0718-Would You Refuse a Promotion to Stay in a Job You Love?

So much career advice involves how to get ahead, get promoted, move up the ladder. But what if you love the job you have? Sue Shellenbarger and University of Colorado Health president Dr. Rulon Stacey look at finding your professional "sweet spot." Photo: University of Colorado Health.

Most career advice is about getting ahead and climbing the ladder toward bigger titles and higher status.

But what if you love the job you're in?

Some people have found their sweet spot—the job that suits both their talents and their goals. To stay and thrive in it, though, requires proactive steps to both maintain personal satisfaction and avoid seeming to coast.

More than 3 in 4 employees say they have no desire to move up in their organizations, according to a 2011 survey of 431 workers by OfficeTeam, a Menlo Park, Calif., staffing service. Some have found equilibrium between career challenges and family stability. Others don't like managing people or taking on tasks that don't excite them.

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Rebecca Greenfield for The Wall Street Journal (3)

Many are wary of office politics at senior levels. "My boss is 2,000 miles away. I like that," says a regional senior executive for a large financial-services firm who has turned down two promotions in the past decade.

Such attitudes are "much more common than people are willing to admit," says Ken Siegel, a psychologist and president of a Los Angeles consulting firm, the Impact Group.

Many employees keep their desire to stay put quiet, because they don't want to be seen as uncommitted or lacking ambition, Dr. Siegel says. Some employers consider employees who don't want to move up a source of problems and a roadblock to others' advancement. At some companies, they are actually referred to as "blockers."

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It's imperative for people who don't want to leave a dream job to let the boss know what they have in mind. Otherwise, "people are going to be making assumptions about where you want to go," says Helene Lollis, president of Pathbuilders, an Atlanta consulting firm. One manager at a financial-services company didn't tell her boss that she didn't want to advance.

"Unbeknownst to her, a senior leader had stuck out his neck to get her promoted," Ms. Lollis says. She turned down the offer and created so much ill will that she decided to resign, Ms. Lollis says.

Most important is to be sure of your reasons for staying put. You should be truly satisfied with your job, not dodging promotions because of self-doubt or fear of failure.

People can thrive after declining a promotion. Typically, they have made it clear to their managers that they want to continue growing while staying in the same job. They update their skills, solve problems for the boss, help colleagues advance and come up with new ways to be seen as invaluable.

They might describe their current job as "an ideal fit for my passion and skill set" or "the role where I can have the biggest impact."

Brenda Thickett makes no secret of the fact that she wants to keep the job she has at Boston Consulting Group. The former consultant stepped off the partner track in 2006 to help manage the firm's social-impact practice, which provides consultants and management help to nonprofits such as the United Nations' World Food Programme and Save the Children.

Ms. Thickett says she has wanted to work on solving social problems ever since studying in Niger for five months during college.

"To have real poverty on your doorstep, to see really hungry kids and children with polio, made me want to understand what we in the U.S. could do to make a difference," she says. The firm also gives her flexibility to work from home, which helps the mother of two children, ages 10 and 7, manage home life.

She says she has turned aside offers to be considered for roles elsewhere within the firm, and rejected numerous headhunter calls. She admits it can be hard to watch peers rise. "I see the class I started with and they're partners, and some are making senior partner," she says.

She finds other ways to satisfy her ambitions. Some have made her invaluable, says Wendy Woods, a senior partner, global leader of the social-impact practice and Ms. Thickett's boss. She started and runs three programs that let the firm's consultants to step away from regular assignments and work with nonprofits for up to a year.

"We talk a fair bit about what she needs to keep it challenging for her," Ms. Woods says.

Often, people who take a promotion discover that they hate the new job. Regrets may spring from the challenges of the transition itself, including longer work hours, more travel or family members' problems adjusting to the change.

