Title: Active Listening — LearnCoachAssist

Q: What is active listening?
A: Fully concentrating on what someone is saying, understanding the complete message (words, tone, and non-verbal cues), and responding in a way that shows genuine comprehension.

Q: What are the three levels of listening?
A: Level 1: Listening to self (thinking about your own response). Level 2: Listening to the speaker (focused on their words and meaning). Level 3: Global listening (attuned to energy, emotion, and what's unsaid).

Q: What is the difference between hearing and listening?
A: Hearing is passive and automatic — sound reaching your ears. Listening is active and intentional — processing, interpreting, and making meaning from what you hear.

Q: What is paraphrasing and why is it useful?
A: Restating the speaker's message in your own words to confirm understanding. It demonstrates you've heard them and reveals any miscommunications.

Q: What is reflecting in active listening?
A: Mirroring back the emotional content of what someone said — e.g., "It sounds like you're feeling frustrated about this." It validates their experience.

Q: What is summarising in a conversation?
A: Pulling together the key points of what someone has said to confirm your shared understanding and give them a chance to add or correct anything.

Q: What are common barriers to active listening?
A: Distractions, formulating your response while they're talking, emotional reactions, assumptions, prejudging the speaker, and being fatigued.

Q: What does non-verbal communication include?
A: Facial expressions, eye contact, posture, gestures, proximity, touch, and tone of voice. These often carry more emotional information than words alone.

Q: What is the 7-38-55 rule (Mehrabian)?
A: Albert Mehrabian's research suggested that liking/feeling is communicated 7% through words, 38% through tone of voice, and 55% through body language. Context matters greatly.

Q: What is "minimal encouragers" in active listening?
A: Brief verbal and non-verbal cues (nodding, "mm-hmm", "I see") that signal you are engaged and encourage the speaker to continue without interrupting.

Q: What is open body language?
A: Posture that signals receptiveness: uncrossed arms, relaxed shoulders, leaning slightly forward, maintaining appropriate eye contact, and facing the speaker.

Q: What is the SOLER model for active listening?
A: A framework for non-verbal attending: S-quarely face the client, O-pen posture, L-ean slightly forward, E-ye contact appropriate, R-elaxed manner.

Q: What is empathic listening?
A: Going beyond understanding the words to understanding the speaker's perspective, feelings, and underlying needs — and communicating that understanding back to them.

Q: What is selective attention and how does it affect listening?
A: The brain's tendency to focus on certain stimuli while filtering others. We naturally pay more attention to information that aligns with our existing beliefs.

Q: What is the difference between sympathy and empathy in a listening context?
A: Sympathy involves feeling for someone from your own perspective. Empathy involves stepping into their frame of reference to understand their experience from the inside.

Q: What is "listening for assumptions"?
A: Paying attention to the beliefs or mental models embedded in what someone says — e.g., "I can't do that" implies a belief about capability that can be explored.

Q: What are open-ended questions and why are they preferred in active listening?
A: Questions that cannot be answered with yes/no and invite elaboration (e.g., "Tell me more about that."). They keep the speaker talking and reveal more information.

Q: What is "listening between the lines"?
A: Paying attention to what is NOT said — hesitations, topic avoidance, contradictions, or areas the speaker glosses over — which can reveal unspoken concerns.

Q: What is active listening in a coaching context?
A: Using listening skills to help the coachee feel deeply heard, which builds trust, and to pick up on meaning, emotion, or patterns that can be explored to generate insight.

Q: What is the impact of asking clarifying questions?
A: They show genuine interest, prevent misunderstanding, invite the speaker to reflect more deeply, and gather information needed to understand the full picture.

Q: What is "acknowledging" in coaching and active listening?
A: Recognizing the significance of what the client has shared — acknowledging their effort, emotions, or insights — without judgment or evaluation.

Q: Why is silence powerful in active listening?
A: It signals respect and gives the speaker space to think. Many people will fill silence with more genuine, deeper thoughts than they'd share if rushed.

Q: What is "mirroring" in listening?
A: Reflecting back a key word or phrase the speaker used to invite them to expand on it — e.g., if they say "I feel stuck," you might simply ask, "Stuck?"

Q: What is the RASA model of listening?
A: Receive (pay attention), Appreciate (give feedback signals), Summarise (capture key points), Ask (ask relevant questions). A framework for engaged listening.

