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3 Things You Must Do To Build A High Performing Team

3 Things You Must Do To Build A High Performing Team

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You, the leader, must have a clear purpose and mission. You have to know why you’re in it and what IT is. High performing teams aren’t constructed based on pure logic or reason. They need an emotional oomp – a genuine reason for existing. Something big to take a collective aim at.

I’ve been married to the same woman – my one and only – for over 45 years. We began dating when we were 18. We fell in love because at 18 I had a great career, a nice house, a strong investment portfolio and a new car. Hashtag NOT. I had school, a car, no house, no investments and a fairly nice car. But those rational or physical things didn’t matter. She worked at The Waffle House and was going to college. She lived with her large family in modest little frame house. And it was an 11 hour drive away from where I lived. Those things didn’t matter.

Imagine trying to fall in love, or get somebody to fall in love, with you because of those logical things. Love has nothing to do with those things and high performing teams work the same way.

High performers, or would-be high performers, aren’t going to be attracted to organizations who can pay the most and offer the best benefits. If that were the case, those large organizations that historically can offer those things would have the lock on high performers, but we can find high performers in all sorts of places that sometimes are no where near the top of the pay ladder. So there’s something more in play.

My wife and I fell in love because we had a connection. Our personalities, experiences and views resonated with each other. In short, we GOT one another and from that connection we felt safe with one another. We loved each other because together we were something far better than whatever we were by ourselves. Being a couple not only felt wonderful…the thought of not being a couple was incomprehensible. High performing teams experience a similar feeling.

It begins with a leader who has a vision so clear they know that the most passionate recruits matter. Without passionate teammates, the leader knows the ideal outcome is beyond reach.

 

You, the leader, must be fanatical to find folks who get it. Not just anybody can be part of your team. Not if you want a high performing team. Only people who see what you see make the cut.

Just now I suppose some of you are thinking how impractical that is. Can I challenge you to see a different viewpoint?

Let’s suppose this is impractical. Let’s suppose it’s too difficult. So we don’t hold this standard and we begin to hire folks who don’t get it. We justify it by telling ourselves how desperately we need people. We start adjusting our expectations – down.

Let’s stick with my marriage metaphor. I know they’re not the same, but they’re more similar than you think. And your high performing team is important enough to avoid compromising. If it’s not important enough to avoid compromise, then it’s not important enough to even be thinking about creating a high performing team. What difference does it make? Go ahead and build a mediocre team and call it a day.

So my wife or I could have thought, “You know…this person is okay. I like them well enough. They’re not ideal, but they’ll do.” Is that a great basis for a love affair? For a marriage?

Then why do we say those exact words when we interview people to become part of our team?

Because we’re lazy and don’t want to put in the hard work to find the ideal people. Because we want to accept the excuses others commonly use. Because it’s too hard.

Well, DUH – if it weren’t hard, everybody would do it. That’s why most organizations aren’t high performing. Most, aren’t even close.

Nevermind that I’ve always followed the advice, “When everybody is zigging, zag!”

Mark Twain said, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

General Electric, General Motors, IBM, Disney, FedEx, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard were all founded during an economic depression. Maybe during tough times it’s easier to find folks willing to become part of something much bigger than themselves. There are many variables to the origin stories of such companies, but it’s not lost on me how powerful beginnings can solidify the foundation of great organizations.

Hopefully we’re not foolish enough to marry any person that comes along. My wife and I dated for over 2-and-a-half years before we got married. By that point, we were certain. How certain are you about your team members? How certain are you about that next person you’re thinking of inviting to join your team? No, we’re not going to take 2-and-a-half years to figure that out, but we’re not going to just say YES to every applicant either. Take your time to find the people who get it the way you get it. People with whom you resonate and people who resonate with you and what you’re pursuing. We need people who want to go where we’re headed because our purpose is congruent with their purpose.

 

High standards, higher accountability. People who are high performers and those who are learning to be thrive in being part of something unavailable to those unwilling to pay the price. The exclusivity isn’t based on our value as people, but rather on our willingness to commit and do the work. There will be some good humans who don’t belong on your team because of it. Yes, Virginia, there are some bad humans, but nobody wants bad people on their team. High performing teams are very discriminating to only accept the people most ideal to contribute the mission. That’s why you hear so much talk about FIT. Not everybody is fit for your high performing team.

Every branch of our military has rigorous early training designed to build in the conformity necessary for troop survival. But it’s also designed to eliminate those unfit for the service. The more advance – high performing – the team – the more rigorous the process to eliminate those who don’t belong. In short, the more elite the group, the more high performing they are. The more high performing they are, the most discriminating they are. That’s why only 1% of Navy personnel are Navy Seals. It’s not for everybody. You have to be special.

How special do people have to be to join your team? The less discriminating you can be the lower the performance you can accept. The more discriminating you are, the higher the performance you’ll require to join and to remain.

