Management Tip: Active Listening

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Tip number 2 is about “active listening”, which can be useful in any interaction, but very useful as a manager. These tips are in order of how you should listen with the other person, who has some problem to solve, but should solve it themselves instead of you solving it for them.

1. Provide an opener: “tell me about…”

2. Provide responses: eye contact, take notes, listen for “but” and “should”, “Can you tell me more?”

3. Restate what has been said

4. Empathy: “That sounds like a dilemma”

5. Don’t provide a solution

6. Help explore their options

7. Ask “which option would you choose”

8. Closure: “Let me know how it turns out”

Again, I do share this information with my team and the rest of Microsoft via MySite on our internal deployment of SharePoint Portal Server.