Dr. Siegel advises waiting six to nine months to adjust. If you still feel that the new job is a mistake, "you can say, 'It's just not working for me,' " Dr. Siegel says. "It's better to have that conversation than to fake it, because faking it usually leads to firing."

Hospital executive Rulon Stacey moved from Chicago to Fort Collins, Colo., in 1996 to run a medium-size hospital because he wanted to make a difference. "And I don't think we have to be at Mayo Clinic or Cedars Sinai to make a difference," he told employees at the Poudre Valley Health System at the time. He was intent on improving medical care, and he also wanted to raise his four young daughters, now ages 21 to 30, in one place.

Dr. Stacey expanded employment at Poudre Valley fivefold to 5,300 and implemented doctor incentives to provide high-quality care. Poudre Valley has won several management and professional awards under his leadership including the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige award in 2008. Some employees resisted the changes and criticized him for résumé-building at the hospital's expense, he says.

To quell speculation, he signed a new long-term employment contract and started talking openly with senior managers and physicians about his plans to stay.

"I wanted to make a difference professionally without sacrificing personally," says Dr. Stacey, who was recently named president of University of Colorado Health, a partnership between Poudre Valley and University of Colorado Hospital.

He says he has turned down "at least a dozen" offers to head larger hospitals elsewhere. Rather than move on to a bigger organization, he says, he is putting his family first.

It's important to revisit your decision now and then and make sure your reasons are still sound. People are often motivated to take a new job by intrinsic rewards, such as enjoying the challenge, the subject matter or the people, Dr. Siegel says. But when moving upward, people are more likely to be motivated by factors like pay or status. "Those may be very compelling but they're not always very satisfying," he says. "Ask yourself why you took the job in the first place," he says. Are those motivators still in force?

Debra Benton, a Fort Collins, Colo., executive coach, surveyed 100 managers several years ago and found two-thirds didn't desire to move up. Many cited fear of making peers jealous or of breaking out of a comfortable role. "People are more afraid of trying for success and not getting it, than of settling for what they have," she says.

Write to Sue Shellenbarger at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com

0717-Apple Investigates China iPhone Death Allegations

Apple Inc. AAPL -0.04% said Monday that it is investigating a case in which the family of a 23-year-old woman alleges that she was electrocuted by her iPhone.

Though details about the case remain sketchy, it has caught the imagination of social media users in China, who have been spreading word about the case and warning not to use devices while they are charging.

Reuters

A visitor tries an iPhone at an Apple store in Beijing March 28, 2013.

According to a report in China’s official state-run Xinhua news agency, relatives of the woman in China’s western Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region are alleging the woman died after trying to answer a call while her iPhone was charging. An officer with the local Public Security Bureau said Monday that an “elementary inspection” showed the woman, named Ma Ailun, was electrocuted.

“Her neck had an obvious electronic injury,” he told China Real Time.

Beyond that, though, the official said that the case was still under investigation, and there were no more details available about whether her smartphone, the charger, or something else killed the woman.

In its statement, Apple said: “We are deeply saddened to learn of this tragic incident and offer our condolences to the Ma family. We will fully investigate and cooperate with authorities in this matter.”

Official media quoted extensively from the microblog feed of a woman who they said was the sister of the victim, though her identity couldn’t be confirmed by China Real Time. She said that her sister had purchased the phone in December. She didn’t indicate whether the phone was Apple’s newest iPhone or an earlier model, and thus far local media reports have had conflicting reports about which model the iPhone might be.

While the fact are still unclear, a number of online users in China focused on the type of charger she might have used. The China Consumers’ Association in May warned about the dangers of a “flood” of uncertified power chargers on the market (in Chinese). In the release the association warned the chargers could turn a smartphone into a “pocket grenade” and cause explosions, electric shock, or fires in a variety of electronic devices.

“Don’t talk such nonsense, it’s a five volt current, it couldn’t kill a cockroach,” wroteone microblogger. “What is her house’s surge protector doing?”

