Advantage Training & Development





Developing motivated employees, effective teams, and leadership capabilites

Can Your Good Listening Skills Improve Employee Performance?

Aug 24

Posted by Alice in Communication Strategies, Effective Listening, Motivating Employees, Performance Reviews | No Comments

Developing better listening skills is an excellent way to improve your communication skills as a supervisor, and using those critical listening skills effectively will help improve the performance of your employees.

How would your employees feel if you met with them regularly one-on-one, for only 15 or 20 minutes at a time, and asked them three or four critical questions? And what if you used your own active listening skills to process their answers?

Those questions to ask? Here they are:

What’s gone well for you since we last met?

What has gone less well than you would have liked? (and maybe what would you like to be able to do about that…)

What do you have coming up in the next week or so that will impact your work?

What can I do as your supervisor to help you do a better job?

Use your active listening skills as you ask these questions. Make eye contact, lean forward a bit, and verify that you’ve understood what the other person has said.

How regularly you meet with your people one-on-one is certainly dependent upon how many people you have reporting to you. If possible, work up to a schedule that makes sense for your situation. Ideally, you’d meet with people every week for 15 minutes, but twice a month may be more realistic.

All too often we have only annual review meetings and too many opportunities to help improve performance—both your employees’ and your organization’s—fall by the wayside for lack of attention and continuity.

Using this one technique will have multiple beneficial side effects!

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Never Underestimate the Importance of Effective Communication!

Aug 16

Posted by Alice in Communication Strategies, Effective Listening | No Comments

Business owners and managers see the need for good communication skills. It is real. Their employees feel it too!

Smart owners and managers work hard at improving communication—two-way communication at many levels. And more than half of improving interpersonal communication is listening well.

You know the old story: Since we have two ears and and two eyes and only one mouth, we should be listening twice as much as we speak! And then observing twice as much, too!

Effective listening requires asking good questions, asking them well by using non-threatening language, and asking them often.

Next time we’ll look at what some of those good questions are, and how often we might be asking them!

Have fun!

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The Personality of a Leader

May 28

Posted by Alice in Leadership, Motivating Employees, Personality | No Comments

Years ago, a teacher acquaintance told a story about two different building principals she’d worked under.

Paul’s building was immaculate, and he ran a pretty tight ship. Some thought he was hard to work for. He even wanted to see, and sign off on, any correspondence that a teacher was sending home to parents. He had seen inappropriate things sent home in the past, and knew his teachers, his building, and the district would be judged by anything negative.

Bert, on the other hand, knew each of his 400+ students by name, and greeted them as they came into the building each day, and his teachers loved working for him. He left them alone to teach in their own way, and was always willing to help if asked.

Paul only knew the names of his trouble-making kids, and one bathroom in Bert’s building had an offensive spot on the toilet seat for two weeks running!

Two different styles, and two different personalities. Was one wrong, and the other right? Of course not—just different from each other.

One man was decidedly task-oriented, and the other far more people-oriented! We need both, of course.

If you lean too heavily to one side at the expense of the other, your organization will suffer. Fortunately, we can compensate for our strengths by making sure that someone with our missing traits can pick up where we leave off.

  • What are your strengths as a leader?
  • What part of leadership makes you stretch the most?
  • In what areas do you wish you had someone else handy who could pick up the slack?
  • Is there someone already in your organization who could fill that role for you?

Comments and questions welcome!

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Effective Communication: Turn Off Your Inner Critic

Feb 5

Posted by Alice in Communication Strategies, Effective Listening, Resolving Conflict | No Comments

Too often we let preconceived ideas color our attitudes and our communication. Doing that can prevent us from understanding others, and also being understood. It can also lead to unnecessary conflict!

Suspend judgment at the outset. If you allow opinion or prior knowledge of the speaker to interfere, you may miss both what is being said, and the intent of the speaker.

Concentrate on the message, not the messenger. We are often told how much visual impressions, and tone of voice color our acceptance of what we hear, and what others hear from us. And yet if we focus first on negative aspects of the delivery, we may, again, miss the message.

Look for meaning. Sometimes we judge people based on appearance, social status, education, reputation, or age. At other times we dismiss the entire conversation (or written piece) once an error of fact, logic, or grammar is made. What gems could we be missing? What snippets could trigger our own next big idea? Turn off your inner critic!

Think the best of others. Rather than assuming the worst, assume the best. Ask yourself what is the best possible thing this person could have meant. We are all egocentric, to a degree. Rather than imagining some slight or evil-doing, consider that you and your concerns may not be top-of-mind for another person. It’s possible they are not doing you a disservice—you may just not be on their radar screen! (And we know we cannot change them. We can only change ourselves and our response to what we see!)

