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Team

Thankful and Discouraged

by Ron Potter December 31, 2020

Today is the last day of 2020. It has completely changed the meaning of 20-20 hindsight. In fact, I hope it continues to fade in the rearview mirror.

Almost all of our Christmas cards described the rough year that was 2020. It was a joy to hear the comments about how thankful and grateful people were through all of the difficulties.

Thankful

The things I’m thankful for include my family (all healthy and living around the world), the Lord and his personal love and forgiveness, and all the things that make life bearable or easier. We are warm, have a roof over our head, and people beyond family around us that love and care for us as well.

Discouraged

The thing that discourages me the most from this year is the loss of human contact. In public, we have masks between us, are able to elbow bump at the best, and have nowhere to meet. I used to arrange to meet people for coffee on a regular basis. And so we rely on video conference. It’s just not the same.

All of my grandchildren do well with their video schooling. But what they talk about the most is not being able to be with their friends. They need human contact. I went to a small rural school system where most of my classmates were together all the way through graduation. We still get together annually and I truly do love these people. We didn’t know each other in the work world where you’re measured on your productivity. We knew each other because we were together. We shared our life dreams together. We share the difficulties with each other. We encouraged each other. We were human beings together.

What We Used to Know as Teams

Highly effective teams got to know each other as humans. We shared together. We journeyed together. We accomplished outstanding things together. If you saw someone on the team who seemed to be struggling, it was easy to take them aside, shake their hand or put a hand on their shoulder and ask, “Are you OK?” Human touch! None of that is possible in a video conference.

Today I hear leaders talk about how productive teams are because there is no time for this kind of thing during a video call. It requires that you get to the topic at hand, receive updates if necessary, set the next goals, and assign the people who will be responsible. The productivity is great! But “team-building” is not. Productivity may remain high for a period of time, but a highly-effective team needing to tackle very complex or innovative solutions will never be built.

Technical Solution

There are no technical solutions to solve this problem. However, a team I’ve been working with has formed an app called GPS4Leaders to help overcome some of these issues. While we’ll never solve the lack of face-to-face issues or overcome the need for human touch, we have focused on where the team is starting to breakdown and how to overcome that issue. The system offers guidance in terms of where-to-look for helpful hints and offers what’s called a “Coach in a Box” to help guide the users in solving the problem they face. But, there’s still nothing like a true human connection to build trust and overcome issues.

Best Solution for the Moment

While I’ll stand by my statement above that there is no technical solution to this problem, there are some things that I believe could help.

Let’s start with understanding the purpose of the various forms of communication we have available today.

Email

Email is the oldest and possibly the most used communication software. However, email was intended to pass on information from one person to another or even several people at once. It was not intended to provide psychological understanding or even humor. It is a fact-based tool.

Text Messaging

Text messaging has likely taken over as the most used communication software. I have to convince my grandchildren that it is not universally used and it is probably worse at providing understanding or humor… hence emojis.

Social Media

I believe that social media was originally intended to share thoughts with lots of people but it seems to me that for the most part, it has allowed people to vent and make outrageous statements that they would never consider making when they are face-to-face with someone.

None of these technical solutions is good at building trust and understand. So what is a person supposed to do in this socially distanced world?

Pick up the Phone!

While a phone is still a technical solution that’s not quite as good as being face-to-face, it does allow for listening. Listening for emotional clues. Listening for understanding. Listening to show respect for the other person.

GPS4Leaders

This is where GPS4Leaders tries to help. Once issues are identified in the data, GPS4Leaders will encourage the team to talk through their beliefs about the issue or have one-on-one conversations for understanding, respect, and trust.

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The First Failure of Socialism

by Ron Potter December 10, 2020

We have just finished Thanksgiving, or what we experience as Thanksgiving in this age of Covid. It is a time, rightfully so, for each of us to talk about what we’re thankful for. However, let’s not forget that the pilgrim settlement in plymouth in the early 1600s may be socialism’s first failure

Needs vs Work

In the settlement, all that was needed by individuals was provided from them, having been either produced or paid for by the collective-owned farms. The “accounting” system was determined by what the individuals needed rather than how hard they worked or earned their way.

Discontent and Starvation

The strongest colonists who worked hard in the fields all day began to resent those that received the same amount for doing nothing while the able-bodied provided all of the hard work to supply the goods. In addition to the discontent, nearly half of the colonists died during that first winter because too many people took advantage of the supplies provided by the few.

