Teams

You know Lawrence, that actually reminds me of a story for myself as well too. Every time we'd go to a valet service at a major shopping center, we'd drive up, you know, leave our car there and there would always be one or two people who were working there who I would hire in a basically an instant. That was so good. And I wanted, I think that the thing that I identified is when you talk about identifying great people, I also was really clear that you had to allocate them and put them in roles that they'll shine. because these people were brilliant in their front of house role. That may not have been as great doing an accounts receivable role. So I think the next iteration of that is always looking for people and then thinking about where they can do their best work within your organization.

You know, it's so true like and and I love that part because it's such an important element is finding the right people for the Right role and and and and and so there's an analogy that I've heard from and I wish I can give credit to where? Where this comes from I can't remember exactly but it's like finding the maybe it's good to great I can't remember if it's from Jim Collins or not But it's like it's that you know having the vision of where we're gonna go We talked about that already So that's where the bus is supposed to be going right and each bus which is the business you have has respective seats

Yeah.

assigned and that seat is the role of that particular person. So each seat has a different role. And really it's about being very clear and going, Hey, this bus is this bus number 11 is going this way. It's going this direction, right? And it's going north. And then but it's like each seat has a specific spot. So if you want to come and join this team, if you want to go to this, you know, going north to say, I don't know, let's just go say we're going to broom. And that's where you want to go to come on board.

there. Yeah.

But if you're going to sit on that seat, make sure you are going to do that role. If you don't want to be on board, if you don't like where we're going, you know, if you don't like this bus being black, you know, black colored and it's like, you know, or it's going this direction, then don't get on the bus. Like there's the door. It's okay. We'll find someone else in the role. So I was like, if you're going to occupy a space in this bus, be very, very clear. Right. That you are part of this team to perform that role on that seat. And I think that's really important from the, from your perspective on what you just said.

See you. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And it reminds me of this. There's a, there's a, there's a band, I'm not sure if you ever came across them. They're called six six foot Nick. Did you ever come across them? Okay, what's unique about these guys is that it was someone who said, we can teach anybody anything. So what they, there was this experiment where they tried to form a band with people who looked like

No, I haven't. Tell me.

about a drummer who couldn't play drums. And they figured, you look like a drummer, you look like a guitarist, you look at this, we can teach you that. And they formed this band around people who look like they had all the elements of what a great basically guitarist would look like. And they taught them the skills. So it highlights what you're basically saying is that high for attitude, trained for skill.

That's awesome. That's a great story. That's great story. All right. So let's I think we talked about several elements of building a team like the next challenge would be like, how do you lead a team? Let's talk about some of the components of leading a team because that is that is I think we're well, first of all, like building a team is important. Actually, no, let's let's before we go into leading the team, I think what we need to do is hiring a team member. What are some of your best practice about hiring to say this is where most people get it wrong. They get the

Yep. Yeah.

So if you don't get the right vision, you don't get the right people, you don't get the right complimentary skills, that's a problem. If you don't know those, that's a problem. So, but then you go, okay, now I know those things, but then they go, but they screwed up by hiring the wrong person for the wrong role. So, or hiring the wrong person in general. We kind of touched a little bit on this, so let's kind of go with that. What are your best practices for hiring?

Yeah. Well, before I get to best practice, I want to talk about worst practices because a lot of the times that's how you get better at doing that, right? So anything that I've learned from experiences, sometimes it has been because of bad decisions and bad choices earlier on. I think when I first started, it was like, hey, this is what I'm liking. If someone was excited or I liked them, then I went, okay, you have the elements of what would be a great team member. So I think that.

Yeah, let's do that. Yeah.

didn't work. I basically wasn't clear enough on the specific skill sets that I was looking for in someone, the characteristics, the character traits, and also how they could complement what we were looking for. So to me, that was the biggest learning. So as a practice, I had to get really, really clear on what I was looking for, why, and how to basically test and measure that competency moving forward.

