Employee Engagement Expert: How You Can Build a High Performing Team For Your Business w/ David Burkus

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<v Speaker 1>I wish I had a better name than the team culture triangle.

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<v Speaker 1>I once jokingly on stage referred to it as the Triforce of team culture, which is a Zelda reference that, like three people in the room, understood.

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<v Speaker 2>Building the best team ever.

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<v Speaker 2>We're going to look at all the things that you and I need to understand so that we can look at the way we do business and look at the way we build teams and do it with a finesse that gets us the highest performing team.

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<v Speaker 1>Some things you just cannot speed up, and the more time you give yourself, and the more forgiving about that, I think, the better you soar right.

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<v Speaker 1>It's no surprise that the largest airplanes with the longest range also require the longest runways to get up to speed.

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<v Speaker 2>But David says fire all the managers.

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<v Speaker 2>What do you mean?

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<v Speaker 2>Well, there's a thing called intelligent failure.

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<v Speaker 2>Let's get to it, David Berkus.

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<v Speaker 2>So, David, your definition of success.

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<v Speaker 2>How do you define it?

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, man, I'm so corny when it comes to this one, and I'll tell you what I mean by that.

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<v Speaker 1>My first job out of school, before I went back to grad school and went down the whole professor route, I was in sales, and when you work in sales, inevitably someone is going to hand you a Tom Hopkins book, right?

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<v Speaker 1>And it's going to yeah, you know what I mean, right, and it's going to be a bunch of gobbledygook about closes that make other people feel awkward, and I have pushed most of that out of my brain.

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<v Speaker 1>But there's one thing I could never forget, which is that Tom's definition of success was the continuous journey toward the achievement of predetermined worthwhile goals, and I've never found a better definition than that, so I just stole it right.

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<v Speaker 1>Continuous journey, meaning you're not going to get there, because every time you hit a goal you're going to set a new one.

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<v Speaker 1>Predetermined, meaning it doesn't happen by accident.

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<v Speaker 1>Worthwhile, meaning you actually want to do it.

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<v Speaker 1>And then goals, meaning you're not just shooting in the dark, you've got something you're actually sort of going for.

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<v Speaker 1>And I've just I've never found a better definition of that.

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<v Speaker 1>And so that's when I hear that success word, that's the first thing that comes into my head.

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<v Speaker 2>I was lucky enough to share the stage with Tommy in Australia, back in oh gotta be 20 something years ago now in Sydney, australia.

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<v Speaker 2>So you know, when you think of success, where in life did success become your choice?

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<v Speaker 2>Like, where did you say I'm going to be a successful person?

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean for me probably high school era, right.

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<v Speaker 1>So my story is a really interesting one.

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<v Speaker 1>When I was in high school, that was when I was sort of like, hey, I want to be a writer, right, and I went to undergrad to study English and creative writing, fiction, right, novelist, that sort of thing, and then, while I was there, took some electives in psychology and that sort of thing.

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<v Speaker 1>I just became fascinated with that, right, and the people that were using good creative writing skills to talk about this, right.

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<v Speaker 1>So this is Dan Pink, free Agent Nation.

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<v Speaker 1>This is early Gladwell stuff, like the articles, the books hadn't been out yet, et cetera.

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<v Speaker 1>Um, and so that was when.

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<v Speaker 1>That was when I found the path.

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<v Speaker 1>But, like, even in high school, it was like you, you can't not say, like, I want my name on books, right, and not think, okay, I'm, I need to be a success at this, I can't just shoot in the dark, right.

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<v Speaker 1>That's when the goal now I had no idea when I'm 17 years old that it would be psychology, leadership, teamwork, books, et cetera, right, but that was probably kind of the start, right.

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<v Speaker 1>That was the first sort of big goal.

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<v Speaker 1>You can't say you want to be a writer without then setting a goal of having a published book.

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<v Speaker 1>So that was the first real goal, right?

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and that's amazing, that you get to start in high school really setting goals for your life.

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<v Speaker 2>I mean that's, I think a lot of people don't get to really setting goals for most of their life and when they hit a podcast like this or a book like Tommy's or something it, it switches them.

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<v Speaker 2>What do you think switched for you when you started setting goals then?

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<v Speaker 1>setting goals, then, um, this sounds terrible.

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<v Speaker 1>Um, I, I think it was when you get old enough to realize where people are without them, right?

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<v Speaker 1>So so think about this.

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<v Speaker 1>Going going down the path I've decided I wanted to be a writer.

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<v Speaker 1>I'm in, I'm in public school in Massachusetts.

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<v Speaker 1>Who is teaching me?

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<v Speaker 1>Inevitably people who didn't actually hit their goals right.

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<v Speaker 1>If they did hit their goals of being successful writers, et cetera, they wouldn't be in a public school room teaching.

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<v Speaker 1>No offense like, teaching is a noble profession.

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<v Speaker 1>I was an academic, I was an educator for 10 years at university level.

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<v Speaker 1>But my point is like you start to realize, oh, shoot, like, even these people didn't necessarily help me.

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<v Speaker 1>Maybe they had the goal and didn't sort of pursue it, right.

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<v Speaker 1>But I think as soon as you get old enough.

