Those great communicators are individuals who can observe people with whom they are communicating and adjust their communication style to what works best with the person with whom they're speaking. That is one of the arts of project management.
The objective of an estimating session is clear, the project manager should give the team member an opportunity to discuss their view of how much work and duration the task will require. Then the project manager should give the team member the opportunity to make their own estimate and the two of them can discuss the differences between the project manager's numbers and the numbers provided by the team member.
In this video we see a project manager sitting down to estimate with a team member. First, we see the project manager not adapt his techniques to the team member's preferences. He winds up with a team member who loses commitment and is less enthusiastic after the session than they were when they started
In the second half of the video, the project manager observes the team member's personality traits and makes a diagnosis about the best way to communicate with this team member. The result is far more effective in terms of both the estimate and the team member's commitment to that task estimate.
Dick Billows, PMP, narrates the video and points out the speech and behavior cues from the project team member that allow the project manager to assess the team member's temperament and their preferences for information in a specific form. In this example, the project manager's personality style does not work well with the team member's style. In the first movie, the project manager makes no adaptation to "fit the team member" better. In the second half of the video, the project manager does make this adaptation and we see the very marked change in his speaking style, body language and the language he uses.
We teach these techniques in all of our courses from the fundamental level to our advanced courses, adding additional interpersonal techniques at each level.
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