Yeah, so when I when I hire there's the three there's three rules that I kind of hire through and they're filtered in that specific order. So the first first rule of thumb for me is that if they have to like what we already talked about, I know beating this, you know, continuously from from from various points, but I'm hiring for personality and characteristic. And that like that personality has to suit the job, the characteristic and also the drive, the person has no drive. I don't care how nice of a person they are. I'm not hiring a nice person for because they're nice. That's, you know, that's one of the worst, like I made that mistake many times. It's about hiring for the right drive because if they don't have the drive, then I'm just carrying them. I'm just creating a job so they can be, you know, employed and supporting their family and not mine. So, which is not ideal. And that is what I think a lot of people end up doing. And so number one is that we're hiring for that first. Now, the second thing I think, so once they pass through, if they're the right,

Yeah. Yeah.

personality to write characteristics of something I want. Okay, now they go to the second ring. Okay, so then the second, second level, the second level, then on what I'm looking for now is being very specific going, where's the proof of that? Okay, where's the evidence? Show me from the past in your life history and experience that you what you what I see in your personality, or what you say your personality is, is there proof of that? Right? Because of course, if you ask someone like, Oh, so what are your

Mm-hmm.

What are your strengths or what are your weaknesses? Or if you ask someone who's like, you know, can you handle adversity? They can say all the nice, I mean, I would, right? If I was getting interviewed, I've been in many interviews, of course I'm gonna say all the things I feel like you wanna hear. But where's the proof? Because here's the thing, just because I say something doesn't mean that my actions match that. I wanna know from the people that I'm hiring that the action is aligned with what they're saying, okay?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I can say, let's kind of use it. If I say, I'm a, I don't know, I'm gonna pick an example. I'm a strong Christian, let's just say. I'm a strong Christian, okay, right? I believe in God, and I know I've dedicated my life to that, right? But if you, but the action says, you know, you don't go to church on a regular basis, or you don't like, you're not nice to people, or you're not, your behavior doesn't match that, then whatever you say has no credibility. And so that's my second level. The second level is like, where's the proof? Show me through your history and through conversation, the questions I would ask is to try to dig at that, okay? You said you have drive, show me, what have you done? Like what have you done in your resume? What have you done in the past in projects where you actually demonstrated drive, you know, or efficiency or productivity or just self-efficiency? Like those are the things I'm kind of looking for, right? Once I get past that level, okay, you have proof in your characteristic, you have proof in evidence, then the third level is like,

Yeah.

Okay, do you have the minimum skills I need? Right? So, remember, that skills is not the first thing is the last thing I'm looking for. Do they have if I'm hiring someone for the, you know, front of house, and they they need to work on a computer? Well, I need some minimal skills on computer. Like if you never don't even know how to turn on actually had a case where one of my clients is like they were hiring someone and like, I don't think the right person. And the minimum skill was obviously working on a computer. And when she started saying goes, So where's the mouse? That's a problem.

laughter

Right? That's a problem. Like they could be the nicest person, they might have some proof of loss. But if you can't work in computer and your job requires you work on computer, okay, that might be an issue. So that's where the skill set, you know, if I'm looking for a chiropractor, well, you might be the nicest person, you might have drive ambition. But if you have no skills to adjust, well, that's a potential that's a huge problem, right? Because there's a minimum skill set that requires so that's my sort of three levels of hiring and obviously the questions.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

uh, and journey of your process, uh, is, is, could try to gear towards or trying to dig that out of someone.

Yeah, great, great distinctions, Lawrence. And really they come out of experiences where we may not have done that. You know, I know I've had someone who, as you said, said exactly the right things, wanted to say exactly, and being the visionary, here's the thing, for visionaries, you get suckered in. If someone has the same vision, you suddenly go, man, we're kindred spirits. We're like, we're on this path. We're going together. But I've had scenarios where whoever showed up in an interview is not the same person who showed up.

Погнали!

basically in the role. So that was a big reality check for me. And so you talked a little bit about leadership. I'm gonna jump ahead and then come back is I had to identify where my blind spots were as a person who was recruiting people because it couldn't be enough that, as you said, it had those three skillset. There was some critical component that I was missing that I had to really develop it myself. So in order to bring someone on to be part of the team, I had to get better at the skill of talent identification. And that was really key.

