Are you really listening to your athletes?
Article 1 — The Co-Active for Sport Leaders series
Ask most coaches if they're good listeners, and they'll probably say yes. Early in my coaching career, I wouldn't have even known how to answer that question, because I had never thought about it.
I wasn't overconfident. I was just completely unaware. I cared deeply about people, I was passionate about the game, and I wanted to teach, explain, and share everything I knew. Listening? It never even crossed my mind as something to work on. I didn't know it was a skill. I didn't know I was missing it.
That, as I'd learn much later, is the definition of unconsciously incompetent.
I'm not even sure exactly when or how the awareness started to creep in. A podcast, a book, something someone said. Sometimes awareness doesn't arrive with a bang. It just quietly shows up one day and you can't unsee it.
A few years later, I had a friend named Michael who was one of the best listeners I had ever been around. People just opened up around him. Conversations went deeper. You walked away feeling genuinely heard. I watched him and thought: how does he do that? What does he know that I don't? I wanted what he had, but I had no idea how to get there.
That gap between wanting to be a better listener and not knowing how stayed with me for years. And it's actually a perfect example of something I'd only understand later, when I discovered Co-Active coaching.
The four stages of learning
Before we talk about listening itself, it helps to understand where you are in your own development. There's a model that maps how we grow in any skill:
Stage 1: Unconsciously incompetent
Stage 2: Consciously incompetent
Stage 3: Consciously competent
Stage4: Unconsciously competent or Mastery
For years, I was squarely at Stage 1. Unconsciously incompetent. I didn't know what I didn't know. I was passionate, engaged, and I genuinely cared. The problem was invisible to me.
Moving to Stage 2, consciously incompetent, can happen in different ways. Sometimes it's a clear aha moment you'll always remember. Sometimes awareness just slowly shows up over time, and one day you realize you've crossed a line. For me it was somewhere in between. What I do know is that once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it.
My wife is a lot like Michael, one of those people who is just naturally gifted at listening. People feel safe around her. She holds space without even trying. Being with someone like that when you know you struggle with it is its own kind of mirror. Humbling and motivating at the same time.
But knowing you have a gap and knowing how to close it are two very different things. I was stuck at Stage 2 for a long time. I cared about getting better. I even Googled listening courses at one point, after hearing Simon Sinek talk about it. Nothing clicked. I could see what I was missing but I had no framework, no anchor, no concrete path forward.
Then I found Co-Active. And they clearly named the levels of listening. That was the moment. Having something concrete to anchor my development to changed everything. Slowly, through a lot of work and a lot of conscious mistakes, I started moving into Stage 3.
I still struggle sometimes. You can't erase 43 years of hard wiring completely. But I know where I am, I know where I'm going, and I know what I'm working on.
I'm sharing all of this because I hope that having this framework does for you what Co-Active did for me. Whether you're a coach, a parent, a friend. Wherever you are right now in your own journey, this is for you.
A quick word on Co-Active
In my last article, I talked about how much Co-Active has meant to me, but I realized I didn't actually explain what it is. Let me fix that.
The Co-Active Training Institute (CTI) is the world's largest coach-training organization, with academic partnerships including Harvard and a track record of training more professional coaches than any other institution on the planet. Their framework gave me a language and a structure for something I had been trying to figure out on my own for years.
At its core, Co-Active coaching is built on one powerful belief: the person in front of you is naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. Your job isn't to fix them. It's to help them access what's already there. That premise changes everything about how you show up in a conversation.
And it starts with how you listen.
The three levels of listening
Co-Active identifies three distinct levels of listening. Each one represents a different quality of attention and a very different experience for the athlete you're with.
Level 1 - Listening with attention on yourself
At Level 1, everything passes through the filter of your own experience. You hear their words, but your mind keeps circling back to you. Your stories, your opinions, your solutions. This was me for a long time.
A player mentions they went on a trip somewhere exciting. Your instinct: "Oh I've been there! Let me tell you about my experience..." The conversation is now about you.
A player shares a struggle. Your instinct: jump straight to a solution, or say "I had that same problem when I was young." The attention moves back to you.
Level 1 isn't malicious. It's just human. But as a coach, it closes doors.
Level 2 - Listening with focus on the athlete
At Level 2, you stay in their story. You're not thinking about what you'll say next. You're not connecting it back to yourself. You're asking follow-up questions, leaning in, creating space for the athlete to go deeper.
Same trip story. Instead of jumping in, you ask: "What was the best part of it?" You stay in their world.