Another said using a phone while it is plugged in shouldn’t be a problem “unless you’re using a shoddy transformer. Even if you do that the possibility of this happening is low.”

The case is the most recent in a string of public relations difficulties for Apple in China. In April the Communist Party mouthpiece the People’s Daily put the Cupertino, Calif., company’s app store on a list of websites being investigated for providing pornographic content in China. Earlier that same month, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook issued an apology to its Chinese customers after the company’s warranty policycame under attack in state media.

– Paul Mozur. Follow him on Twitter @paulmozur

0716-Apps That Help Kids Like Chores

Summer often reminds parents how little their children are involved in household chores. But a new generation of chore apps is changing the game. Sue Shellenbarger and mother of four Hannah Carpenter join Lunch Break to discuss. Photo: Karen E. Segrave for The Wall Street Journal.

Few parents see digital games as a promising way to pry kids off the couch—much less inspire them to be useful around the house. But a new generation of chore apps, designed primarily for the under-12 set, aims to turn kids into bed makers, laundry folders and toy picker-uppers by offering rewards ranging from funny collectible monsters to redeemable digital coins.

Karen E. Segrave for The Wall Street Journal

Tristin, 10

Brooke Wise of Dallas says a $3.99 smartphone app called You Rule Chores has her three children, Justin, 12, Rafaela, 9, and Will, 4, actually competing to see who can do more housework. The children were involved from the start, helping their mom enter the list of chores, including laundry, cleaning up after the family dog and loading and unloading the dishwasher. Each child chose one of the app's six avatars, which include a pink kitty, a robot scientist and an intergalactic policeman.

For chores completed—and approved by Ms. Wise—the app doles out digital coins the kids can redeem for rewards, such as TV time or a trip to the yogurt store. The siblings compete to see who wins the most coins and like seeing their avatars earn new strengths and skills each time they finish a job. Rafaela says she loves playing with her kitty avatar, and "it's fun getting paid" in rewards.

Karen E. Segrave for The Wall Street Journal

Silas, 6

For Ms. Wise, who says she was concerned about keeping the kids busy this summer, the results have been surprising: "They make their bed, pick up their rooms, and my daughter goes out in the yard and picks up the dog poop! I'm like, 'Who are these children?' "

While preschoolers often like to lend a hand with adult tasks, fewer parents are optimistic they will hear the words "What can I do to help?" from their older kids. The number of 9- to 12-year-olds who help with household tasks fell 9% between 1997 and 2003 to 72%, according to the latest trend data available, published in a study in the International Journal of Time Use Research. And it may have fallen further amid kids' rising use of videogames, computers and cellphones, says the study's author, Sandra Hofferth, a family-science professor at the University of Maryland and an authority on children's time use. By ages 16 to 18, only 65% of kids take part in chores, Dr. Hofferth says.

Karen E. Segrave for The Wall Street Journal

The ChoreMonster app

App designer Brian Linder says he and his business partner Nathan Clark launched You Rule Chores in 2011 because "we knew it was always a pain in the butt to get our kids to do work around the house." They wanted to motivate kids without "the nagging and the repeating yourself over and over until you sound like an insane person and end up doing the chores yourself," says Mr. Linder, of Dallas, whose own sons are 9 and 12.

Parents don't mind the apps' resemblance to videogames because so many children are already entranced by games on their smartphones and hand-held game consoles, he says.

Benham Family

Togetherness Tasks: Royce and Denise Benham, of Kennewick, Wash., mobilize the whole gang for Saturday chore time. Kids are Lindsey, 11, Jackson, 6, center, Derek, 16, far right, and Ryan, 4, front.

Chris Bergman of Cincinnati, father of an 18-month-old son, says he worked with another dad to launch an app called ChoreMonster earlier this year because he wanted housework to be fun for kids. "Chores were a huge tension point in my home" when growing up, he says. "I was always getting in trouble." The app, available at $4.99 a month for use on the Web and with Apple's mobile devices, gives points and rewards for chores, along with passes to a Monster Carnival where kids play to win either one of the game's 200 humorous monsters or a booby prize such as stinky socks.

