Cathy Liska In this blog series, we have reviewed the additional points of skill from ICF’s Team Coaching Competencies 1 through 5 and now are continuing with competency 6. 
Competency 6: Listens Actively
+ Notices how the perspectives shared by each team member relate to other team members’ views and the team dialogue.
+ Notices how each team member impacts the collective team energy, engagement, and focus.
+ Notices verbal and non-verbal communication patterns among team members to identify potential alliances, conflicts, and growth opportunities.
+ Models confident, effective communication and collaboration when working with a co-coach or other experts.
+ Encourages the team to own the dialogue.
What this means:
- Listen deeply to hear what each is and is not saying.
- Offer neutral observations of alliances, conflicts, and growth opportunities.
- Be aware of individual impact, relationships, conflicts, and opportunities to grow for exploration by the team.
- Modeling effective communication becomes an opportunity for the team to also model effective communication.
- Hold the team as empowered to manage their own dialogue.
Often coaches are asked to explain what we actually do; listen and ask questions is an over-simplified answer. At the same time, really listening is much more involved and takes skill. This competency is taught during coaching certification and worked on consistently by coaches throughout their careers. When working with a team it means further developing listening skills to hear and be aware of multiple people at once.