Q: What is confirmation bias in listening?
A: The tendency to hear what confirms our existing beliefs and filter out information that contradicts them — leading to incomplete or distorted understanding.

Q: What is listening to understand?
A: It means your goal is to accurately grasp the speaker's meaning before judging, fixing, or responding.

Q: Why is interrupting harmful in active listening?
A: Interrupting breaks trust, narrows disclosure, and signals that your reaction matters more than their message.

Q: What is emotional labeling in listening?
A: Naming the emotion you hear, such as saying "It sounds frustrating," to help the speaker feel understood.

Q: What is the value of asking one clear follow-up question at a time?
A: It keeps the speaker focused and prevents the conversation from feeling like an interrogation.

Q: What is listening for values?
A: It means noticing what the speaker cares about most, such as fairness, autonomy, speed, or belonging.

Q: Why should coaches avoid jumping to advice too quickly?
A: Advice given too early can shut down reflection and reduce ownership of the eventual solution.

Q: What is attentive silence?
A: Silence paired with presence, eye contact, and openness that invites the speaker to continue or think more deeply.

Q: What is an example of a validating response?
A: "Given what happened, it makes sense that you'd feel disappointed."

Q: What is a common sign that someone is not really listening?
A: They reply to what they expected to hear instead of what the speaker actually said.

Q: How does summarizing help at the end of a conversation?
A: It confirms shared understanding and makes it easier to agree on next steps.

Q: What is listening for contradictions?
A: Noticing where someone's words, tone, or behavior do not fully align so you can explore the gap gently.

Q: Why do assumptions weaken listening?
A: Assumptions cause you to fill in missing information instead of staying curious about the speaker's reality.

Q: What does curiosity sound like in a conversation?
A: Questions like "What feels most important about that?" or "What led you there?"

Q: What is the benefit of slowing your response down?
A: A slower response reduces defensiveness and gives you time to answer what was truly said.

Q: How do active listening and trust relate?
A: When people feel heard accurately and respectfully, trust usually increases quickly.

Q: What is the difference between fixing and supporting?
A: Fixing rushes toward a solution; supporting helps the speaker feel understood first and then decide what they need.

Q: Why is context important in listening?
A: The same words can mean very different things depending on relationship history, pressure, and environment.

Q: What is a useful check-for-understanding question?
A: "Did I get that right, or is there something important I missed?"

Q: How can note-taking affect active listening?
A: Good note-taking can help memory, but too much of it can reduce presence and eye contact.

Q: What does listening with humility mean?
A: It means accepting that the other person knows important parts of their experience that you do not.

Q: Why does active listening improve coaching outcomes?
A: It surfaces clearer goals, deeper blockers, and more accurate next steps.

Q: What is the role of pace matching in listening?
A: Matching someone's conversational pace can make them feel more comfortable and understood.

Q: How do you listen better under stress?
A: Pause, regulate your own reaction, focus on one idea at a time, and paraphrase before replying.

Q: What is a listening reset when a conversation goes sideways?
A: Briefly stop, restate the issue neutrally, and ask the speaker to clarify what matters most.

Q: What does the "listen or die" framing capture about poor listening?
A: Unattended listening signals to the speaker that they don't matter, which often kills the relationship before any solution is offered.

Q: What is the neuroscience behind why we so often fail to listen?
A: The brain's predictive-coding system constantly generates expectations about incoming speech; we often hear what we expect rather than what is actually said.

Q: What is "inner chatter" in listening?
A: The internal monologue that runs while someone else is speaking — judging, planning a reply, or rehearsing our point — which competes with attention for cognitive bandwidth.

Q: What cognitive load limit makes sustained listening hard?
A: Working memory can hold roughly 4 chunks at once; spoken language arrives at ~150 wpm while we can think ~4x faster, leaving room for drift.

Q: What is "reactive listening"?
A: Listening primarily to spot an opening to respond, argue, or advise — the opposite of listening to understand.

Q: What is "appreciative listening"?
A: Listening for value, meaning, or enjoyment rather than to evaluate or respond — used in coaching to surface what energises the coachee.

Q: What is "comprehensive listening"?
A: Listening to understand the full content and intent of a message — the mode most coaching conversations require.

Q: What is "critical listening"?
A: Listening to evaluate the truth, logic, or usefulness of what's being said — useful but often premature in coaching contexts.

