Episode 8 - Building A Team

The hosts discuss the importance of building a successful team and the role of leadership in setting goals and objectives. They use examples from various fields to illustrate the need for a shared vision and alignment among team members. They also highlight the challenges of selecting the right people for a team and the consequences of misalignment. The hosts mention an article from Forbes that provides six elements for building a winning team, including enlisting for potential and fostering a culture of continuous learning and growth. Hello and welcome to another episode of Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way. We've got Chris here and John here and today Johnny what are we talking about today on our next episode? Today we're talking about how to build a team. Building a successful team, right? A good team. Yeah, of course. It has to be good. Look, it's a very interesting topic in a sense that you're dealing with humans again and as we've seen in previous episodes, right Johnny? I love to talk about the human, right? Yes. And it's been something that I've been growing with personally since my childhood and I reflect back, John, when I was a child, right? And I'm talking like you know, primary school leading to high school. I was a social recluse. I was your typical intellectual, right? Loved science. I even liked art but anyway go figure. But you know, I had always aspired aspirations to build and do amazing things, you know, with defying science and engineering and all sorts of principles. The world was my oyster, Johnny. But because I was socially recluse, right? I was always struck up with the concept of how can one person achieve this and the point here is that one person cannot. So for example, I mean look at easy, right? Henry Ford, the Ford Motor Company. Yes, he was a founder but he did not build the company on his own, right? He's not a machinist for producing the engines on the shop floor nor was he a spray painter for the cars, etc, right? He was a visionary. He was a leader. He had a team. He put together a team. Same can be said for Igor Sikorsky with the Sikorsky Helicopter Corporation, right? These people were leaders but they did not succeed alone. They built a team and they strived to make that team into something that is winning and succeeds. Yes, also these people had a vision and a dream and you must have a purpose to your company before you start recruiting or hiring anybody because leadership is about leading and you have to have a pathway and a goal for people to go to. So they come on a journey with you. If there's no journey for the people to go on, they won't follow you. So you can't leave them. So that's the role of the leader, to set up that goal and objectives for the company. And in turn, that is shaping their roles and responsibilities of people in a team and then their performance tasks for them to do to achieve their goal. That's a good point because the team is not just about people, right? You can get people from anywhere and you can get good people with good work ethics from anywhere as well, right? But if you don't coordinate and align an overarching vision or mission, then you've nailed it there, Johnny. Yeah, so Chris is a car builder. You know he bought some VWs on the weekend. The Volkswagen, it's a hobby, it's a side hustle. Yeah, anyway, Chris is going to build himself his VW project. Himself. But if he had a team of VW students that wanted to help him, he could build it a lot faster and cheaper than him doing it himself, maybe. If the people are aligned to Chris's goal of having the number one VW shop in Queensland. Well, it's true, right? I mean, it's a basic example. But again, to achieve something grander on your own, you can't do parallel activities, parallel tasks, right? I mean, you think of something as rudimentary as an old Volkswagen. There's not many bits, but you take something complex like an aircraft or, heck, a corporation that distributes building materials to a whole entire massive region, there's a lot of moving pieces. And so you need someone that has an overarching goal. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, I always love, Johnny, in these ways to talk about how we've seen examples of bad building of teams that we can always learn from failures. Yeah. Have you seen examples in your line of work where the wrong people were selected, the wrong vision was distributed, and you ended up with some sort of mal-alignment or misalignment? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So bad. Yeah. Soccer, for example, I recruited, so I built a team, and we advertised, and we recruited people for the team. Some of these people were not at a skill set for the team, so I asked them to meet the mission and the vision, which is to win a championship. But we let these people stay on the team. So the people who had the skill set would get pissed off at the other people because they couldn't do the job of what they were asked to do on the soccer field, because they didn't have the right skill set or weren't good enough to do the objective. So that was a failure. We came last. So I learned from that. You lost the camaraderie. Camaraderie in the team, yeah. So it wasn't just a leisurely, hey, the vision here is to build a team to leisurely play a sports match and thus enjoy the social aspects of it, and that there be the goal. No, this was about actually getting the trophy. Yeah, that's right, yeah. So the objective was to get the trophy, but some guys were just still playing leisurely. So you had a skill mismatch. A skill mismatch, yeah. And at work, I've had the same thing at work. We've hired people, look, their certificate is okay. But then after three months, their ethics didn't match up to what we said in our mission statement, to be honest with people. And they've lied multiple times to customers and staff members. So we had to go. So these people weren't good contributions or members to become part of a solid winning team. That's right, yeah. And we've had the same with Air Force. And any of those that are aware of the military game, right, defence members, not just in Australia, but often overseas, including America, for example, they post around into jobs. They inherit roles because the powers that be say, go here, do that. And those roles, it may or may not be within your proficiency. There'll be some small relevance to your particular professional accreditations and credentials. But then, for example, there may be misalignments like rather than providing advice for, hypothetically, engineering or something technical, instead now you're actually leading a team and that perhaps is a misalignment to your skill set. And thus then the leaders that provide those postings and directions to members that don't fit in, they haven't actually built a winning team. A defence unit has to live with that and manage that, unfortunately, and make that work. And I myself, Johnny, have been in times where we've been in teams where I've inherited staff that have been posted in and are not good fits for the role. They've got adoption of the vision. They even have a good heart and a good work ethic, but they simply just don't click or not align to the job per se. And we find that we have to go and tailor and compensate for their deficiencies and in turn that can cause a heap of dramas and people think there's special treatment and stuff too, but it's a difficult thing to manage. At the end of the day, if we picked the right person for the job to build the winning team because we need a team of X, Y, Z people with these particular skill sets, it would have been far better than simply inheriting people posted in and you just willy-nilly get whatever you're given. Yes, yes. So, that's another quandary if you have an interview with three guys and they're all terrible. Yeah? Yeah, yeah. Yeah? But you have to get something out and if you're employed somewhere by Friday, today's Monday, what are you going to do? Are you going to wait through that four days or are you going to offer somebody a year? I've seen this at work. We've had periods where we've had significant staff deficiencies where everyone is hurting as a result of surging with their workload and we needed people, just bums on seats is all we wanted. And they, the powers that be of the workplace, would interview and they'd say, none of them are suitable. And you think to yourself, you know what, surely even if we had a lacklustre candidate, could we make it work? Notwithstanding, though, that once you've got someone employed under a full-time arrangement, at least in Australia anyway, right, it's very hard to get rid of them. And that's the risk, right? Yeah. But you also have a three-month probation. Three-month probation. Or a six-month probation in contrast. So, as long as you structure them right, you can get rid of them in that period of time. But, yeah. What did you do in that particular instance? Was this a real example? Yeah, every example of three months, you're done. Everybody's got a performance every time. I need somebody, even if they're bad, and if they are that bad and I can't make sure they're good, then out you go. I'm not having you on my wedding team because you're not going to help. There's the door, buddy. You have a shot. Here, I'll give you a shot. Here you go. Show off the time. You perform, do what they say, or you're done. You've got six months of it. Yeah, yeah. So, I've done quite a bit of research in this area and I try to find some structure for our listeners to at least have some sort of a model with this whole concept of building a team, right? And one good model came from Forbes.com by an author called Sagi Eliyahu, and she's a Forbes Council member, and the article was written in September 2021, titled, How to Create a Truly Winning Team. And she put together six different elements for building a company where the desire is to succeed, and that's the primary component of this company's DNA. And she often talks about the success and the drive to success being in the DNA, the very fundamental existence and rationale of the organisation. I mean, it's a vision. Yeah. Strategy. Yeah. One of the first concepts that she talks about is enlist for potential. And so, that's where members have the right mindset or at least demonstrate that at the interviews and show