Plan to discover something new from every conversation. It may be about the topic, the speaker, the venue, or even about yourself! Seeing things in a negative light may save you from being disappointed later, but how often do things turn out better than you thought, and how much energy does it take you to look for the worst? I’d place my bets on the positive side of things—Hands Down!

What Do You Think? Questions and comments welcome!

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What's the Point of Your Conversation?

Feb 3

Posted by Alice in Communication Strategies | No Comments

Effective communication requires a different approach for different purposes!

  • Are you trying to make a point?
  • Do you want to bring someone around to your point of view?
  • Do you need to express your feelings?
  • Are you directing the work of someone else?
  • Is your goal to gain commitment or agreement?

If you are casually recounting an experience, your approach will be different than if you  need to gain commitment or compliance. Talking about a sporting event, a TV show, or a social event certainly requires a far less serious approach!

  • How important is this particular interaction?
  • Do you need some practice or advance planning?
  • Will you need to gain commitment or agreement?
  • Who is in your audience?
  • Are your listeners supporters or adversaries?
  • Are they aware of your topic and your goals?
  • How much preparation will you need if they already support you?
  • How much if they don’t?
  • Can you imagine both situations?
  • How will you prepare for each?

Your personality may already lend itself to advance planning for situations like these. On the other hand, if you are usually more direct than others, or even more laid back, you may want to consider the need for planning in those situations that have high stakes!

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Communication Success: Understanding and Being Understood

Feb 2

Posted by Alice in Communication Strategies, Effective Listening | No Comments

It’s Up To You!

Yes, both understanding and being understood are up to you!

If you are the listener in a conversation, it is your responsibility to verify that you have understood what the speaker has said. Depending upon the importance of the topic, you may need to paraphrase to be sure you understand the meaning the speaker intends. But don’t just parrot back the words you’ve heard. That can be annoying, regardless of what NLP tells us about building rapport. Rephrase what you’ve heard in your own words.

If you didn’t get a “yes” to indicate you’ve gotten the other person’s point, you may have to ask clarifying questions to determine his or her meaning or point of view.

Keep clarifying until the speaker agrees that you’ve correctly interpreted his or her meaning.

If you are the speaker, it’s also your responsibility to verify that you’ve been clear. Check for understanding by asking if you’ve explained something adequately. Repress the urge to ask, “Do you understand?” Your questions should be about your own delivery or clarity—about your own part of the conversation, which is the only part that you can control.

How much more shared meaning and how many more effective relationships would we have in the world if each of us took responsibility for both sides of our conversations?

By the way, if I need to articulate any of this more clearly, please let me know!

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Well-Intentioned Feedback

Jan 26

Posted by Alice in Effective Listening, Motivating Employees, Performance Reviews | No Comments

Here are three ways to avoid the negative effects of well-intentioned feedback:

  • When others give you feedback, ask yourself, in every case, “What’s the best possible way that person could have intended the feedback s/he’s just given me?”
  • When you give someone feedback, frame your comments in a way that clearly indicates your own positive intent to your listener.
  • Be sure that the feedback you provide is coming from a positive place in you! Ask yourself, before you make a quick comment that could be misinterpreted, “What is my purpose in giving this specific feedback?

Are you genuinely offering assistance? Merely showing your own expertise? Angry at that person for something else entirely? If your own energy around the feedback is positive, it is less likely it will be misinterpreted.

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How Do Your Customers Find You?

Dec 16

Posted by Alice in Marketing | No Comments

On a recent trip to Halifax, Nova Scotia, we used several methods to find restaurants and coffee shops. The hotel had a city map with advertisments as the border of the map, and we found several good places to eat that way. There was also a pamphlet-sized tourist guide and a magazine-sized regional guide for us to use. We were not disappointed with our results.

However, we also visited one of Halifax’s physical information sites and spoke to a lovely woman about having dinner in the city. She mentioned several restaurants, one being a Thai restaurant not far from our hotel. We had dinner there, and it was delicious. So good, in fact that we went there for a second evening meal a few days later. This restaurant was not listed in any of our informaiton sources.

In April, we visited Staunton, Virginia, and also used a pamphlet-sized tourist publication to find an Italian restuarant. The food there was very disappointing, although the after dinner coffee was superb.

Our coffee shop experince was somewhat different. Each morning we asked a different hotel employee where their own favorite coffee shop was, and went to several. They were all very good, and very different from each other, and we felt we’d gotten a good sense of the flavor of the city…off the beaten path!

Those establishments listed on your hotel map, and in the tourist publications have paid to be listed there. There is no guarantee of the quality of their offerings. However, many of them got tons of business as a result.

Where do you show up, and how will people find your business if they are looking for what you sell?

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