Welcome to Hacking Your Leadership. I'm Chris and I'm Lorenzo. And Lorenzo on
this episode, I want to talk about an article that I came across on
LinkedIn. It's a couple of years old, but it bears repeating and going
over because I think these are things that they really stand the test of time,
and they're important regardless of what an article is written. The article is
written by Ron Krucci, who is a friend of the show. He wrote
one of the best leadershi books I've ever read, called to Be Honest,
a few years ago, and so when I see an article by him,
I tend to like give it a look just to see what's in what the
content is. The title of this article is how to make your leadership team
Absolutely Exceptional? And you know, I like that. We talk about high
performance teams all the time. There are definitely leadership teams out there who are
exceptional, But in a lot of organizations and on a lot of teams,
there are individual leaders who I think are absolutely exceptional. And then there are
individual leaders on those leadership teams who are not exceptional, who are who are
mediocre or who need a lot of work, and they're probably some people who
just need to go away all together, but to have a team become absolutely
exceptional. To me, what that says is that the whole is greater than
the some of its parts. So you know, you get the one plus
one plus one equals nine in terms of their impact if you have a truly
exceptional leadership team. There's a lot in this article, but there are three
different concepts in here that I want to go over because I think they're the
ones that our listeners will get the most amount of, you know, kind
of a benefit from. But it is definitely worth reading the entire article,
So we'll link to it in the podcast description and we'll go over it.
What were your thought about the article in general? Yeah, I agree.
You know, we're a huge Ron fan here on the show, and he's
yet to miss for me everything everything he writes. I'm like, there's something
in there that really is phenomenal. And this is the big question that a
lot of leaders always have. It's like, you know, how do you
how do you lead a team and make them exceptional? And how do you
you know, build high performing teams? And what are the things that you
can do to number one kind of check yourself as a leader and making sure
that you're showing up in his space. That's creating the opportunity for your team
to be exceptional. But then, also, like what I like about the
articles, he addresses some of the things like what do you do in these
spaces when you might see some behaviors or something's happening that on the surface might
now seem like a big deal, but can really chip away at the ability
for you to have a highly exceptional team. I couldn't have said it better,
like that's that's what it is. The difference between a truly exceptional leadership
team and one that isn't is in these little details. They are the little
interactions that happen that you might think don't mean much, and they probably don't
individually, but they absolutely add up, and they can add up and send
your leadership team in the right direction or send it in the wrong direction.
The first one I want to talk about here, I think is I overlooked
it it first because I thought, okay, there's some there's some more meat
here later on. But one of the first things he talks about is this
idea of embodying a charter, and those are those are his words, But
what it really means is what are the rules of the team. What do
you sit down with and decide are the rules for how things are done within
this leadership team. So, if it's a leadership team, you're assuming that
these are people who are our peers to each other, and the rules kind
of say, what are kind of the guiding principles of how we interact with
each other? What are the guiding principles of what we take on as a
team in terms of what's our what is our job to accomplish versus what is
not our job to accomplish? And it's really important to be clear about these
things because you need to be able to figure these out when there isn't the
kind of the emotion and the personal buy in that exists when you can apply
it to an individual point in time or decision that has to be made.
You figure these out in advance, when no one has any kind of personal
stake in any one item, and then that allows you to just look back
at what you all agreed on together to apply it to whatever that moment.
Is much easier to do it that way than to try to convince people I
think of that they're you know, that they're doing something they shouldn't be doing
in the moment when they're already bought in. Yeah, I love what he
says. He says, you know, this is this is a compass and
your report card. And I think it's so critical when you are looking to
have exceptional teams, is that you've got to have some type of a way
of kind of defining the team, some way of like laying out who we
are and what we do and how we approach things, some type of mantra,
some type of manifesto, whatever you want to call it. But there's
got to be something there that can be looked at from a team and say
that's who we are. And there are a lot of tools. There's a
lot of ways to do that, everything from like assessments that you can do
with a team to aligning on certain you know, whether it's quotes or or
developmental you know, themes or words or whatever that might be. But I
think it's so important for a team to have a sense of identity as to
here's here's who we are, here's how we do our work, and here's
how we measure it, and we do that with intention. You know,
there's something that a leader of mine said a long time ago that's always stuck
with me, which is like, we don't let things fall off the plate.
