Improving Managerial Talent

23Behavioural styles

Asking or telling?

We read in the last section that there are two questioning behaviours: Seeking information, which tries to elicit new facts, opinions, feelings etc. and Testing understanding which seeks a yes/no response to confirm or reject our understanding of what has been said.

There are also two clear ‘telling’ behaviours. The first of these is Proposing: ‘A behaviour which puts forward a new suggestion or course of action’.¹ This is what the HR director was doing when she said ‘I suggest we run the candidates against the job spec’. The other telling behaviour is Giving information, as when the operations director ...