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<v Speaker 1>The other thing that happened to me was I was in high school, my senior year, actually my whole high school life, I worked at a supermarket.

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<v Speaker 1>There's a.

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<v Speaker 1>There's a chain in new England called market basket.

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<v Speaker 1>Any of your listeners know it.

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<v Speaker 1>You know it's a.

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<v Speaker 1>It was a great place to work, but I met you end up meeting a lot of people who are three or four years down the road from you.

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<v Speaker 1>There is of people who are three or four years down the road from you, so they're in their early 20s and you're 17.

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<v Speaker 1>And they're boasting about their $45,000 a year job because that's like mind-blowing money to a 21-year-old.

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<v Speaker 1>And then you're kind of like doing the math and you're like no, it's not.

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<v Speaker 1>So that I mean inevitably like meeting people being old enough to realize that not everyone gets everything they want in life, and interacting with people who didn't is what I think really woke me up.

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<v Speaker 2>So what's the David Berkus formula for success, then?

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<v Speaker 2>What are the ingredients that make someone successful?

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah.

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<v Speaker 1>So I think first, if you go with my stolen Tom Hopkins definition, right, you have to sort of have a predetermined worthwhile goal.

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<v Speaker 1>I'm also hugely influenced now this is me switching from sales guy to intellectual I'm also hugely influenced by Roger Martin, right, whose two big strategy questions are where do we play and how do we win?

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<v Speaker 1>Right.

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<v Speaker 1>So predetermined worthwhile goals is also that where are we playing, what are we accomplishing here, what's our goal, et cetera.

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<v Speaker 1>But then how do we win is the really interesting question, right, and this is where I differ from a lot of people.

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<v Speaker 1>I think it's kind of I'm a big proponent of the idea that different is better than best, right.

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<v Speaker 1>And so when you're looking at those individual goals, just saying I'm going to be in the best in the world, that's a really tough strategy.

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<v Speaker 1>There only gets to be one of those right, I'm certainly not the best writer in the world, I'm not the best speaker in the world, I'm not the best standup comedian in the world, et cetera, like my unique value proposition to the market, that that hires me for a speech or a workshop, et cetera.

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<v Speaker 1>Is this kind of talent stack of, like I call it smart guy you'd want to have a beer with right.

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<v Speaker 1>It's this talent stack of like.

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<v Speaker 1>Okay, call it smart guy, you'd want to have a beer with right.

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<v Speaker 1>It's this talent stack of like.

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<v Speaker 1>Okay, I can cite the data as good as your sort of Adam Grant's, et cetera in the world, and yet I can crack some jokes and pay attention to what's in the room and do to use a stand-up comedy term do crowd work in the middle of a talk and that sort of thing, and that's a differentiator, right.

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<v Speaker 1>And so that's my thing.

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<v Speaker 1>There's sort of those two questions what is that actual goal?

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<v Speaker 1>And then what's your strategy to get there?

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<v Speaker 1>And your strategy can't just be outwork, because there only gets to be one person who grinds so much that they become the best in the world, but there's a lot of people that get to be differentiated categories of one, and so that's kind of what I go through in that formula right, you need the goal, but then you need the differentiated plan to get there.

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<v Speaker 2>Love it, Love it for sure.

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<v Speaker 2>You know it's amazing.

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<v Speaker 2>There's so many methodologies to get to success, and success is not one thing for any group of people.

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<v Speaker 2>I always ask, though what's your theory on the relationship between failure and success?

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah well, I think.

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<v Speaker 1>I think the intelligent failures would be the term that I would use right, and an intelligent failure is something you can really learn from.

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<v Speaker 1>An intelligent failure is something.

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<v Speaker 1>It's something it's kind of like Kevlar, like like wearing a bulletproof vest.

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<v Speaker 1>You're going to take hits.

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<v Speaker 1>What you want is to make sure you're not taking any hits that take you out Right.

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<v Speaker 1>And so when you're doing, when you're going for risks, you need risks for sure, and you need to run experiments.

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<v Speaker 1>You need to try stuff.

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<v Speaker 1>I've tried all sorts of stuff in building out my brand and putting out different content.

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<v Speaker 1>We had a magazine at one point.

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<v Speaker 1>We had all of this different stuff, but the goal was never to get so tilted towards anything that that failure would take us out of the game.

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<v Speaker 1>I firmly believe in the line of work that I'm in.

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<v Speaker 1>I just need as many at-bats as possible, I need to step up and take as many trials as possible.

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<v Speaker 1>I need to make sure that none of them are a death blow, and when I do that, then some of them are going to fall apart and I can go why, and I can learn from it, et cetera.

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<v Speaker 1>You're going to need to extract those lessons.

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<v Speaker 1>Failure, after all is feedback, but only if you're still alive.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I got feedback.

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<v Speaker 1>I'm dead yeah exactly so that's my goal is the intelligent risks that make room for failure.

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<v Speaker 1>But not failure.

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<v Speaker 1>That's final failure, that's just sort of feedback, and then you learn and you grow and you pivot and you adjust from that.

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<v Speaker 2>What brought you to leadership management team?

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<v Speaker 2>What brought you to that as like a thing that you know?

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<v Speaker 2>As you said, you wanted to be a creative writer, but you end up writing about this amazing other subject.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so.

