101: Unlock your Zone of Genius – The P.I.D. System, with Rutherford Pascal

How are the leaders at all levels of management tackling the toughest challenges each day? That's the question, and this podcast is the answer. I'm Rob Fonte, and I'm bringing on the brightest minds in management to share practical solutions to those challenges you're facing. Let's get ready to jam. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Leadership Jam session. Today's guest is Rutherford Pascal, a leadership coach and keynote speaker with a proving track record of helping leaders and organizations achieve transformative results. Rutherford has vast leadership experience in leading teams as large as over 600 people, including developing over 70 leaders. He also recently published a book called the PID System. Preparation, intentionality and Differentiation.

Elevate yourself from the sea of sameness and get prepared Promoted. Rutherford, welcome to the Leadership Jam session.

Glad to be here.

All right, you ready to jam?

Waiting for this all day.

There you go. All right, well, let's talk about your book, the PID System, Preparation, Intentionality and Differentiation. So maybe you can share a little bit about the core elements of the book.

Excellent. For the last few years, people have been asking me, what did I do to get promoted? As many times as I got promoted, what did I have to do to get to do that? And when I tell them, they don't, they, they don't really believe it. They're like, really? That's all you did? And the answer is I did things that were very specific and very intentional. I wrote this book to, to really tell the reader that in order to, to get outsized results in their career from a promotional perspective or just being the, the best at whatever role there is and not wanting to move, just getting paid higher and higher and kept being the go to person. You don't have to invent the wheel or slice bread or whatever. You have to do one or two things very well and it becomes what you're known for and you should do it in your zone of genius. I said a lot there, Rob. Your zone of genius is my way of saying what you're great at.

Whatever you love doing and you're also really good at. Right? So if you're great at numbers, figuring out a way, how do I use my analytical ability to better the company and, or better the customers, clients that we serve. And you know, one of the, the, the examples I love using because people, when I say that people think again. They're like, I can do so much. I got. No, you just be you.

Yeah.

Take what you are great at and figure it out. Right. So one of the guys that I, I, I Hired back in the day. He was a good salesperson. Not a great salesperson, not great, but he followed up better than anybody else I've ever worked with in my entire career. 35 years, nobody's better. So he would see 10, 8 to 10 customers a day. Every interaction he saw he would send and by email a summary with what they said they were going to do, what he promised to do or just a thank you if it wasn't that kind of a conversation.

Every conversation. So he would send eight to ten emails every day. And I told you he was a good salesperson. But he wasn't great. But his results were like great. So if you do something like that, you're going to get better results because they reminded. Oh yeah, I did tell him I was going to do that. And he's got it in writing so he's going to expect it the next time he's come.

And then he would do what he said. So just that little thing got him outsized results. There's another person that used to work for me, Rob, that, that again, somebody that didn't do anything. He didn't do anything like this outstanding new tactic or strategy. What he did was the fundamentals. He took blocking and tackling and he just was, he was spectacular at it. It was the standards of his team. So he's, he started his team to do A, B, C and D and do A, B, C and D in this way.

And they talked about it, they practiced it and they executed it. He became so good at the fundamentals that his team won every year. He was the number one sales rep in our company for eight to 10 years. He was number one, not, not one of the numbers. He was number one like six out of eight years. I mean he was that good. So he becomes a first time leader. I'm his mentor and I say to him, I said, you know, I don't, it's harder to win year after year as a leader.

Yeah.

So he puts this in place and he wins three out of four. First four years really See because he, I mean the stuff he was teaching was just simple. He did it, you know, basically every day the same way. They got great at it and they got great results because what he was doing was tried and true. He just wouldn't let that needle drop that, you know, that standard was here and it never fell down. It was always here and if it felt, if it fell down a tick, he would, he would mention it.

So that's a piece about being very intentional.