Denise Herrold

'I Call Dish Duty!' Using the You Rule Chores app, kids in the Dallas-based Wise family now compete to see who can do more housework. Left to right, Brooke, Rafaela, 9, Jason, Will, 4, and Justin, 12.

Hannah Carpenter of Searcy, Ark., says she had trouble structuring a housework system for her four children, ages 1 through 10, until she started using ChoreMonster in February. The app "is a huge motivator," and her kids are gaining skills, she says. Her 4-year-old daughter Enid has learned to fold and put away laundry, Ms. Carpenter says, and her 10-year-old daughter Tristin rushes to help out, saying, "Don't unload the dishwasher—I want to do it."

SonKissed Photography

Made It Official: A housework contract devised by the Cox family of Oklahoma City pays $5 a week for duties including kitchen cleanup. Clockwise from top, David, Jayna, and twins Jenna and Seth, now 13.

Other apps include Epic Win, a role-playing to-do list manager, and iRewardChart and Chore Pad, digital replacements for traditional chore charts with stickers or stars.

Chores teach kids self-control and self-regulation, says Jim Fay, co-founder of the Love and Logic Institute, a Golden, Colo., provider of parent training and resources. Research shows self-regulation—learning to invest effort and persist in finishing difficult tasks—is a powerful predictor of academic and career success. It's best to start instilling the habit early, Mr. Fay says, teaching children that chores are a shared family responsibility and each member is expected to contribute. If parents can find a way to make chores fun by, say, pretending the open washing machine is a basketball hoop, he says, "go for it."

Tips to Get the Family to Clean Up

• Start giving children regular jobs when they are young.
• Be consistent in teaching that chores are a shared family responsibility.
• Let children take part in deciding who does which chores.
• Thank them for helping out.
• Follow through on any reward system you set up.
• Set deadlines and consequences for slackers, and stick to them.
• Plan a group cleanup with the whole family, setting a quitting time in advance.
• Work together in pairs on tough jobs, letting a child pick music.
• Raise the fun quotient by, say, using the open washer as a basketball hoop.
• Let children use appliances they like, such as a Swiffer or a vacuum.

Sources: Love and Logic Institute, parenting author and speaker Kathi Lipp.

Working side by side with youngsters on household jobs can be a motivator. By the time they were 3, each of Denise Benham's four kids was pushing a toy lawn mower around the yard behind their father Royce, says the Kennewick, Wash., mother. They learned as toddlers to measure and do basic math by breaking eggs for pancake batter and pouring soap into the washer. Now 4 to 16, the kids do chores with their parents most Saturdays. "A bond is created when we work together," Ms. Benham says, while also conveying the importance of a clean, orderly home.

Parenting experts advise treating teens like adults, setting clear expectations and consistent consequences. Jayna and David Cox write and sign a housework contract annually with their 13-year-old twins, Seth and Jenna, paying $5 a week for duties such as laundry and kitchen cleanup, says Ms. Cox, of Oklahoma City. This year, they added mowing the lawn. "We're businesspeople, and we feel it doesn't hurt for the children to learn a few things about business," says Ms. Cox, an information-technology project manager. The twins can earn bonuses for extra work, but their pay is docked if they slack off.

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Such setups require parents to coach their kids on housework skills, but also to give up some control—and avoid micromanaging, which can lead to conflict with teens trying to assert their independence. Ms. Cox says that while she has shown Seth and Jenna how to do laundry correctly, Seth still washes colors and whites together sometimes. "He doesn't always care if his socks were once white and are all gray now," she says.

More important, she says, is that the twins are learning the natural consequences of failing to be responsible: "If they don't do the laundry, they don't have clean clothes."

