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Tip 449: Use silence to encourage the talker. |
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Recruiters understand this as their best tool to find out more about a job applicant. Silence makes some people uncomfortable, and they will do anything to fill it. Whether making someone uncomfortable so they will chatter on with revealing information or inviting a friend to unload, silence encourages talk. |
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Tip 450: probe with open-ended questions. |
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Probe someone's comments with questions that begin with the five Ws: Why is that so? When is that true? Where is that true? With whom is that true? What is true? How is that true? How much is involved? Don't become an interrogator with yes-no questions; closed questions put you too much in the driver's seat. Instead, with open-ended probes you encourage the listener to explore both feelings and facts for errors and insights. |
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Tip 451: Be wary about listening for what you want to hear. |
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My entrepreneurial college-age son recently asked his stepfather if he could use part of his office building for teaching country-western dance lessons. His stepfather replied, "I have reservations about that, Jeff. I'm often working late at night, and having people here would be distracting. And the cleaning crew that comes in might not always clean up after themI don't know exactly what time they make it to our building. And the tenants next door have a silent alarm that even our own employees set off when walking through the lounge after hoursand they know it's there. Dancers in here would be setting it off and the police would be having to come out. And I wouldn't want people just milling around through our workstations." |
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"But couldn't you move those wall dividers over into the big open area and keep people out of the workstations?" Jeff asked. |
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"Well, I don't know. I guess that's a possibility. . . . What nights are you planning to give lessonsI'm up here late working every night but Wednesday." |
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"I haven't decided on a specific night yet," Jeff answered. |
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My son came home and told me that his stepfather said it was okay for him to have the dance lessons in the buildingas long as they were on Wednesday nights and as long as they used the partitions to keep people out of the workstation areas. |
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We hear what we wish to hear. |
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