One Whale Said to Another

I watched a fascinating documentary at the weekend about how AI is being used to help us better understand animal language.

One part stayed with me. It focused on whales and how researchers are beginning to understand more about how they communicate, and even how wisdom may be passed from one generation to the next.

At the end, one of the researchers said something that stopped me in my tracks. He said the goal is not primarily to help humans communicate with animals, but to listen with a view to better understanding them.

I sat with that for a while. Because it made me wonder if we humans are really much different.

So much of life trains us to speak, to explain, to persuade, and to defend. Very little trains us to truly listen. And if I am honest, most of us are not really listening to understand; we are listening to reply, to fix, and to speak.

One of the things that always fascinates me when I train people in coaching is that the biggest transformation is often not in their coaching skills.

It is in themselves.

As they learn to slow down and become comfortable with silence, they begin noticing things they missed before: the tension in their own body, the emotion behind someone’s words, the question no one has yet asked. Again and again, people tell me they are learning more about themselves through listening than through talking.

That does not surprise me.

In The Imaginal Coach, I write that transformation rarely happens amid noise and hurry. More often, it begins in the space between words. I have come to believe that we rarely grow in our careers or relationships by talking more.

We grow by listening better.

So here is a question to sit with this summer: Where in your life are you listening to respond rather than listening to understand?

Sometimes the most transformational gift we can offer another person is not advice.

It is attention.