Write to Sue Shellenbarger at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com

0715-Microsoft reboots with sweeping reorganization

   SAN FRANCISCO (AP) _ Microsoft Corp. has decided its entire business needs a new operating system.
 
   CEO Steve Ballmer is restructuring the company to cope with a quickening pace of technological change that has left the world's largest software maker a step behind its two biggest rivals, Apple and Google.
 
   In an effort to catch up, Microsoft is dismantling a management structure that separated the company into sometimes disjointed divisions and hatching a more cohesive product line-up. The new set up revolves around software, devices and services connecting those devices to applications stored in remote data centers _ a concept that has become known as ``cloud computing.''
 
   The move comes amid a lukewarm response to the latest version of Microsoft's flagship Windows operating system and a steady decline in demand for personal computers as people increasingly rely on more convenient smartphones and tablets.
 
   If things pan out the way Ballmer envisions, the shake-up announced Thursday will foster more rapid innovation and sharpen the company's focus on countering the threat posed by mobile devices running on software made by Apple and Google while laptop and desktop computers powered by Windows lose their luster.  He is hoping a more closely-knit organization making the software and services that run smartphones, tablets, the Xbox video game console and, yes, PCs will re-establish Microsoft's reputation as ``a company that helps people get stuff done.''
 
   ``We are ready to take Microsoft in bold new directions,'' Ballmer told analysts and reporters during a conference call.
 
   Ballmer, 57, can't afford to lose his way now. If he does, Microsoft could be even further eclipsed by its rivals. That, in turn, could disillusion investors already exasperated with the lackluster performance of Microsoft's stock since Ballmer succeeded his close friend, company co-founder Bill Gates, as CEO 13 years ago.
 
   During Ballmer's reign, Microsoft's stock has slipped by nearly 40 percent even as the company's annual revenue has roughly quadrupled from $20 billion to nearly $80 billion. The bellwether Standard & Poor's 500 has climbed by 14 percent during the same time while Apple's stock price is nearly 17 times higher. By the time Google went public, Ballmer had already been Microsoft's CEO for four years. Since then, Google's stock has risen tenfold. Both Apple and Google now boast higher total market values than Microsoft.
 
   Microsoft's stock gained 99 cents Thursday to close at $35.69. The shares have surged 24 percent in the past three months, partly because the company's revenue is holding up better than many analysts expected, despite five consecutive quarters of declining PC sales. Some recent buyers of Microsoft's stock had been betting the company would do something even more dramatic, such as spinning off a division or shedding its unprofitable Internet search engine, Bing, said BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis. Neither of those appears likely, now that Ballmer has reshuffled the business.
 
   Gillis views the changes as Ballmer's tacit acknowledgement that Microsoft had become bogged down in bureaucracy and second-guessing _ and an admission that there was too much internal strife as various factions formed to protect their turf.
 
   ``We have to make the right decisions more quickly,'' Ballmer said. The company's motto now: ``One Microsoft all the time.''
 
   Ballmer appears to have the right idea, although it would have looked even smarter had he done it shortly after it became clear that Apple's 2010 release of the iPad was reshaping the tech market, said Gartner Inc. analyst David Cearley.
 
   ``They are really reorganizing for the market reality that has been in place for the last three years,'' Cearley said. ``It would have been nice if it was done earlier, but it's not too little too late yet. The real key is execution. All these changes make sense and I can see a path forward, but that path forward is a really rocky one.''
 
   Most of Microsoft's key executives will remain in positions of power at the Redmond, Wash., company although with new roles and more defined responsibilities. The company's new divisions include engineering, marketing and business development.
 
   Ballmer said no layoffs are planned, although analysts believe the overhaul will open the door for cost-cutting opportunities as Microsoft pulls together its disparate parts.
 
   Terry Myerson, who had been overseeing Windows Phone, will lead Microsoft's operating systems and engineering group, namely Windows. Qi Lu, who had been overseeing Bing, will head applications and services.
 
