The Leader Factor

In this episode, Tim and Junior discuss how high-performing teams are formed and maintained. The quality of an organization is a reflection of the quality of its teams, and high-performing teams have patterns. Although there are many patterns, Tim and Junior will focus on a core four in this episode, including how high-performing teams (1) connect, how they (2) improve their skills, how they (3) view transparency and autonomy and how they (4) continuously seek innovation.

The benefits of improving your teams' performance (01:43) Remember, individuals rarely accomplish extraordinary feats alone. The quality of an organization is a reflection of the quality of its teams. As you improve your teams, you’ll get two things: Leverage and scale. You'll be able to multiply the force, scope, and magnitude of your organizational efforts.

How do high-performing teams connect? (13:55) High performing teams know each other. If your team doesn’t know each other, it’s not a high performing team, or at least it won’t be for very long, or when things get hard. Tim and Junior share the story of Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, and why a 3-day offsite was one of the most important things he has done as a CEO.

How do high-performing teams improve their skills? (26:33) High performing teams are constantly growing. When teams acknowledge that the knowledge they have today is not enough, they open themselves up to development. 

How do high-performing teams view transparency and autonomy? (38:10) High performing teams are focused on achievement based on transparent, meaningful metrics. Tim and Junior talk about Google's Project Aristotle and how they discovered that psychological safety is the #1 indicator of high-performance. 

How do high-performing teams chase innovation? (50:44) High performing teams believe in continuous improvement. They're proud but never satisfied. At the end of the day, challenger safety not just as challenging the organization, but challenging ourselves to do better and be better. 

Today's episode is the final part of our four-part series on the change management principle, behave until you believe. This is our final episode in the series, and it's on challenger safety in practice. Tim and Junior will discuss why innovation requires deviation, why an environment of high challenger safety is not the default, and they'll give you practical behaviors for you to put challenger safety into practice. If you like this episode, go ahead and listen to the rest of the series. As always, this episode's show notes can be found at leaderfactor.com/podcast.

(04:51) Creating a more innovative culture doesn't come from pushing behavior through compliance. Punishment-based accountability does not seem to get the job done over the long haul. There's a cost to compliance if it's punishment-based. The accountability mechanism is important because it depends on what else you want. If you just want pure compliance, great, press people into compliance, that's fine, but what are you losing? You're losing innovation.

(09:44) What's at stake when you challenge the status quo, what do people worry about? They worry about social status, political status, their career advancement and their upward mobility. You're risking your job. You might be risking your career in some cases. It may be that you do something that could be seen as this black mark that follows you around forever. These categories of personal risk illustrate the nature of vulnerability associated with stage four challenger safety. If you're asking people to challenge the status quo, you have to keep these risks in mind.

(20:23) Less than 10% of teams have challenger safety. To achieve and maintain stage four challenger safety is the supreme test of a leader. To create an atmosphere where people feel free and able to challenge the status quo without fear of retaliation or repercussions.

(25:50) Weigh in last. If you have an authority position in a room and you weigh in first on whatever the issue is, you anchor your team with bias. You are softly censoring your team and the presumption is that the discussion is over because you possess positional power and you've registered your point of view. Next time, weigh in last. Mirror the team and summarize the discussion to that point the way that you would if you're talking one-on-one. When you can do this right, you're acknowledging everyone's opinion, but you're also consolidating the information so that it's actionable and you can continue the conversation in a productive way.

(32:20) Respond constructively to dissent and bad news. If you respond poorly to dissent and bad news, you inject fear and you break the feedback loop. One of the best things that you can do in a crisis is to ratchet up the transparency and confront the truth head on. Don't try to dismiss things. Don't try to spin things. Don't try to hide things. Just confront it. Square up to the truth and deal with it.

(42:48) Reward shots on goal. "If you're not taking shots, you're not going to score. It's simple math." - Lionel Messi. Become good at identifying what your shots on goal are. A shot on goal might be just a comment or an idea. If it's in the right direction, it's on goal, reward that. If you want something to happen more, reward it.

Important Links
The 4 Stages Behavioral Guide

During this episode of Culture by Design, we're continuing our four­-part series on the change management  principle, Behave Until You Believe. These episodes are focused on the practical application of each of the four stages of psychological safety and, this week, Tim and Junior tackle Stage Three: Contributor Safety. During the episode, they'll discuss our innate need to make a difference, the relationship between autonomy and accountability, and relevant examples and behaviors that will help you put contributor safety into actual practice. 

What is contributor safety? (04:04) In this third stage of psychological safety we give others autonomy with guidance in exchange for effort and results. This stage is all about the human hunger for meaning. While it’s great to be included, to learn, grow, and develop, that’s not enough for most people. Deep in our hearts we have a need to make a difference.

