The following behaviors were identified as key to empathetic listening by Dr. M. Pickering in the Journal of Research of the University of Maine.
•    Acknowledging the other person’s presence, for instance by meaningful eye contact or non-verbal signals
•    Restating and paraphrasing what the other person is saying
•    Reflecting: revealing feelings, experiences, or ideas of your own that support what they’ve said
•    Interpreting: offering a tentative interpretation about the other’s message or feelings
•    Summarizing and synthesizing what you’ve heard them say
•    Probing: gentle questioning requesting more details or a better understanding
•    Supporting: showing warmth and caring
•    Checking your understanding of what they’ve said; finding out of your interpretation is accurate
•    Being quiet— not thinking about what you’re going to say next. Just being.

… Than men themselves? Yes, quite possibly! At least for certain topics. But first, a disclaimer: for the sake of brevity and clarity, I’m over-simplifying an already-controversial topic. Bear with me here, and save the rotten tomatoes for compost. With that said, here goes….

Experts from a wide range of fields, from evolutionary psychology to behavioral science, seem to agree that men are driven to compete with each other—whether it be for resources, status, power, knowledge, and so forth.

Evolutionary psychology proponents such as Robert Wright explain that this driver can be more or less present depending on the situation, but is always present, even if it’s only in the background. Which would make it understandably harder for men to reveal their vulnerabilities to one another— who’d want to expose his weaknesses to competitors?

Unfortunately, great coaching work can sometimes require complete openness to achieve true breakthroughs. One good example is the “silencing the inner critic” work we’d previously covered. Even admitting that you have a critical inner voice is already revealing a vulnerability; let alone revealing what exactly it says to you. Unfortunately, both are critical steps to improving the situation.

In this scenario, choosing a coach with whom there isn’t even a hint of biological urge for competition would make it much easier to open up. Of course, the question then becomes: what of women coaching women? Now, that’s another matter indeed…

•    Neuroscientists specializing in eye contact found that when our eyes are in “sharp focus”, our stress responses increase. As soon as we relax our eyes, the rest of our body follows.
•    When you look deeply into people’s eyes, it speeds their heart rate and sends a hormone called phenylethylamine, or PEA, coursing through their blood stream.
•    Our brains are hardwired to experience “separation distress” whenever someone with whom we have meaningful eye contact turns their gaze away.  The circuitry of our brains reacts instantly and tells us to either:
Move to reconnect with them using the social skills of our higher brain (cortex),
Disconnect from them in the fight-or-flight mode of our mid-brain (amygdala),
Shut down and freeze in the mode of our lower survival brain (brainstem).
•    One good way to avoid this is to keep eye contact for three full seconds at the end of your interaction with people (it may sound short, but it’ll feel long!) With just this, they’ll feel you were truly paying attention to them.