Asking for Input

In my last several blog posts, I’ve been writing about SLII® micro skills—leader behaviors that help direct reports get things done while increasing their motivation and confidence. In this post I’ll focus on Asking for Input—a supportive behavior that not only develops mutual trust and respect between leaders and direct reports, but also benefits the organization.

Why should a leader regularly ask direct reports for their input? There are multiple reasons; I’ll talk about three of the big ones here.

Asking for input engages your direct reports.

The Gallup organization—famous for its employee engagement research—has long recognized that one of the primary reasons employees become disengaged is because they feel their thoughts and opinions don’t count. This disengagement has a significant negative impact on productivity and the bottom line.

The leader who charges ahead and makes decisions without asking for input from followers contributes to employee disengagement. A study conducted by John Izzo, author of Stepping Up: How Taking Responsibility Changes Everything (Berrett-Koehler, 2012), found that the number one reason employees don’t take more initiative at work is that their leaders fail to get their input before making decisions. This is right in line with our own research on organizational change. When those who are being asked to change are not asked for their input, the change is likely to fail.

Whether it’s on a small project or a large change effort, the principle is the same: by asking for input, leaders can turn disinterested employees into an engaged ones.

Asking for input sets up a mutual, two-way conversation.

In the old days, leadership was regarded as a top-down conversation. The assumption was that the leader was the one with all the answers and the people doing the work were merely “hired hands.” Today, we recognize that leadership is more of a side-by-side endeavor, where both leader and direct report work together to create results.

By asking for input and listening well, leaders create connectedness and build trust with those they lead. A climate of trust leads to more productive employees and a healthier organization. In our research of more than 1,000 leaders, 59 percent of respondents indicated they had left an organization due to trust issues, citing lack of communication as a key contributing factor.

Asking for input also reduces the chance of miscommunication. For example, suppose you’ve just given instructions on an assignment to a direct report. To ask for input, you might say, “I’ve been talking for a while and would like your feedback. Why don’t you recap for me what you’ve heard, so I can make sure I’ve given you the direction you need to be successful?”

Asking for input stimulates people’s best thinking.

Not only does asking for input improve employee engagement, but it also taps into people’s inherent intelligence and creativity. Let’s face it: direct reports often know more about their jobs than their managers do. They also have far more power and potential to contribute to the organization than leaders often realize. From the 3M Post-It® Note to the Starbucks Frappucchino®, stories abound about employee innovations that went on to become multimillion-dollar revenue earners.

But even when focused on everyday projects, asking for input invites employees to participate in problem solving and contribute their expertise. The positive results are two-fold: The employee has more job satisfaction and the organization benefits from the employee’s knowledge.

If leaders don’t ask for input—and value that input—they may be hurting their organization more than they know. Keep in mind that when Steve Wozniak was an engineer for Hewlett Packard, he tried five times to get management interested in his idea for a personal computer. Wozniak finally left HP, teamed up with Steve Jobs, and founded a little company named Apple. Talk about a missing out on some good input!

In the coming weeks, I’ll be covering the remaining SLII® micro skills, so watch this space!