You mentioned something really interesting. It's like, you know, we learned all this through mistakes and that's absolutely true. You can read all this stuff in a book. I'm sure we all read books. Like honestly, you're not, like you learn from a book but the reality is that the experience comes from when you actually hire the wrong person or you go through the process of like just realizing like this is a lot harder than what a book tells you. And the reality is like the cost of

Yeah.

hiring the wrong person is very costly. It's not just like the salary or the misoperability, it's like the retraining of this person. Like it is about, I can't remember what the stat there was like five times this person's salary or 10 times that person's salary or something like that. By, I can't remember his first name, Smart was his last name. I think he talked about that. Brad Smart, I think was his name. And he talked about like how a wrong hire can really derail your business. And that's why it's such an important aspect of hire slow, fire fast, right? That's the mantra that people kind of talk about.

Yeah. Yeah, something like that, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the whole hiring and firing fast, I've been guilty of that one as well too, where you basically, you look for the good in people and I had kept people in roles much longer than they needed to be. So when you talk about the cost of rehiring, yeah, it's costly, but what does it cost you having the wrong person in your business for a lot longer than they need to? It's like, you don't even want to think about what that happened, what happened. So I've done them all. I've been guilty of them all along the way. And that was cutting our teeth on the experience of learning how to be a great leader and what the team members look for, but then also how to create a performance culture around the supports basically keeping getting better. So yeah, you learn hard the hard way.

Yeah, there's a, there's a, there was definitely a client of mine once and, uh, there was a person that they just had to let go and, and it really, but there's like us, we're nice people, you know, we just, we just can't let people go and then we just hang on and hang on. And, and, um, eventually it got to the point where he, you know, finally made a decision to let go and to, to let the person go. And as soon as they did that,

Yeah.

The amount of people that called back and said, you know, cause you know, when they started coming back in and they do recalls and get people back in again, the amount of people was like, oh, like, oh, I, I, I'm glad you got rid of that person because I stopped coming because of that person. And we're talking, I, I, within a span of about a month, their, their business grew by a minimum of about 30%.

Yeah Yeah, that's huge.

not from doing anything else other than like just and it was all simply because see that the thing is is that you're so hung up on this one person and and feeling the The guilt or whatever to let someone go But the problem is that you're you're taking the hit on on the business side thing And you don't even know it because people move on you don't even realize they're gone I don't realize that the the the the the business is declining because of that and it's really hard to see Because you want you know, we are We're trying to do the right thing. We're trying to make sure we hang on to people. We wanna make sure that we don't, and let's face it, not only that are we nice people, but the other part is that we don't want confrontation, right? So we're trying to avoid the confrontation, but your business is tanking at the same time and you don't even realize it. And I don't know, I always say I have this line, it's like, we built this business, we built any business, not the point of the business isn't to keep people employed.

Yeah. Yeah.

so they can have a job, right? Like, you know, you gotta fundamentally remember that. We build a business so that we can achieve our mission, right, and that their job, hiring people, their job is to hire, so our job is to hire people so they can actually help advance that mission quicker and get there more efficiently. And I think that's really important, and I gotta lock that into people and entrepreneurs is that we tend to not let go of people.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

uh, quick enough because we're, we're so stuck on avoiding confrontation and avoiding the pain of doing it. It sucks. I will say this, I will say firing someone. I've done it twice. Uh, it's, it is the, one of the worst feelings in the world. All right. It sucks. Um, but I do believe that most businesses will go through it at least once or twice in their lifetime.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, right now there are massive layoffs that are occurring, you know, and fundamentally it's the principle of having to cut off the branch to save the tree. So it's effectively, it's out of necessity. And so when the financials of a company are threatened, yeah, you're thrust into a situation where you have to make a decision for the livelihood of your organization. I guess what you're talking about and what I've also come to understand too is, when you're not in dire straits and you're tolerating, the principle of you get what you tolerate, if you're tolerating an element of underperformance by virtue of the fact that you as a leader aren't making the best decisions for your business or your company, that's ultimately gonna hurt you. It's gonna derail your vision and keep you further away from what you're looking at. So.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, and I think, uh, firing fast, like we'll go, we'll go with that too, as well as that there's one golden rule that I've listened to, which is, I think it's really important is that if you had to let someone go and it's a surprise to them, that's on you. Um, and meaning like what the, what that really means is that it should never be a surprise to the person who you're letting go, because there should be an ample warning, uh,

