289. How Listening, Mattering, and Frontline Leadership Shape Culture with Mick Spiers

What if your culture is decided not by a manifesto, but by the conversation your frontline supervisor has at 9:12 a.m.? This solo deep dive distills September’s standout lessons into a practical playbook you can use today—clear prompts, coaching moves, and values-in-action routines that turn intent into impact.

We unpack five anchors. First, trust offered early and often is an accelerator: set a clear vision, step back without disappearing, and stay available to remove blockers. Next, listening is a skill, not a reflex. Using PAVE (paraphrase, admit, validate, empathize) and the four C’s (conscious, committed, curious, compassionate), we design for shared meaning so two people don’t leave the same meeting with different realities. Then we move to mattering: connect strategy to micro-whys, ask who benefits if we nail this work, and clear the path like a creator, not a victim of circumstances.

Values earn their stripes when the pressure peaks. We show how to pre-commit to red lines, name the value most at stake before tough decisions, and choose behaviors that prove integrity in the room. Finally, we ground culture on the front line. Train supervisors to set expectations, coach in the open, and use curiosity-based postmortems that build judgment instead of blame. We also tackle the danger of silence; without timely updates, people write their own stories. Learn how to narrate the “no update yet” moments to protect trust.

You’ll leave with scripts to start better one-on-ones, practical questions for debriefs, and simple habits that make people feel seen, heard, and valued. If you’re ready to strengthen your supervisor bench, make listening visible, and give trust on purpose, this playbook is your next step. Subscribe, share with a leader who needs it, and leave a review telling us which move you’ll try first.

Chapters

• 0:00 Questions That Reframe Leadership
• 0:22 September Solo Recap & Promise
• 0:56 William Davis: Trust As Accelerator
• 3:14 Julian Treasure: Design Shared Meaning
• 5:43 Rand Selig: The Math of Mattering
• 8:18 Tamara Jackson: Values Under Pressure
• 9:09 Phil Wilson: Culture At The Front Line
• 12:49 Fill The Silence Before It Hurts
• 14:20 September Playbook & Next Guest

