Listening levels
It doesn’t matter if you are just starting out in teaching or you’re an experienced senior leader, it’s vital you understand the people you work with (both young and old).
There is one skill, which helps you achieve it that many people have never been taught to use properly.
Listening.
In the classroom you need to listen to answers. In form time you need to listen to worries. In the staffroom you need to listen to strategies.
But it’s easier said than done. This week’s highlights from the We Are In Beta community will help listen better, help others more and learn from them.
We - schools - Are In Beta - always learning (when we listen (properly) to each other).
This week
🧑🏫 Leadership coaching: four levels of listening
🗳️ Closing soon: help others listen to excellent subject practice
📺 Listen to how high expectations, strong relationships, and precision support drive Outstanding Outcomes
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🧑🏫 Leadership coaching: 4 levels of listening
This is a guest post by George McMillan, Assistant Director, Harris Federation.
If you’ve been following this series you’ll know by now that coaching is about helping others to think and that leadership is about ‘being’ not ‘doing‘. You’ll also know that to get coaching right, you need to remove what’s getting in the way: unwillingness, untidy coaching environments and poor positioning. And finally, you’ll know that coaching requires you to fight the battles in your mind: the noises in your head, emotional dysregulation and wanting to look good and be right.
So once have all this clear, the next thing to think about is how to listen. Properly.
A framework for listening
In coaching we talk about four levels of listening. Let’s take each one in turn.
1. Attentively
We want to listen attentively. So, first and foremost, eye contact, right? Eye contact is really important.
Body language is really important too. I mean, I’ve seen some ridiculous stuff where people get it wrong. You know the Hollywood style, alpha male, leaning back with the hands clasped round the back of the head type stuff. Especially from guys. I’ve seen it. When I train people, I’ve seen it. Sometimes it’s sort of a nervous reaction, right? But anyway, body language is really important.
Non-verbal cues. “Uh-huh”, “mmm-hmm”, and all that kind of stuff are ways of training yourself to listen attentively (and demonstrate that you are listening attentively).
If you read my last piece, it won’t surprise you to hear me say that your physical environment helps you to be attentive.
2. Accurately
Then it’s about listening accurately. So, listening to the facts. To test that, ask yourself: can you summarise what the person has said?
To practice (and demonstrate that I am) listening accurately, I’ll say things like
“Right, [insert name], so what I’m hearing is…”
Or if what they are saying is really complicated, I’ll just flag it because I don’t need to pretend that I’m right. If it’s complicated, I might say:
“Wow, it sounds really complicated. Can I just reflect back what I’m hearing because there’s a lot going on here?”
And then I’ll summarise: “A, B, C. Is that about right?”
And they’ll say “Yes”. Or they’ll say, “No”. And even if it’s a no, that’s great. That means you can then clarify things by asking questions and get really, really clear.
It’s hard to do that sometimes, especially when someone who’s coming to see you might be cross about you or they’re coming to complain. You’re having a really difficult conversation. That’s actually quite tricky for you. So, it’s really, really important that you’re clarifying what it is that they’re actually saying.
The purists might come at me at this point and say, “But, George, that’s not coaching”. To them I say, I’m talking about a coaching style (which I discussed here), not formal coaching per se.
Would someone else find this useful?
3. Empathetically
The third level is then listening empathetically. Does the person feel like you understand how they feel?
Notice I’m not saying sympathetically. I am saying empathetically. There’s a big difference between a coaching conversation and having a conversation in a pub.
You can say to your mate in the pub, “Oh, God, I hate working with George McMillan. He’s a moron”.
And your mate’s like, “Yeah, I heard he was a moron as well. I hate that guy?“
And that’s fine. But only in the pub.
But in a workplace context, that’s not actually useful. So, when you say to a work colleague in a sort of coach-y style conversation, “Oh God, I just find George McMillan so difficult to work for. He’s a moron“, what the coach should not be doing is colluding by saying “Yeah he is!”
Instead the coach might say, “Tell me more about that”. Or “I can see you’re really frustrated”. That’s what you say when you’re listening empathetically.
You are showing that you understand rather than colluding. Because the thing is that they might not be ‘right’ (for lack of a better word) in their disgust of me. For example, I might’ve challenged them about something, they’ve had a massive response, or they’ve misunderstood it, or you were incredibly defensive and that’s why they think I’m a moron. But, in fact, I’ve done it because I care and they’ve got the wrong end of the stick.
So, colluding with them is just reinforcing what might be not a correct response to something and is not useful.
So, listen empathetically without collusion.
Want to know the fourth level and how to make sure you don’t miss any of the levels the next time you are working on your listening?
🗳️ Closing soon: help others listen to excellent subject practice
Curriculum Thinking Week is an amazing opportunity to share and get feedback on your work.
Here’s what lead Practitioner , Katherine Baulcomb said about her experience speaking last year:
Thanks, Katherine!
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On a personal note
Writing this section of the newsletter is always the hardest part.
Why?
I push myself to share things I don’t feel entirely comfortable sharing - vulnerabilities, painful learning, original thoughts - to make sure I am living the We Are In Beta value of ‘always learning’.
What I share doesn’t always resonate. I don’t always gets replies from readers.
But last week (when I reflected on loss and leadership through the lens of Arsenal Football Club), something about it resonated.
It prompted more replies than usual. It encouraged others to share their thoughts (however embryological they were). In turn that made think harder (and hopefully better).
This would not have happened, had I not pushed myself outside my comfort zone to share my work and they not been open to listening.
If you want to share, listen, learn or improve, join the lineup of Curriculum Thinking Week 2026 and/or read about good (and bad) listening. You will help teachers improve and student achieve by doing so.
Thanks for reading.
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This made me think about assessment.
Many assessments are designed to listen at Level 1: they check whether a student produced the expected answer.
A good teacher often operates closer to Level 2, trying to understand the student's reasoning.
The most valuable feedback may come from something like Level 3—listening not just to the answer itself, but to the misconceptions, confidence, uncertainty, and mental model behind it.
Sometimes what a student is thinking is more informative than whether they got the answer right.
The "accurately" level is the one I wish more project managers practised. In requirements workshops I have lost count of how many scope disasters traced back to someone nodding instead of reflecting back "what I am hearing is A, B, C, is that right?". The counterintuitive part you name is the real value: a "no" at that moment is a gift, because it surfaces the gap while it still costs nothing to fix.
And the empathy-without-collusion distinction works just as well with a frustrated sponsor. You can show you understand the frustration without signing up to the conclusion behind it.