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

to let them know like you're not performing, you're not performing, you're not performing, and they're not changing. So when you do let them go, it shouldn't be a surprise to them. But if it's a surprise to them, then you definitely haven't done your job to let them know that they have not been equipped or they're not been performing at their best. And so that's why I think that's a good golden rule to kind of live by.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's really good. It was Jack Welch used to do that years ago in GE, but he used to have a much stricter policy where he would fire the bottom 5% of the organization every year. But fundamentally, I remember him saying that. He goes, that's right, it should never come as a surprise to him. And it's actually cruel to keep people in a role. I mean, yeah, there was probably element of justification in that action by Jack did there as well. But there's an element of what you're saying that I took out of what he said then as well. That was invariably, you're not being honest with people. If they're not suited to that role and they're underperforming, you're compromising something, either their progress or the viability of your business. And that's not actually being honest and transparent.

I think that another mistake as we're going through some of this stuff is, I think it's easier to go through mistakes, is the mistake of overestimating someone's value. And I think when you're hiring someone, oftentimes we see, because you, like you say, we see the good in people and the tendency of that is that we see the potential of that, what that person is. But the reality is, I think, is that we can see the potential and we look in the good in people. So therefore we see the potential. The challenge is, is that do they rise to the top?

Mmm.

Do they rise to their own potential? And the reality is that most people, everybody has potential, but can they do it? Like, can they reach their potential is the challenge. I mean, I, you know, it's, and that's in a personal endeavors and also professional endeavors. That's the, that's why I look for character and personality because if the character and the personality doesn't have the drive in them to reach or come close to the potential.

Yeah.

then having potential is useless. How many, like let's use athletes as an example, how many athletic prospects that are drafted to be the top first round draft pick in any particular sport fizzled, never made it to living up to the potential. It happens every single year in every single sport. It happens all the time. They have all the skillset. They also have all the attributes in terms of physicality, but it comes down to like, do they have the heart?

Yeah.

And does they have the heart? Can they translate the heart into action? And sometimes like the best of the best are the ability to be the people who perform. Like, I mean, you look at the, let's say the greatest basketball player, the Michael Jordan, the Kobe Bryant's, right? They weren't great. Were they extreme amazing athletes? Yes, of course. Were they fit for their roles in terms of size from back? Yes, they were. But you know what made the difference? Why were they the greatest of all time? It was because they worked at it. They trained at it, right? Someone who is similar.

Yeah.

I mean, that's Michael Jordan is a classic story. He would, he was cut from their high school basketball team. Right. So he wasn't the greatest player back then, but you know, took time for him to develop and so on and so forth. And that is what ma that matters. Right. Wayne Gretzky being in hockey, say for example, you know, he was, he wasn't big. He's a small player comparatively to, you know, he was quite young. He became great because he just kept on working at it and working at it and, and it had the discipline to. where someone else sometimes, I think we live in this entitlement world where sometimes we think we're so good at something, we're physical beings to help one particular sport, or think we're smart enough, we don't have to try hard. And when you don't try hard, that becomes the problem. And I think that's the main distinction between, sorry, I have this one thought I wanna share, which is like the danger with kids and younger kids, right? It's like, just because you're, the danger is saying that you're smart.

Nie wiem.

And I think that's a massive danger, right? Because as soon as you think you're smart, it becomes a problem because then you go, well, I don't have to try. But in reality, we both know it's nothing to do with how smart or not smart you are, it actually has everything to do with effort, right? Because the effort is what changes you, right? And being smart, as soon as you come up with a failure, at one point, then all of a sudden it goes, you tell a story, oh, I must not be smart anymore.

Yeah.

But that's not true. It's just that you may not have put effort into that test or that exam or whatever. And that's the problem. It's the effort that you put in is so much better than the, you know, thinking that you're good or not good at any given thing.