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

When was the last time you truly listened not to reply but to understand, and what changed because of it? Which relationships in your team rise or fall on the quality of the first line leadership right above them, and if a stranger shadowed you for a week, what would your day to day behavior say about your values in today's episode. It's going to be a solid cast where I'm wrapping September with the biggest lessons from our conversations with William Davis, Julian, treasure Rand, Selig, Tamara Jackson and Phil Wilson, and I'll connect them to what we're watching in the world right now. My promise to you practical reflections you can put to work today. Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm your host, Mick Spiers, and today will be a solo cast where I reflect on the lessons that we learned from our guests throughout the month of September, starting straight off with William Davis, who taught us to give trust, to get trust, William brought us back to first principles, the leaders we remember most gave us trust. First, they made people feel seen and safe to do the work. Then they stayed available without micro managing, empowerment, gratitude and everyday respect weren't slogans. They were routines. Great leaders are able to set the vision of what we're trying to create, and then they empower and enable people and set the environment where they can do their very best work. In some cases, it's just getting out of their road, but being available in case they need help to remove a roadblock. You've heard me say often on the show, one of my favorite quotes from Tim Galway is that performance is equal to potential minus interference, and we have two choices. We can work on our potential, our skills, our knowledge, our experience, or we can remove interference. And Williams reminder is that distrust is a form of interference. If the people closest to the work need your permission to breathe, they don't bring their very best. So distrust is interference. Trust is an accelerator. So reflect on this today and consider, do you truly empower, enable and trust your team, and do you show them that they are empowered and trusted? And what actions can you take today to make them feel empowered and trusted? Try This This Week. Start during your one on ones with questions like, Where do you need more space and where do you want more support? And close out each one of your one on ones by naming one gratitude for invisible work that they do. Everyone wants to be seen, they want to be heard, they want to be valued. They want to feel like they matter. And a great way to show someone that they matter is to acknowledge and be grateful for the little, unseen things that they do that may not always get attention. The next interview was with the amazing Julian treasure, who re joined us for a second interview on the show, and he shared with us that the world isn't hearing, and leaders must listen, that there is a listening deficit in the world. Julian drew a hard line between hearing which is automatic and listening which is a learned skill. He offered two simple ideas, that your listening is unique. Everyone filters meaning through values, beliefs, state and context, so you can have two different people listening to the identical conversation and taking away completely different understandings of what just happened. An active listening means choosing the right listening position. Is it critical, empathic, or is it coaching, and you're choosing the right listening mode for the right moment? He also shared some powerful tools, such as pave, if we really want to show someone that we're deeply listening. Pave was paraphrase, admit, validate and empathize, so that you can show that the person that you are truly listening and taking perspectives during the conversation. And he shared the 4c of listening, conscious, committed, curious and compassion. So the reflections here today are that two leaders can hear the same update and walk away with very different meanings. So if you don't design for shared meaning, you design for misalignment. So here are some techniques that you can try today after a tough conversation. So. Say to the person, let me play back what I heard and ask them, What did I miss? Or alternatively, ask them, ask them, what did we just agree upon? And what we're looking for here is shared understanding that you don't walk away and find out later that you didn't understand each other in conflict. Try this. I don't agree, but I do understand why you see it that way. This is an example of validation, but without capitulation. Validation doesn't mean that you have to agree with the other person, but it shows them the respect that you took the time to see the world through their eyes. The next interview was with Rand Selig, and he shared with us that mattering is equal to purpose plus values plus a manager who clears the path. Rand anchored culture in mattering. People give their best when they know the why, the purpose behind the work when they see Values in Action and when they have a manager who removes obstacles rather than adding them? So my reflection here is the fastest way to lift a team isn't a new tool. It's a manager who makes the work easier and more meaningful. That's a creator mindset leadership in practice, a victim mindset is someone that constantly blames their circumstances and has an excuse for why something doesn't work. Whereas a creator mindset makes the most of where you are with what you have from this moment onwards, and a leader who has a creative mindset will pave the way and create the environment where people can do their very best work. They set the purpose. They set the micro why? Why does our team exist? Why does our organization exist? What makes this important? And they help with the micro wise. The micro wise are, well, what's the purpose of this task? What makes this task important? What makes this deadline important, and what does doing this enable a micro why can also be the rationale behind a decision. A funny thing is that people can often accept a decision that, on the surface, goes against what they would like to have happen, as long as they understand that there's a clear why, a clear rationale behind the decision. So here's some things that you can try this week. Ask your team what's slowing you down that I can remove and take the time to translate strategy to purpose. It can be in statements like, if we nail this, who benefits and how? What will this enable? The next interview was with the amazing Tamara Jackson around the theme of leading with values when life gets loud, Tamara offered a courageous integration of faith, values and innovation. She spoke to resilience after trauma, to impermanence that this too shall pass, and to leading with integrity, especially when the pace of change tempts expedience. So my reflection here was that values don't count when they're easy. They count when they're costly in high pressure moments. Do we reach for shortcuts, or do we reach for the compass? So you can try this today before a hard call ask which value is most at stake and what behavior will prove that we stick to our values. You can also, as a team, create a red line, agree on things that you'll never trade for, speed, have