A key skill of good
managers is the ability
to listen carefully

In last week's column, I suggested that people's life experiences have an impact on how they interact with others in the workplace.

Some people learn that addressing others in a calm and respectful voice is more effective than shouting at them. Some people learn that addressing individuals by the name of their ethnic group, with the group name preceded by a four-letter word, has long-term implications for their reputations. Other ways of interacting with coworkers and subordinates, collectively called social skills, are worthy of discussion because they mark effective managers.

ONE IMPORTANT SKILL that managers should possess is the ability to listen carefully. When workers schedule a meeting with managers, they almost always have concerns that they want to share. Managers should listen carefully to workers, not interrupt, and take steps to assure that the workers have voiced all their concerns.

Managers should make sure that they are showing respect for the workers' concerns. Workers often have to dredge up all their courage before making appointments to voice their positions, and so managers should make the workers feel everyone's time is being well spent.

This piece of advice may seem to be little more than common sense, but workers often complain that their managers do not listen carefully. If it is common sense, it is a point missed by many managers.

The advice also can be at odds with a conversational style common in Hawaii. As part of informal, talk-story interactions, people in Hawaii often engage in conversational overlap. People make statements, and before they end, someone else jumps in. Often, this takes the form of one person starting a sentence and someone else finishing it.

This overlap can continue for many rounds, with the first person who spoke interrupting others as they add to the conversation.

This overlapping style is widely accepted and is not considered rude. The style is meant to show that people have a lot in common, since they can add to the same conversation. In addition, no one person becomes the center of attention since everyone is contributing to the informal conversation.

The difference between the manager-worker conversation style and the overlapping style is that one is formal and the other is not.

When people have a concern that they want to share with managers, they do not want to participate in the informal overlapping style. They want the full attention of managers.

The informal style is more common outside the workplace. People use it at beach gatherings, while watching their children play youth sports, and during chance meetings at shopping malls.

To make matters more complex, managers should sometimes participate in the overlapping style. When they have lunch with workers, or share the coffee pot with them, appropriate behavior is more informal than formal.

How do managers tell the difference? This is another social skill.

When workers speak with managers, they may want to talk story or they may want to bring up a burning issue.

Managers need to read non-verbal cues, such as facial expressions, relaxed compared to tense body postures, and the types of gestures people use while speaking.

Like all social skills, decisions about appropriate conversational styles can be improved if people have the desire and are willing to invest the necessary time and effort.