He was very intentional and that's really the most part of it is really figuring out who you are, figuring out what you do well and don't lean into it. Rob, double down on it, take all your cards, push them right in the middle and say, this is who I am, this is what I'm great at. And what I'm great at is going to really help the company, the customer, the client, the patient, whoever you're, whoever that is. So that's really what this book's about. And I break the day down into five areas. Daily mental intake. So how do you think about the day? Internal meetings if you're inside in a company. External meetings if you're with customers, prospecting for new customers and, and if you're networking at all, I give you things on that.

With some people they only have to look at the first three. So there's preparation suggestions, the intentionality suggestions in those five and there's differentiation.

You know, it's interesting going back to the first example of the sales rep, that probably wasn't as good as from the selling skills aspect, but it was the follow up that was the key. Yes, that was kind of what he leveraged.

That's all he leveraged.

So it's interesting is how many managers would have just focused more on the selling skills part, which again that's what we do. But allowing to leverage the sales reps of what they're good at and if it's working for them, what you're good.

At has to be something that, that's needed, necessary and makes a difference. If you're good at writing with crayons, it's probably not going to help you.

It has to be relevant. Right.

It has to be relevant, relevant to your job. And if you just do that one part of your job better than everybody else, you're known for it. It drives business. If you think about people who are great with customers, people want to see them. Doesn't matter if it's an internal, external. Yeah, you know those people because they'll walk into a customer and there'll be a smile. They're having a bad day, they'll see Rob and they'll go, rob's here.

Yeah.

And their voice softens. They're happy because of the impact that Rob makes on that customer. And that by the way, Rob, you. Well, the business is going to grow because you do that for them. And they see it now. Now juxtapose that with somebody who doesn't do anything great. They're like do a couple of things good. They don't Stand out.

It's not memorable. Doesn't create the same type of lift that Rob, because of how he treats the staff, how he treats the customer makes a huge difference. That's. That's really what I'm talking about.

We were actually talking about this the other day, and I kind of want you to talk a bit more about it, about the value piece of this. Right. The value that. I think you were saying the. The value that you bring to yourself, but then from a leader perspective, the value you bring to everybody else when.

You do these things. Right. You're adding value to the company.

Yeah.

You're adding value to the customer. Client. You're definitely adding value because they want to see you. They'll do it. They'll buy the product, they'll buy the service, whatever. So you're absolutely adding value. If you do that really well, that value comes back to you. Because now you're seeing from the customers, clients and the company's eyes as somebody that they value so much that they're going to do every single thing they can to keep you happy.

But that also applies to like, even like internal customers. Right? The value you're bringing to Internal as well.

Absolutely, absolutely. If you're one of those people that you're going to a meeting or you're talking, you're working with somebody else in Internal and you're helping them do their job better, or you're not. Or you're not. A roadblock right now.

Right.

Or a stop sign to people and they see that you're helping them and they can come to you and talk to you and ask you. That's a huge value. One of the first things, when I got this role as the head of sales and I was there for a few weeks and like three to five people came up to me, like in those three, and they said, they. I swear to God, they said this. You know what I like about you? I go, no, tell me what you make really quick decisions. And I went, okay, well, so what does that tell you? That tells you that in their history, they would ask for something and it would, you know, kick the can down the road. Oh, yeah, let me. I'll get back with you a couple weeks.

Yeah. So that was important to them, that they asked for something and I made a decision very quickly. And for them that was important. They would never say that that loudly, that if it wasn't important to them.

Exactly.

Because then they could do the job. Right. You know, it's important because if you can help somebody finish their job faster Better. And if you're a collaborator on that and you're not an impediment. At my first pharmaceutical company, I was taking the. I was interviewing for an internal position. I was a field rep. And then they wanted me to go inside and they had a question about working with one person in the organization who was not.

He was an impediment. He was basically a stop sign. If you had a project and you needed something from him. He was very difficult to work with. There was a question in an interview about him without naming him and I. And because he just, he just. No matter who it was, unless it was his boss, it went to the back of the pile. They didn't.

Hey, I did this project by Thursday. Can you get me this thing by Wednesday night? Sure, sure, sure. Thursday afternoon. You still don't have it?

Yeah.

Friday you don't have it. That kind of. So that's a stop sign. That's a person you don't want to work with. Right. Because he's hard. I did, I. I did like in my interview, and I did figure out a way to, to get him to, to comply.

