Good Jobs #54: Just listen

Remote and Boise-area jobs at Fitted, Automattic, Abound, Khan Academy, Saalt, GitLab, BII, Trailhead, Healthwise, and more

Nov 05, 2021

Hear me out

A few years ago I went to beautiful San Diego for a three-day workshop.

It was about how to facilitate productive workshops and meetings. Yes, a workshop about workshops. It was great, honestly.

On the second day, we spent the afternoon working on listening. The class divided into threes and we switched off asking each other questions and just listening.

Easy, right?

It was my turn to ask and just listen. I asked my partner something along the lines of, “What’s something at work you’ve been challenged by?” My partner, a great guy btw, instantly went into an impassioned speech about his frustration with people not wanting to do taxes throughout the year. He had a strong belief that if people entered receipts and completed tax-related tasks for an hour every month, they wouldn’t have to do really anything when it came time to submit taxes.

[At this point in the story it would be helpful to know that I hate taxes — specifically the preparation part. It’s complicated by design. It could and should be way easier… I step off my soapbox.]

My partner finished off his answer and I immediately went into asking him leading, passive aggressive, and critical questions about what he said.

His posture changed and he immediately went on the defensive.

I was supposed to listen, but I selfishly wanted to tell him why he was wrong.

There is a time and place to have the kind of back and forth I was wanting, but at this particular moment, the goal was to listen and give someone the space and time to be the most important person in the room.

I told this story to a friend of mine recently and they told me about sh’ma. A Hebrew(?) word that means to listen with the sole intent to understand.

I’m working on being a better sh’ma-er.

Onward,

Loren Morris

P.S. - Book binding zen

DEV

Engineering Manager at ConvertKit

Remote | Full-time

Principal Software Engineer at ConstructSecure

Boise | Full-time

Senior Backend Software Engineer at Automattic

Remote | Full-time

Software Engineer at Abound

Remote | Full-time

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