How to get the honest input you need from your employees

If you want to learn what those around you really think, feel, and know, there’s only one reliable strategy: asking them

Leaders often struggle to get complete, unfiltered information from the people around them. This wealth of unspoken information represents a great untapped resource for today’s leaders, and yet most remain at a loss for how to reliably access it.

Key takeaways

• When it comes to learning from others, the first step is making the mental shift from certainty to curiosity. When we choose curiosity, we intentionally go on a search for what we might learn from another person;
• Just because you want to learn from others doesn’t guarantee they’ll want to share with you. People’s willingness to speak up about important issues hinges on how psychologically safe they feel;
• The right question, asked in the right way, is one of the most powerful tools in a leader’s toolbox. But not all questions are of equal quality when it comes to learning from others.

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