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<v Speaker 1>So I fall in love with the idea of writing about social science and writing stuff that's actually helping people, using storytelling to not only tell the case study of a company or a leader or a team, but also to tell the story of how we discovered this psychological principle.

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<v Speaker 1>Right, and in the beginning I kind of had intellectual ADHD.

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<v Speaker 1>Right.

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<v Speaker 1>There was a book on creativity and innovation.

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<v Speaker 1>There's a book on networks and network science.

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<v Speaker 1>There was a sort of future of work book called Under New Management.

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<v Speaker 1>That was all sorts of different trends and it took kind of getting all three books out.

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<v Speaker 1>This is that.

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<v Speaker 1>Who is it?

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<v Speaker 1>I think the Kierkegaard quote about life only being able to be understood backwards right, it took having three out in the marketplace that are just scattered out there to realize it's like wait a minute.

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<v Speaker 1>The through line through these is teams, right.

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<v Speaker 1>So the most highlighted passage in the first book on creativity is the phrase creativity is a team sport, and that's the thing everybody wants to talk about is how do you not boost your own individual creativity but how do you get teams to work together?

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<v Speaker 1>The Under New Management book is a bunch of different future work policies, but they also represent that shift from doing solo work to doing teamwork.

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<v Speaker 1>And the networking book is really just about how you partner with and collaborate with other people in the network of your space.

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<v Speaker 1>So that's where I had this sort of realization that the through line is just sort of teams, and that's when I went deep on it.

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<v Speaker 1>Right Now.

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<v Speaker 1>It just so happened, because of where we were in the world, that that next book was a book about teams remotely.

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<v Speaker 1>How do you work with a team when they're not with a team?

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<v Speaker 1>Because that's, every team was working remotely.

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<v Speaker 1>But that became the through line and so that's become my sort of niche where I've dedicated all of my spare time and research, learning more about that field, researching more in that field, and then also that becomes if that's my input, that's, the majority of my output is focused in on that team's idea.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, let's dive into them.

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<v Speaker 2>Actually, let's start with the fire all the managers, which is something that people throw it around.

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<v Speaker 2>It's like fire all the managers and for years people go.

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<v Speaker 2>I don't want to be a micromanager, I want to be a leader and I'm like but how does anything get done in your company, you know?

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<v Speaker 2>So take me more into that theory too, because I think it's important.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so this is again another, another theory that came out there that I wrote a lot about without the realization that it's really about teams.

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<v Speaker 1>Right, fire all the managers doesn't mean nothing gets managed, but it does mean that the work of management so setting budgets, making decisions, tracking, accountability, performance, feedback, hiring, etc.

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<v Speaker 1>A lot of those functions are actually better suited for the whole team, right, and you know, what I think is interesting is you write this book called Fire or you write a chapter called Fire All the Managers inside of this book, and everybody, exactly what you said, thinks it's about frontline and middle managers, and I think I probably was at the time.

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<v Speaker 1>Right, because it's about this making sure people aren't micromanagers.

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<v Speaker 1>Ironically, the place you see it the most is actually in senior leadership teams.

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<v Speaker 1>I've worked with so many senior leadership teams that are now truly collaborative teams instead of just people reporting to the CEO.

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<v Speaker 1>Right, 20 years ago, that senior leadership team, you probably didn't even want to use the word team, right, because all they were was different representatives of their own little fiefdoms into operations and finance and tax and whatever.

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<v Speaker 1>Never seen it at all Right.

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<v Speaker 1>And now they're realizing wait a minute, this CEO thing, it actually works better if we're a senior leadership team of seven or eight people that are collaboratively making these decisions.

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<v Speaker 1>Now my hope is that trickles down.

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<v Speaker 1>But we've started to see that shift there and that's what it's really about.

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<v Speaker 1>You can leave someone in there with the title of manager.

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<v Speaker 1>Most of these companies a few go to sort of co-CEOs and that sort of thing.

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<v Speaker 1>Most of them still have an appointed CEO, but that CEO realizes that his or her job is a whole lot better if there's a much more collaborative, team-centric approach to this right.

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<v Speaker 2>I noticed Alan Mulally's quote on your latest book and Alan was probably one of the best at I think my favorite quote of his is my job is to not say anything.

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<v Speaker 2>You know it's like, that's it.

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<v Speaker 2>How does that theory like cause?

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<v Speaker 2>I love the way he approaches that and it relates a lot back to your stuff.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, no, I I've been fortunate enough to learn a ton from from Alan and Alan is my pick from as like greatest living CEO.

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<v Speaker 1>He's not currently CEO, but he's still alive.

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<v Speaker 1>Um, and I was fortunate enough to meet him through Marshall Goldsmith, who's been sort of a mentor of mine, and Alan's whole phrase is working together.

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<v Speaker 1>Right, even when he was at Boeing before the turnaround of Ford, it was very much about if we don't actually work together on this, make decisions collaboratively, none of us are as smart as all of us right, then we're not going to do this around Now.

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<v Speaker 1>What I think is really interesting is when that working together model came over to Ford.

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<v Speaker 1>So he was hired in 2006.