Nearly 400 years later, Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the UK said, “The trouble with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other people’s money.”

Socialism Abandoned

About two years after the famine brought on by the socialism approach, the pilgrims decided that enough was enough, a new approach was undertaken that required each family to provide for themselves. It required hard work.

Work Application

If you’ve followed my blogs, you know that I’ve tried to stay away from politics for the most part. So how do we look at our own and other’s failed attempts at socialism?

How does socialism disguise itself in the workplace? It’s not all that hard to see. Some people are there simply for the paycheck. No motivation. No extra effort. No innovation. Unfortunately, those people are left in place for various reasons even though it’s obvious to their colleagues and others they’re not pulling their weight.

What happens when that attitude is allowed to continue? Other people either:

Begin to exhibit the same traits: “Why should I put in the extra effort, create my own motivation, look for innovative approaches when others are not and no one seems to notice?”
Leave for new employment: If a person is hard-working, motivated, innovative, they begin to look for a different place to work. Just like our pilgrim’s failed effort, it leads to starvation. Starvation is the sense that productivity begins to dwindle and those left tend to wither on the vine.

Winston Churchill (where are all these UK quotes coming from all of a sudden? 😉) is quoted as saying, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those others that have been tried.”

Don’t put up with it

This form of socialism in the workplace leads to failure. Every time I’ve seen the “deadwood” taken out of the system, I’ve seen productivity increase. Not just for a moment, but long-term. Pulling together a team of highly motivated, hard-working individuals will always lead to long-term productivity gains.

Build a Team

Build a team of highly motivated people, each being productive, and you will experience long-term growth like you’ve never seen before.

Radar

Recently I watched a documentary on the development of radar that is credited with saving England during the Nazi air blitz of London. Many times individuals wanted to quit but they were always reminded that they were part of a team that was bigger than any individual. It took a team to accomplish the goal.

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Blog Leadership

Oxygen – Part III

by Ron Potter October 29, 2020

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve looked at the Project Oxygen findings at Google related to high-performing teams.

This list is from the book Work Rules by Laszlo Bock who is the person at Google that has helped shepherd the project.

The eight findings that help teams perform at their peak include:

A good coach
Empowers the team and does not micromanage
Expresses interest in and concern for team members’ success and personal well-being
Is productive and results-oriented
A good communicator – listens and shares information
Helps with career development
Has a clear vision and strategy for the team
Has key technical skills that help advise the team

In this week’s blog, we’ll cover the last three findings.

6. Helps with career development

As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs on this topic, it’s difficult for me to distinguish between Leadership issues and Team issues. This has mainly to do with my Mental Model of Team, Leadership, Culture.

This is not to say that Laszlo’s approach is incorrect, it’s just that I come at it from a different perspective.

In my mind, it’s difficult for a team to help a member in their career development. Teams can certainly contribute but it is often the leader who is in the best position to help with career development. What comes to mind is the lack of career development. I have often been hired as a consultant to work with an individual who has “gone off the rails” in the mind of their leader. The leader will tell me that unless this person deals with the issue, they will no longer have a position at the company. In every case, the individual has held a senior position in the company, often they have been Vice-Presidents.

Shocking News

When possible, I have looked back over several years of performance reviews. It’s always been amazing to me that if the person has worked for the company for any length of time, their annual performance reviews mention the issue I’ve been hired to help them deal with. And yet, when I mention to the individual that unless they correct this issue they will no longer have a position with the company, they’re shocked. They’ll say to me something to the effect that “no one has ever mentioned to me that my continued employment depends on me fixing this problem.”

People Pleasing

Why is there such a disconnect? The person dealing with the issue says “no one” has ever told me it could cost me my job. The person hiring me to tell the person will say, “I’ve put this issue in every performance review for the last several years.” Why the disconnect? I believe it’s because almost everyone wants to be a people pleaser and believe that giving people bad news counters that desire. Managers will say to an employee “you must fix this issue.” They might even say “unless this issue is fixed I can no longer keep you in this job.” But, because people don’t like to give bad news, they’ll almost immediately shift their conversation to tell the person all the things they do well. The bad news never sinks in or is dealt with. Think about that for a minute. My boss says to me: you must fix this issue. It can’t go on like this.