The balance of autonomy (12:35) Tim and Junior discuss the delicate balance between autonomy and accountability. If your teams want autonomy, they have to learn to love accountability. Ask yourself this diagnostic question: Do I gravitate towards transparency or do I gravitate towards ambiguity? 

Behavior #1: Communicate Tradeoffs (18:33) Everything in life is a trade­off. Effective execution and consistent innovation depends on our ability to effectively choose to do some things instead of other things. Tim and Junior explain the power that comes from deliberately saying no to good things to make room for better things. Do we celebrate and encourage that choice?

Behavior #2: Give People the Why (28:07) Urgency may get you started on an endeavor, but the deep "why" keeps you going long after that initial excitement has worn off. And this doesn't always have to be institutional! Your "why" can live at the individual or team level and be just as effective.

Behavior #3: Let Them Do it Their Way (33:51) When we increase autonomy in an organization, we increase risk. Many organizations believe that micromanaging will mitigate that risk, but that's not the case. If you give autonomy to employees who want to do their best work, you'll get their best work as long as they have equal amounts of autonomy and accountability. 

Important Links
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety Behavioral Guide

Today's lesson:
Beware the Tyranny of Your Expertise

Key Points:
Expertise is a double edged sword. On one side, it’s knowledge, it's useful, and it’s leverage. On the other side, you can become insulated and you can lose touch with context. "The danger of the expert is that he often becomes a prisoner of his own expertise." -Peter Drucker. There is no field of knowledge that is static or complete. Nothing is in a state of true equilibrium, so if you don’t move with the unfolding of knowledge in your field of expertise, you become increasingly obsolete and irrelevant. 

Today's key action:
Next time you feel like you’re 100% confident in the answer, assume you’re missing something.

Today's episode is part two of our four-part series on the Change Management Principle, Behave Until You Believe. These episodes are focused on the practical application of each of the four stages of psychological safety and focus on the key principles and behaviors that will help you foster an environment of high psychological safety. This week, Tim and Junior talk about what learner safety is, the two domains of learning, why learning is error-driven, and their top 3 picks from the 4 Stages Behavioral Guide as actions we can take to “Behave Until we Believe” in Stage 2 Learner Safety.

What is learner safety? (03:26) As the second stage of The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety, learner safety is crucial to ensuring that innovation can  flourish in an organization. In this stage, fear is detached from mistakes, and mistakes are rewarded as part of the learning process.

Learning is error-driven (04:29) In order to learn, we can’t always be right. If our environment only rewards correct answers, the expectation will always be perfection, and learning will never be prioritized. 

The two domains of learning (12:27) Learner safety encompasses creating a culture of rewarded vulnerability across 2 domains: Formal and informal. As we get older, we lose opportunities for formal learning and rely on creating our own informal learning experiences. The goal in these experiences? Create learning agility.

Behavior 1: Share What You’re Learning (21:47) If nobody knows that learning consistently is encouraged and accepted, they won't want to appear ignorant. Model learning behavior as the first-mover. By acknowledging your ignorance you’re making it safe for them to acknowledge theirs.

Behavior 2: Take Notes (31:48) Your mind is not a steel trap. Taking notes is a physical manifestation of your intent to learn, retain, and improve. 

Behavior 3: Identify and Share What You Unlearn (38:57) If knowledge is learning things, wisdom is unlearning things. People and organizations have to let go of what worked before but doesn’t work now, and of what we thought was true, but isn’t.

Important Links
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety Behavioral Guide

Today's lesson:
The 21st century requires Mission-type or mission-command orders

Key Points:
Mission-type orders include a clear statement of the superior commander's intent and state each unit's tasks in terms of operational effects to be achieved rather than specific commands. A mission-type order only works when your junior officers have the capability to do the job, including the critical and strategic thinking capability. If they don’t, the mission-type order is more dangerous than a static “command order.” The whole concept rests on the ability of the junior leaders to interpret and respond to changing conditions. Let’s understand that a mission-type order is a very different form of delegation. You are mandating the outcome and delegating the tactics. 

Today's key action:
Next time you assign a task, consider “Mission-type Orders”. Describe the what, delegate the how.

In today's episode, we're kicking off a new four-part series on the Change Management Principle, Behave Until You Believe. These episodes are focused on the practical application of each of the four stages of psychological safety and focus on the key principles and behaviors that will help you foster an environment of high psychological safety. To kick off this series, Tim and Junior will talk about what it means to behave until you believe as a principle, then move into Stage 1, and behaviors and environments that foster inclusion safety, the difference between bonding and bridging, and give you specific, real ways to create an environment of inclusion.

The goal of transformation (03:36) If we aspire to transform ourselves and our organizations, we must be willing to change our behavior. Tim and Junior set the stage and explain why this cultural goal, as daunting as it is, is essential for organizational well-being and growth.

