The Unified Team

What's the first question for every leader to answer?

This is the question Romana Prochazkova answered in today's podcast. She explained the answer that is key for every leader. Especially those early in their journeys.

Watch to understand what makes the foundation of your leadership style.

Until you have that foundation, you cannot be authentic. Integrity will be a struggle. And you will find it a challenge to connect with your team.

A key part of authenticity is understanding and embracing your quirks.

People will accept them. And you. But you have to accept yourself and embrace who you are first.

How do we get to peak performance?

In an ever more demanding world there are more and more demands on our time and energy.  How do we ensure that we meet the demands of our work, home and family and yet maintain our health and wellbeing.  Everything we do rests on foundational pillars.  

Performance too rests on certain foundations.  

Performance too rests on certain foundations. I talked to Abigail Ireland about her work and journey in getting people into Peak Performance. What are the habits that will really make a difference?

She has a model of Five Pillars of Peak Performance which you can hear about in this episode.

Why should someone choose you?

For the job. The project. Or the contract.

We live in a world of overwhelming choice and yet each of us is trying to stand out and be valued.

The social media world has created the personal brand which can seem contrived. At it's worst it's creating a false image to sell. But at it's best it's about clarifying what you do best, who for and the unique flavour you bring to your work.

Clark, Tony and I discussed our experiences and understanding of explaining who we are and what we do.

On the surface we each do something similar. But our personality and backgrounds mean our focus and style is different.

Tony gets people ready to perform under high pressure. This comes from his background of operating at the highest level in football.

Clark challenges so people not only make decisions in the right way, but they make the right decision. This comes from his background in manufacturing where decisions make the difference.

I give people understanding about themselves and the context they are operating within. This comes from my therapy background in helping people make sense of their problems.

Each of us is unique, but we have to identify the flavour we bring and who it brings most value to.

That's the core of authentic branding for me. To do the work for others to understand what you do and who for. So they can say yes or no.

Why do groups of the smartest people make dumb decisions?

The Bay of Pigs invasion. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. Blair and Bush's war on Iraq.

Every day in smaller ways groups make terrible decisions because of groupthink.

Yet the increasing complexity of the world shows that collective intelligence is key. Overwhelmingly, science, business and social breakthroughs happen through teams. Individual brilliance is no longer enough.

Rebel Ideas by Matthew Syed shows how teams get it wrong.

People not speaking up. The people who could see the flaws not being in the room. The unconscious biases that mean we don't know what we're missing.

If you lead or are part of a team, it's a must read.

Here's our Book Club discussion with:

Eduardo Dos Santos Silva

Neil Hamilton

Michael Ward

Whenever we introduce change we meet resistance.

Every change involves loss of some sort for someone. That person is likely to be the person who most resists the change. How well we address their concerns determines the smoothness of change.

We can push past resistance, but when we don't address these concerns we suffer.

Either we get silent conflict and disengagement. We get loss of trust or active sabotage against us. Or we get outright conflict.

The success of any change over the long term comes from the ability to change old beliefs.

When we leave someone behind. Knowingly or not. We have created a pothole that will eventually cost us.

The key to bringing everyone along is empathy and curiosity.

Finding out where people are. How they feel. And what is behind their resistance.

Links:

Clark Ray’s Linkedin Profile

Clark’s Website

Tony Walmsley’s Linkedin Profile

Tony’s Website 

Rob McPhillips’s Linkedin Profile

Rob’s Website

Why do we do this?

Whenever we join together, there's a sacrifice. We give up time, resources or autonomy. So why would we join?

Humans have always joined together because some goals we can only achieve in numbers.

Once that was to succeed in the hunt or to stay safe. Now it is to achieve increasingly complex goals. Or even to have a stable wage.

We sacrifice something to get something greater together.

At the core of what makes a group effective is clarity in that purpose. When we recognise the payoff, we accept the trade-offs. We accept what we have chosen to sacrifice for the greater purpose we are striving for.

In this episode, Clark Ray, Tony Walmsley and I talked about purpose in groups and tried to relate it to why we gather to talk.

As Tony says, every group needs a clarifying question that guides every decision.

What's yours?

How do I get people to do what I want?

Change is notoriously difficult. So is leadership. But why?

Because often the change we seek to make isn't for the greater good.

It's for what I want. For my personal agenda. And that's why we can't get people on board with it.

Leadership isn't about how good you are.

It's about how good you can make others. It's about how little of your own agenda is involved. The best leader needs little from the group.

They don't need their ego stroked.

The fantasy of a new leader is that now I'm driving the bus. I can put my ideas into practice. I can set the strategy and prove myself.

When reality hits they find they are in the middle of everyone else's demands.

They can only steer when they subdue their needs and give the group what is needed.

In today's podcast Clark Ray, Tony Walmsley and I talked about ego, stress and leadership.

Everyone wants to feel good about themself.

Our inner narrative is driven by this imperative. No-one wants to hate. We hate when we're empty.

We need to find a scapegoat that explains why we're not doing as well as we wish we were.

In the UK this week there have been shocking scenes of anti-immigration riots. On the surface it looks like racism. Actually there's a bigger problem.

This is about hopelessness and groups of people being manipulated.

Politicians and Social Media Influencers are creating a narrative that serves their agendas. There are sections of society that feel like failures. And they are being given a narrative that creates a scapegoat.

This is nothing new.

It's been the story of human civilisation for years. This issue is too big and complex for us to really do justice to. But it is a dynamic that threatens every team.

Division.

I got together Michael Ward, Clark Ray and Michele to try and make sense of the issues we've been seeing with the UK riots.

Why are some people so much better than everyone else in a given field?

What makes a Usain Bolt or Steve Jobs so successful? Is it nature or nurture? Outliers by Malcom Gladwell seeks to answer these question.

An Outlier is an anomoly.

Most people think of the average as the mean. But most science (at least social science) tracks the mid point. Otherwise the data will be skewed by Outliers.

That is, those that fall so far behind, or ahead that they skew the mean.

Gladwell focused on those people who achieved outlandish success. Like Bill Gates, The Beatles and Robert Oppenheimer. To try to understand the ingredients of success.

Our book club chose it as our first book to read and review.

Here's my conversation with:

Eduardo Dos Santos Silva

Neil Hamilton

Saurabh Debnath

The world is changed by those who can inspire and unite.

Whether it's Martin Luther King giving a dream for the civil rights movement. Nelson Mandela uniting South Africans as a new nation. Or a team unifying around a shared goal.

We achieve by working together as one.

While this is magical when it works, it more often than not doesn't work. It doesn't happen by chance. Because human forces are working to divide your team.

It happens when we have a strategy to unify the team.

So what's your strategy? Most people don't have a strategy. They think adults will naturally get along.

In today's podcast I wanted to talk about the three types of people that make up teams. Why by default we end up with divisive forces. And how we can create the conditions so teams do unite.