   Microsoft named veteran executive Julie Larson-Green head of its devices and studios engineering group, which will be in charge of hardware development, games, music and entertainment. She had been promoted in November to lead all Windows software and hardware engineering after Steven Sinofsky, the president of its Windows and Windows Live operations, left the company shortly after the launch of Windows 8.
 
   Tony Bates, who joined Microsoft in 2011 when the company bought video calling service Skype for $8.5 billion, will take on a key networking role as he works with the company's key business partners and preaches about the virtues of Microsoft's products and services.
 
   Some of what Microsoft is doing mirrors changes that Apple and Google already have executed.
 
   For instance, Apple put its iOS software for iPhones and iPads along with its operating system for its Mac computer under one executive, Craig Federighi, in a shake-up last year. And Google's Android software for mobile devices and Chrome software for laptops were aligned under the management of the same executive, Sundar Pichai, for the first time during the spring.
 
   Now, Microsoft hopes to mimic the success of its rivals in a world that increasingly revolves around mobile devices and Internet services. Gartner estimates nearly 867 million devices running on Android software will be shipped worldwide this year, up from 505 million last year. Worldwide shipments of Windows-powered devices are expected to total nearly 340 million this year, down from 346 million last year, Gartner forecasts. But those Windows machines are primarily PCs, not smartphones or tablets. Apple will ship about 296 million iOS and Mac devices this year, up from 213 million last year, Gartner predicted.
 
   Part of Microsoft's problem is a matter of perception. Even though it remains one of the world's most profitable companies, its stature has been steadily diminishing in tech and investment circles.
 
   Ballmer's reorganization ``should help Microsoft slow its decline, but the question remains whether it will be enough to help it climb into new markets,'' Forrester Research analyst Frank Gillett said.

0712-Now on Taobao: Outsourced Care for Grandma

Associated Press

A group of elderly men take a rest at a park in Beijing. New wording in the law requiring people to visit or keep in touch with their elderly parents came into force July 1.

China’s newly revised elder-care law has come as good news for a handful of entrepreneurs who specialize in outsourcing those now-mandated visits to grandma and grandpa.
The new law, which requires adults to offer their parents mental and financial support, has spurred at least 17 online vendors on Taobao, the eBay-like site owned by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., to offer  services such as running errands and standing in line for the elderly in Beijing, Shanghai, Hunan, and Zhejiang.
“We offer services such as chatting, celebrating birthdays and even performances,” one online storekeeper told the state-run Shanghai Daily, saying services were selling for 100 yuan (about $16) an hour, plus extras and transportation.
Because nothing raises the spirits of the elderly like a stranger hired by their child to talk to keep them company.
Last week, just hours after the elderly care law was implemented, the first related case came to trial as a couple in Jiangsu province were ordered to visit the wife’s 77-year-old mother at least once every other month and during at least two public holidays annually.
The law comes at a time when government estimates show the population of senior citizens in China growing by 3% every year.
Elderly care has been a hot topic in China, where the one-child policy has left fewer children to care for their aging parents.  Urbanization has left an increasing number of rural Chinese elderly desperate for care.
“I think the government is going to use the threat and fear of prosecution to force Chinese citizens to provide more care for the elderly,” says Dean Polizzotto, a Chinese law expert at the University of Hong Kong.
According to a government white paper on care for the elderly, citizens above the age of 18 are obliged to support their parents. The new law, Mr. Polizzotto says, seems like “an attempt to address the needs of an insufficient public welfare and pension system, which has been developed over the last decade.”
A joint study by Chinese international academics found elderly Chinese are disproportionately poor and depressed, with roughly 42.4 million living on less than 3,200 yuan ($520) a year.

–Riva Gold with contributions from Xiaoqing Pi 

0711-Part-Time America

The U.S. labor market may be gaining a little more steam, judging by Friday's June jobs report. Imagine how much better it might do if ObamaCare weren't encouraging employers to hire so many part-time workers.