Yet almost immediately they will say: but I love how you handled such and such or you’re great at dealing with certain kinds of problems. What does the employee hear? Blah, blah, blah, but I love how you handle this or how you deal with these issues. You’re doing great!

If there is an issue that must be dealt with

state the issue
don’t accept excuses
don’t move on until the is a plan in place
make sure there are milestones to fix the issue
make sure the consequences are clear if the issue is not fixed

People Caring

The way to be people-pleasing is to be people caring. If people feel they are being held accountable with caring and support, they’ll be the happiest.

7. Has a clear vision and strategy for the team

Once again this sounds more like a leader issue than it is a team issue. However, while a leader should have a clear vision and strategy for the team, it should never be used to dictate to the team a course of action.

Team members need to be bought into the strategy/vision

If team members don’t have a shared strategy or vision, the team will never grow and develop together. I’ve worked with too many teams through the years that didn’t take the time or make the effort to develop a shared strategy/vision. In every case, competition develops as managers try to implement their own vision at the expense of others. It becomes a tremendous waste of resources.

Leaders must have a strategy/vision but leaders must also be humble enough to see beyond their own vision and they must have enough grit to bring the team together around a joint vision.

8. Has key technical skills that help advise the team

This final “Oxygen” is true at both the leader and the team member levels. Trustworthy teams and members must have both character and competence. It never works to have one or the other, there must be both.

Information Technology

From a leadership standpoint, I believe the Information Technology (IT) area of the business is the most vulnerable. The IT portion of the business is:

Complicated
Fast-moving/changing
Many faceted

I’ve seen too many IT leaders that fall short on one or all of these issues. When that happens, the IT department can buffalo the leader.

Tyranny of Competence

With team members, I have more often seen what Robert Quinn calls the “Tyranny of Competence” in his book, Deep Change. This happens when an individual has so much competence in a given area that it is felt the competency must be protected at all costs and therefore, the individual may have a lack of character and there are no consequences.

Character and Competence must be present for teams to thrive.

Project Oxygen

This covers the eight elements found to be meaningful in building great teams. Think about them. Incorporate them. Discuss them. The more you can build these into your own makeup or a team’s makeup, the more success and satisfaction you’ll experience in life.

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Blog Leadership

Oxygen – Part II

by Ron Potter October 22, 2020

Last week we talked about the Project Oxygen findings at Google related to high-performing teams.

This list is from the book Work Rules by Laszlo Bock who is the person at Google that has helped shepherd the project.

The eight findings that help teams perform at their peak include:

A good coach
Empowers the team and does not micromanage
Expresses interest in and concern for team members’ success and personal well-being
Is productive and results-oriented
A good communicator – listens and shares information
Helps with career development
Has a clear vision and strategy for the team
Has key technical skills that help advise the team

Leadership or Team membership

As I said last week, my mental model puts some of these in the Leadership category and some in the Team category. Some fit both. I’ll distinguish how I see each of these but you can fit them into your own Mental Model.

2. Empowers the team and does not micromanage

The word empower has been misunderstood and used in recent years. Most of the time we’re actually talking about delegation, not empowerment. In this case, I believe either word can apply.

Empowerment

The word “empowerment” refers to influence. The purpose is to build up confidence and self-esteem. If you are empowered with a piece of the business, you can influence that piece of the business, but the authority clearly lies with the leader. Empowerment is granted by the leader to grow confidence and self-esteem.

Delegation

Delegation, on the other hand, means that a piece of the business has been entrusted to you. With teams, most of them should be entrusted with their piece of the business. Entrusting a piece of the business requires trust and respect between members.

3. Expresses interest in and concern for team members’ success and personal well-being

Individual success is one part of this equation. Helping members of a team be successful will help the team be successful.

The other aspect of personal well-being is often overlooked. With almost every team I ever worked with I ran an exercise (regularly) that I called “Human Beings, not Human Doings.” In this exercise, team members got to know each other based on who they were, not what they did. Often, after running this exercise someone would make a statement that expressed the fact they had known and worked with an individual for many years (15+ in one case) and they never knew “that” about that person. All of a sudden, many actions seemed to make sense and there was a true sense of caring and empathy for the person which often helped them be more successful and better understood.

4. Is productive and results-oriented

Team members must be trustworthy. We’ve looked many times at character and competence which are the two elements of being trustworthy. An individual must have character and at the same time, they must be competent at the same time.

