Steve Kroft Quotes

My advice to all interviewers is: Shut up and listen. It's harder than it sounds.

You have to learn to ask questions in a way that will elicit more nuanced answers, rather than the answers you would like to get.

You have to do a lot of listening, you don't just learn out of yourself.

I found I wasn't asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something. I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn't know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.

The biggest piece of advice I have is - listen. Don't jump to the answer or what you think the answer is. The more you listen, the more you learn.

Curiosity is the process of asking questions, genuine questions, that are not leading to an ask for something in return.

It's not easy, but I truly that think being a good listener is an important part of being a good journalist.

Don't be afraid to ask questions. People have a lot of knowledge.

I think one of the things I really learned in Denver is the value of being a good listener.

The way to keep yourself from making assumptions is to ask questions.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

I am a good listener. I think that came from my schooling.

If you ask questions that interest you, you'll get answers that interest your audience.

Fortunately, I've done so many interviews that I've become very good at detecting when someone is giving a less-than-candid reply.

This is the first lesson for writers - or anyone - who conducts interviews: If you want someone to talk, you've got to know how to listen. And good listening is a surprisingly active process. The interviewee is your focus of attention; you are there to hear what he says and thinks, exclusively.

When you talk, you only talk about something that you already know. But when you listen, you can learn something you don’t know.

I listen to my political rivals sometimes with fear and trembling, sometimes with awe, sometimes with near panic, but always with a curiosity of nuances, curiosity for the language, curiosity for the story behind the 'impossible' position.

I don't have the answers. But I am asking the questions, and that's the fun part. I'm like the kid in class with his hand up, going, 'Um...' I think that's a powerful place to create from.

Curiosity at work isn't a matter of style. It's much more powerful than that. If you're the boss, and you manage by asking questions, you're laying the foundation for the culture of your company or your group. You're letting people know that the boss is willing to listen.

When I am talking to someone, I can constantly see whether I am failing or succeeding. I am regulating what I am saying in terms of how I think I'm doing. I'm always searching for the truth of a subject or person, and I look at every meeting as a grand experiment.

When you don't understand something, it's always OK to ask questions. That's really the mentality that I've had.

There are no sure answers, only better questions.

I subscribe to the school that there are no dumb questions.

Usually, you can figure out where a person's mistakes came from if you ask them the genesis of their thought process: 'Why did you do it this way?' As opposed to telling them they did it the wrong way. Understanding their thought process will ultimately help you be able to communicate with them and navigate around them.

I actually find it a lot easier to interview people I don't agree with because I'm far more curious about how they've arrived at that place.