Why the traditional approach to transformation is broken (05:12) Tim and Junior present the traditional, linear approach to cultural transformation, which is achieved through three categories and five stages. Those stages are (1) awareness, (2) understanding, (3) appreciation, (4) belief, (5) behavior.

What does it mean to behave until you believe? (10:50) In order to achieve transformation both personally and professionally, you need awareness, but you should work on behavior simultaneously. As Richard Pascale once wrote: “People are more likely to act their way into a new way of thinking than think their way into a new way of acting.”

Increase inclusion through bridging, not just bonding (28:10) While it may be easier to bond with people who are similar to you, inclusion comes through bridging the gaps with people who aren't like you. Unless we close the distance, our relationships stay superficial and transactional. Tim and Junior share three ways to put this theory into practice.

Be the first mover and share your story (30:52) One of the best ways to close the gap between yourself and a colleague is to learn more about them, and one of the best ways to learn more about them is through asking them to share their story.

Ask twice as much as you tell (39:32) Each of us has a personal inquiry and advocacy ratio. Ask yourself: "Am I in inquiry mode right now, or am I in advocacy mode right now?"

Express gratitude and appreciation (44:30) Are you showing gratitude and appreciation not just for performance in a team setting, but for effort? And remember: Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone.

Important Links
Psychological Safety Behavioral Guide

Today's lesson:
Excavate Your Talents

Key Points:
The National Endowment for the Arts tells us that the average person possesses 500-700 different skills and abilities. Yet, Gallup tells us that only 10% of people are able to identify their natural talents. Everyone has special gifts, talents, and aptitudes– areas where their potential ability is two or three standard deviations from the mean. The problem is, many of us can’t see them because they are not obvious. No one comes with a list of their talents. They’re all discovered. We all require additional self-awareness, awareness that only comes with additional effort, discovery, experimentation, or in short, excavation.

Today's key action:
Go ask ten people who know you well this question: “What do you think I’m better at than 9/10 people?”

1. Write down their responses.
2. See if you can find a pattern in the responses. Drill down, excavate, and then put in the work.

In this episode of Culture by Design, we're talking about building a culture where employees feel free to speak up. This episode comes to you from an article Tim published recently on HBR with the same title. You can't just speak a speak-up culture into existence. Doing so in the absence of psychological safety is actually an abdication of leadership and an admission of failure. Tim and Junior talk about the four separations presented in Tim's article that create the conditions to give all employees a voice and motivate them to use it. They are: (1) separate worth from worthiness, (2) separate loyalty from agreement, (3) separate status from opinion, and (4) separate permission from adoption.

What's the opposite of psychological safety and speak-up cultures? (03:11) Rhetorical reassurance in the absence of true psychological safety is an abdication of leadership and an admission of failure.

Why do we want speak-up cultures? (10:21) Tim and Junior explain how speak-up cultures improve safety and compliance, improve decision-making, and increase innovation. 

Why are speak-up cultures hard to create? (11:57) Speaking up is a highly vulnerable behavior. We gathered 50,000 data points on people's experiences with vulnerability at work. Tim and Junior explain the significance of the data in the context of challenging the status quo.

Separate worth from worthiness (17:36) Worth is based on your intrinsic inherent worth as a human being. Tim and Junior explain why speaking up is not a matter of worth, and how separating worth from worthiness helps us create a foundation of inclusion.

Separate loyalty from agreement (28:39) When loyalty becomes contingent on agreement, it produces manipulated conformity, which isn’t loyalty at all. True loyalty, which refers to genuine concern for and dedication to the best interests of an institution and its people, must not only allow, but encourage, independent thought.

Separate status from opinion (34:53) Smart people don’t make a smart team unless they can harness their collective intelligence. We harness collective intelligence by inviting and processing dissent. How do you do this? Teach and model the art of disagreement (both how to disagree and how to be disagreed with).

Separate permission from adoption (43:29) Some people mistakenly believe that to be heard is to be heeded. Of course, in organizations, this is not possible. The organization can’t say yes to everyone. It has to constantly make tradeoff decisions in the allocation of its resources. Remove the misconception that permission to speak up somehow translates into an obligation to adopt the suggestion. And, in the absence of adoption, emphasize recognition.

Important Links:
HBR Article: Building a Culture Where Employees Feel Free to Speak-Up
The Ladder of Vulnerability Data

Today's lesson:
Use Minimum Necessary Intervention to Liberate Talent

Key Points:
One of the hardest things for leaders to learn is when to be more or less directive, when to tighten down and when to loosen up. Too little intervention and you’re an absentee landlord. Too much, and you’re micromanaging. As humans we yearn for autonomy in our contribution. We want to create, we want to affect reality in a way that is uniquely ours and in order to do this, we need room.

Today's key action:
Next time you work with a high performer, spend time determining what minimum necessary intervention looks like, and then behave accordingly. Even better, write it down.