that they have a drive to learn and grow. So, it's interesting. Potential doesn't necessarily mean that you're there, right? That's right. And hypothetically, if you were to have someone that wasn't there versus someone that was and didn't want to grow anymore, I mean, you'd be more interested to have someone that had the motivation to adjust and grow and shift. Yeah. You're always going to have a learning curve in any new job. Because you're walking into a new organisation, every new organisation does something slightly different to the past one, right? So, it's not really on what they... It's on their adaptability to adjust and to learn. When you look at jobs on their resume, you know, you go, how did this person learn the skill set? Who did this person learn the skill set to do the job? Is there a transfer of skills from the past job to be able to do this job? Yeah. Yeah. The second one, and we've covered this before. I think, before we said this, people, especially older guys, older people, think that it's like an old dog doesn't learn new tricks. So, they're pitting the old guys that they can't learn. I guarantee you, they can learn if you give them a chance. And they have a lot of background experience in the past and previous jobs and they could transfer the knowledge across if you give them a chance. I think that's another deficiency in hiring. And also hiring people like the employees themselves. So, if somebody's likeable and they can talk and have a chat, they'd be more likely to be employed. But the guy, they're just copying and mimicking you. Yeah. You're not really creating diversity of thought within the team. You create more you. So, you're more putting yes men in your team because the guy is like you. If he agrees with you, he's going to put his thing. You know what I mean? You want diversity of thought. You want them to be there. We disagree with you all the time, but you want people to be willing to share different views. Yeah. Have the courage. Have the courage. Yeah, that's right. To speak up. Yeah, absolutely. The second principle was lead by example. And we've covered that before. And that's involving, like what you said, Johnny, strategy, having a purposefully led team where it's really to set standards and holds everyone, including themselves, to account against that standard drive for reaching the organisation's goals. Yeah. And, like, KPIs. People focus in your head. This is how you do it. Yeah. You set the benchmark. And you go, look at the average. We'll ask the KPI. Let's look at who's above it. Let's look at who's below it. And let's talk to the guys who are below it. How did they go off? And ask the guys who are above it, how did they get there? And as soon as you've got those guys, get up there. And hold them accountable. And hold them accountable, of course. Including yourself as the leader, right? Of course. You own this team. You own this team. You've got to do the work as well, so the KPIs can be met. The third principle is growing together. And, in this case, it's where every team member must be engaged and be prepared to do whatever it takes to achieve a common goal. And that goes without saying, doesn't it, Johnny? Yeah. And the fourth principle of the six is foster a winning mentality. So I thought this one was interesting in particular. It was saying teams who are encouraged to take risks come to believe anything is achievable and employees should be shown how to strive for the best and never look back. So, for example, if you try something and fail, don't dwell on it. And that kind of falls into the next one. But before we get there, though, or into the subsequent ones anyway. That's right. We're very into the joy and suffering. Yeah, that's right. We deal with that. Yeah. But taking risks, right? And that's something we've covered with regards to change management. That's right. If something doesn't work, do something different. Have the courage. Number five, teamwork makes the dream work. Cliche. Make sure everyone can raise their voice and have their contributions taken seriously, albeit, and again, we've said this before, you don't have to agree to someone's perspective. But if you do go a different way to what your team has contributed, you have to at least be able to rationalise and justify it, right? Exactly. If you don't communicate well with that, you're going to create animosity. But you want your people to contribute. You want to foster that. If they're not going to contribute, get it out of them. Go talk to them. Ask them. And the last one, Johnny, was don't let failure derail progress. Again, it's a subject we've touched on, but this is about winning a team, about building a winning team. And so with this sixth one in particular, you've got to analyse what's wrong, yes, but don't dwell. Put your focus on how you can win next time. And you've got to go and lead that example to your team and set that as a norm, a standard. And everyone else ought to be sharing these exact same principles as well, right? And lastly, Sajee sums it up saying that people like to say a team is only as strong as its weakest member. However, it is worth considering that perhaps a team is only as