Same struggle. Instead of fixing it, you say: "Tell me more about that." You give them room to keep going.
Level 2 is where many good coaches operate. But there's still another level beyond it.
Level 3 - Listening to everything
Level 3 is 360-degree awareness. You're not just listening to the words. You're taking in everything: energy, body language, what's not being said, what the room feels like.
When a player talks about that trip, you notice: are they lighting up, opening up as they speak? Or are they closing in, making themselves small? That tells you something beyond the words.
When a player talks about a struggle, you're reading the whole picture. Posture, eye contact, the energy they walked in with. That's information too.
This is also where you begin to sense what Co-Active calls the Saboteur. That inner critic quietly working against your athlete's belief in themselves. We'll dedicate a full article to the Saboteur. For now, just know: at Level 3, you start to hear it.
Listening in practice: youth, elite, and pro
Understanding the levels of listening is one thing. Applying them looks different depending on who you're coaching. Here's how I think about it across three contexts.
Youth - Protect the play
At the youth level, play is the root of learning. There's a reason kids absorb so much so fast when they're having fun. They're not thinking about working their craft. They're just playing. And that's exactly the point.
As a coach working with young athletes, your listening job is to see each kid's individual spark. Some are there for the competition. Some are there for their friends. Some just love the feel of the ball at their feet. None of those motivations are wrong. Your job is to notice what brings each kid alive and protect it.
In practice, that means staying at Level 2 and Level 3. Ask follow-up questions about their friendships, their trips, their life outside the game. Stay in their story. And read the energy. When is this kid glowing? When are they shutting down? That tells you more than any drill result.
Playing time becomes real at a certain age, and that's where listening matters most. A kid left on the bench in a big game is carrying something. The Level 1 coach jumps in: "Work harder, your time will come." The Level 2 coach sits with it: "I noticed you didn't get in today. What was that like for you?" That kid will remember how you made them feel long after they've forgotten the score.
Elite and college - See who they are becoming
Play is still at the root of learning at this level, just in a different form. The stakes are higher, the competition is real, and scholarships and futures are on the line. But these are still humans figuring out who they are.
Here's something worth remembering: the adolescent brain is in a state of massive change. Science tells us the two periods of greatest neuroplasticity in our lives are zero to three years old and adolescence. These athletes are literally rewiring who they are. They're building their identity, their worldview, their sense of what they're capable of. They might say something frustrating in the moment, or not be where you want them to be yet. But as a coach, remember: they are in full expansion mode.
Listening at this level means investing in who they're becoming over the next two or three years, not just who they are today. The player in front of you is not the finished product. Your listening, your questions, your attention, are part of what shapes who they'll be.
Playing time carries serious weight here. Use the levels of listening deliberately. Stay in their story. Read their energy. A player who feels truly seen by their coach will give you everything.
Professional - See the human behind the athlete
A quick note: working at the professional level is not my primary expertise. I have spent time in elite college environments and worked around professional organizations, but I want to be honest about where my direct experience ends.
That said, here is what I believe: professional athletes have been the best their entire lives. They arrived at the top through years of sacrifice, and now they live with a reality most people don't understand. Playing time that was once a given can disappear for a season, sometimes two. Injuries can derail everything. The career window is short.
Professional coaching staff are larger, and there is more time spent together at training grounds and facilities. That means more opportunity for deliberate listening, and it should be used. These athletes are not just performers. They are humans carrying enormous pressure, and they need someone who genuinely sees them.
The best CEOs in the world have coaches. The best athletes are no different. A professional coach who builds real listening into their practice, who stays at Level 2 and Level 3, who sees the human behind the athlete, will unlock things that tactical brilliance alone never can.
I work with a small number of athletes in an executive coaching capacity, supporting them in that deeper space. That work has shown me how much this matters at the highest levels. The head coach is not a life coach, and that's not the expectation. But the responsibility to truly listen, to see each player, that belongs to every coach at every level.
Where does this leave you?
If you're being honest with yourself right now, which stage are you at? And which level of listening do you actually operate from most of the time?
There's no shame in the answer. I was Stage 1 for 30 years without knowing it. The moment I became aware was uncomfortable (another 12 years…). But it was also the beginning of everything.
The athletes in front of you are already resourceful. They already have more answers than they think. Your job is to listen at a level that lets those answers come forward.
Coming up: the Saboteur: that inner critic that quietly works against your athletes, and what to do when it walks into the room.
M-A
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