The Most Powerful Moment in Any Conversation... And How We Keep Missing It

This newsletter is inspired by Empower World's Coaching and Leadership Podcast conversation with Lyssa deHart, LICSW, MCC, BCC, EMCC, Author, Coaching Educator & Mentor Coach: Episode 260 - 'Fifteen minutes. One metaphor. A life shifted.'

Most of us believe we are good listeners. We wait our turn, nod and follow the thread of what someone is saying... and we can still miss the most important thing the person just said. Not the content or the problem they described: it's a keyword or metaphor someone has used to describe what they are experiencing.

Lyssa deHart -  an International Coaching Federation Master Certified Coach and author - is a leading researcher on metaphors in coaching. She explains that when someone shares "I'm having a rough day" - something happens in their brain because the word 'rough' has a texture to it and lights up the textural receptors in the brain. The language is not describing the experience. It is the actual experience.

This is the insight that most listeners - including most coaches - never fully land on. The words our clients choose are not random. They are 'maps' or 'windows' into the experience, and as Lyssa describes them, they are idea 'containers' which are like "a whole somatic, emotional, mental, physiological experience" packed into a single phrase.

And when we hear them as just words, we walk straight past the door they were holding open - the opportunity to explore how they can support the person we are with to open up new perspectives and choices.

What happens when two people hear the same thing at the same time

When a coach or a leader or a friend truly hears a metaphor shared - and reflects it back, stays inside it, gets curious about how to utilise it as a shared understanding - rather than moving on past it - something powerful can happen which almost never occurs in ordinary conversation. It's an opportunity for two people to inhabit the same understanding simultaneously.

No translation needed. No lengthy explanation. A shared world is created in an instant - and in that shared world - the other person feels something they rarely feel in the rush of daily life. They can feel truly heard.

As Lyssa puts it: "It becomes a shared conceptual language. Metaphors resonate between two people if you allow them to. They become a shared moment, a shared experience in that moment."

This is not a coaching technique. It is a fundamental human experience. And the reason it is rare is not that we lack the ability to offer it; it is often because we are busy focusing on other elements of the story - perhaps even trying to formulate a response.

The plate that scraped itself clean

Lyssa describes a fifteen-minute coaching demonstration where her client arrived talking about a full plate. The plate was overflowing for her coaching partner and for a long time, the plate had been empty - nothing on it, nothing coming. And now suddenly there was too much, and she did not know what to do with it all.

Lyssa stayed entirely inside the world of the metaphorical plate. She got curious about the plate itself - what was on it, what belonged there, what the plate actually needed to look like. And fifteen minutes later, her client had arrived somewhere she could never have reached through a conversation about time management and priorities.

Lyssa explains that by the end of their conversation, her coaching partner said: 'I'm gonna scrape the whole entire plate clean. I'm gonna start over. I need a divided dish.'

This conversation included values, boundaries, the relationship with saying yes, and the unexamined belief that a commitment made once is a commitment made forever. All of it emerged from staying inside four words the coaching partner had shared: 'My plate is full' - supporting them to recognise what was possible within the container of the metaphor.

The questions that keep our partners 'stuck'

The most common response to "I feel stuck" - in coaching, in leadership, in everyday conversations - is "what makes you feel stuck?"

Lyssa is direct about why this can be a problem. "We're now directing them completely towards that unwanted state experience that they're having, and they already know what that feels like. So that's not the direction of coaching."

When we ask what makes someone feel stuck, we pull them further into the stuckness. We generate more detail about the problem. We confirm that the stuck place is where the important conversation is happening.

But 'stuck' is a metaphor for where a person is, and coaching - which is forward-looking - can signal to the coach questions about where the person wants to be. The more powerful question is not what put them there. It is what they would want instead.

They might say they want to dance, or they want freedom (to move or make choices). Both of those are metaphors too. And both of them are 'maps' toward something real that the person already knows and is already trying to tell us, if only we would hear it.

The simplest practice that changes everything

Lyssa's most practical recommendation is straightforward: "Start recording your work, and getting transcripts, and start highlighting everything that the thinker offered you. Because they're in there."

By doing so, start noticing the patterns of key words. Because once you begin to see how frequently metaphorical language appears in every conversation - such as stuck and full and rough and grounded as - you cannot unhear them.

Within that shift of listening, the quality of what you offer the people you work with changes

When we truly listen out for those powerful maps and windows to enter and you start truly hearing what is being said, this provides the foundation for powerful transformational conversations. 

By staying present and supporting the people we work with to understand their needs, desires, beliefs and values - the who and the how emerge - supporting them to move into their desired experience.

Be Empowered

www.empower-world.com

If this reflection resonates with you, you may enjoy listening to the full conversation with Lyssa deHart on the Empower World Coaching and Leadership Podcast with Jeanine Bailey, Co-Founder of Empower World. You can listen to the full episode here:

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/YT-EP-260

Direct Link: https://tinyurl.com/EP-260

Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/SP-EP-260

iTunes: https://tinyurl.com/IT-EP-260

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