Yeah. Yeah, Lawrence, those are great. That last couple of minutes or so, what you're talking about, honestly, I've got about 65 comments and ideas that have just come out of the struggle. We can go in any different direction. So I have to discipline myself to just bring it back to team specifically. It is a multiverse, right? So in a multiverse, we'll be splitting out in multiple screens and we go to each and every one of those.

I'm sorry. This is the multiverse.

Specifically what you said about I'm gonna bring it to team right and I recommend Obviously because I go there and I said no go no Just rain it back in bring it in Jim because you I could talk to you for hours about a whole lot of things but in this context, I Want to talk about you what you said about Michael Jordan and Michael Jordan phenomenal in there So it raises the concept of a team of champions versus a champion team

Thank you for bringing this back by the way.

Because a lot of the time, individually, you can have people who may or may not be getting the best out of themselves. And Michael Jordan in his capacity did. So what is it that separates a group of Michael Jordan's? And we've seen that time and time again, where you have people who get together, who on the surface look brilliant, fantastic, they shouldn't thrive, and yet they're beaten by a champion team. People who had characteristics, traits, attributes, habits that... cause them to overexceed. And I think, over Excel I should say, I think if you ever come across a guy called Patrick Linceoni, who wrote a book called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Yeah, and fundamentally that to me is the baseline of what separates great teams versus teams that aren't, right? So, for people who haven't, or have got familiarity with it, it's a great concept, great.

Yes, he's a great author on Tees. Yep, yep. Absolutely.

paradigm. It's basically, you're talking about five steps that are really important. You know, you fundamentally have to have trust. You know, next level, you have to have, um, honesty. Next level, I think was commitment. Fourth was accountability and fifth was results. So effectively, so I'll say that again. It's basically, um, you've got to have trust. Next level up was, uh, honesty. Next level was. Commitment, next level was accountability, and next level was results. So if we look at that as a concept, we've kind of touched on that. And we probably haven't spoken about the trust component, Florence, where perhaps you can talk about that. How important is trust in your team? Whether it's the culture, whether there are expectations, where you can rely on someone to do what they said, how important can you talk to that as a concept?

Awesome. Yeah, I think, you know, I'm going to share with one story, and then we'll kind of lean back into trust or make sure I come back to that. Like, I want to continue the story about Michael Jordan, what you said about champions and a champion and versus champions teams. Like Michael Jordan, when if you look at his career, I mean, I hate it, the Bulls, because that was my brother's team. I was a Lakers fan. I was a more of a Magic team. So the reality was that, you know, when you think about the Bulls were, you know, Michael Jordan got drafted his first couple of years. He was great.

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But he never won anything. That was the make difference. He never won anything because he was a great individual. It wasn't until they brought in the coach, Phil Jackson, it wasn't until they brought in the Scottie Pippins, the Dennis Rodmans, and all those people coming together, like working together that actually created the championship team that then won all those championships, right? And so coming back to what you said around the trust is that

Mm.

If you don't have trust, if your teammates don't have trust within yourselves, there's no way they're going to be there to accelerate. There's no way they're going to be able to get to the next level. And that trust is like, it's, it's in trust is it's, it's not tangible, right? You go out of trust. It's like, you got to know that you have someone who's going to look after your backside, who's going to be able to know that they're always going to be there. And the teams that I know, I followed the sports teams I have, like there's, you know, I'm a, I follow certain teams like

Yeah.

49ers is one of them. It's like, you can just tell when the team is gelling, when you got a team of 54 people, you can tell because there's trust in them in terms of what they do. I think that's really important. Trust is a massive, massive factor because, like I said earlier, let's bring this back to earlier what we said, each person on the bus has to have a certain role. The trust needs to be that the other team members are doing their role and performing their job.

Yeah.