A person may be the most honest, high integrity, highly principled person there is (great character) but if they don’t know how to do their job, they are not trustworthy. A person may be the best at their job (highly competent) but if they don’t also have high character (honesty, integrity, principled) they will not be trusted by the team. They will not be trustworthy. Both need to be present.

5. A good communicator – listens and shares information

The key to this one is listening with the intent to understand, rather than listening with the intent to respond. If you’re listening with the intent to respond (as most of us do most of the time) we’re running a little checklist in our brain as we’re “listening” to the other person. This checklist may include things we agree with, things we don’t agree with or anything that we want to reinforce or negate as soon as there is a break in the talking. However, the goal is not to understand, the goal is to respond. When we listen to understand we start asking a whole different set of questions and the other person feels we’re making an effort to understand them. When the other person feels that way, they are much more interested in what we have to say when it’s our turn.

Google Oxygen Project

Next week we’ll wrap of the last of the eight findings of the Google Oxygen Project.

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Blog Leadership

Oxygen – Part I

by Ron Potter October 15, 2020

Have you ever been near drowning? When I was a kid I don’t know how “near” I was but I was afraid that I was drowning. Swimming at our local swimming hole I got stuck under the 55 gal drum that we had used to create a raft. There was a point when I thought I was done for but eventually broke free and surfaced to suck and gulp oxygen into my lungs. That oxygen gave me my life back!

Project Aristotle

in 2012 Google set out on the task of figuring out which teams performed the best and why. They called it Project Aristotle. The main researcher at the time was Abeer Dubey. He said, “At Google, we’re good at finding patterns.” The problem was that they didn’t find any solid patterns.

Then they looked at the work of Amy Edmondson at the Harvard Business School. Amy and her team found something they called Psychological Safety. Psychological Safety meant that team members felt safe for interpersonal risk-taking. Team members felt confident that they would not

Be embarrassed
Rejected or
Punished for speaking up

They were safe within the team!

This type of team climate is characterized by

Interpersonal Trust
Mutual Respect

Work Rules

Now comes a book titled Work Rules by Laszlo Bock. Laszlo leads Google’s People Operations. Laszlo does a good job of summarizing the findings during that time of searching for what makes the best teams.

Oxygen

So what does this have to do with Oxygen? In my 30+ years as a coach and consultant to leadership teams, I saw too many people who were going through their days feeling like I did when I was underwater and running out of oxygen. I experienced this first during one of my summer jobs during college. It was in a factory and I would watch the employees go through the shift like they were short of oxygen. Then as soon as the whistle blew, it was like sucking in that oxygen when my head first broke the surface of the water. They had new life. They were energized. They couldn’t wait to get going on whatever it was that gave them oxygen.

Project Oxygen Finding

Laszlo breaks the results into eight “Project Oxygen Findings”

A good coach.
Empowers the team and does not micromanage.
Expresses interest in and concern for team members’ success and personal well-being.
Is productive and results-oriented.
Is a good communicator – listens and shares information.
Helps with career development.
Has a clear vision and strategy for the team.
Has key technical skills that help him/her advise the team.

I’m going to ask forgiveness from Laszlo at this point but as I categorize these elements into my mental model (Team Leadership Culture) I see many of them fitting into the Leadership category more than the pure Team category.

This is not to say they are incorrect, it’s just a different mental model.

A Good Coach

Future posts will cover each of the eight findings but I’ll close today’s blog with the number one finding – A Good Coach.

Why is a good coach necessary? Can’t teams just get better on their own? Do they really need that outside source to figure this out?

The answer to these (and other Team questions) is yes, but! As good as teams get, sometimes it’s valuable just to have an outside observer and someone who has no fear of voicing opinions. Good coaches can do that.

One of the projects that I’ve talked with you about in the past is our GPS4Leaders app. It has been our opinion right from the start that an app will never replace the need for a good coach but can go a long way toward bringing a team closer to the Trust and Respect levels that is required for strong teams.

Project Oxygen Finding

Over the next few weeks, I’ll unpack each of the findings from Project Oxygen. Stay tuned.

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Blog Culture

High Tech – High Touch

by Ron Potter July 23, 2020

Those words keep haunting me. They are the four words I remember from the book Future Shock. The book was written by Alvin Toffler in 1970. That’s 50 years ago!

