ignite! Newsletter
Each month ignite! explores a different topic designed to help HR, L&D, and training professionals improve productivity, employee engagement, and customer retention by exploring best practices in management training and leadership development.
September 2010
Take the Time to Listen and Provide Feedback
Good listening and feedback skills are essential to any manager's success—but they are in short supply these days, according to Dr. Vicki Halsey of The Ken Blanchard Companies. With today's managers struggling to find the time required to get their own jobs done, it's easy to move listening and providing feedback to the back burner.
The net result is a coolly efficient form of interaction between managers and direct reports where the goal is to solve the problem as fast as possible. On the surface this may seem like a good goal, but in practice it leads to the increasing use of short cuts to speed up the process. With that attitude, a manager listens just long enough to understand the problem, organize his or her thoughts, and prepare a response.
As Halsey explains, "Well-meaning managers are trying to achieve the tasks before them as quickly as possible. Because they are so results oriented, it's easy to focus only on the destination and not manage the journey properly. It's important to remember that listening and feedback are part of the development process. The most successful leaders are going to be those who focus on both the end result and the process used in getting there."
Explore the September 2010 Issue of Ignite!