Do you think Navy Seals have a higher degree of pride and commitment than the other 99% of the U.S. Navy? Of course they do. They know how special they are. They know the expectations on them are significantly higher. They thrive on that higher accountability. It would all be wrecked if the Seals decided to lower their standards. Lowering your standards and accountability will kill your high performing culture.

 

High performing teams aren’t ordinary. Or average. Almost every leader thinks they have a high performing team, but most of them are deceived. Most organizations and teams are average or below. They just don’t think they are. 

Saying it doesn’t make it so. Every organization crows about how special they are, but most are only crowing about it. They’re not doing it. It’s not real, it’s just talk. Real is rare. Real high performing organizations are rare. Real high performing people are rare. You can’t have a high performing organization without high performing people, but you can be a high performing person stuck inside an average performing organization. So that’s how I’d like to wrap up today’s show — by encouraging you, the individual, to become as high performing as possible. Never mind if your team or organization is average. Be superior. Do outstanding work. Get used to holding yourself accountable to a standard much higher than the ones your boss holds you to. Don’t waste time judging co-workers who refuse to join you. Just do your thing and become the highest value person possible. Serve and contribute to make others better. Help everybody around you shine, if they’ll let you. If they won’t let you, forget it and stay focused on doing the best work of your life. And keep dating other organizations as you look for a team where everybody is like you. You’ll find it, but only if you’re searching for it consistently. So you have to accept that you’ve got two full-time passions: doing the best work of your life and searching for a home where you can better thrive. It’s all about growing great and where you’re planted matters so get busy looking for better soil. 

If your team isn’t high performing and you want to change it, then begin by subtracting. Start expecting more. Better. Don’t accept what you’ve always accepted. When performance doesn’t match your new standard, do something about it. Coach it. Correct it. If that fails, then show it the door. Replace it with only the ideal fit. People who ideally fit a high performing culture will produce the ideal outcome. Never forget that average or below average performers will never achieve the ideal outcome. And you want to achieve your ideal outcome while you give every member of your team the best opportunity to achieve their ideal outcome, too.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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You Can't Grow If You're Planted In The Wrong Place

You Can’t Grow If You’re Planted In The Wrong Place

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Older folks admonished me, “Grow where you’re planted.” The wisest of old folks who surrounded me influenced me to be careful where I was willing to plant myself. They knew the soil of my life would matter. It would determine how strong I’d be able to grow. Today, join me and Lisa as we talk about culture and fit.

No matter how good you are, if you're in the wrong place, you're worthless

Take care to plant yourself in soil that’s ideal for your professional and personal growth. As a leader, do your best to create the right environment to grow others. If the forest of high-performing people isn’t flourishing, look at what you can do to improve the conditions – for yourself and for others. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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I Don't Have Time To Grow My People

I Don’t Have Time To Grow My People

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Busy, busy, busy! 

It’s the battle cry in every city. The flow of work that must be done is often overwhelming. Managers lament, “I don’t have time to grow my people. We’ve got too much work to do.”

It’s an excuse. 

And a flimsy one. 

It may even be delusional for managers who choose to believe that it’s true. What if it’s completely untrue? What if you not only have the time, but what if you’re wasting time? What if you choose to believe that until you start growing your people you’ll never reach the speed and efficiency possible in getting more work done – and better?

Maybe it’s time to change our mind, change our behavior and get on with developing the members of our team. The results may astound you!

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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How Do You Measure Leadership Success?

How Do You Measure Leadership Success?

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Many of us value popularity over influence. Some degree of fame over impact. 

I ran across a statement that I had to write down in my little notebook…

Others will attempt to get you to lower your standards, to compromise performance and lower your expectations because that’s where you’ll find the crowd.

Today, we discuss self-awareness, influence, serving others and exercising self-discipline so we don’t fall prey to vanity metrics. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Leadership Resilience

Leadership Resilience

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Our show today began with seeing this quote after the NBA championship series was won by the Denver Nuggets.

Jokic quote

This quote provoked us to think about the power of resilience in personal, professional and leadership growth. 

If you want to be successful…you need to be bad, then you need to be good. Then when you’re good, you need to fail. And then when you fail, you’re going to figure it out.

Our podcast is squarely aimed at helping people in city government leadership figure it out. It’s a personal journey that each of us must make, but that doesn’t mean we must go it alone. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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The High Value Of Saying It Out Loud

The High Value Of Saying It Out Loud

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“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”   

– Albert Einstein

I heard Herminia Ibarra, a Yale-educated Ph.D. in organizational behavior, talk about the value of saying it out loud. Or saying it to somebody who you’re not that close to. She meant that by having to explain it to somebody who doesn’t know you so well, or by having to say it out loud so it sounds like it makes sense to you – then you can better figure out your story.

I sat up straight and thought to myself (I may have even uttered it aloud), “YES!”

You see. I talk to myself. Often. If not daily, almost daily. I’ve done it all my life and this is exactly why.

To figure things out. 