By giving him false dates. I gave him false dates. Listen, you know, this is due Tuesday.

Nice.

This is due Tuesday.

Was that your answer in the interview too? I'll just give him false dates.

I told them that I would. I said I would remind him early and often.

Yeah.

And in different ways. I did not. I did that and I gave him false dates. Right.

Well played. Strategy. Yeah.

Listen, it worked. It worked. It worked. And for him, it was necessary. It was a means to an end. But yeah. So the internal, like you asked me, is very important. It helps the whole corporation if you have good people.

I had one of my HR people, she would say, the simplest thing. All I want people to be, is be easy to work with. Be easy to work with. That's. That was like. That was her thing. Why be so difficult? Just be easy to work with. The other point, you were questioning about the value.

So.

Yeah, so the. That was one side of, you know, how do you add value to your. To the customer? And then, by the way, when you add value outwards to your company, to yourself, to your clients, customers, it eventually comes back to you and you get credit for that. Eventually could be immediate, but it might take, you know, if you do it two, three times. The other thing to think about from a leadership perspective is do we value everybody in our ecosystem? So typically, we'll value the people that report to us because we see them, we understand what they Bring it's, it's the lion's share of whatever their job is to get the, you know, to get the job done. So we kind of value them for the most part. A great leader will value more people, will value the person two, you know, two steps down, like the associate, you know, or a junior marketer or somebody, you know, in the mail room. Right.

That they do that. Right. So they'll, they're going to value more people. So I was listening to a podcast this morning, and I'm going to mention, because I was, I was like, thank you. This woman was the leader, a CEO of Otis Elevator. We all know Otis Elevator. And she said, the most important people in our company are the engineers. Choose the.

Those people are the backbone of our company. And because of that, when I travel the world and I meet them on a regular basis, I have a coin that I give them and I thank them for what they do every day and how they keep us, you know, running, how they keep people safe. She calls them absolutes. And she said, and I do it face to face and I thank them for what they do. That's the other part of the value, that you're valuing people at every level of your organization. And you're not saying that people who do this job are less important because they're not. Rob. One of the worst terminologies I've ever heard in my life happened during the pandemic.

And that, that was non essential employee. I hated that. I know what they meant by it. But I think, I think everybody is essential. And I think it's really important as leaders we recognize how essential and how valuable everybody in our ecosystem is to getting us to where we need to go.

Yeah, I think it's a great point. I mean, you know, we, we should as leaders obviously be making sure we're valuing our employees. But to your point, I mean, that's, that's just a ticket to get to the dance floor. I mean, we should be doing that. I do agree. I think there's oftentimes we as leaders don't give enough credit to those that support our people or help us along the way and, and make sure that they are valued. I, I agree with that. I think it's, I think it's several of us who are listening could probably do a better job of that.

Well, listen, we can all do a better job. We. I mean, I say this not because I do it all the time, because I don't. I should. It's something that every one of us can get Better at. There was a, there was a person I heard talking about that he wanted to do this same thing like thanking people. And it was for the coffee he drank and he wanted to thank everybody down the food chain and what he thought was going to be this exercise of thanking like three people turned out to be like 70 or 80 people he had to thank and write to because of, you know, the farmer who got the bean, the person who. There's all these people in the food chain that are help.

That's, that's a, that's maybe too far, but, but you get the point is there's so many people that, that make up getting things done. And the idea that people are self made.

Yeah, right.

That's hubris, right? That is. There's always somebody that helps you, right? There's always somebody that, that helps you get to where you want. And just as leaders, if you think about leadership and if we thank those people that appreciate those people, what do you think they're going to do for us the next time?

That's right.

How do you think they're going to act? We are going to get better work, better output from them.

That's right.

If you're just recognize their value. It sounds simple. We don't do it often.

That's right.