Q: What is the difference between content and process in listening?
A: Content is WHAT the speaker says; process is HOW they say it (pace, pauses, words chosen, energy shifts). Skilled listeners track both.

Q: What is "tracking" in active listening?
A: Quietly noticing the speaker's shifts in topic, mood, energy, and language so you can reflect patterns back at the right moment.

Q: What is the "ladder of inference" in listening?
A: A model showing how data → selected data → meanings → assumptions → conclusions → beliefs → action. Listeners often jump several rungs, distorting the message.

Q: How does the ladder of inference distort active listening?
A: When listeners skip from raw data to assumptions or beliefs, they react to inferences rather than to what the speaker actually said.

Q: What is "looping" in a listening conversation?
A: A pattern where speaker and listener return to a theme or phrase multiple times, deepening understanding each pass instead of jumping forward.

Q: What is "second-level listening" in Co-Active coaching?
A: Listening beyond the speaker's story to what is happening inside them — emotions, somatic cues, and the call to action beneath the words.

Q: What is "third-level listening"?
A: Listing to the speaker, to yourself, and to the field/relationship between you — listening to the whole system, not just two people.

Q: What is "field listening" in a coaching context?
A: Tuning in to the relational and contextual energy between coach and client — what wants to happen next, not just what is being said.

Q: What is "somatic listening"?
A: Paying attention to the speaker's body — breath, posture, tension, gestures — as carriers of meaning that words miss.

Q: What is the "felt sense" in listening (Gendlin)?
A: A Gendlin term for the vague, whole-body knowing a person carries about an issue before they have language for it; attentive listening helps it crystallise.

Q: What is "focusing" in the Gendlin sense?
A: A practice of gently turning attention toward the felt sense of a problem so fresh meaning emerges — requires a deeply listened-to companion.

Q: What is "presence" in active listening?
A: A grounded, undistracted state in which the listener is fully available — psychologically, emotionally, and physically — to the speaker.

Q: What is "cognitive empathy" vs "affective empathy" in listening?
A: Cognitive empathy is understanding another's perspective; affective empathy is feeling their emotion with them. Coaches need both, balanced.

Q: What is "empathic accuracy"?
A: Research term for how well a listener infers what a speaker is actually thinking and feeling — it correlates strongly with relationship quality.

Q: What is "perspective taking" in active listening?
A: Deliberately imagining the situation from the speaker's frame of reference rather than your own before responding.

Q: What is "empathic conjecture"?
A: A tentative guess about the speaker's inner experience ("It sounds like part of you is relieved and part is scared") — offered as a hypothesis, not a fact.

Q: What is the risk of over-using empathic conjecture?
A: Poorly timed or premature empathic guesses can feel presumptuous, like mind-reading, and trigger defensiveness.

Q: What is the "listen-validate-invite" micro-sequence?
A: A three-step response pattern: reflect what you heard, validate the experience, then invite the speaker to go deeper.

Q: What is "validation" distinct from agreement?
A: Validation is acknowledging that someone's feelings or perspective make sense given their context; agreement is endorsing the view. You can validate without agreeing.

Q: What is "normalising" in active listening?
A: Helping the speaker see that their reaction is a common human response under similar circumstances — reduces shame and isolation.

Q: What is the "name it to tame it" effect in listening?
A: Research by Lieberman showing that labelling an emotion reduces amygdala activity — speaking or hearing the name of a feeling calms the nervous system.

Q: What is "circular listening"?
A: Tracking how a speaker relates to multiple people or forces in their story ("He feels unsupported by her because she is stretched at work") rather than only linear facts.

Q: What is "self-disclosure" from a listener and when is it useful?
A: Sharing a brief, relevant personal experience to build trust or normalise struggle — useful in moderation, harmful when it shifts focus back to the listener.

Q: What is the "1:1:1 rule" for self-disclosure in coaching?
A: Keep disclosures short, relevant, and in service of the client; the spotlight should always return to them within a sentence or two.

Q: What is "looping back" in long coaching conversations?
A: Periodically referencing what the speaker said earlier to show continuity and to surface shifts in perspective over the conversation.

Q: What is "future-paced listening"?
A: Listening with one ear to what the speaker is saying now and another to the future action or decision implied by it.

Q: What is "values listening"?
A: Noticing the recurring values — autonomy, fairness, belonging, mastery — embedded in the speaker's stories and choices.