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<v Speaker 1>So again, this was actually kind of the beginning of that shift to a collaborative senior leadership team In 2006,.

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<v Speaker 1>His sort of grand realization was like we're not going to turn this company around unless we all start working together instead of everyone just defending their division, their department and casting blame in other places.

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<v Speaker 1>Right, which requires a lot more again, seeing everything as we're one team, but creating the psychological safety and the identity shared identity around the one team so that people can talk honestly about their failures, not to have a call back to five minutes ago, right, and actually extract those lessons.

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<v Speaker 1>You know, my dad always used to have this joke that failure is a great teacher, but tuition's half off if it's someone else's failure.

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<v Speaker 1>And when you really adopt that team mentality and you create that sense of psychological safety, what you can do is you can have the team learning from each other's failures and so the whole team learns a whole lot faster right, and so I think that's been a big approach of Alan's as well, and it's just been fascinating to watch it work twice Right and uh and I.

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<v Speaker 1>You know Alan's not done yet.

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<v Speaker 1>Alan's now moved on into sort of teaching, that working together model.

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<v Speaker 1>So there's a lot more examples of his influence on senior leadership teams that we're going to see in the future for sure.

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<v Speaker 2>I love it.

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<v Speaker 2>I think it's great.

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<v Speaker 2>You mentioned psychological safety in there.

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<v Speaker 2>Let's go through a theory or let's start to look at the employee engagement and psychological safety and how they work together.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah.

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<v Speaker 1>So I mean, depending on which survey of engagement you use, right, you're going to see psychological safety represented a bit more or not in the actual items and the questions, but I've yet to see.

00:14:57.345 --> 00:15:09.090
<v Speaker 1>You know, if we use the standard sort of textbook definition of engagement, then what we're talking about is people who are locked in, who believe their work matters, who believe that the challenges they're facing in any given day match up with the set of skill sets.

00:15:09.090 --> 00:15:11.091
<v Speaker 1>Too challenged, and they're burnt out.

00:15:11.091 --> 00:15:14.773
<v Speaker 1>Not challenged enough, and they're I don't know what are we gonna call that Bored out, right?

00:15:14.773 --> 00:15:17.573
<v Speaker 1>But there's that sort of perfect match, right?

00:15:17.573 --> 00:15:27.278
<v Speaker 1>Which also means that if you think about a perfect match of the challenges of the task for your skills, that actually means you're going to fail a decent amount of the time and you're going to succeed a decent amount of the time, right?

00:15:27.278 --> 00:15:32.304
<v Speaker 1>Because if you always succeeded, then you'd be bored.

00:15:32.304 --> 00:15:34.153
<v Speaker 1>And so what you again need in that sense of failure is the ability to kind of talk about it.

00:15:34.173 --> 00:15:43.991
<v Speaker 1>Psychological safety from a textbook definition is the feeling that the team is safe to take interpersonal risks, and those come in a variety of different forms, but openly talking about failure is one of them.

00:15:43.991 --> 00:15:53.128
<v Speaker 1>Feeling like you can bring your whole self to work is one of them, Like you can share ideas of your identity, that you can share your ideas and that your ideas are accepted right.

00:15:53.128 --> 00:15:58.471
<v Speaker 1>And so it's very, very hard, Because it's impossible to do this in reality.

00:15:58.471 --> 00:16:05.592
<v Speaker 1>It's very hard to find a company that reports high levels of employee engagement without also reporting high levels of psychological safety.

00:16:05.592 --> 00:16:07.244
<v Speaker 1>It's sort of a precursor right.

00:16:07.244 --> 00:16:15.744
<v Speaker 1>You have to feel safe to actually bring your whole self to work to those challenges, to know that these challenges are going to grow you before you actually feel engaged in it.

00:16:15.744 --> 00:16:20.101
<v Speaker 1>So there's a massive correlation there, because I don't think engagement's possible without it.

00:16:20.482 --> 00:16:22.149
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and what do you think it is?

00:16:22.149 --> 00:16:27.486
<v Speaker 2>That's the trend of people have finally started to realize that engagement is necessary today.

00:16:27.486 --> 00:16:31.602
<v Speaker 2>I mean, is it just knowledge of it, or you think there's something bigger than that?

00:16:32.465 --> 00:16:48.188
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, well, I mean, the irony is we've never been in more agreement that employee engagement is important and yet it's basically stayed the same levels it has as we've come to this awareness, right, so we're still at like three out of 10 in the United States, where we are two out of 10 globally.

00:16:48.188 --> 00:16:51.883
<v Speaker 1>People report that they're highly engaged in their job, which these are dismal numbers.

00:16:51.883 --> 00:16:57.863
<v Speaker 1>I think the reason it's come to an awareness is that we see the disproportionate effects of it.

00:16:57.863 --> 00:17:05.211
<v Speaker 1>Right, performance follows a power law in just about every scenario, right, it's not a normal curve where most people are in the middle, et cetera.

00:17:05.211 --> 00:17:09.411
<v Speaker 1>No, it's a power law where the top performers dramatically outperform everybody else.

00:17:09.900 --> 00:17:12.106
<v Speaker 1>And then, when you go in and you look at what are the causes of those?