Because we just don't think about it. We, we have this expectation that, oh, that that's their job. If you just think about it from an intentional or a strategic perspective and, and you have that mentality the whole time, you're going to get so much more out of the people that they report to you and the people that help them that you're going to get things that nobody else get. You know. You know this Rob, right. These situations where this person is, you know, like a. Kind of a difficult to work with, but you have a great relationship with that person because you treat them well, you talk about their family, you care about what they care about you, you know, you ask them questions about whatever that they love. And the other three people that are, you know, trying to get something from this person can't get it.

But you can. It's the same thing, right? So if you do that, you're going to get greater results. That's why I was talking about these small little things that you do give you outsized benefit, outsized results financially. Same thing, right? You're gonna, you're gonna get that. And we're just talking about the, you know, internal customers do the same thing to external customers. If you give them more than your competitors, giving Them as far as knowing more about them, knowing what they care about. There's a. There's a book.

This is. I'm old, so I'm gonna. I remember this book. This is called how to Swim with the Sharks Without Getting Eaten Alive.

All right.

It's by Harvey Mackay. And don't ask me why I remember this, but. So he had a.66 questions that he had, everybody, all the salespeople had to ask and get answered over three, four or five months. He had an envelope business, number one envelope business in the country. Envelope business. But you know, the reason why they were finding out everything about their customer by asking those six questions. So they could, they could identify, they could, they could have greater conversations with them because they went deeper. You know, they asked, you know, the questions because people go, oh, I know all about.

I know everything about this question. Really? Okay. By the way, six, six questions. Just his number. There's probably another. Another 50 or 40 questions they could ask to find out even more, to go deeper and deeper and deeper. But the, the point is that the more interest you take in those customers from a leadership, the better questions you ask, the better results. If, you know, if you're.

If every single time you're coming in, you're saying, hey, how was Tommy's t ball game? What? What? How many hits did he get? I know that Jennifer was in cheerleading camp. What do you know? So you know everything about the family. Guess what's going to happen. That customer is going to be going to give you, you know, going to give you the business if you know more about what they're doing in their future, what they're working on. So it doesn't have to be only personal things.

Sure.

It can be things in. From a business perspective and, you know, where the customers were. When I was, you know, you know, pharmaceutical sales, I wanted my representatives to find out where patients were coming from.

Yeah.

Coming from that factory. Was it coming from this? Because. Because then you could ask questions. So what's a typical. What are they? What kind of ailments do those. You know, and then you had a manufacturing plant. They came in with these typical things. You could have this conversation, by the way, you know, other people asked him or her that question.

Nobody. Because they were so interested in just being transactional selling. Right.

It's more surface level. Right. Versus getting deeper into. Yeah.

And get. Getting to know them, their business, their. They're, you know, the whole. Again, the whole ecosystem around them. The more you find out, the better you can. You can serve your customer yeah.

You know what's interesting too is, is just talking about, you know, knowing your ecosystem and, and valuing everyone into it that falls in that ecosystem has to pay off dividends for you behind the scenes. And I don't know if this gets into one of your other, you know, the high impact actions of the networking and personal branding piece of it, but I gotta imagine if you're trying to get promoted and move ahead, it's the conversations that take place when you're not there. Right. And it's those little things you're doing along the way with somebody else. Internal, cross, functional partner. And they, and you made them feel valuable that they could be having a discussion with somebody else that is a potential hiring manager down the road for you.

That's. Oh, that's 100% correct.

Yeah.

So you want, you want to create the narrative about you when people are talking, when people talking about you, that you're not there. So one of the, one of the fallacies, I still people, you know, some people like to hide and I don't want, I just, I don't want to be, you know, I said, listen, let me explain something to you. Somebody's talking about you 100% of the time.

That's right. Yeah, that's so true.

So give them something great to talk about. Give them something great to talk about. And you do that by really being great at something. Be great at one aspect that really helps the company. Customer, patient, client. Be great at it. And so then you grab somebody to talk about. By the way, you know, if you win every year, they talk about you and they.

And. But the talk is typically envy or jealousy. You know, how, how the hell does he win every year? What does he do? What is he cheating? What is it? Right?

Yeah.

