Don’t Talk So Much!
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Stop problem-solving for people so much. Start looking at things differently.
I know the title is provocative– Don’t talk so much. I was thinking this morning about. How the best response for so many things isn’t an answer, but a question.
In my opinion, people don’t ask enough questions. Let me give you an example.
We just finished the political cycle. There were 2 major party candidates and two tertiary party candidates that were involved as well. If you ask a lot of voters what their candidate would do if they were elected, most can’t answer. One side may say, “Make America great.” The other side, I’m not sure exactly what they might say about what she would try to do if she were elected. I am, however, sure that most of them have no idea about policy positions that might affect them day to day.
One side spoke about lowering taxes. The other side spoke about raising them on the rich. It was not a lot of depth or texture to what potential impact might be.
So people went to the polls and voted for people who are not the ones that they hated the most. That is probably the best way to describe it. They voted for people that they didn’t hate more than someone else.
Now, let me bring it to our real life. Day to day, we don’t deal with the impact of the politicians all that often.
Let’s say, you manage a group of people, and someone comes into your office and says, “I need help.”
You asked, “What sort of help do you need? What’s wrong?” They immediately go out and problem solve. Do you dissect the issue to see some of the decisions that the person made that now brings them to your office? No. You problem solve right away.
You report to your boss. You talk about something that isn’t working right. Do they ask questions? Except to trap you in order to blame you for the failure, probably not! LOL!
You need to look at things from a coaching perspective and how you can help subordinates become more effective so that they can go out and make better decisions and perform better.
If you have kids, do you always answer their questions… For a while you do, but then you try to send them away.
My intention with this video is to encourage you to always be asking questions to clarify because when push comes to shove, many of you are operating with limited information, offering advice and opinions, and you don’t have enough data to be offering advice and recommendations.
With that being the case, you send people off on missions that are probably not effective because they gave you incomplete data and you didn’t ask enough questions.
My encouragement for you is to ask more questions. Questions are the lifeblood of problem-solving. For you as a business leader, even a job hunter or hiring manager… Let me start with the job hunter perspective. An employer tells you better job and you leave things on the surface. As a hiring manager, you have basic questions that only flushes out limited information before you start projecting crap on the people and decide, “Ehhh! I don’t like them.” What don’t you like about them? You don’t know enough about them to decide that yet or have a valid opinion. But that is how a lot of people operate.
Ask more questions. Ask better questions to help you flush out stuff more effectively.
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a career and leadership coach who worked as a recruiter for more than 40 years. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with more than 2400 episodes. He also hosts Job Search TV on YouTube, and Amazon, as well as on BingeNetworks.tv for Apple TV and 90+ smart sets.
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Indeed. Taking a course required to talk to FDA inspectors taught over and
over ” Be comfortable with SILENCE”. The most effective tool in you arsenal
is the control over what your response to any situation you find yourself
in. That said, I’ve had to force people to talk that had previously been
actively ignored. Ask “what is wrong today that is stopping you from being
successful?”
Indeed. Taking a course required to talk to FDA inspectors taught over and over ” Be comfortable with SILENCE”. The most effective tool in you arsenal is the control over what your response to any situation you find yourself in. That said, I’ve had to force people to talk that had previously been actively ignored. Ask “what is wrong today that is stopping you from being successful?”
Indeed. Taking a course required to talk to FDA inspectors taught over and over ” Be comfortable with SILENCE”. The most effective tool in you arsenal is the control over what your response to any situation you find yourself in. That said, I’ve had to force people to talk that had previously been actively ignored. Ask “what is wrong today that is stopping you from being successful?”