Description

Wikipedia says that

Alvin Toffler argued that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a “super-industrial society”. This change overwhelms people. He argues that the accelerated rate of technological and social change leaves people disconnected and suffering from “shattering stress and disorientation”—future shocked.

Stress and Disorientation

I am familiar with these feelings. I wrote about them recently in my blog titled “Divided” where I talked about being confused, hurting, and even angry. I love this country and love the people in this country. But I am feeling stress and I’m definitely disoriented.

Virtual World

Covid-19 is contributing to this stress and disorientation. By all predictions, more than half of employees indicate that they would like to stay in the virtually connected world, rather than go back to the office. I believe that many corporate leaders are salivating at the cost savings of shedding their physical office space by allowing everyone to continue in the virtual world of video connection, they just don’t know the real costs.

High Tech, High Touch

Toffler was emphasizing one point with these words. You can have all the high tech you want, but without high touch, it won’t work well. In this day of division, with many taking “sides”, what can we do to help this situation? The answer is also in the four words: High Tech, High Touch.

Without building personal, “high touch” relationships, we don’t have a chance of solving this issue.

Virtual World Better

So, if we’re going to be in this virtual world for some time to come, how do we solve the “High Touch” issue. Unfortunately, I don’t think we do completely. But with some additional High Tech we can at least get focused on the issue and help people connect and build relationships if they’re willing.

I’ve been working with a group of consultants (High Touch) and technical people (High Tech) over the last couple of years in anticipation of this virtual world happening. Even without Covid-19 impacting the world, I was seeing more and more geographically separated people working together on teams. Through this effort, we have created a platform we call GPS4Leaders. It’s made up of four modules: Interact, GPS4Teams, GPS4Leaders and GPS4Culture. We might refer to it as iTLC.

Here is a short video about the iT of iTLC.

We have designed the GPS4 modules to help virtual teams. It can help in the following ways:

Identify the makeup of the team from a personality type. Built into the system are three assessments based on Social Styles, Competing Values, and a partial Myers-Briggs. If there is discord on the team or the teams lack the ability to make decisions, the Interact Module can help.
GPS4Teams will also help the team to determine where they are now and how they get to the needed future state of a highly functioning team. This happens through team assessment and pulse surveys.
GPS4Teams also identifies disagreements. While protecting individual member scores, it will show if there is Diffusion, Polarization, or an Outlier.

The best that can happen in this virtual world is to help teams focus and spend time developing understanding and relationships between members.

Reach for the Best

It’s going to be difficult to create the relationships that are required for high functioning teams. Using the tools available can help focus the need for building these relationships. But, it’s going to be up to the team leaders and team members to use technology to help build high functioning teams. It looks like the only thing we’re going to have as the world changes.

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Blog Team

Overused Teamwork

by Ron Potter July 9, 2020

Team Leadership Culture: Teams first. I’m a big fan of teamwork. However, when it creates an overcommitted organization and conflicting priorities it is counterproductive.

The foundation of this post was inspired by a Harvard Business Review article, The OverCommitted Organization, written by Heidi K. Gardner and Mark Mortensen.

The Overcommitted Organization

In the article, they talk about the dysfunction that can happen when people are assigned to too many teams at the same time. They break it down to the following pros and cons:

PROS: By assigning people to multiple teams at once, organizations make efficient use of time and brainpower. They also do a better job of solving complex problems and sharing knowledge across groups.

CONS: Competing priorities and other conflicts can make it hard for teams with overlapping membership to stay on track. Group cohesion often suffers. And people who belong to many teams at once may experience burnout, which hurts engagement and performance.

Increased Pros or decreased Cons

So now we face the question: Is it worth increasing the PROS at the expense of decreasing the CONS?

My answer is a clear NO! Look in more detail at the expense of the CONS.

Difficult to stay on track.
We have looked at the cost of distraction many times in this blog. Our social media and instant communication can and will negatively affect productivity.
In fact, we can become so distracted on a regular basis that it reduces the brain’s ability to concentrate and think deeply. These are two features that we need more today than ever!
Group cohesion often suffers.
Without group cohesion, there is no team! Teams that tell each other the truth with respect and fully commit to team goals (regardless of personal or department goals) is at the core of great organizations. Group cohesion is essential!
Burnout.
People who experience burnout experience reduced energy, brainpower, commitment, drive, and many other aspects that make them top performers and good team members. Avoid burnout!

PROS

In my mind and experience, the list of pros is actually cons.

