HR Advice: Stop Talking Already

In my rush to be efficient the other day, I grabbed lunch and headed back to the office to eat at my desk. My coworkers didn’t have the same idea so when I returned, I was locked out with no keys and no cell phone.

I decided to head next door to the mall where I could sit and eat my lunch. With no iPhone to play with while eating lunch, I had nothing to do but listen in on other people’s conversations.  Lucky for me, there happened to be a job interview that was just beginning at the table beside me.

After a couple of minutes, I realized the candidate was being interviewed for an assistant store manager position by what sounded like a regional manager. I listened as the interviewer talked about the company, the challenges of being in store management, the role of an assistant store manager in increasing sales and creating a strong customer service environment, etc.

While I found all of this very interesting, it took up half of my meal and I had yet to hear the candidate say anything. The only real question that the candidate responded to was so leading that he just repeated back exactly the response the hiring manager asked for. It was at this point that I wanted to pull the hiring manager away to provide some free HR coaching!

I was left wondering how often this scenario is played out every day in interview rooms across the country. How can I really find out if a person has what it’s going to take to be successful if I spend most of my time doing the talking? How do I assess whether or not someone will fit within our culture when all I’m doing is telling the person about our company?

I experience this same thing in meeting with prospective clients. I’m always amazed at the number of times I’ve walked out of a prospective client meeting and couldn’t get a word in about our firm or our capabilities only to be hired for the project!

The value of listening (or, in this case, asking a question and then shutting up) is something we all probably need reminded of from time to time. Just asking questions of others forces you to listen. And when you really pay attention to what others are saying, you start to get drawn in – which often leads to a dialogue.

Is this the art of listening? Not entirely, but asking questions means that others will usually respond which forces you to stop talking and start listening.  How do you keep yourself from doing too much talking and just how important is listening in the work that you do?

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