conversations about what you'll stand for and what you won't stand for, and make sure that these values are known before things get tough, because it's in those times of pressure where your values are mostly going to be tested. And our final guest for September was Phil Wilson, who spoke to us about culture, living or dying at the front line. Phil's leader shift lens is blunt, your culture is defined by the daily interactions between frontline workers and their immediate supervisors. If those relationships are healthy, culture thrives, even when the top is messy. If not, the culture will fail. The other thing I'll add here is that you as the leader, are often the difference between whether someone has a very good day or a very bad day. Picture this, when people go home from work after a bad day, what do they talk about? They talk about spreadsheets that didn't behave themselves. Do they talk about the work? No? They often talk about, oh, you can't believe what that jerk did to me today. So your interactions with your team are often the difference between whether they have a good day or a very bad day, and He's the killer. It's whether you intended it or not. I know that leaders don't wake up in the morning and rub their hands together and go right? How can I be a real joke today? Everyone shows up to work wanting to do their very best work, but it doesn't matter if you had good intentions or not, if your actions or omissions make someone feel small, make them feel like they don't matter, they will go home having a bad day. So it's your acts, your ability to make someone feel seen, feel heard, feel valued, that will be the difference between whether they go home happy or they go home angry, and ultimately, it'll impact whether they do their very best work or not. Phil also challenged a common trap assuming a tent things like, oh, they did that on purpose, and encouraged us to switch to curiosity and coaching instead. So my reflection here, we love grand culture statements, but your supervisor bench is the culture how they treat their direct reports. So invest there first. So try this. Train your leaders on three core moves, setting clear expectations, observable coaching and giving specific feedback in post mortems. Ban words like, Oh, why did you do that? And use things like, Oh, what did you notice? What options did you consider? What will you try next? What worked well, what didn't go well, what will you do differently next time, using curiosity and this approach, the added bonus here is to think about the hero or villain effect, and remember that everyone is the hero in their own story. They don't have necessarily ill intent. So that person that you've been whinging about or complaining about, that they you know, they're making your life more difficult. They're actually trying their best, and a deep connection is just the other side of a curious conversation. Go and ask them about what they're trying to achieve, what's working, what's not working, connect with them. Connect with them and see that they aren't the villain. They're the hero of their story. And if you use some perspective taking, you'll start to see the world through different eyes, and you'll be able to connect together. And the final lesson for me in September comes from something personal, and this happened in the workplace this month. And what the lesson here for me is that in the absence or a vacuum of information, people draw their own conclusions, and I had a recent example where a staff member was in line for a promotion, but there was a long period of silence. That silence was nothing more than will working through trying to find the best solution. The way the silence was interpreted was the person felt like they were the second choice for any job, which was far from the truth, but I can fully understand why. If I was sitting in her shoes, it would have felt that way. It would have felt like I was the second choice and that we were off talking to someone else about the role that we're talking about, which was not true, but in that vacuum of information, that was the conclusion that the person Drew. So my lesson that I take away from this is to fill that vacuum, even if there is no update and things are taking longer than you thought it would take call them and say, Hey, give us some time. We're still working through it. There's no update yet, but we will be back with you soon. So try to fill that vacuum and don't leave people second guessing. So pulling together our September playbook here the things I want you to think about, make listening visible, use techniques like pave and the four Cs in your meetings, in your one on ones in post mortem reviews. Strengthen your first line leaders, your supervisor bench is your culture train and coach there first, make sure that people understand the responsibilities of leadership. Remember that people spend up to 1/3 of their life in the workplace, and this is a grave responsibility. It's up to you to create an environment where people feel seen, people feel heard, and people feel valued. And the key here is to train your first line leaders to take actions. Things that make that true. Third, give trust on purpose, start with autonomy and empowerment and add support the enablement, not surveillance. So we set a vision, we discuss what we're trying to achieve. Then we empower, enable and trust our people to get on with it. We then remain available if they need help to remove a roadblock, but without leaning in to micromanage. Fourth, lead with values under pressure, decide the behavior that proves the value before the meeting starts, particularly in times of pressure, your actions speak louder than words. It doesn't matter what values you have written on the office wall plaque. It matters whether you live those values. And finally, perspective taking put yourself in the other person's shoes. Be careful with what I said about with a vacuum of information and the other person drawing their own conclusions. So don't make assumptions about other people. Test those assumptions with curious questions, and try to leave little doubt about your own intentions. Don't leave that vacuum where they do end up drawing their own conclusions, which may not be correct. So that's it for today's episode. In the next episode, we're going to be joined, or re joined, by the amazing Zack Mercurio, the author of the book The Invisible leader and his new book The Power of mattering, he has been one of our favorite guests on the show, pretty much ever a fan favorite, and also a favorite of my team, and I look forward to bringing you this powerful interview where we go into the power of mattering and how you can make that work for you and your team. Until then, take care, look out for each other and always lead with intent. Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project, mickspiers.com a huge call out to Faris Sedek for his video editing of all of our video content and to all of the team at TLP. Joan Gozon, Gerald Calibo And my amazing wife Sei Spiers, I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel where we bring you interesting videos each and every week, and you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Now, in the meantime, please do take care, look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.