Rocketeer Leadership Behavior 4 - Good Listener

Sometimes you have to listen with all your senses to what is really happening around you. Most of it is noise and your mind wants to react immediately to everything.

Our fourth Leadership Behavior is Good Listener. And in atrue consistent & predictable manner I present the slide from our super-secret internal deck:

Good Listener! This one is one of my favorites, and by now you might know that they are all my favorites. The Leadership Behaviors help me measure up each day so that I show up best. It’s a dance of the four quarters, bringing the energy you need at the right time. Being a Good Listener, you want to create a safe and fair space.

We use the word 'Discovery’ at ServiceRocket a lot. Both internally and also with our customers. When we engage and start a project or working on a task, engagement or problem we start with curiousity. We invoke the word Discovery. For us it means that we are clearly acknowledging that we don’t know everything, and that we might find out something we don’t. That’s important. If you and your ego walk into a scenario that you know everything then there’s a lot that could go wrong. I’ve found that out the hard way many times!.

When you listen, it’s not about just ensuring you have kept the notes. It’s about alignment. You are meet the person that you’re communicating with where they are at. And then you can walk on your journey together.

For many of us, we’re guided by our gut, our paste experiences - both good and bad. It’s important to elevate yourself above the situation at the same time as being present. For me, this allows me to try and counter any assumptions I’ve made and assume that everyone is working towards what they believe is the right positive thing to do. Over the years I have some to realize that in the business world most folks are doing what they believe to be right and you won’t convince them they are wrong by telling them so. But if you walk next to them, you can often show them a different pathway.

Music is the space between the notes - Miles Davis

Sometimes you have to just pause. Let things rest. Nod your head and take a breath. Listen and process. Create that space for things to unfold. Peel back some layers.

I’m deliberate about our company value Talk Straight, and that isn’t just about telling people what I think, it’s also being clear about my own vulnerabilities and blindspots. When you, as a leader, as the one with power takes the first step to create that safe space as a Good Listener, you’ve allowed others to rise.

The Good Listener Rocketeer Leadership Behavior has the following sub-points:

• Listens openly to criticism and asks questions to discover.

• Restates the opinions of others to help alignment.

• Examines the assumptions behind actions before passing judgement.

• Assumes positive intent.

• Understands and demonstrates the power and preciousness of vulnerability.

Leaders play an important role in empowering voices of individuals and minorities by the action of listening. In some context, we are all minorities.

Viktor Frankl's quote lies the essence of this Leadership Behavior, “Between the stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space lies our freedom and power to choose our responses. In our response lies our growth and our freedom”.

Anti-Behavior: Inattentive & Poor Listener

We think Anti-Behaviors are a clear way to communicate what we don’t want. And to try and be explicit. Have you ever been talking to someone and know that they are just waiting for a break to get in what they want to say? Or have a feeling that they are pre-judging you before you have ever spoken? A big part of being a good listener is also the environment, the safe space that you create for others.

Our Inspiration

We leveraged the core of this Leadership Behavior from Scaling Leadership by Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams along with it’s anti-behavior. And then we adapted it for our culture and The series of books and research by these authors and the underlying Leadership Circle framework is used heavily at our company and linking these together made so much sense. In that body of work it distinguishes between leaders being in the state of high creativity or high reactivity. The anti-behavior logically has a canceling effect on the creative side.

The sub-points were inspired by our Rocketeer managers along with the Leadership Circle. I’ll write more in a future post how we use this leadership framework in our company across the globe in a scalable way.

Some great resources for this Leadership Behavior include*:

• Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor Frankl

• Mastering Leadership - Robert J. Anderson, William A. Adams

• Scaling Leadership - Robert J. Anderson, William A. Adams

• Principles - Ray Dalio

Why do we have Leadership Behaviors? Isn’t this what Core Values are supposed to do? See my previous post below on ‘When are Core Values not enough?”, but in short Leadership Behaviors give you explicit coachable items to work with your team to help them get better. Telling someone they have fallen on a behavior is much easier to correct and improve, whereas telling someone that they have failed against values is akin to telling them that they’ve been banished from the tribe.

In my opinion, companies need to define these behaviors if they are truly invested in growing their employees to reach their potential. We outline this in our Rocketeer Promise.

When are Core Values not enough?

ROB CASTANEDA 🇦🇺🇲🇹🇸🇻🚀

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At some stage around 2007 we got to a stage where we needed Core Values. I remember this moment clearly, Philip, a fellow member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization took my call where I started expressing issues I was having with our business. We were ~60 people at that stage and alignment was a challenge.

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*I have some amazon affiliate codes on book links, I may make billions from these and quit my job.

**Over time these posts will be updated with more links, tweaks and changes as we learn more. Nothing is ever final at ServiceRocket, and we don’t like “unveiling” things.