strong as its leader because they are the only ones, at the end of the day, that have the true power to pass on the winning DNA of the organisation to the group of people that they manage and lead. You're not going to have a winning team if you're not going to be a competent leader, right? You may be lucky. You're super lucky. If you're incompetent, then you can't... I liken it to an orchestra, right? You need a conductor. Yes. And orchestras sound absolutely awful if they're all playing the same tune. Yeah, that's right. But you may be lucky and you may practice not having a conductor. It may be a bit out of control a little bit, but some people might play a tune by themselves, right? And get away with it, right? But, at the end of the day, on performance, you want to have a conductor. You want to be playing all together. Unless it's jazz. Jazz is just loose anyway. So it goes anyway. Yeah, I know. But what I was going to say about the strength of the leader, if the leader is not, say, the leader is not strong or has no um, the honours of violence, or her doesn't have the, you know, to talk about the um, the problems, the tough conversations, the experience of it, um, yeah, their reputation is at stake. Yeah, it's an art too. Like, leading people can be difficult, right? It's not easy sometimes. It is the hard yards, and that's why you do get paid more, right, in most instances. But it comes easier with practice if you're just simply jumping. Give it a go. And I think that's where role-playing comes about. So when you're doing it for real, you already know what, how the other person is going to react to the situation. So, a great example of, when we fired a guy, me and my dad role-played it, and our dad was the firee, I was the fire, I was, The fire. Yeah, and we were going through it as a role-play, and that guy went ballistic, and this is what could happen. You have to be able to prepare for it, and yeah. And um, so another time we did it, and it was called Wyatt, and it was like, oh, what's going on here? Got a cry. Yeah, so again, you experience that as a role-play, right? Yeah. Now we're going to have it live, and with the real stuff, and we're going to see what's really going to happen. If you don't role-play, you are, and it's going in the head first, you don't know what's coming up. No. And that's what people get scared of, because the fear of the reaction of the other person, not to be able to think, to move the head and think, I was going to respond. I was going to know what I had to move. Yeah. So, you know, that's a great tool to practice incorporating these facets to build a winning team, by having role-plays of certain conversations to shape and grow, and all sorts of, all that good stuff. But I do have a question for you there, Johnny. These principles, they talk about enlisting, employing the right people, et cetera. We're talking about grassroots, hypothetically, you've got nobody and you're starting off scratch. What happens as a leader if you inherit a group of people? Do the same principles apply? How would it be different? How would it be different? Well, you're walking in, and you're the new guy, right? And everybody is getting to meet you, and you're building relationships with these guys, and you're finding out what they do and stuff, and then you're going to watch them as a team, how they perform and analyze them, and then you're going to say, well, how do we, you know, put some stretch goals in for each of them and see how they can do it. Yeah. Yeah, and then have a look at them, and see what, they're going to look at you and analyze how you work, and you're going to look at them and see how they work, and see what good habits they have and what bad habits they have. Yeah, that's a good point. There's a period of observation, and then you'll have to go and see the strengths and weaknesses and see how you can leverage individual strengths and weaknesses to allocate roles or at least leverage roles to achieve the vision, right? That's right, yeah. Mr. Lyman, the guy comes in and says, oh, I don't like my job, but I'm better at that job. I know how to do that job better. And you can associate one with the other person, oh, I don't like my job, I like his job, and you just do it that way. So instead of employing and assigning people to roles, you can get roles assigned to people. To people, yeah. Yeah, yeah, and you know, it's alongside, and there's a lot of work. At the end of the day, though, you've got to have a play as a leader. You've got to keep these focuses in, and it all comes back down to what you said, Johnny, in my opinion anyway. Vision and strategy is the foremost thing that covers the whole lot of it, the umbrella. The umbrella. But to that end, Johnny, that's the end of Episode 8. So we're going to be looking at our Episode 9 next time, and what subject would that be, Johnny? That will be on team performance. Pretty important topic, right? Yes. You're building a winning team. How do you know they're winning? It's a great question. So please, stay tuned until next time, and we'll discuss that and explore some techniques there. Yeah. All right. On, leave, follow, or get out of the way. Peace.