And it's the same, by the way. If you're finished at the bottom, people talk about you too. Why is he still, still here? You know, what kind of sweet deal this. I wonder, you know, so this. So my thing is be great at something, right? Be great at something. Be great at it. Nope, don't. Be good.

Be, you know, major in the minors. These minor things be, be really great at. So I don't know if you watch it. So the NBA playoffs is happening right now, and one of the, one of the best terminologies I've heard, which I love, is be a superstar in your role. That's kind of what this is. Just be a superstar at what you're in. Your, in the role that you're playing with the company. Be.

Don't be good at it, be great at it. And the other thing is, it's again your zone of genius. It's what? It's pick something that you love to do. It's one of those things, Rob, that you know when you're doing it, time flies by and you don't even, you're not think, oh my, I've been at this for three hours. Oh my God. Yeah, I thought it was 20 minutes. Well, that's the kind, that's the, that's if you don't know what you're great at. It's when that happens.

It's when you're working on something you love, you know. You ever seen I don't know if this is you, this could be you. I like, I was a finance major in college, so I'm good with numbers, but if you ask me to stand and sit in front of a spreadsheet, I couldn't do it. I know people that love that.

Right.

And if you love that, use that to your benefit to make it completely easy for other people to do things. You make it great for them by how great you are with spreadsheets and how good you are. And you can teach people how to be good. They'll never be you because you have this love.

Sure.

You know, I, I was talking to this person and he is a, you know, he, he likes AI and he says, oh, I could do that in 10 minutes. You know, you said, you know, you know, you know I'm talking about those kind of people.

Oh yeah.

That they, and his face lights up. Tell me. I love solving problems. Give me, I'll tell you. That's what he loves to do. So find out whatever that is, right. As a leader, as a potential leader, as an emerging leader. Find out what you're great at and use that to get to be a leader.

To get to be a second line leader. You don't have to again, you don't have to cure cancer, you don't have to sell world peace. Figure out what you are great at doing and then use that to escalate within the company, if that's what you want. Or just drive yourself to greater financial gains at the end of the year because of that or the other thing. I, I, I will say, Rob, is be irreplaceable. Be irreplaceable. If you do things like that. There's always a role of the company for you.

Always.

Well said. Yeah. Let me ask you this. I'm, I'm curious just to get your thoughts because your book Right. It, it's a great framework. Right. In terms of, of how to help, you know, your. Yourself kind of separate yourself, differentiate yourself.

Yep.

Promoted. And, and, and you and I both know that you could be doing all the right things, but who you report into makes a big difference too. Right. And, and, Correct. And people like, like, like yourself. Right. Myself, like, like minded. We look to develop and promote people.

Right. But what happens? What advice would you give those out there who may not have a leader that, you know, thinks that way. Right. Or that is. It's more about themselves versus their employees? And what advice would you give to that employee to help them overcome that or try to, try to get ahead?

Yeah. And by the way, unfortunately, that's not uncommon.

Right.

It's not uncommon. So the thing I'll say to you is, if you're great at something, he will eventually, he or she, whoever that boss is that thinks of themselves, they'll be asked about, hey, why is Jane winning every year?

Yeah.

What is she doing? They're probably not going to be able to say that. They'll say, well, this is what he or she does. The only way you can outmaneuver that that bad boss is by being so great. By being so great that they recognize who you are. They know it. Hopefully you're at a company organization where multiple people see you when you're in multiple situations, where even with a bad leader, you can be recognized for what you do. In certain situations, you might have to make a different decision. Right.

We both know that. Right. Try to transfer to a different division. Be so good that they can't ignore you. Just be so good that they can't ignore you. And that would be what I would tell you. One of the things that you and I both know about leadership and leaders like that, they're what we used to call short timers. They're not going to be there for 10 years.

Right.

Exactly. Yeah.

They're going to be there for a couple of minutes. Right. A cup of coffee, and then they'll move on. Because some of the companies promote them, which is maddening. But, but, but they'll go to, they'll go to a different role of how they figure out whatever. So it's. Life changes very quickly.

Yeah. That's a great point. It's great perspective. Yeah. I mean, I can't tell you how many times an employee would tell me, well, I had, I've been here five years, had five different managers. Yeah. Sometimes it's just a little bit of a waiting game.