Efficient use of time
It’s been proven that the only people capable of multi-tasking are highly trained fighter pilots. And even these highly trained individuals are not capable of transferring the multi-tasking beyond the cockpit when their life depends upon it.
Brainpower
It’s also been proven that teams function better when multiple brains are open about a problem or situation. However, using “one” brain across multiple teams does not increase multiple team’s “brainpower.”
Solving Complex Problems
Complex problems are solved with deep thinking and moving in and out of team subgroups. Complex problems are not solved by having one brain on many teams. In fact that leads to burnout and reduces the ability to solve complex problems.

The Overcommitted Organization

Don’t misunderstand, I’m not opposing what Gardner and Mortensen are stating in their article. In fact, they use experience and solid research to prove their points. And, they reach the same conclusion that I did.

One paragraph right near the middle of their article says

Launch the team well to establish trust and familiarity. When fully dedicated to one team, people learn about their teammates’ outside lives—family, hobbies, life events, and the like. More important, it forges strong bonds and interpersonal trust, which team members need in order to seek and offer constructive feedback, introduces one another to valuable network connections, and rely on one another’s technical expertise. (Italics are mine)

This is a powerful conclusion that reinforces everything I have learned and experienced. Teams that establish trust and have an environment of constructive feedback are the most beneficial.

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Blog Leadership

Performance vs Trust

by Ron Potter May 7, 2020

Those are not my words. Those were spoken by Simon Sinek. If you have not discovered Mr. Sinek, look up his website. I read him and Share Parrish more than any other blog writers out there.

Navy Seals

Simon talks about working with Navy Seals. Navy Seals are probably the highest-performing teams on the planet. In his work with Seals, he asked, “How do you choose the guys that make it to Seal Team 6?” Seal Team 6 is the best of the best. The Seals drew the following graph:

Leader or Teammate

Nobody wanted someone from the lower left: Low Performer and Low Trust.

Everyone wanted someone from the upper right: High Performer and High Trust.

When Simon asked them which type of person they want as a leader or teammate, they all said they would prefer someone on the right side of the chart than the best performer who had low trust.

Keep in mind that these are the highest-performing teams in the world. But they would select Trust over Performance when it came to a leader or a teammate.

Corporations Have it Backward

In my thirty-plus years dealing with corporations and corporate reviews, they have all been heavily weighted toward the left side of the chart. They graded and promoted people based on their performance rather than the trust they exhibited or expected. It’s interesting to note that the Navy Seals termed that upper-left leader or teammate as toxic! Regardless of high performance, if the person wasn’t trustworthy, they were toxic.

Performance Reviews

Why do corporate reviews focus so much on high performance rather than high trust? I’m sure there are many reasons but the two that I see as most prevalent are:

Corporations often want high performance (get the job done now) over anything else. Part of the reason is that public corporations have bowed to quarterly reporting. If the return isn’t better that quarter, the leadership is often called on the carpet by Wall Street and the Investors. They don’t want to be in that position. Therefore, they promote people who produce high results, regardless of the internal costs. Remember that the Navy Seals labeled them as toxic.
It’s easier to measure performance than trust. With performance, it’s easy to check the box. Was the goal met or exceeded? Was it done on or ahead of schedule? Easy to measure and identify.
Does the person generate trust within their team? Hard to predict. The results may not show up for a long time. Corporate leaders want results this quarter, not three years from now.

Trust Builds Long-Term Performance

I’ve worked with a few leaders who ranked high on the trust scale. There are more stories, but two that come to mind include one leader who I worked with about a decade ago. Three members of his team are now CEOs of three different companies. He built trust!

Another CEO I worked with started two companies and built leadership teams that now run or are high-ranking leaders in several corporations.

Both of these leaders (and there are a few more) built leadership teams based on trust. That doesn’t mean they ignored performance, but trust ranked higher when it came to evaluations.

Visit Simon Sinek’s youtube talking about Performance vs Trust. Then evaluate what kind of leader or teammate you happen to be. Then think about the type of leader or team you want to be a part of. If you don’t like the answer to either of those questions, make a change! If you’re the kind of person that believes outperforming everyone is what will make a difference in your life, you’re in for a shock. You’ll end up very lonely.

If you’re the kind of person who exudes and promotes trust, you’ll find yourself much loved!

Lonely or loved. You make the choice.

