Dan Erwin

How High Is Your Listening Quotient?

Listening is one of those behaviors that most people take for granted. Until, that is, they miss something very important that impacts their job and career. So when interviewing for a developmental client, I inevitably ask about my client's listening skills. Nearly always the first response is that the client is a "good listener." Then I start chunking the listening competency, ultimately revealing the client's listening failures.

The chunks start with a question about "parroting," then to paraphrase, summary, and on to implication questions including the client's competency and effective use of questions surrounding the messages from senders. Smart interviewees understand that...

Nowhere Beats Europe for Fast Public WiFi. Not Asia, and Certainly Not the US.

Ever been a tourist or a business traveler who wants to get around international data charges? If so, you've learned there's a lot of difference in free, public WiFi speeds. Still, the hotspots are growing fast and that includes cafes, bars, restaurants, etc. And lately, these public WiFi hotspots are popping up everywhere.

But, as you'll find to your chagrin, connectivity and quality..

No, You Can't Become a Better Listener by Listening Harder

Listening is far more difficult, more fatiguing and often more frustrating than talking. But no, you can't become a better listener by listening harder. And furthermore, even the best listeners have to bite their tongues to stop from reacting, interrupting or verbally identifying with the person talking. But there are a few simple ways to make certain your listening is truly effective.

Effective listeners listen for different levels of meaning. 
The linguistic level is simply that to which the message refers. “Jim can’t come to the team meeting.” The individual words of the sentence and the sentence as a whole have linguistic meaning. “Jim” refers to one specific person and “can’t come” refers...

Quotation of the Week: David Brooks

There will always be moral fervor on campus. Right now that moral fervor is structured by those who seek the innocent purity of the vulnerable victim. Another and more mature moral fervor would be structured by the classic ideal of the worldly philosopher, by the desire to confront not hide from what you fear, but to engage the complexity of the world, and to know that sometimes the way to wisdom involves hurt feelings, tolerating difference and facing hard truths.
    --David Brooks, NYTimes, 6/1/2015

Clearly, Brooks has inherited the mantle of national thought leader. Few deal with conflicting ideas as easily, nor make sense...

When Your Best Career Theory is Wrong. Dead Wrong!

As a research-based consultant, I’m used to getting my ideas tweaked by new research. After all, I think of myself as a fairly flexible, open guy, so a small adjustment to my theories and ideas is usually illuminating. But unknown to Harvard’s Rosabeth Kanter, she took a Shillelagh, a big club to one of my big ideas. Her blog, Why running a family doesn’t help you run a business, knocked me back on my heels. And I yelled a silent Aaargh!, knowing full well that she was quite correct and I was quite wrong. So there, I admitted it Prof Kanter.

Kanter lays out her case with panache, acknowledging the conventional wisdom first. Here’s her argument:

In theory, those years of family work at home could look great on a resume. Consider the skills required: setting priorities, training others, organizing complex logistics and schedules, and using interpersonal sensitivity to handle difficult people problems. Indeed, some advocates have argued that the time women with advanced degrees spend out of the workplace managing a family is valuable experience for managing back in the paid work world.

I agree it is valuable experience — if the paid job one returns to involves managing a handful of people who are vulnerable and can't leave. Otherwise, the operating skills for family manager are nothing like the qualifications for workplace professionals.

Her reasoning and...