Yeah. And, and, and Again, you know, I, and I'll tell you what, when I, when I, when people tell me things like they have a, A bad leader, and it's, it depends on how the, you know, the degree of.

Sure.

You know, but if it's just a, you know, person that thinks about themselves, the, the question I always ask is, why am I doing this job? Why do I wake up every day? Is it to listen to that person or is it to really serve my customers, patients, clients, or serve the company or do something great? If. And I have to spend 10, 20% of my time with this person. It's something I have to manage now. But the 80% of my job, which I love, that's my focus. That's my mental focus. Because I can tell you I had a person in the company that every single time it was a drain. It was. And it wasn't just with me.

It was with, like, every person this person encountered was a, was a drain. But. And every once in a while you get, you go like mad. You get really upset.

Yeah.

And I would, I'd have to stop and go, okay, why am I doing my decision? And it's not because of this. It's because of everybody here. And it immediately stopped me from thinking about that person. Because if, if you, if you're in the, if you're in the right position, if you understand your purpose, if you understand which. The value you bring. Right. To those people that matter. And I say matter in a huge way because your boss kind of matters.

The people you serve really matters.

Yeah.

If, if I can separate those things quickly, it gets me out of that funk and I do a great job. I'm going to get, I'm going to get noticed. Yeah, I will get noticed. Now if I had a great boss, I'd get noticed faster, of course. But the point is, I'm going to get noticed eventually. I keep doing great things, then eventually somebody will recognize it and come to me.

Well, this goes back to what you're saying before about, you know, the internal communications and meetings. Right. And the ecosystem. Right. You're leveraging more of that to help make the case for you along the way.

And sometimes customers will tell you a lot. Right?

Yeah. It gets back to external customers, right? Yeah, of course.

Yeah, yeah, those, those, those external customers. So I go, hey, man, Rob was, You know what Rob did? You're like, oh, I didn't know that, Rob. You did that. Then you get, you. Goes right over the first line leader, the, the leader you have, and goes right to the somebody With a bigger title, bigger role.

Yeah.

And you get kudos and he or she, your direct manager had nothing to do with it. And then you, your career elevates. If that's what you want.

Right.

Yeah. This you do. You keep doing great things. It will, it will happen. May not happen in the way you imagine, but that's what typically life is. Right. But if you keep sowing great seeds and something's going to sprout, germinate in a, in a way that is unimaginable to you because I thought this customer was going to be it and it's actually this customer. I thought this was going to happen and that happened.

Yeah.

As long as you do great things and are, you know, are doing it for the right reason.

Yeah.

It'll eventually happen.

Yeah. Yeah. And this aligns to, you know, some of the concepts in your book about being deliberate. Right. Intentional that align to. It's about the long term goals.

Oh, yeah, right.

That gets you there. Yeah.

I would ask people, is this a job or is this a career? It's a difference. If this is a career, is this a long term thing? You invest, you invest emotionally, you invest, try to get better and grow at it. It's a job. That's a, that is, that is an acute situation for me. I don't want a job, I want a career. And I keep building and growing and getting better and things like that. So that's the other thing you have to think about too. You talked about making a decision with a bad boss.

If it was a job versus a career, that would also help you make that decision. Depending on where you were in that, in the timeline and what you thought about what you wanted to do long term. That's another.

From a leadership perspective.

Yes.

And I know you've, you have a lot of success. Right. Managing leading large teams and, and we know listening is an important part of being a good leader. How much of that would you attribute to your success? Being listening? Yeah.

I would tell you that's the major part of my success.

Yeah.

And I, and I would call myself an aggressive listener, a radical listener. Whatever you have, you determine. I always talk about the most important thing as a leader is K, Y P. Know your people. Right. The only way to know your people is to listen to your people. Because you'll know your people, you'll know the business. You know, when great leaders move from a one company to another, like a CEO goes from like a food.

Food company, they go to like finance company. What are the great leaders do? Always do the first thing they do, they go on what they call a listening tour.