Q: What is "needs listening"?
A: Listening past strategies to the underlying needs — safety, significance, belonging — that any behaviour is trying to meet.

Q: What is "story-listening"?
A: Noticing how the speaker narrates their life: the characters, turning points, and moral — which often reveals identity-level beliefs.

Q: What is "identity listening"?
A: Listening for statements about who the speaker believes they are ("I'm just not a math person") which often hide the real coaching opportunity.

Q: What is "exception-finding" in active listening?
A: Listening for moments when the problem did NOT happen, or happened less — these exceptions usually contain the seeds of a solution.

Q: What is "scaling listening"?
A: Listening that picks up on numeric or comparative cues ("always", "never", "10 out of 10") and gently makes them precise.

Q: What is "metaphor listening"?
A: Noticing the images and metaphors a speaker uses ("I'm drowning", "hitting a wall") — these often carry richer meaning than their literal words.

Q: What is "language listening"?
A: Noticing exact word choices, pronouns, and tense — "I have to" vs "I choose to" — which encode agency and can be reflected back.

Q: What is the "dropped word" technique?
A: When a speaker uses an unusually strong or unusual word, the listener repeats just that word with a rising intonation to invite more.

Q: What is "minimal response versus minimal engagement"?
A: "Mm-hmm" can be a real attention signal or a habitual filler; quality of attention matters more than the specific sound made.

Q: What is "speech-rate matching" and what are its limits?
A: Mirroring a speaker's pace can build rapport, but matching too closely can feel mocking — light calibration beats imitation.

Q: What is "vocal mirroring" beyond pace?
A: Subtly matching volume, pitch range, and rhythm to signal attunement — used in therapy and hostage negotiation alike.

Q: What is "postural echoing"?
A: Subtly reflecting the speaker's open/closed posture without caricature — a non-verbal way of saying "I am with you."

Q: What is the difference between rapport and attunement?
A: Rapport is the feeling of connection; attunement is the moment-by-moment tracking that produces it. Rapport is the outcome, attunement the practice.

Q: What is "attunement" neurologically?
A: Co-activation of mirror neuron systems and limbic resonance that lets one person's nervous system track another's — the biology of being felt.

Q: What is "limbic resonance" in listening?
A: A term from Daniel Stern for the moment-by-moment coupling of two nervous systems that makes deep listening feel effortless and safe.

Q: What is "co-regulation" through listening?
A: How a calm, regulated listener helps a dysregulated speaker settle — the listener's nervous system literally lends stability.

Q: What is the "Vagus Nerve" link to listening quality?
A: Polyvagal theory suggests a regulated ventral-vagal state supports the facial expressiveness and voice modulation that signal safe presence.

Q: What is "window of tolerance" listening?
A: Staying aware that a speaker in hyper- or hypo-arousal cannot process complex reflection — listening must first help them regulate.

Q: What is "titration" of emotional material?
A: Handling distressing content in small, manageable doses with pauses — so the speaker's nervous system can integrate rather than flood.

Q: What is "pendulation" in a listening session?
A: Gently moving attention between difficult material and a resource — a safe memory, a body sensation of ease — so the speaker doesn't get stuck.

Q: What is "grounding" before deep listening?
A: A brief practice (feet on floor, slow breath) the listener uses to arrive fully so they don't arrive distracted.

Q: What is the "ARRR" model of trauma-informed listening?
A: Attend, Reflect, Respond, Refer — a simple sequence for conversations that may touch on trauma.

Q: What is the "first aid" model of empathic listening?
A: Treating empathic listening as psychological first aid: provide safety, calm, connectedness, self-efficacy, and hope.

Q: What is "psychological safety" in a listening conversation?
A: A shared belief that the speaker can be vulnerable without embarrassment, rejection, or punishment — a precondition for deep disclosure.

Q: What is the cost of rushing to solutions?
A: It signals that the speaker's emotions are an obstacle to the "real work" rather than part of it — a common cause of stalled coaching.

Q: What is "premature problem solving"?
A: Offering solutions before the speaker has been fully heard, which often produces shallow compliance instead of real change.

Q: What is "advice-giving disguised as a question"?
A: "Have you tried just being more positive?" — phrased as a question but functioning as a directive. Coaches should notice and reframe.

Q: What is the "sound of advice"?
A: Linguistic markers — "you should", "why don't you", "the thing to do is" — that signal the listener has left listening mode.

