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Listening and Inquiry
Listening as an information system: questions that get real answers, what silence means, and hearing bad news well.
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01
The Skip-Level Conversation
Thirty minutes with someone two levels down, run on a fixed rotation, with rules that keep it from undermining the manager in between. Format, questions, and what to do afterward.
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02
Hearing Bad News Well
The person telling you has already decided it was worth the risk. What you do in the following minute sets the price for everyone who hears about it, and everyone will hear about it.
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03
What Silence Means
A quiet room is reporting something, and the four things it might be reporting call for opposite responses. Reading it as agreement is the default and is wrong most of the time.
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04
Questions That Get Real Answers
Any concerns? reliably returns none, because answering it requires the person to volunteer that something is wrong. The fix is to ask questions whose easiest honest answer is informative.
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05
Listening Is an Information System
Treated as a courtesy, listening gets the effort left over after the real work. Treated as the primary means by which a leader learns what is true, it gets designed.