Yeah.

So they go to every area of the company and they listen. They don't talk. They listen because the only way you can fully understand what's going on is to listen. And great leaders understand that. And they continually listen to the field. I had the. You know, the. I had the great fortune of working with one of the best CEOs ever.

And he actually was the one that made rare disease profitable. You know, the government. Government for years was trying to get pharmaceutical companies to work on rare disease, but it wasn't profitable for them to work until Henry Tamir with the company Genzyme, they made it profitable. That gentleman, that leader, created more leaders when he was alive. He didn't know this, but he had created over 50 CEOs that work for this small. By the way, a small biotech company. 50.

I didn't know that. I didn't know that.

50 when he. Since he passed, like, 15, 20 more. It's crazy. You think of big companies. Yeah, I don't. I mean, I worked for three big companies, and of those three companies, I think combined, they don't have 50. Combined.

Yeah.

This little company, because of the great leaders. And he did that because he listened very well. So we would go to. We would be in a. This is how great of a listener he was. So we would go into a board meeting, and he would have different, you know, countries. China and Japan and Brazil, you know, come talk to. And he would say.

Somebody would say something like, yeah, it's gonna. We're gonna grow 2% in this. And you go, last quarter, you said it was gonna go 4%. And people were like, oh, this guy, he listens to everything. And when he. As a CEO, he'd go out in the field, and he'd always want to listen to what the field said about what was going on. He always had field people in his. In his leadership, in those meetings.

Cause he cared. And he wanted to listen to the concerns, what he could do right, what we're doing wrong. And you change. When I talk about aggressive, listening is. So you listen to what the company wants. You listen to what the field is saying, then you listen to what your marketplace customers say. If you listen to all three, you should come to a consensus of what to do.

That's the key.

The problem we have is people are lazy, and they'll listen to one. And you think they've got an answer. Well, I just talked to this focus group of eight people, and this is what they Said we made a decision on eight people and we have didn't listen to this group or that group. And that's. I, that's, that was the issue. So I think listening of all the leadership traits and people, you know, we can just debate in different listening.

Yeah, I mean, I 100% agree and I could tell you have exceptional listening skills. And for those that are listening to this, you might have missed this, but when you were sharing your story about the employee that came to you and said, you know, I appreciate the quick decisions you make, you were sharing that. You were able to then articulate the point of that. What that told you was that this employee probably reported to somebody that they were lacking that.

Yeah.

But you were in tuned to what they were saying and were able to even take that a step further, almost listening for what they were not saying.

Yeah, that's. That is, that is exactly correct. Listening. What do you. And so the, the one thing I wish I, I did better was ask that question like in a different, in a nice way, like come over a second. What. Tell me more what I know you want to say. You know, I didn't do that a lot as much, especially in the last role because you, you know, you get, the higher you get, the less truth you get.

Right, right. That's true. Yeah.

So you have to, so that's why you have to listen for what's not being told, not being said. Because people either are afraid or they don't want they not afraid of the person they're afraid of the information might get come back to them and they might get in trouble. They don't want to get somebody, you know, either they get in trouble or their direct report or somebody else in your organization. So they're really fearful about giving information. So it's, it's. You have to ask unique questions.

Yeah.

To uncover that in a way that makes them feel safe. Psychologic.

True. Yeah. Well, I know we're going off on a little bit of a tangent.

No, no, it's good.

I don't think you can overemphasize the importance of listening from a leadership perspective. Right.

Not at all. Yeah.

Well, Rutherford, I truly enjoyed this conversation and I appreciate you coming on and sharing your book with my listeners and I wish you all the best with your book as well. And we'll leave a link on the show, notes to the book where they can, and also more about your background and if anyone's interested in and hiring you as a keynote speaker as well. But once again, I appreciate you coming on.

Hey, thanks for. Thanks for the time. I enjoyed it. Great questions. Thank you for the time.

Thanks so much for listening today. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to share it with a friend or colleague who you think might also get some value from it. I'm Rob Fonte and I'll see you on the next episode of the Leadership Jam Session podcast.