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Effective interviews optimize communication with a time constraint. Methods for planning and preparation, building a rapport, developing information, and following up are important constructions. The most important issue is realizing how one's biases and attitudes affect the collected information. Preparation should reinforce the purpose of the interview and should include a time limit and outline. The best tone is one of friendliness. The interviewer should guide information to the most productive channels. Questions should be free of sarcasm or obscure humor and should be able to fit a pattern that sharpens the focus of the interview. How to avoid or deal with silences, listen well, analyze data, and conclude the meeting are important skills.

Beliefs in the value of praise as a motivational tool, a reward, and a way to establish good relationships are inaccurate. Although praise may be a useful technique to keep human relationships on an even keel, it is questionable that praise serves as a motivational tool. To develop qualities of initiative, creativity, judgment, and problem-solving ability, dependence on "internal motivation" is necessary. By being honest about both positive and negative feelings and being empathetic and nonevaluative, listeners help establish a free, accepting, yet close relationship that will encourage independent judgment, effective decisions, and creative actions.

Managers may most effectively approach the complex problems of individual differences by first assuming that the differences are neither good nor bad, and that no one right solution exists. Diagnostic questions the manager must ask concern: the nature of the difference; the underlying factors; and the stage to which the interpersonal difference has evolved. Available courses of action include: avoidance, repression, conflict, and problem solving. A systematic approach to the problem, which will result in a solution that will preserve corporate harmony and individual initiative, is the goal.

Tests show that individuals retain only half of what they have heard immediately after hearing it, and only one third of it within eight hours. Methods to improve listening should build an awareness of the factors that affect listening ability and should construct aural experiences that will produce good listening habits. Fourteen suggestions provide the basis for building an awareness of the importance of listening skills.