Can they listen?

From My 8 Best Techniques for Evaluating Character by Ted Gioia.  The list is here but it is worth clicking through to get his rationale and explanation for each of the points.

1. Forget what they say—instead look at who they marry.

2. See how they treat service workers

3. Discover what experiences formed their character in early life

4. How do they invest their two most valuable resources?

5. Identify what irritates people the most in others—because this is probably the trait they dislike most in themselves.

6. Can they listen?

7. If they cheat at small things, they will cheat at big things.

8. Watch how they handle unexpected problems

Not a bad list.  Usefully true, which beats most techniques and stratagems.  

Can they listen? - Reminds me of this from The Will to Live On by Herman Wouk.

Shutting up when talking to an authority is not a bad rule. While doing research on the atom bomb for my novel, War and Remembrance, I consulted a supreme mental giant of the century, the physicist Richard Feynman. I had barely told him what I wanted of him when he broke in, “You know, while you’re talking, you’re not learning anything.” There I heard a book of wisdom compressed to a calculus formula, so I shut up and listened, and learned something. 

 Discover what experiences formed their character in early life - reminds me of Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations and the importance of the formative years.

The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.

When they came into the world, and for the first six or eight years of their existence, they were perhaps, very much alike, and neither their parents nor play-fellows could perceive any remarkable difference. About that age, or soon after, they come to be employed in very different occupations. The difference of talents comes then to be taken notice of, and widens by degrees, till at last the vanity of the philosopher is willing to acknowledge scarce any resemblance. But without the disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, every man must have procured to himself every necessary and conveniency of life which he wanted. All must have had the same duties to perform, and the same work to do, and there could have been no such difference of employment as could alone give occasion to any great difference of talents.