The Labor Department's survey of businesses found 195,000 net new hires in June, 202,000 in the private economy. Payrolls for April and May were also revised upward by a total of 70,000, which means the average for the last three months is about 200,000. That's up from the 182,000 monthly average over the last year.

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Editorial board member Steve Moore explains the surge in part-time hiring in the June jobs report.

One positive development is that the number of "long-time" unemployed, those out of work for six months or more, fell again and is down by one million workers over the past year. The dismally low labor participation rate ticked up to 63.5% from 63.4% in May as 177,000 more Americans entered the workforce, though the rate is still below the 63.8% from last June. Average hourly wages climbed a welcome 10 cents and for the first time hit $24.

The disappointments include a big jump of 247,000 in the number of "discouraged workers," those who have stopped looking for a job. This could be a one-month anomaly given the other increases, but it bears watching.

Also disappointing is the big jump in the number of Americans who want to work full time but could only find part-time work. That number leapt to 8.23 million, a 322,000 one-month increase. Total part-time employment rose by 432,000, more than double the total number of net new jobs.

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A Lowe's home improvement store in Chicago, Ill. The company plans to hire 9,000 permanent part-time employees this year.

The broadest measure of unemployment—which includes discouraged workers and those who can't find a full-time job for economic reasons—still totals more than 20 million Americans and the rate unexpectedly rose in June to 14.3% from 13.8%.

This could also be a one-month outlier, and at this stage of an expansion you'd expect the number of part-time jobs to be falling as companies do more full-time hiring. Yet as the nearby chart shows, the number of part-time workers who want full-time work has stayed stubbornly high. The number at this stage in the last expansion was closer to 4.5 million.

Retail (37,000) and leisure and hospitality (75,000) businesses accounted for more than half of the new jobs in June. And it's revealing that the average hours worked in retail have fallen to 31.4 from 31.6 hours a week over the past year, and the average hospitality job now is still 26.1 hours a week.

One explanation is almost surely ObamaCare. The law requires employers with more than 50 workers to provide health insurance to all employees or pay a $2,000 penalty per worker. The law also defines a full-time job as 30 hours a week. All of this gives businesses that operate on thin margins—and that's most businesses—an incentive to hire more part-time workers.

On Tuesday the Obama Treasury announced it is postponing this employer mandate until 2015, and perhaps this will encourage more full-time hiring. But thousands of businesses, especially in retail and fast-food, have already started to cap employment for many workers at 30 hours and they know their reprieve is only for a year. If President Obama really wants to spur hiring, he'd let Congress delay the employer mandate forever.

0710-Listen Up! Here's One Convention Where Talk Is Cheap

By 
• ANNE KADET

What do you talk about at a two-day conference where the sole topic is listening? For the International Listening Association, a society of dedicated listeners that gathers every year for a big convention, it's a perennial conundrum.

The joke among presenters, of course, is that you can't find a better audience—they're all ears.

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Reuters

Canadian radio host Jian Ghomeshi shown in 2010. He received the International Listening Association's highest honor.

Listening is a serious topic for the association's 300 members. They include both social scientists who study the mechanics of listening and professionals who want to sharpen their listening skills so they can better communicate with clients.

But there's an unspoken truth behind all the attentiveness: When your passion is listening, it's hard to find folks who share your interest. So even when allegedly silent types gather from cities around the globe, the rooms ultimately fill with chatter—about listening strategies and the latest listening research.

"We have good listeners, but we have a lot of good talkers too," says executive director Nanette Johnson-Curiskis.

Among them is consultant Manny Steil, who teaches executives how to better absorb what they hear. As for himself? He's apt to answer a simple question with a 20-minute monologue. Listening, he says, is "a tough business to be in when you're a talker."