00:17:12.106 --> 00:17:22.413
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, talent, intelligence, et cetera are one of them, but there's a lot of talented, intelligent people who get put into a culture that drains them and so they don't perform for a year or two before they go off and find a new job.

00:17:22.413 --> 00:17:31.428
<v Speaker 1>Right, and so I think it's just this realization from a lot of organizations that this is the precursor to setting people up on that power law to really, really thrive.

00:17:31.428 --> 00:17:44.307
<v Speaker 1>Now the irony, as I said, is that, while we're realizing that, we still are pretty clueless at understanding how to turn it around, and I have some ideas on why that is, but, yeah, we still need to grow in that area.

00:17:44.307 --> 00:17:46.865
<v Speaker 1>So we know it works, we just don't know how to get it working.

00:17:47.279 --> 00:17:54.346
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, look, it's really interesting because you know, here at Action Coach we run a whole employee engagement program and you mentioned Marshall.

00:17:54.346 --> 00:18:06.228
<v Speaker 2>Marshall and I and Mark Thompson and Richard Maloney did a video book on engagement years ago, talking about you know how to actually make employee engagement happen and I think it's just starting.

00:18:06.228 --> 00:18:08.428
<v Speaker 2>People are starting to actually act on it now.

00:18:08.428 --> 00:18:10.667
<v Speaker 2>Compassionate leadership's becoming a thing.

00:18:10.667 --> 00:18:12.768
<v Speaker 2>We're starting to see that stuff.

00:18:12.768 --> 00:18:23.208
<v Speaker 2>When you look at leadership and its trends over the years, I think one of the great things is almost your books sort of start to follow a bit of a trend.

00:18:23.208 --> 00:18:28.605
<v Speaker 2>I guess it's like you know you can follow a bit of a history of this whole thing as where it gets.

00:18:28.605 --> 00:18:34.022
<v Speaker 2>And that brings me to your latest book of the best team ever A.

00:18:34.022 --> 00:18:36.244
<v Speaker 2>Why best team ever B?

00:18:36.244 --> 00:18:37.767
<v Speaker 2>Let's dive into the triangle.

00:18:38.528 --> 00:18:39.930
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, so I mean ironically, you know I joked.

00:18:39.930 --> 00:18:42.092
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so I mean ironically, you know I joked.

00:18:42.092 --> 00:18:52.185
<v Speaker 1>I have some ideas on why we're still doing poorly on the engagement side, and I think best team ever, to some extent, is a example of that.

00:18:52.185 --> 00:19:02.324
<v Speaker 1>So one of the data points that really stands out to me in this whole thing is that employees who are on positive team cultures not the whole organization, but employees who are on positive team cultures are 2.3 times more likely to be highly engaged, right?

00:19:02.324 --> 00:19:03.626
<v Speaker 1>That's not 23%.

00:19:03.626 --> 00:19:06.093
<v Speaker 1>That's 230% more likely, right.

00:19:06.093 --> 00:19:07.888
<v Speaker 1>So there's something to this team element.

00:19:07.888 --> 00:19:26.907
<v Speaker 1>If you think about every survey you've ever taken or every survey you've ever administered at Action Coach, most people, when they're filling that out, they're not answering for what it's like to work for the entire company, because they haven't worked at enough places across the company to know they're answering it talking about their immediate manager, the team that they're on or the teams that they're on, right.

00:19:26.907 --> 00:19:31.576
<v Speaker 1>So engagement surveys are a reflection of that team culture, and I think this is where the disconnect is.

00:19:31.636 --> 00:19:36.705
<v Speaker 1>I think we still think about organizational culture as predominant over team culture, and it's not true.

00:19:36.705 --> 00:19:46.163
<v Speaker 1>Organizational culture is just the average of each individual team culture and the thing that really got me to realize that was the pandemic and the shift to remote work, which was the book before.

00:19:46.163 --> 00:19:48.490
<v Speaker 1>Best Team Ever was all about working remotely.

00:19:48.490 --> 00:19:52.810
<v Speaker 1>What does it take to feel like a team and build a team when you're not actually in the room with them?

00:19:52.810 --> 00:19:59.709
<v Speaker 1>Because it became even more important Now you're not even at the office every day, running into random people that you might know but don't work with.

00:19:59.709 --> 00:20:09.884
<v Speaker 1>Now your day-to-day experience is basically just interacting with the people who are on your team, right, so that makes that sense of team culture even more important, and so that's why we decided to really focus in on that.

00:20:09.924 --> 00:20:14.803
<v Speaker 2>Okay, if employees who are highly engaged I don't think a lot of people pick up on.

00:20:14.803 --> 00:20:20.653
<v Speaker 2>The small team is really where team happens.

00:20:20.653 --> 00:20:26.226
<v Speaker 2>It's not the hundred people, the thousand, the 10,000 people, it's that small team.

00:20:26.226 --> 00:20:27.048
<v Speaker 2>That I think.

00:20:27.048 --> 00:20:32.484
<v Speaker 2>And I think when we get into the triangle I want people to sort of recognize that fact because that's highly important.

00:20:33.106 --> 00:20:39.905
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, so we're talking about that immediate team, right, and that is often defined as the people who report to the same manager, but not everywhere.