We push them off. We do everything with intention, and if we're
not good at something, we know that we're not good at it, and
we know why we're not good at it, and we know why we're not
focusing on it, and it's not that we can't get better at it.
But you have to make decisions as a team to say, these are the
things that we are going to really define us in our success, and then
these other things are things that we need to make sure that we're good at,
but we don't have to be great at. They don't have to take
a lot of our time and effort because we have clearly defined what the things
are that we're doing and we are really aligned on how we do this work
and the lenses that we all use collectively and shared. So I'm a huge
fan of this. And then that charter might look different for everyone, but
there has to be something there if you're truly talking about exceptional teams. Yeah,
I agree that The one thing that I'll say about this that is something
to keep in mind is that nothing in this charter can go against or be
at odds with the overall values and principles of the organization, meaning you can't
use this to set your team apart from a standpoint of, oh, well,
these these things that the company put forth, they don't apply to us.
We're the exception. Exceptional does not mean exception, right, You still
have to it has to be in line with the company as a whole,
but it's something that that you kind of it's there. There's self imposed rules
on how you'll work with each other within a team and what you decide to
do as a team. But it can't give the impression to other teams that
you somehow believe that your team is either you know, the rules don't apply
to you, or that you are above them, or that you are you
know, kind of you know, exceptional from a standpoint of you know,
anointed, or or that you that you get to do things differently than they
do because of the accomplishments. There there has to be some humility in this
and and and really it has to be almost almost innocuous. From an outside
perspective, A person looking at it would think, oh, okay, that's
just how they that's how they run their team. Right, you know,
but from the inside it needs to be something that speaks to you and and
every individual and the team deeply, and something that you adhere to and something
that you that you honor in your actions to each other. The next thing
that he discusses that I want to go over is this idea of creating belonging
in every direction, is what he says. Now, I belonging is something
that is popped up in a lot of diversity, equity and inclusion conversations recently,
and it's great, like the idea of belonging kind of takes that to
the next level in terms of it's this is reported by the employees, not
necessarily by the company. A company can tell you what that what their diversity
numbers are. A company can tell you can tell you, you know,
what the what the demographics are at every level of the organization, and if
people have are getting promoted, and if people are you know, all the
all these things you can measure. Belonging, I think is very self reported.
From the individual standpoint. A company can't say our employees feel like they
belong. The employees have to say they feel like they belong and so on.
An exceptional team employees have to believe that they belong not just to the
leader, but to each other. Yeah. I think this is the ultimate
element of like true team work is that idea and feeling that that they work
together, that they have each other's backs, that they know they can use
each other as resources. There's kind of this idea of like, you know,
we can solve it together, and and and you know, and as
a leader, that's a space where I think sometimes I see a lot of
leaders that have to be the resource for everything. They have to be the
decision maker and everything. They're kind of like, you all go out and
do this work and then come back to me and then all make a decision
on what we should do next or what the thing is, versus versus saying,
hey, here's here's the expectation, here's what we're being asked to deliver,
here's the thing that we need to work on. Let me give you
a little bit of my framework on how I'm looking at it and how I
think that you know, we should be considering this work and then assign and
allow the team or a collection of the team or a pair from the team
to go do that work and build that on and then you know, and
then really provide them with the recognition that you not only see maybe in the
outcome of the strategy, but how they got it done, how they work
together, you know, kind of building that idea that it's not about an
individual and when you sense and hear those things that you kind of have to
step in and redirect or make sure that everyone who's involved is getting the credit
they deserve. You know that That is where I think when you're creating belonging
again, it's building the connections amongst the team and allowing them to function collectively,
but then being conscious, like you got to be also really really careful
that it doesn't become so tight that it won't welcome others in or not allow
for other perspectives or that type of thing as well. So it's it's it's
a it's a balance that you really truly have to have there. But I
think that you know, I'd rather deal with working through some of the elements
of like you know, making sure that it's not getting too clicky, uh,
but but having them function in such a way that they work really really
well together is critical. The last one I want to discuss in this article.
