Manager radiating questions. Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.netHow do you engage friends or strangers? You ask questions. How do you learn more about people? You ask questions. How can you improve employee engagement?  Read on…

 

The need for managers to be more inquisitive was discussed at an Association for Talent Development – NYC (ATDNYC) chapter event featuring Marsh & McLennan’s Global Head of Learning and Organizational Development, Jon Rhoades, PhD and Chief Talent Officer, Carlos Rivero, PhD. At the meeting, they spoke about how they organized for impact and built and rolled out a global L&D Framework model to over 140 countries. They also revealed best practices in launching a successful Global Executive Development Leadership Program. While they focused on the upper echelons of the company, the best practice of inquiry and narration are equally applicable to managers at all levels of any organization.

 

If you are like most managers, you are busy. When direct reports come to talk to you, you tend to want to have all the answers. Do you question if you have all the answers? While an answer seems to be the most logical response to an employee’s question, you should respond a question with another question instead. There are two reasons for this.

 

First, managers tend to take on the additional, unneeded responsibility of helping employees solve their problems. Employees essentially look to you for THE answer. Secondly, you are missing a crucial development opportunity to help the employee hone their thought processes and become more self-sufficient in solving their own problems. Responding with a question pushes the responsibility back to the employee.

 

Yes, it might mean some short-term pain and think of the long-term gain.

 

Use questions to probe for information that will help the inquirer develop a process to think through their current and future questions.

 

Of course, answers ARE necessary at some point further along in the conversation. The important thing to remember is that how you answer the question matters, i.e. narration.  Yes, No, We’ve already tried that before, etc. are frequent responses. Again, these short matter-of-fact types of answers are missed development opportunities. When you provide an answer, it should focus on providing insight behind the answer. Walk the person through your thought process and/or provide background information of which they might not know.

 

Remember, according to Gallup, “Managers account for 70% of variance in employee engagement.”1 Asking questions and providing a narrative for answers are best practices that all managers should begin to adopt and implement as a way to further foster employee engagement.

 

 

Do you have the gift of an inquiring mind? If you need help in improving this best practice, try playing a game used on the TV Show, “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”2 In this show, one game requires that the players use only questions to further the conversation.

 

 

1 Beck, Randall, and James Harter. “Managers Account for 70% of Variance in Employee Engagement.” Gallup.com. Gallup, Inc., 2 Apr. 2015. Web. 03 Aug. 2016
2 “Whose Line Is It Anyway? (U.S. TV Series).” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 03 Aug. 2016.

 

 

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I’m Agent in Engagement Simpson…Gregory F Simpson.

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