00:20:39.945 --> 00:20:54.644
<v Speaker 1>Like again, when I was in sales 25 years ago, we had what we called a team, but we were all individuals, right, and the team was actually the people that were in the same city with me working even though we had different products, working in the same company in that same area to the same clients, right?

00:20:54.684 --> 00:21:13.413
<v Speaker 1>So, yeah, it's that small team and this is the problem, right, organizationally, we still think of engagement initiatives and culture initiatives, as let's have perks and let's have flexible work environment and let's increase our benefits package and increase incentive compensation, and those are company-wide things, and yet the problem is team by team.

00:21:13.413 --> 00:21:26.583
<v Speaker 1>I actually know most of the time when I'm working with organization, I know why their engagement numbers are down the first time I'm talking to them, because they send me the breakdown by question and I'm never interested in the breakdown by question.

00:21:26.583 --> 00:21:31.284
<v Speaker 1>I'm interested in the breakdown by team, by region, however small we can break it down.

00:21:31.284 --> 00:21:42.704
<v Speaker 1>That's what I want to see, because odds are there's two or three managers, or two or three teams, or maybe a function, a location, a division that's dragging the numbers down because the culture on that small T team is a problem.

00:21:42.704 --> 00:21:43.468
<v Speaker 1>We need to turn around.

00:21:44.060 --> 00:21:50.548
<v Speaker 2>Well, hey there and thanks for listening, I've noticed that 78% of you are brand new, which means you haven't hit the subscribe button yet.

00:21:50.548 --> 00:21:57.849
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00:21:59.948 --> 00:22:01.125
<v Speaker 2>It only takes a second.

00:22:01.125 --> 00:22:02.643
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00:22:02.643 --> 00:22:08.685
<v Speaker 2>If you support us, we're going to support your success and help you achieve big success together.

00:22:08.685 --> 00:22:10.392
<v Speaker 2>All right, the triangle.

00:22:10.392 --> 00:22:17.732
<v Speaker 2>Take us through it and help me understand each one of those points, cause I think that using it will help massively for people watching today.

00:22:17.920 --> 00:22:22.108
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, I mean, I wish I wish I had a better name than the triangle, right, the team culture triangle, the.

00:22:22.108 --> 00:22:22.589
<v Speaker 1>I.

00:22:22.589 --> 00:22:32.928
<v Speaker 1>I once jokingly, on stage, referred to it as the triforce of team culture, which is a Zelda reference that, like three people in the room understood Um, so I knew how many gamers there were.

00:22:32.928 --> 00:22:42.830
<v Speaker 1>But when you look at high performing team cultures, teams that are highly engaged, those positive team cultures we're talking about, you find three commonalities in almost all of them.

00:22:42.830 --> 00:22:44.933
<v Speaker 1>We've already talked about one, which is psychological safety.

00:22:44.933 --> 00:22:51.317
<v Speaker 1>The other two are common understanding, or sometimes called shared understanding, and a sense of pro-social purpose.

00:22:51.317 --> 00:22:52.778
<v Speaker 1>More on those here.

00:22:53.559 --> 00:23:06.962
<v Speaker 1>Common understanding or shared understanding is about how well individuals on the team understand not only their role in the team but everybody else's role in the team so roles and responsibilities, who's doing what and by when but also have a sense of I call it clarity.

00:23:06.962 --> 00:23:08.868
<v Speaker 1>That's clarity also have a sense of empathy.

00:23:08.868 --> 00:23:10.544
<v Speaker 1>They understand each individual team member.

00:23:10.544 --> 00:23:12.511
<v Speaker 1>They know who works better.

00:23:12.511 --> 00:23:18.446
<v Speaker 1>They know that Brad is great remotely, but that Sarah really needs to be in the office interacting with people asking questions.

00:23:18.446 --> 00:23:25.209
<v Speaker 1>They know that one person prefers long drawn out emails as the way that they think through an argument and another person wants to jump on the phone.

00:23:25.209 --> 00:23:35.346
<v Speaker 1>It's not empathy in the sense of, like, I feel your pain, but it's empathy in the sense that I can predict your behavior and because I can predict your behavior, I can collaborate better with you.

00:23:35.346 --> 00:23:37.271
<v Speaker 1>Right, so that's common understanding.

00:23:37.339 --> 00:23:41.171
<v Speaker 1>The second element is a sense of pros or or third element, I should say, the first being psych safety.

00:23:41.171 --> 00:23:47.102
<v Speaker 1>The third element is a sense of pro-social purpose, and this is not just purpose, this is not.

00:23:47.102 --> 00:23:49.509
<v Speaker 1>Can we regurgitate the company mission statement?

00:23:49.509 --> 00:23:51.688
<v Speaker 1>Mission's important for alignment and that sort of thing.

00:23:51.688 --> 00:23:57.520
<v Speaker 1>But what most people want at the end of the day is to do work that they implicitly feel the impact of work.

00:23:57.520 --> 00:24:01.722
<v Speaker 1>That matters, if you will implicitly feel the impact of work.

00:24:01.722 --> 00:24:02.285
<v Speaker 1>That matters, if you will.

00:24:02.306 --> 00:24:04.373
<v Speaker 1>And we judge whether or not we feel our work matters based on who we see impacted by our work.