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Blog Culture

We’re not in Kansas anymore

by Ron Potter April 16, 2020

I’ve just started reading a book titled Epidemics and Society. This book makes the point that epidemics have done more to shape society and the course of human history than wars. This book was written before our current battle with COVID-19 was even on the radar.

What will our Future Look Like?

During this time of self-containment, I’ve had many thoughts about what our future will look like when we finally emerge for the worldwide pandemic. My thoughts have taken me from movie theaters to the workplace and topics in between. We’re not in Kansas anymore!

Video Connected Teams

One of the things that I believe will happen during this time is employers and employees will realize that much can be accomplished over the Internet. While we’ve been moving this way already, this forced telecommuting may help us finally pull the trigger to use technology more broadly.

All of the collaboration software such as Microsoft Teams, WebEx for Teams, Zoom, and others are seeing this as an opportunity to push their technology farther and faster then they would have before we left Kansas. We’re not in Kansas anymore!

Art of Teamwork

We’ve heard “Art of Teamwork” used to show that collaboration is needed as much as simply getting things done by groups of people. In other words, there is an Art to building great teams with collaboration platforms.

A few years ago, a small group of my colleagues gathered to talk about creating an app that would help leaders form better teams. We believe it’s more than simply adding the “art” of great teams.

We called our app GPS4Leaders (You can see more on our webpage). In doing so, we were expressing that teams, like a good GPS system, is more than just functioning well at the moment.

Think about what a GPS system does for you:

Clearly identifies where you are now.
Helps you locate your desired destination.
Maps out the best route to reach that desired destination.

Where are you now?

Knowing where you are now means knowing who you are as a team. GPS4Leaders uses four modules to help you assess your team and guide you toward the desired future.

GPS4Leaders is made up of four modules:

Interact (available now)
Teams (available now)
Leadership (coming next)
Culture (in the near future)

Knowing where you are now requires the first two modules.

Interact helps the team identify who they are as individuals and what the make-up of the team looks like when you put all the pieces together. This is accomplished by a self-assessment looking at personality types. You can think of these similar to the familiar DICS or Myers-Briggs. We’re not trying to build the best assessment; we’re trying to make whatever assessment you use more visible and useful.

Teams looks at the dynamics within the team. GPS4Teams has two assessments built-in. But again, we’re not trying to become the best assessment in the world. Our goal is to help you assess how your doing so that you know where you are now and your progress toward a better future team.

Leadership will be built in the near future. This will allow teams to assess their leaders. It will provide the same advantages as Team but be focused on the leader.

Culture will be coming in the future. This will look at the company as a whole and determine the extent to which leaders and leadership teams are being successful in pushing positive behavior throughout the organization.

We’re not in Kansas anymore

Just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, we are now in a very different place. The rules and patterns of our old way of working together have disappeared. How are we to function now?

Please visit our website today and experience how this new app will help you navigate this brave new world.

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Blog Culture

Consequences

by Ron Potter March 2, 2020

Great Teams and Great Cultures require Consequences

I was talking with a colleague this week about lasting cultures. He mentioned that the Mayo brothers died over 80 years ago but the culture they built is still in place. Meanwhile, we’ve been associated with several companies where the culture deteriorated quickly.

One of the reasons for a lasting culture is clear and immediate consequences when team rules and cultural norms are violated. And it doesn’t matter who violates the rule.

Immediate Consequences

I graduated from Michigan and was a fan of the Fab Five. When Michigan hired Juwan Howard as the new basketball coach last year, I was thrilled. Juwan also seemed to be thrilled to tears that he was “coming home” to Michigan.

But, it wasn’t long before his first test as a new college coach would come front and center.

Star player violates the team code

The Big Ten schedule was not yet a month old in his first year as a coach when something happened. Michigan’s star point guard violated team rules. After a hot start to the season, Michigan was now struggling and needed all of the players more than ever.

Coach Howard didn’t hesitate, he suspended the Star Player.

No delay
No leniency
No privileges

Coach Howard said the player had been suspended for “violation of team policies. We have team rules and unfortunately he broke one of them.”

It didn’t make any difference that the team desperately needed it’s starting point guard right now. He broke team rules and he was suspended!

Team and Corporate Rules

Do you have team rules? Is everyone aware of those rules?

More importantly, does everyone know the consequences of violating those rules? Will anyone and everyone be punished according to those consequences regardless of who they are, what position they hold, or how “indispensable” they are?

