Using Silence to Gain Deeper Information: More about the “Stay” Interview and Communicating with Our People

I sure have a hit a positive cord with my post on January 7^th about a “stay” interview, i.e., having individual conversations with our people asking purposeful questions about what they like about our work and our company and about their ideas for improvement.

As I mentioned in last Monday’s post about letting people know they are valued, I received a lot of enthusiastic feedback that the idea really resonated with many of my readers.

Just this past week, someone told me that she had circulated my post within her company and it reached the CEO, who loved the idea and said, “Let’s do this within our company.”

I have another suggestion regarding these conversations.

At a local International Coach Federation program this week, we practiced using silence in coaching. I practiced with Lulu Gonella, an astute coach and HR consultant. It was pretty amazing. Here’s how it worked:

When we ask a question, receive a response, and remain silent, maybe give affirmations such as a nod, the person very often will go on, will continue to give us more information. Often, what follows is where the real value of the information is—when we go deeper.

I love the saying, “Let silence do the heavy lifting.” It can certainly help us in these very important conversations when we want to learn what our good people like and value about our work and our company and their ideas about what we could do better.  Silence, and also simple follow up questions such as, “What would that look like?” or “What does that say to you?” or, “How would you explain that,” or, “What would that mean to you?” can open up more and meaningful, rich information for us.

I am thrilled with the response I have received about these conversations.  Our internal relationships are ultimately every bit as important as our conversations with our clients.  We must remember, we have external clients, vital to our business, of course, and we have internal clients – our co-workers, team members, colleagues – and the quality of our relationships determine our success over time.