The question as a listening tool

Maybe you never thought of asking questions as a listening skill. After all, when you are questioning, you are speaking. That's true, but you are speaking with a view to eliciting information, so it is part of the listening process.

There are two kinds of question, each with its specific purpose:

Closed questions: those that can be answered with a single word or phrase. e.g. "Will you be at the meeting?" Answer: yes or no. Or "How many people will be at the meeting?" Answer: six. Use closed questions to get confirmation of facts.

Open questions: those that need more than a single word or phrase as an answer. e.g. "What are your thoughts on this?" or "How could we introduce this new method in our department?" or "Why should we be concerned about this development?" Use open questions when you want to broaden the discussion and encourage people to say more on a subject.

When someone makes a statment like, "We need better communication around here," ask some pointed questions before reacting. You might, for example, ask, "What specifically do you mean by that?" or even "What would you suggest?" This automatically separates the whiners from those raising serious issues.

Listening as a management tool

An article in today's issue of News.com.au discussed the need to find and keep great talent, and said companies are spending huge amounts of money on incentives that are not working, because they are not what employees value. Here's an extract:

"Sandy Hutchinson of Mercer Human Resource Consulting said research carried out by the company showed the incentives companies used to keep employees were totally out of sync with what workers valued most highly.

"The research, which included an in-depth survey of more than 3000 working people, found employees rated receiving respect their number one motivator at work. This was followed by flexible work arrangements. Base pay rated sixth, benefits eleventh and bonuses twelfth.

"Ms Hutchinson said it was time companies stopped wasting money and started listening to their employees.

"There is a strong link between communication and trust and commitment and productivity," Ms Hutchinson said. "Too often the incentives employees actually want are far less expensive to implement than the things companies are spending their money on." (Read more at
finance.news.com.au/story/0,10166,12514093-31037,00.html)

I've always regarded listening as the undervalued and underused communication skill. It's particularly important for managers, so I'll be doing some posts on the techniques of listening. Stay tuned --- and in the meantime feel free to comment on this or any other post you see on this blog.

Management skills for new and established managers

Hello! This is my first post to this new blog, which will be dedicated to helping managers both new and experienced sharpen the skills they need to succeed in business and their careers.

I plan to post my own thoughts and ideas, based on my speaking, consulting and coaching work. Since I read voraciously both on paper and on the Internet, I often come upon interesting views on management theory and practice and I will be bringing the most interesting and useful ones to my readers.

I'll bring you tips and techniques and specific how-to ideas, as well as ways of looking at management that may be new to you. I hope to build a large following of readers, and I hope they will ask me questions and provide feedback both on my answers and my original postings. If you're having a management challenge at work and you'd like an outside expert opinion, ask away and I'll do my best to provide a meaningful, useful response.

So keep checking in. I'll be posting often, and if you like what you find here, tell your colleagues in management and we'll build a community together.

Cheers,
Helen