Are there consequences to breaking the rules, team or culture?

Without the consequence of rule violation, no team or culture will sustain itself.

Know what the rules are! Know what the consequences are!

Rules must be clear. Teams and cultures must be committed to those rules. Without them, teams and cultures will never last!

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Blog Culture Leadership Team

Team Leadership Culture

by Ron Potter February 13, 2020

Over this last year, we’ve spent time and detail defining the Team and Culture sections of Team, Leadership, and Culture.

Our Monday blogs have spent a great deal of time over the last couple of years looking at the Leadership elements from my book Trust Me. Let’s wrap up this section with a summary of the three elements.

Team First (Sort of)

As I’ve said in the past, I believe Teams should be worked on first followed by Leadership than Culture.

However, the overlap between Team and Leadership makes it very difficult to do them in order.

You’ll notice from the matrix above that there is a great deal of overlap between the Team and Leadership columns. It seems as if you can’t accomplish one without the other. I believe this is true!

The first element of the Team list includes “Truth”. However, you won’t have the reputation of a “truthful” person if there is no humility, compassion or integrity.

Respect requires humility, development, and commitment from the Leadership list. Neither one of these overlapping issues is restricted to the three that I mentioned for each one. There are elements in all eight of the Leadership outline that are required in one or more of the Team outline. Essentially, you can’t have one without the other.

Next Steps

Start by focusing on each of the first two outlines, Team and Leadership.

With the Leadership list, become much more self-aware and get some straight feedback from a trusted advisor, coach, or partner.

For the Team list, it will require the entire team to be made aware of the four elements and do some honest grading in each of the categories. In our next blog, I’m going to introduce you to an app called GPS4Teams that will help you accomplish this goal.

Culture

The Culture section follows work on Team and Leadership. Until you’ve improved to a very high level on the Team and Leadership aspects, any efforts at improving Culture tends to fall on deaf ears.

A friend and I were discussing why some cultures last (the Mayo brothers died decades ago but the culture at the Mayo Clinic seems to continue). In identifying those companies where the culture doesn’t last, we always came back to elements of Team and Leadership that either changed or were lacking over the years. You can’t build a great culture without first building great teams and leaders.

Emotional Quotient

Many people feel a high IQ is sufficient for solving problems. The interesting thing is that there has never been any correlation found between high IQ and success.

What has been well documented is the correlation between high EQ and success.

Emotional Quotient can be divided into two components, Personal Competence and Social Competence. You’ll see the Personal Competence of self-awareness, self-regulation and self-motivation relating to Leadership. The Social Competence of social awareness and social skills relate to building Team.

Team and Leadership = Success

This correlation tells us that success requires great teams, great leadership leading to great culture.

Get started on your success today. There’s nothing mysterious about the process.

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Blog Culture Culture Series

Culture – Consistency: Agreement

by Ron Potter December 19, 2019

Agreement that leads to commitment is a long, arduous process. It requires building great teams that listen to each other, respect each other and use a great process to reach agreement. Agreement leads to commitment which leads to better execution. This commitment happens in the face of initial positions that may be counter to the final agreement. Reaching agreement is hard work.

Culture Elements

Items that the Denison Culture Survey asks about include:

win-win solutions
consensus or agreement is reached on difficult issues
while the process may be long and arduous, it’s always easy to reach agreement in the end
is the agreement in line with the core values

Intact Teams

These questions are focused on teams that work together. We’ll look at building coordination and integration across the corporation in the next blog post. But coordination across the organization never happens if we aren’t able to reach agreement within teams first.

Agreement and commitment were the subjects of a series of blogs that I wrote in the first half of 2019 on building great teams.

Respect

Reaching agreement within teams requires a great deal of respect for each member of the team. Good leaders should expect that each member of a team has either a slight or dramatic different point of view. This diversity of thought is what leads to great decisions. But only if there is respect within the team for each person’s point of view. If there is an element of right and wrong or someone believes they know the “truth” while everyone else simply has a different perspective, a true agreement cannot be reached.

Culture Survey

The culture survey does a great job at pointing out the symptoms of agreement or disagreement. It doesn’t actually help us solve the problem but clearly identifies if a problem exists. If the culture survey indicates there is a lack of agreement, that should serve as a big red flag that lots of internal work is required to build up the respect and processes of teams.

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