Power Listening: Mastering the Most Critical Business Skill of All [Hardcover]

Bernard T. Ferrari (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 1, 2012

Listening is harder than it looks- but it's the difference between business success and failure.

Nothing causes bad decisions in organizations as often as poor listening. But Bernard Ferrari, adviser to some of the nation's most influential executives, believes that such missteps can be avoided and that the skills and habits of good listening can be developed and mastered. He offers a step-by-step process that will help readers become active listeners, able to shape and focus any conversation.

Ferrari reveals how to turn a tin ear into a platinum ear. His practical insights include:

• Good listening is hard work, not a passive activity
• Good listening means asking questions, challenging all assumptions, and understanding the context of every interaction
• Good listening results in a new clarity of focus, greater efficiency, and an increased likelihood of making better decisions
• Good listening can be the difference between a long career and a short one

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Bernard T. Ferrari is the chairman and founder of Ferrari Consultancy and a twenty-year veteran of McKinsey & Co. as a leader of its North American Corporate Finance and Strategy Practice and the firm's Health Care Practice. Prior to his career with McKinsey, he was a surgeon and chief operating officer of the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover (March 1, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591844622
• ISBN-13: 978-1591844624
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #47,404 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars How and why the difference between great and mediocre managers is the ability to listen April 4, 2012

By Robert Morris HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

In Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, Susan Cain suggests that there is much of value to be learned from those who are primarily introverted by nature and/or preference. For example, when engaged in conversation, they listen intently and purposefully to what another person has to say. In this book, Bernard T. Ferrari explains how to master "the most critical business skill of all," one that I believe is also the most critical social skill of all. "The key to good listening is to develop a filing system in our heads, and to ask questions that get those folders and cabinets adequately filled." Ferrari devotes a separate chapter to each of the following categories of situations in which feedback is obtained:

o Get to the mandate: Focus on the question to answer, the problem to solve, etc.
o Understand the plan: How to get from A to B (small picture) and from A to Z (Big Picture)
o Know who is on the team: Who will do what by when? With whom?
o Be aware of how you are executing: What is working, what isn't, and why?
o Be mindful of the personal: Take defining characteristics of each source into full account.

I agree with Ferrari that in a business setting good listening is a critically important (albeit strenuous) activity, one that must be purposeful, under control, with total focus and engagement, and most active at the front end of decision making. As for poor listeners, Ferrari identifies and discusses six familiar types: the Opinionator (often wrong, never in doubt), the Grouch (everyone else is wrong), the Preambler (wind bag filled with digressions), the Perseverator (self-serving blah blah blah), the Answer Man/Woman (hair-trigger problem solver), and the Pretender (really could not care less). It is difficult to respect those such as these six who have no respect for you or for anyone else. This is a key point, given the much greater need now for collaboration than at any prior time that I can remember.

For me, the greatest value of this book lies in how skillfully Ferrari poses clusters of questions (in Chapters 4 and 7-11), to accomplish two separate but interdependent and immensely important purposes: To sharpen the inquiry skills of his reader (i.e. how to learn what needs to be known), and, to provide a context within which his reader can apply those skills. For example, in Chapter 4 ("How to Keep Quiet - Most of the Time"), Ferrari explains why, whenever possible, he avoids interrupting another person but when appropriate, "any interruptions or responses I make as questions. If I disagree with a statement, I'll package my disagreement in a probing question." In advance of discussion of key issues, he formulates a few questions that he may need "to guide the conversation into areas that will be more useful for me and CP."

Note: CP refers to "conversation partner," the person with whom one is speaking. The term is significant. Whereas a listener is a recipient (sometimes a target), a partner is a collaborator in a process to increase each participant's understanding.

Ferrari brilliantly achieves his stated objectives: To review the common pitfalls in conversation and explain how to avoid or correct them; to explain the basic principles of "Power Listening" and the basic tools needed to possess and apply it; and explain also how to develop techniques "for harnessing what you hear in service of a leaner and better-informed decision-making process." The techniques he discusses in Sections Two and Three can be adopted by almost anyone who is determined to become a Power Listener and is well along in mastering the skills discussed in Section One.

These techniques include being fully aware of everything "that their idiosyncratic filing system already contains or needs to contain; also they "rapidly shuffle and recombine any or all of the stored information, constantly adding to the options and alternatives available for consideration." I presume to add that the "idiosyncratic filing system" to which Ferrari refers must be managed as a work in progress, one to which updated information is constantly added and from which outdated information is systematically removed. The quality and value of each judgment are determined by the quality and value of the information on which it is based.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Good listener equal good manager March 25, 2012

By Marlene Moleon

Format:Hardcover

In Spanish some experts make a distinction between hearing (oir) and listening (escuchar).
I've read before about learning to listen to resolve conflicts, but this is the first time I read about the importance of listening focused on business. This is an excellent book that I recommend.
Quote: "Listening can well be the difference between profits and loss, between success and failure, between a long career and a short one. Listen is the only way to find out what you don't know, and marks the path to making good decisions, arriving at the best ideas. If you aspire to be better at your job, no matter what it is, listening may be the most powerful tool at your disposal".

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Most Important Skill You Can Ever Learn March 30, 2012

By Scott Hoffman

Format:Hardcover

I believe that the power to truly listen to people is the most important skill you can develop, for business and for life. This book is an excellent source for developing a listening skill set and should be required reading for all professional sales people.