Triggers: Why Don't We Ask?

Why is asking so important? In the Information Age, leaders must manage knowledge workers. Peter Drucker has defined knowledge workers as people who know more about what they are doing than their boss does. It is hard to tell people what to do and how to do it when they already know more than we do. In today’s rapidly changing world, we need to ask, listen and learn from everyone around us. Research shows that asking works. Howard Morgan and I recently published a study involving more than 11,000 leaders and 86,000 of their co-workers from eight major corporations. Our findings were clear: Leaders who ask, listen, learn and consistently follow up are seen as becoming more effective. Leaders who don’t ask don’t get much better. A few years ago, Alyssa Freas joined us in a similar study with customers and discovered nearly identical results. External customer satisfaction goes up when customer service representatives ask, listen, learn and follow up. In addition to being supported by research, asking is just common sense. When people ask us for our input, listen to us, try to learn from us and follow up to see if they are getting better, our relationship with them improves. This seems simple and obvious – so why don’t we do it? Reviews of summary 360-degree feedback involving thousands of leaders from more than 50 organizations have shown that when the item “Asks people what he or she can do to improve” is included in the company’s leadership inventory, it almost always falls near the bottom (if not in last place) in terms of employee satisfaction. As a rule, leaders don’t ask. I recently asked the vice president of customer satisfaction in a major organization if his employees should be asking their key customers for feedback – listening, learning and following up to ensure service keeps getting better. “Of course,” he replied. “How important it this to your company?” I asked. “It’s damn important!” he exclaimed. I then lowered my voice and asked, “Have you ev