Mr. Steil, CEO of the International Listening Leadership Institute in St. Paul, Minn., founded the ILA in 1979. Within a year, he organized the association's first conference. But much to his chagrin, Mr. Steil says the public's interest in listening doesn't seem to be growing. As the Twitterati replaces the literati, "I think there's more of an interest in being listened to than ever before," he says.

While most folks dismiss listening as a simple matter, the experts know better. Almost every ILA wonk offers his own propriety listening model, ranging from Mr. Steil's seven-stage "Steil SIER" listening pyramid to Winnipeg, Manitoba, consultant Dwight Harfield's "Harfield Cognitive Listening Model," a colorful traffic map that breaks the listening process into components such as "hearing" and "responding."

Perhaps the most visually impressive model belongs to past ILA President Alan Ehrlich, creator of "The Process of Listening," a flow chart that looks like a schema for a nuclear submarine. "I have no idea how accurate it is," he says. "All I know is that no one else came up with it."

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Mr. Ehrlich, who founded the Center for Listening Disorders Research in Plainsboro, New Jersey, envisions a world populated by listening therapists and listening pathologists who can diagnose and remedy listening difficulties such as hearing loss, cognitive problems or chronic distraction. "Right now, if you have trouble listening, you have no place to go," he says.

Unless, of course, you're with the ILA. This summer, four members completed the association's yearlong course of online lectures and exercises needed to earn the professional designation of "Certified Listening Professional." And throughout this year's conference in Montreal, members learned the fine art of compassionate listening and "listening through strategic questioning," while honing their "pre-listening skills."

One highlight: a workshop on Listening to the Self. Participants practiced grilling themselves aloud while facing a wall to better hear their own answers."Your inner voice is your personal GPS," said presenter Michael Murphy. "You're probably pretty good company—give yourself a chance."

The conference happened to coincide with prom night in Montreal. After midnight, the staid hotel came alive with the sounds of partying teens blasting music and crashing about in the halls. But few of the conference attendees called the front desk to complain. They lay quietly in their beds, listening to the shrieking and thumping.

Indeed, members say they truly love to listen to others orate. "There are times when it's almost like a dream state. Time passes and you have no notice of it," says Michael Purdy, a retired professor and 1994 inductee into the association's Listening Hall of Fame. "We could be here for an hour and I wouldn't know!"

A bleary-eyed but attentive crowd attended the next day's panel discussion on the theme, "What is listening?" Florida Gulf Coast University professor Maria Loffredo Roca defined listening as the opening of the self to the possibility of being moved and changed by the other. And yet: "True listening is virtually impossible," she acknowledged, due to the level of humility and reverence required.

A second presenter read a poem. Graham Bodie, an academic with a taste for Latin phrases and German phenomenology concluded that "Listening is the mediation between firstness and secondness…but there's always thirdness leaking into it."

Mr. Bodie works at Louisiana State University's listening lab, a four-room complex featuring a mock living room where researchers videotape and analyze conversations. Among the findings cited by Mr. Bodie: the more people talk, the higher they rate their own listening skills.

The conference finale: a banquet dinner where the association presented its annual "Listener of the Year Award"—an honor reserved for people whose closed mouths and open ears help set a standard for others in academic or business practices. In past years, it chose famous folks such as Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz (2012) and Michelle Obama (2011). This year, the association tried a new tactic, awarding its highest honor to CBC radio talk show host Jian Ghomeshi. He's big in Canada.

"I'm aware a lot of people in the room don't know who I am," said the modest honoree. Before receiving the prize, he added, he didn't really know much about the ILA, "But I'm a big fan of listening!" The members gave him a standing ovation.

At night's end, in a solemn ceremony, Mr. Ehrlich passed the association's gavel to newly elected President Debra Worthington. True to form, the communications professor had no acceptance speech. She simply smiled and announced, "I think the next order of business is to adjourn." The assembled quickly dispersed, headed home for another year of listening.