What Do You Think? – An Invisible Sentence in Many Managers' Handbooks

Managers  (and people in general) have a tendency to directly ask for things or direct people to do something. Some of us practice this on a very consistent basis and by doing so, a great opportunity to trigger ideas, solve problems faster and empower people is wasted.

Imagine if Don Quixote had asked his squire, Sancho Panza, what he thought about the windmills before going banzai on them.* The outcome could have been entirely different; and less painful for Don Quixote.

“What do you think?” is an invisible sentence in many mangers’ handbooks.

When managers make decisions -specially the hard ones- they may be missing parts of the puzzle  because of the complexity of the situations, emotional involvement in them, stress levels or simply because everyone is unique and so are our ideas and ways of approaching different challenges. It only takes 1 second (yeah 1 second, try it: “What’cha think?”…. see, 1 second)  to potentially make your life and the lives of those around you a lot easier. It’s just a matter of practicing and getting accustomed to saying it.

Start you engines

Asking people for input (specially about challenging problems) switches their brains on. The endocrinous system goes into party mode, serotonin starts to get synthesized, adrenaline levels go up and this morning coffee’s sugar starts to be burned into usable “thinking-energy”. The response is not only physiological. At a psychological level, self esteem is temporarily boosted thanks to a sense of recognition for ones knowledge and skills, the professional bond between team members is strengthened and a positive identification with the boss’ figure is established.

PG13: discretion is advised

Giving orders is not a bad thing itself. In fact,  there are situations when an assertive voice is required to provide a sense of direction. On the other hand, not giving enough orders may be perceived as a sign of weakness or lack of confidence. Other times, asking your staff what they think about simple requests like “I need this report by next Tuesday” or  questions such as “should I use a blue or a light blue pen to sign this” would just get you a weird eye from your co-workers. That said, discretion is advised.

For the bullet list lovers out there:

Pros and cons of asking WDYT

Here are the pros:

• Empowers people
• Saves time
• Increases the chance for out-of-the-box-thinking
• Fosters teamwork and collaboration
• Improves morale
• Makes you a good leader
• Triggers a pleasant physiological response

And here are the cons:

• You lost 1 second of your life

What do you think?

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* Probably the outcome would have been the same since the Quixote was crazy and Sancho wasn’t that bright, but just for illustrative purposes pretend Sancho was sane.

Image credit, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Article by Fernando

This is my blog - I write about careers, talent management and organizational development. I've been featured at Monster.com, Alltop, WeBlogBetter and BloggingPro among others. I hope you leave this blog with more than you arrived and I look forward to discussing your ideas and projects with you. See you in the comments section.

Fernando has written 230 awesome articles for us at Fernando Tarnogol – Careers Blog

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