Because if you don't have trust in the other people doing their job, then all of a sudden you have to not only do your job, you have to also worry about the other people. And that's a huge problem. And then that's when, because that little bit lack of trust leads into other things of them going, well, if I can't trust them in that, then I can't trust them in this. And then there's no cohesion and that really affects the culture.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, when you talk to people who have been part of, whether it's people who have been in the military, whether they've been in sporting teams, whether, like when you watch a high performing team, there's a buzz about them, there's a trust. It's like, hey, I know that's your specific role. I can trust you to execute that. You've got my left and right flank covered. That gives me confidence and certainty. So then that elevates me. I don't know if you've ever had that scenario, Lawrence, and I certainly have where. I didn't have full trust in a team member. So consequently, it took me out of what I should have been doing because I was second guessing, or not second guessing, but I was worrying about whether they were doing that correctly. So fundamentally, it took me out of my power zone. And so for me, it was like, the reason why trust is important is because I can focus on my skill set and the highest and best use of my skills and talents because I know that those complementary skills are taken care of. If I don't, I've got an open file in my brain that basically takes me out of house.

It takes up RAM, right? And let's bring it back to the personal side, which we started out with the podcast with, with regards to personal. Like if you don't have trust in your significant other, like how much time, like just think about that, right? Because you can just, it's a good context. If you don't have trust in your significant other, how much energy, time, and emotions are you wasted on worrying about what the other person's gonna do, right? That's what marriage is about, right? If you don't have trust in your marriage,

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

you're gonna be constantly thinking about it. So you can't move on. It's gonna be a slow ride. Remember, what's our goal of a team? The goal of the team is to help you accelerate towards the goal, not to help you create anchors. And I think, you know, the whole point of you have lack of trust, it becomes a massive anchor. And resentment and energy and, you know, emotions that are just purely wasted.

Yeah, I'm going to give you an example, which basically treads on the toes of a couple of those concepts. When you talk about a team, there was an AFL team in Australia, North Melbourne, who a few years ago, two of their star players were involved in a kerfuffle because there was infidelity in between the player and the wife of another player. So not only did that rock the relationship, but as a team, it tore the team apart.

Mmm.

because fundamentally they went, I don't now have trust. I may have trust on you as a player, but now I don't trust you as a person. So consequently it unraveled the whole club and the whole team because fundamentally trust as a paradigm has gone. So that it really does highlight how important that is and how quickly it basically blows up an organization.

Yeah. Well, it's no different than for people in teams where they are focused more on their individual stats or individual performance than actually where the team is supposed to go. And I think a highlight of a good team is when team members are willing to sacrifice their own personal agenda, personal stats and personal fame or whatever for the sake of winning championships, I think, you know, or winning together. I think that's a huge, huge, huge sign. And that has to be a culture that it needs to be built upon. And that's where, you know, where we can end on here, which is the leadership part, which is like, how do you lead a team, um, to win championships or how do you lead a team to create, do great performance? I think it starts with culture and culture is a, you know, it's, it's about the, but who sets the culture is the person who's leading the team. You know, as a leader, I think the fundamental thing is that you need to set the culture of what the team is supposed to look like.

Yeah. Yeah.

I remember listening to a friend of mine who runs two businesses and has a massive team of a thousand people. He spent a couple of years in Thailand talking about going through Stephen Covey's things and brought them in as consultants to kind of build the values of the team and so on and so forth. He spent two years. employees should think about the values of the team. Shouldn't I be the one who created the values of the team? So he threw away, you know, one and a half year, two years of consulting work with, you know, that team and go, no, here are the values, you know, here's what we're about. Here's what we need. And he's basically set the standard of the values, which are, you know, inherent values of the company. And these are the values of what he needs people to be. If you don't like the values, then that's okay, move on.

Yep.

But here's the values and then sets the culture and that culture is about, you know, having a team leader and setting the boundaries of what is right and what's wrong. I think that's really important.

Yeah, perfect. That's a great example. And that probably does lead up to that next point of Patrick Lincione's component about trust. And from trust is there's basically honesty. And being honest with number one yourself, which in that example, I think your friend was honest with himself and said, okay, it's about the guidance that I give. And I need to communicate that from my perspective. But then also, we talked a little bit about that in our episode already.

