MANAGEMENT SPECIAL.................. Observe, inquire, listen

Observe, inquire, listen  Rev Up Your Leadership With the OIL Method Too often I see leaders communicating by telling...what's wrong with this technique? First of all this is what managers do, not leaders. And, you may be missing opportunities for innovation and employee development. The OIL Method is Observe, Inquire and Listen.     Observation: The ability to observe what others may not see is a huge advantage to a leader. These are some of the things you should be observing daily: Employee Interaction; Performance; Behaviors; Environment and other external factors       Inquiry: Most mangers and leaders underrate questioning skills. In order to master inquiry, you first need to define the goal you want to accomplish. Some goals that a leader may want to accomplish are: Coaching employees to self reflect and commit to specific actions; Learning about situations, people, processes; Persuading others to move in a specific direction or make a certain decision; Seeking clarification and understanding to redirect misunderstandings or conflicts; Building existing or new relationships by asking people for their opinions     Listen: The goal of listening is to gain understanding, which means that the listener needs to not just hear noise and words coming out of a person’s mouth but understand exactly what the person is trying to communicate. So what gets in the way of actively listening? Doing other things in addition to listening, such as email; personal opinions and biases that distract you from listening to the message being delivered; emotions that you have about the subject can shut down your ability to listen and understand the other person’s point of view; not identifying what is missing; not clarifying what you just heard from the other person. Beth Armknecht Miller