00:24:04.373 --> 00:24:06.561
<v Speaker 1>That's the pro-social and pro-social purpose.

00:24:06.561 --> 00:24:26.762
<v Speaker 1>Can we as a team and sometimes that's not the customer or the stakeholder or something like that, sometimes it's another team inside the organization, sometimes it's something else, right, but can we see that when we do a good job, it positively affects these people and can we keep that front of mind, because then we'll know our work matters and we see it's really interesting from a psychology standpoint.

00:24:26.762 --> 00:24:29.770
<v Speaker 1>We not only see increases in motivation and performance and engagement.

00:24:29.770 --> 00:24:42.718
<v Speaker 1>There's a nerdy term we use in org site called organizational citizenship behaviors, which are really, just how many times does somebody go above and beyond, put the needs of the team over their own needs, do work that isn't required of them, but they do it because it helps the team.

00:24:42.718 --> 00:24:46.185
<v Speaker 1>You could call that teamwork, if you will, or you could just call it helping.

00:24:46.185 --> 00:24:53.839
<v Speaker 1>But we see massive increases in people's willingness to engage in those behaviors when they have a pro-social purpose, not just a mission statement.

00:24:54.161 --> 00:25:08.519
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so buddy, let's dive into each one of them and maybe one or two practical things that someone can do, or even examples of it being done, so that someone can hang their hat on it and go OK, I can start on psychological safety by doing these one or two things.

00:25:08.519 --> 00:25:12.630
<v Speaker 2>I can jump on the common understanding by doing these one or two things, et cetera.

00:25:13.372 --> 00:25:13.873
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah.

00:25:13.873 --> 00:25:16.186
<v Speaker 1>So for psych safety we'll just go in order.

00:25:16.186 --> 00:25:19.054
<v Speaker 1>We've been in this interview For psych safety.

00:25:19.054 --> 00:25:25.148
<v Speaker 1>I think the biggest misconception people have here that blocks them from building it is that this is not just trust.

00:25:25.148 --> 00:25:26.295
<v Speaker 1>This doesn't mean trust.

00:25:26.295 --> 00:25:33.470
<v Speaker 1>Trust is important, for sure, but trust is that precursor to getting people to take those interpersonal risks that we talked about.

00:25:33.470 --> 00:25:39.748
<v Speaker 1>And then what you also need after that is, when people take those risks, you need them to feel respected, to feel heard.

00:25:39.748 --> 00:25:47.423
<v Speaker 1>Amy Edmondson calls it a climate of mutual trust and respect, and those are the two different things that happen before and after someone takes a risk.

00:25:47.423 --> 00:25:55.510
<v Speaker 1>You do need to build trust so that people take that risk, admit the failure, share the crazy idea, disagree publicly with the leader right.

00:25:55.510 --> 00:25:59.501
<v Speaker 1>But after they do that they need to feel respected, right.

00:25:59.501 --> 00:26:18.374
<v Speaker 1>And so I think the biggest thing you can do here to build that sense of psychological safety in a team is just make sure you're actually hearing someone when they're stepping up and disagreeing with you, when they're sharing kind of a vulnerable moment, not just waiting for what you have to say, but actually practicing that sort of active listening and checking for understanding.

00:26:18.374 --> 00:26:29.241
<v Speaker 1>So the easiest way to do that it's not active listening, it's not about eye contact and that sort of stuff Although I mean it is, but that's not the most important.

00:26:29.261 --> 00:26:34.693
<v Speaker 1>The most important thing you can do after somebody takes an interpersonal risk is not go to immediately to advice, but to ask questions.

00:26:34.693 --> 00:26:37.924
<v Speaker 1>Ask questions that encourage them to follow up a bit more.

00:26:37.924 --> 00:26:40.469
<v Speaker 1>Ask questions that encourage them to explore the idea a bit more.

00:26:40.469 --> 00:26:42.112
<v Speaker 1>That check for understanding.

00:26:42.112 --> 00:26:44.221
<v Speaker 1>You know, if I hear you right, it sounds like this is the issue.

00:26:44.221 --> 00:26:45.423
<v Speaker 1>Did I get that right?

00:26:45.423 --> 00:26:48.660
<v Speaker 1>That shows that you actually care to hear what they have to say.

00:26:48.660 --> 00:26:50.084
<v Speaker 1>Then you can get into your advice.

00:26:50.084 --> 00:26:55.266
<v Speaker 1>Right, but take the time to actually ask that first, to check for understanding, to circle back with them.

00:26:55.266 --> 00:27:05.544
<v Speaker 1>They'll feel heard and respected, and if they didn't, I mean this is the other thing.

00:27:05.544 --> 00:27:09.438
<v Speaker 1>Candidly, if I can talk just to leaders for a second, the majority of the time that people come to you with a problem, they're not coming to you with the actual problem.

00:27:09.438 --> 00:27:12.939
<v Speaker 1>They're coming to you with a version of the problem they feel safe enough to put in front of you.

00:27:12.939 --> 00:27:14.685
<v Speaker 1>Right, there's a reason we say don't shoot the messenger.

00:27:14.685 --> 00:27:24.290
<v Speaker 1>It's because people shoot the messenger so they have minimized or sterilized or you've done something to try and soften the blow of the bad news they're about to give you.