I know firsthand the power of saying things out loud. After all, I was doing long before podcasting was invented. In the late 90s, I began recording some thoughts under the banner, Leaning Toward Wisdom, largely as an effort to figure things out aloud. I talked into a microphone, recorded it, and uploaded it to the Internet. 

Now that I’ve been doing it for a few decades I can affirm the value of saying things out loud. It can help you clarify things while helping those who may hear you say it out loud better understand. And if they fail to understand, it can provide us with opportunities to say it better – more clearly. After all, understanding is the goal. 

We want to better understand and we want others to better understand, too. It sure beats misunderstanding. But if you’re a subscriber to our show you already know the final leadership recipe ingredient is compassion, which can only result when we understand. Otherwise, judgment reigns supreme. And it’s most often critical judgment.

Writing To Figure Things Out

I am a lifelong letter writer. Today, it’s such an old-school way to go, but I still do it on special occasions. Like to my wife on her birthday or our anniversary. When we started dating we were both 18. We lived hours away from each other, working and going to college. We wrote letters every day. I’ve long maintained that all that writing helped us figure ourselves out – individually and together. There’s value in pouring out your heart, reviewing what’s happening in your life and all the other things we did trying to convey our thoughts with each other. And putting it on paper (literally) helped us distill it all. We were figuring it out. 

For me, and I’ve since learned – for others, writing and thinking are connected. Saying it out loud – writing it – helps us think. I’ve written for as long as I can remember so I confess I have a positive bias for the activity. But in adulthood I learned how common is it for people who are attempting to figure something out write. People may erroneously think that we write to convey that we have it already figured out. But there seems to be some truth that it doesn’t quite work that way. Rather, more often than not people write while thinking. We write while we’re figuring it out. Saying it out loud – or on paper or a screen – helps us think about it more deeply. Hopefully, more clearly. 

So I began to think about the difference in how we write. 

There’s writing for reading and there’s writing for speaking. They may be the same. Maybe not.

For example, we commonly use contractions like I’m, we’ve, and don’t when we speak. But we likely write out “I am,” or “we have,” or “do not.” They mean the same thing, but they sound differently. Then there are times when we write it, but when we read it…even we don’t understand what we wrote.

We can write entire paragraphs or pages thinking we’re making complete sense, but when we go back and read what we’ve written discover we’ve left out a verb here, used the wrong tense there and written in passive voice all over the place. Not until we say it out loud do we realize the brilliance we thought we were writing is jibberish. 

Writing is great. Saying it out loud is even better because we know if we’re making sense or not. Then the editing can continue while we refine our thoughts – and our ability to accurately convey our thoughts. 

This is all about figuring it out. Our leadership journey can be summed up in that activity. We’re not all on the same path, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from one another and remain committed to our own growth. Improvement is the goal. Finding a way forward to our better self. 

I’m often asked how I formed my own notions of leadership. It’s a complex thing I suppose because each of us are a distillation of who we innately are coupled with all the experiences we have with a major sprinkling of how we see the world – and our place in it. Then pile on top of that our natural abilities and interests. That’s why leadership isn’t a precise science where one-size-fits-all. 

However, our leadership recipe is in play because since I was 27 I figured out these ingredients were vital to all the effective leadership I experienced, including my own. No matter the style or personality, these five ingredients — humility, curiosity, knowledge, understanding and compassion – were always present in some measure. I spent my professional leadership life testing them. Putting pressure on each of them. Proving them. They never failed.

And they were all adaptable to the way people rolled. Personalities didn’t matter. Backgrounds either. Or communication styles. To each her own. 

It was through writing (and thinking) and saying it out loud that I was able to discover that leadership is very unique for each of us. That’s why it’s urgent for each of us to get on the journey as quickly as possible so we can learn how to leverage our uniqueness to grow great – and help others grow, too.

If We Can Serve Others…Shouldn’t We?

Yes. We should.

And serving others often means we need to say things out loud directly to them. It’s how we express our love for our family. It’s how we express our sorrow to those who grieve. It’s how we encourage those who may be struggling. It’s how we correct those who may not know they did something wrong. It’s how we elevate performance – when we express it and when we allows others to express it to us. 

If a tree falls in the forest we can wonder if it makes a sound unless somebody is present to hear it. But a more practical thought is if we’re able to help somebody how can we do that if we’re not willing to say it out loud to them? 

Could you have learned anything from a school teacher who didn’t speak to you? 

Could you have improved and learned from your first (or any other) boss if they had never said anything to you?

Here’s my challenge to you – prove me wrong…

Try to improve without thinking about – writing and saying out loud – how YOU can improve yourself.

Try to help others improve without communicating, as directly as possible, with those you’re trying to help grow. 

Leadership is still about:

• Influence
• Focusing on others (after we focus on our own improvement — which never stops, btw)
• Doing for others what they’re unable to do for themselves

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

Check out the Hosts page for our profiles.
Connect With Lisa On Linkedin •  Connect With Randy On Linkedin

We encourage you to contact us. Feedback, suggestions, criticisms, insights, and experiences are welcomed. Thank you for watching and listening!

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