He says, ampt take collusion immediately, you know. We we think
about this from a standpoint of you know, the meeting, after the meeting,
you know, like the meeting ends and everybody gets up and leaves,
and then you stick around to say something to your boss that you wouldn't necessarily
in front of, say, in front of the group. That's where this
can come up, or as Ron puts it, clickiness, you know,
gossip and you know, kind of like undermining. Sometimes that can be it
can be rooted not in malice. I mean, it could just be that
someone doesn't feel comfortable speaking up amongst an entire group and they want to say
it to an individual person, and that that implies a lack of psychological safety.
But it isn't necessarily a huge issue. The issue comes when people are
using it to undermine people, When when they're when they're trying to kind of
like get in and and form like these little alliances that can somehow be used
to undermine somebody who they don't like it. And and that's where it's the
leader's responsibility to get rid of it right away. Yeah, and like,
look, the reality is that this is going to happen regardless on most teams
because there are going to be relationships where people have more in common with each
other, and whether it's like the amount of time they've worked together, the
teams they've worked on, the previous work that they've done. It's like humans
are going to act like humans from time to time. The important part of
this, so is as a leader is that when you sense it or when
it's brought to you, that's really where you kind of have to force the
hand of breaking this up and stopping it right away. You know, he
uses a great example in here, and I love this around Like, you
know, somebody is like, hey, you know, have you had a
chance to connect with so and so, because you know, I'm not They've
they've kind of like been you know, not doing great work or or you
know, like I'm trying to work around them. Do you have any advice
on that? And instead of being the one who says like, well,
I want to give you the advice, you say like, well what have
they said? What was their response to the feedback you gave them? And
they oh, oh, well, you know I was going to you first,
like well how about you go to them, like like, how would
you feel if one of your peers came to your boss and was saying some
things about you and had not given you the chance yet to even hear it
or understand or address it. So, like, you know, we work
collectively together, you need to go have that conversation if you'd like for me
to do that, Like, I'd be more happy to pull them in right
now and the three of us can sit down if you want to share what
your concerns are with them. But like, that's how things have to work.
You have to work it out amongst each other. And you start to
kind of snip that away very very quickly, that forces the hand of the
team to realize, like, okay, like that's not going to work.
We're going to have to work together. We're going to have to not boil
up some of these things and kind of get like the leader in charge to
have favorites or that type of deal. You really have to work hard on
that. Right. If you have a lot of individual contributors reporting to you,
right, you're not leading a team of leaders, or you're not talking
about a team of leaders, but rather people who don't have people reporting up
to them. How you as a leader deal with this individually? Can can
vary from one organization to another, from one team to another. Meaning if
someone comes to you and says something about one of the one of their co
workers, whether or not you say to them you know, no, I'm
not going to deal with this. You need to deal with this. You
need to give them the feedback. In some situations, I think that is
appropriate. Meaning in some situations we don't hold employees to a high enough standard,
we don't give them the opportunity to do the tough work of giving feedback
that needs to be given. We take it off their plate as somehow it's
our responsibility as the leader, and in some situations it is appropriate take off
their plate and you, as the leader, have to have those conversations.
If you're dealing with a team of people who have said I want to lead
people, and they are in that role, it's their responsibility to lead people.