Q: What is the "sound of curiosity"?
A: Markers — "I'm wondering…", "what's that like?", "tell me more" — that signal listening mode is still active.

Q: What is "shift-talk" in motivational interviewing?
A: Speech that pushes toward change ("I suppose I could…", "I guess I want to…") — active listening is tuned to amplify it.

Q: What is "sustain talk" and how should a listener respond?
A: Speech arguing for the status quo ("it's not that bad", "I can't because…") — listen fully first, then reflect it back without argument.

Q: What is the OARS acronym in motivational interviewing?
A: Open questions, Affirmations, Reflections, Summaries — four micro-skills that operationalise active listening in MI.

Q: What is a "simple reflection" in MI?
A: Restating or slightly rephrasing what the speaker said to confirm understanding — usually short and literal.

Q: What is a "complex reflection" in MI?
A: Going beyond content to add meaning, emotion, or unspoken material — deeper than a simple reflection and more likely to move the conversation.

Q: What is the "rule of thirds" in MI-style conversations?
A: On average, the coach should talk less than a third of the time, with the rest silence or reflective response.

Q: What is "reflection depth" calibration?
A: Starting with simple reflections and escalating to complex reflections only when the speaker is ready — too deep too soon feels intrusive.

Q: What is "deaf spots" in listening?
A: Topics or emotions the listener unconsciously avoids hearing — usually tied to their own wounds. Self-supervision reveals them.

Q: What is "countertransference" in active listening?
A: The listener's own emotional reaction to the speaker, which can either distort listening or — if noticed — become useful data.

Q: What is "reverence" in listening?
A: A stance of treating the speaker's inner world as worthy of careful attention, not as material to be managed.

Q: What is "unconditional positive regard" (Rogers) in listening?
A: Accepting the speaker without judgment as a baseline condition for genuine listening — one of Rogers' core conditions.

Q: What is "congruence" (Rogers) in listening?
A: The listener's responses are authentic and aligned with what they actually notice, rather than performed or scripted.

Q: What is "Ulysses contract" in listening agreements?
A: Pre-committing in a coaching contract to listening deeply even when tempted to advise — protects the process.

Q: What is the "three-second pause" practice?
A: Counting to three after the speaker finishes before responding — often the most useful upgrade a new coach can make.

Q: What is "first-word noticing"?
A: Paying attention to the very first word a speaker uses to answer — it often leaks the real feeling beneath the prepared answer.

Q: What is "last-word listening"?
A: The final word the speaker says often carries the highest emotional charge — a good place to reflect, paraphrase, or ask.

Q: What is "yes-and" listening (from improv)?
A: Accepting whatever the speaker offers without negating or correcting — building the conversation rather than blocking it.

Q: What is the difference between "yes-and" and "but"?
A: "But" negates what came before; "yes-and" accepts and adds — a structural choice that determines whether a speaker feels heard.

Q: What is a "blocking move" in conversation?
A: Anything that dismisses, corrects, or one-ups the speaker — joking, advising, story-topping, or shifting topic. Listening minimises these.

Q: What is "story-topping" and why is it a listening failure?
A: Responding to someone's story with a bigger story of your own — it centres the listener and signals the speaker's experience wasn't interesting enough.

Q: What is "minimal response inflation"?
A: When "mm-hmm" or nodding becomes so constant it becomes noise — losing its meaning as a real attunement signal.

Q: What is "over-listening" or "hyper-reflecting"?
A: Reflecting after every sentence, which turns conversation into therapy-speak and exhausts the speaker.

Q: What is the "label lag" problem?
A: Waiting too long to name an emotion — by the time you say it, the speaker has moved on and feels unseen retroactively.

Q: What is "process interrupt" in listening?
A: When the listener notices the speaker's process ("I notice you went quieter when you mentioned your father") and reflects it back.

Q: What is "permission-giving" in listening?
A: Explicitly inviting the speaker to go slower, say more, or feel what they feel — "Take your time, there's no rush."

Q: What is "cultural humility" in active listening?
A: Recognising that meanings, eye-contact norms, and silence all carry different weights across cultures — and asking rather than assuming.

Q: What is "high-context vs low-context" listening?
A: In high-context cultures, much meaning is carried by shared background and tone; in low-context cultures, by explicit words. Listeners must adjust.

