By Mel Kleiman, president, Humetrics
When you are asking for information, skip saying things like: “How’s it going” or “Is everything okay?” All you’ll get are answers like: “Fine” and “Yes.”
To elicit meaningful feedback, do what doctors do when they want to assess how much pain a patient is experiencing and ask: “On a scale where one is low and 10 is high, how much pain are you in?”
For instance, “On a scale of one-10…
- “How’s the new project going?”
- “How are we doing on meeting schedule?”
- “How much do you like your job?”
Once you get a number, you can ask more specific questions to come up with improvements/solutions.