Hmm.

was about being honest with people, whether they're performing well, whether they're not performing well, and having those tough conversations, which you can't have, I guess, within that context as effectively, unless you have that baseline of trust. So once you've got that, then you go, okay, how are we honest here? How do we communicate optimally and honestly with each other, whether it's good, bad, or otherwise? And I'm gonna tell you that the most impactful conversations that I've quite often have have been hard conversations. yes with employees, but even with friends, but it was because we were prepared to go there that it elevated the quality of the relationship that we had. So I've never been scared of tough conversations on a personal level. I had to learn them in a business sense and purely from the perspective of, so here's the thing that I used to do Lawrence, I'm not sure if it has any relevance, but you know when you talk about being a guy, like I... I could get stuff done and I worked at 130% of my intensity. What I did, I had the expectation that people could do the same. And when they didn't, what I did, and it was because I had a coach at the time who pulled me up on it and said, hey, do you know that you're minimizing yourself to make the rest of the team feel comfortable? Right? So you are the one who sets the tone of the organization. Not the tail doesn't wag the dog. And that was like, boy, that was a really hard realization to make.

Hmm.

And so I got to the point where I went, hey, listen, here's where the standard is. I want you to stand by me. If you can't, then great, awesome. You know, it's been awesome and great, but I can't minimize to make you feel comfortable. And that was, I'm gonna tell you how massive, I think back to that, and it brings up frustration and anger, purely because for a longest time, I didn't realize I was doing that. And I was the one who was compromising the performance of the team.

Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, it actually just reminded me of another point on leadership. I think one of the jobs of a leader is to create psychological safety amongst the team. You know, and, and, and, you know, based on what you sort of said, I think that's safety, psychological safety, where it means that the team members need to feel. That they can voice their honest opinions without being reprimanded or being made fun of. I think that is, that's hard to do as a leader.

Yeah, exactly. Hmm.

right, to be able to like be honest, but also like, you know, you can have honest feedback. We all want honest feedback, but at the same time, you want to do it in a way where it's not like it's going to bring them to a level where they go, okay, well, I'm not going to do anything then, right? Or they're going to feel bad about themselves. It's like they want, if you want, like, you know, we all say, we love to have your feedback, but the reality is we're all human beings and the staff is not going to want to give you feedback because you don't, they don't know how it's going to impact. in their jobs, the safety of their jobs, so that if you can create a culture, an environment where there is psychological safety, where if that person says, hey, Mary's not doing their job, or Mary's screwing around doing other things, they need to feel comfortable they can say that to you. If they don't feel that safety, there's no way they can tell you. And so therefore this thing goes on. And then when you do find out about Mary, why didn't anybody tell me? Well, because, it's not because they didn't want to, it's because you didn't create an environment that allowed them to feel safe to do that.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I think that's a really important element to our kind of culture we do. Um, Jim, like this has been an, like, I hope that everybody's been getting a lot. I do not know that you guys have been getting a lot of tons of value from just today's podcast in regards to all the, the trials and jubilations of building a team, leading a team and creating a team. And, uh, I hope that you can take these ideas and then implement them and ask yourself the tough question, which is, have I been doing that so far? And if you haven't, um,

Yeah, totally. Hmm.

what changes do I need to make moving forward? Because it does take time. It's not gonna say like, you know, when it's in the snap of a finger, everything's gonna change. But I encourage you to look at teams as an important value of your business, but more importantly, hiring and recruiting the right players in your team is actually way more important than just hiring team for team's sake. So that's the thing that I wanna kind of leave. Is there any lasting thoughts or things that you wanna add to this?

Yeah. No, I think we covered it. It's a big topic and we wanted to address it, but not basically say, look, it's the end of the road. This is like guidelines and tools. The whole process of leadership and team is an ongoing process. And you get better at it the more you do. The better you get at it, the more you apply yourself. So that'd be the only thing I'd add on top.

Okay, excellent. Well, despite so many technical difficulties and issues that we had during this podcast You probably may or may not notice even if you're listening So but the people who are watching the video and you would notice that I change backgrounds because I'm that good I'm able to kind of switch backgrounds in an instant in the middle of the broadcast. But uh But anyways, I hope that you guys enjoyed this today And I really loved for some here some feedbacks from you guys are around teams and what you guys are thinking about that Like always please like and subscribe to us on various

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Bye-bye.