Q: What is the "ambiguous pause" problem?
A: A silence can mean thinking, discomfort, agreement, or disagreement — listeners must ask rather than assume.

Q: What is "micro-affirmation" in listening?
A: Tiny signals — "that makes sense", a nod at the right moment — that cumulatively make a speaker feel safe to continue.

Q: What is "micro-invalidation"?
A: A small dismissal — "oh, that's nothing", "don't worry about it" — that teaches speakers to stop sharing.

Q: What is "faux listening"?
A: Going through the motions of listening (nodding, "uh-huh") while clearly thinking about something else — speakers usually notice within seconds.

Q: What is "selective deafness" in couples or teams?
A: Filtering out the very person or topic that matters most — a pattern that active listening is specifically designed to break.

Q: What is "echoic memory" and why it matters for listening?
A: The brief (~3–4 second) auditory buffer that lets us hold a speaker's words in mind long enough to reflect them accurately.

Q: What is "deep listening" as defined by Thich Nhat Hanh?
A: A contemplative practice of listening with the whole body, in which the goal is to help the speaker suffer less — not to fix or advise.

Q: What is "the way of council" in listening practice?
A: A circle practice where each person speaks without interruption or response, and listeners offer only presence — a powerful training ground for active listening.

Q: What is "dialogic listening" (Isaacs)?
A: Listening as part of a co-created inquiry where meaning emerges between people, rather than being transmitted one-way.

Q: What is "appreciative inquiry" listening?
A: Listening for what is working, generative, and life-giving — the opposite of deficit-based listening.

Q: What is "deficit-listening" and why is it common?
A: A habit of focusing on problems, gaps, and risks — useful for safety, but exhausting over time and often blind to strengths.

Q: What is "strength-spotting" in active listening?
A: Deliberately noticing and naming the capacities the speaker is already showing ("you've been persistent about this for months").

Q: What is "asset-based framing" in listening?
A: Reflecting what the speaker said in language that highlights agency and resource rather than lack.

Q: What is "double-loop listening"?
A: Listening not only to the speaker's content but to the assumptions and rules governing their thinking — then questioning those gently.

Q: What is "single-loop listening"?
A: Listening just for the speaker's stated request and answering it — efficient but often misses what they actually need.

Q: What is "ambivalent listening"?
A: Holding two opposing things the speaker says at once without forcing resolution — often where the most honest reflection happens.

Q: What is "grief-aware listening"?
A: An approach that resists fixing, platitudes, and silver-lining — instead offering presence, silence, and acknowledgement of loss.

Q: What is "non-violent communication" (NVC) listening?
A: Rosenberg's practice of listening for the feelings and unmet needs beneath someone's words before responding.

Q: What is the "jackal vs giraffe" metaphor in NVC?
A: Jackal language judges and demands; giraffe language observes feelings and needs — listening helps you translate the former into the latter.

Q: What is "tuning fork" listening?
A: Visualising yourself as a tuning fork that resonates to the speaker's exact frequency rather than imposing your own pitch.

Q: What is "audio mirror" listening?
A: Treating your reflection of what was said as a mirror, not a magnifier — accurate rather than amplified.

Q: What is the "echo chamber" risk in coaching?
A: When a coach reflects only what the client wants to hear, reinforcing their existing narrative instead of widening it.

Q: What is "challenge as a form of listening"?
A: Offering a respectful challenge ("I notice a contradiction — am I hearing you right?") that takes the speaker's thinking seriously enough to push it.

Q: What is "stretch listening"?
A: Listening for the edge of the speaker's current understanding and reflecting what lies just beyond it — calibrated challenge.

Q: What is "tactical empathy" (Chris Voss)?
A: Labelled, mirrored understanding used deliberately in negotiation — to surface information and build trust before influence.

Q: What is "labelling" in tactical empathy?
A: Naming the speaker's emotion ("It sounds like you're frustrated") so they feel seen and continue talking.

Q: What is the "late-night FM DJ voice" in active listening?
A: A warm, slightly lower, slower vocal tone that research shows increases perceived empathy and reduces defensiveness.

Q: What is "mirroring failure" — when mirroring backfires?
A: When the listener mirrors so closely it feels like mimicry or manipulation — calibration matters more than technique.

Q: What is "over-identification" in listening?
A: Feeling the speaker's pain so intensely that the listener loses perspective and cannot reflect — a hazard for new coaches.