This needs to be the default. There can never be a time when
on the very first you know, time, feedback is mentioned, the leader
takes it off the plate of someone reporting to them. If that person is
a leader of people. A person who's a leader of people needs to be
able to give feedback to a peer and to end to other people, and
if they are unable to do that, they probably are the wrong person for
the job. They're probably in the wrong role. And so it really needs
to be the default to say to people who are coming to you, kind
of circumventing the feedback process. If they're leaders that know you're not gonna take
us off their plate, that they need to be able to go in and
have these conversations with their people. I think it's really important, absolutely,
And with that it brings us to this episode's one minute hack. But first
a few words from our sponsors. All right, for this episode is what
minute Hackers will want you to do. Click on the article link in the
podcast description and read through the entire thing through the lens of your own leadership
team, the team that you that you are on, and look at the
items as you read through it that make you uncomfortable, the ones that the
ones that you read and go oh, that's great, yeah, I like
that. Typically that means that you're probably already doing that. It's the parts
you want to focus on are the ones where you read and you think,
ooh, that's more of a difficult one. That probably means that your leadership
team isn't necessarily great at that focus on those, and that's where you're going
to have kind of the low hanging fruit of becoming a more exceptional leadership team.
If you are a leader of a team of leaders, then you need
to go through all of this, maybe even with your people, the people
report to you, go through all of this and almost have like a self
inventory of where you and the team are doing well and where you're not doing
well, and then put it on, you know, put it as the
responsibility of the people who report to you to figure out what they can do
to get better at this. If you approach it from a standpoint of not
an individual problem that has to be solved or an individual person that has to
be solved, but rather the shortcomings of how the team works together as a
whole, you will probably have less, you know, kind of push back
from a standpoint of individual anxiety around people feeling like they're being coached up,
as opposed to the team looking at what they can do better. Because really,
for a team to be exceptional, it doesn't matter how exceptional the individual
leaders are. Being able to work together as an exceptional team is a different
skill set, and these are some of the skills that you can use to
really get to that next level. Yeah, I like that woman a hack.
And one of the thing that Ron says in the article is like the
leadership choices that can make or break the cohesion and energizing dynamic of a team.
You know, this is kind of what his version is of these things
in this article, and it's so so spot on, like there are there
are times when you're gonna make the day to day decisions on projects, on
strategies, on things that have to happen in day to day, but then
there are definitely times when you have to pull up, like pull your head
up and really think about who are we and how do we what is our
charter? How do we function as a team? What is the kind of
the sandbox of the framework that you've built as a leader that allows your team
to be successful, to work together, to push the boundaries, to challenge
one another in a healthy way, to debate. You know, that's really
what this is talking about. And if you have yet to define those things,
or if you assume that people know what they are, that's what reflected
on this article should really be helpful with is going through it, like what
does that mean? And if I was to ask my team these questions,
like what is our charter? What do we stand for as a team.
If they can't answer the question, then there's obviously work to do. So
like that's kind of what I would suggest, is, like, you know,
ask kind of taking these different elements and asking these questions of those that
are on your team, that that you trust and that to be honest and
to be very transparent with what they believe and see if it's as clear as
you believe it is. And I think that will be the first step in
understanding like where the work is that you need to do? Oh do Yeah,
that's that's so true. I think this work is incredibly important because there
are people who individually are exceptional leaders and they do great work, and then
they still leave organizations. And when that happens, oftentimes it can be attributed
to not feeling like they are working alongside people who are just as committed as
they are, or who follow follow the rules that they follow, or who
are committed to doing the best work that these people are committed to doing.
You know, typically we look at the people who have dropped off the radar
from a performance standpoint, and we've all our focus on them because we don't
want them to want them to step up to what they were before. But
oftentimes it's the highest performers that will surprise you and when they leave your organization
and you feel blindsided by it, but it means that there was an issue
oftentimes with the team cohesion and how they felt like they worked amongst the broader
team. If they're not feeling like they're getting great work done as a team
and they're just getting individual work done, that's a recipe for them, you
know, being more likely to leave and to you know, seek out greener
pastures where other people might be as committed to the work that they are.
So this is very important work to do, and if you have a lot
of high performing individuals, you're definitely on the right path already. Get them
working together as a team and it'll be surprising you into you how much they
can accomplish. Absolutely, and with that it brings us to the end of
this episode. This is acting your leadership. I'm Lorenzo and I'm Chris,
and we'll talk to you all next time.