I highly recommend Power
Listening by Bernard T. Ferrari for PMs (and managers, executives, BAs,
spouses, parents, children, …). This
book doesn’t offer platitudes about why listening is important; in fact, Ferrari, who is obviously
experienced with coaching on this subject, offers specific direction on, not
just the why but, the how of listening.
The first few chapters of Power Listening are devoted to documenting archetypes of listening
failures: Opinionator, Grouch,
Preambler, Perseverator, Answer Man, and Pretender. These are described sufficiently well so that
you can recognize them when you encounter them in others but, more importantly,
when you find yourself, as we all do at various times, exhibiting these
characteristics. These opening chapters
help us recognize poor listening archetypes, understand why each of these
deficiencies prevents us from reaching our potential as listeners, and provide
techniques for breaking bad habits associated with poor listening.
The meat of the book follows, though. Here Ferrari provides the structure to swing
from poor listening to Power Listening,
by providing a schema for collecting and organizing (mandate, plan, team,
execution and personal) information. The
goal of power listening (the technique) is to make better business decisions
and this section helps us to better know when we are (still) missing critical
information and what questions to ask to fill the gaps. Knowing what questions to ask is
beneficial; knowing what information is
missing is priceless.
The final section of Ferrari’s book explains how the
organizational leader’s listening skills set the tone for the organization and
that the leader can improve the organization by modeling Power Listening skills.
Communications is the most important skill in project
management. Therefore, anything we can
do to improve communication skills – for ourselves, our project teams and our
stakeholders – should be explored and practiced. This book should be in your library; these skills should be in your toolset.
©
2013 Chuck Morton. All Rights Reserved.
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