00:27:24.290 --> 00:27:31.821
<v Speaker 1>And if you just jump right into advice or worse, you just jump right into sort of barking orders at them et cetera, you're never going to actually hear the real problem.

00:27:31.821 --> 00:27:34.388
<v Speaker 1>But if you take the time to ask questions, what else?

00:27:34.388 --> 00:27:35.511
<v Speaker 1>What have you tried?

00:27:35.511 --> 00:27:37.563
<v Speaker 1>Okay, let's think about the impacts of this.

00:27:37.563 --> 00:27:47.063
<v Speaker 1>Anything you can do to check for that understanding increases your chances of hearing the actual problem, because you're demonstrating that respect after the risk, got it, got it.

00:27:47.063 --> 00:27:49.500
<v Speaker 1>Common understanding, yeah.

00:27:49.601 --> 00:28:01.882
<v Speaker 1>So I think the best activity here that I do I call it the single best team building activity is a manual of me, like literally have people do a self-reflection and write the user's manual to working with them.

00:28:01.882 --> 00:28:04.326
<v Speaker 1>I typically use four questions.

00:28:04.326 --> 00:28:11.582
<v Speaker 1>You can add questions to this and sometimes we get into personal details and stories or whatever, but the core four questions are four fill in the blank questions.

00:28:11.582 --> 00:28:14.869
<v Speaker 1>The first question is I'm at my best when, blank.

00:28:14.869 --> 00:28:17.260
<v Speaker 1>So strengths, context, you're at your best, et cetera.

00:28:17.260 --> 00:28:23.872
<v Speaker 1>Second question is the inverse I'm at my worst when, what situations, what types of work, et cetera bring out your worst.

00:28:23.872 --> 00:28:28.509
<v Speaker 1>Question three is you can count on me to blank.

00:28:28.509 --> 00:28:31.902
<v Speaker 1>Meaning here is, historically, where I've been able to help other people on the team.

00:28:31.902 --> 00:28:33.906
<v Speaker 1>Maybe I'm an Excel wizard.

00:28:33.906 --> 00:28:35.510
<v Speaker 1>Maybe I'm a great proofreader, right.

00:28:35.510 --> 00:28:39.448
<v Speaker 1>Maybe I'm great for bouncing ideas off of just wherever I've made a contribution in the past.

00:28:39.448 --> 00:28:41.553
<v Speaker 1>And then the last question is the inverse of that.

00:28:41.553 --> 00:28:43.928
<v Speaker 1>What I need from you is blank.

00:28:43.928 --> 00:28:50.626
<v Speaker 1>So in four simple questions, we get strengths, weaknesses, where somebody feels like they can make the best contribution and where they're going to need the most help.

00:28:51.925 --> 00:28:52.832
<v Speaker 1>Now think about the team you're on.

00:28:52.832 --> 00:28:59.325
<v Speaker 1>If you're listening to this, do you know the answer to those questions for other people on your team, and how useful would it be to know those?

00:28:59.325 --> 00:29:02.175
<v Speaker 1>I think that's one of the best places to start.

00:29:02.175 --> 00:29:24.976
<v Speaker 1>What I'll do is usually send those questions out ahead of time, give people a week or so to reflect on them, and then we'll have an in-person meeting where everybody kind of shares out their responses and we discuss after each person, because the other thing that's going to happen is some people are going to say I'm at my worst when blank, and then someone goes well, really, I actually thought that was fantastic of you.

00:29:24.976 --> 00:29:26.092
<v Speaker 1>Or this happens all the time in a remote and hybrid environment.

00:29:26.092 --> 00:29:27.571
<v Speaker 1>I'm at my best when I'm working from home oh really, because I've noticed this.

00:29:27.571 --> 00:29:34.784
<v Speaker 1>So that opportunity to compare and contrast someone's self-reflection with what the team sort of already learned is a great growth experience as well, and pro-social.

00:29:34.784 --> 00:29:38.652
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, there's a lot we could do here.

00:29:40.192 --> 00:29:47.417
<v Speaker 1>I think probably the easiest and fastest way to get started is to rethink how you're expressing gratitude to people, right?

00:29:47.539 --> 00:29:57.748
<v Speaker 1>Most of us well, some of us are terrible at saying thank you, but most of us get the idea that, hey, we should be saying thank you to the folks on our team, especially if we're in a leadership role often, but we just stop there.

00:29:57.748 --> 00:29:58.964
<v Speaker 1>Hey, brad, thanks so much.

00:29:58.964 --> 00:30:04.345
<v Speaker 1>Instead, think about how you can add a second sentence to every expression of gratitude.

00:30:04.345 --> 00:30:08.161
<v Speaker 1>First sentence is thank you so much for whatever their effort was.

00:30:08.161 --> 00:30:12.569
<v Speaker 1>Second sentence because it helped me do whatever.

00:30:12.569 --> 00:30:18.531
<v Speaker 1>It is right and that's, if you think about pro-social purpose that we make a contribution toward work that benefits others.

00:30:18.531 --> 00:30:23.961
<v Speaker 1>It's not enough to just say thank you.

00:30:23.961 --> 00:30:26.769
<v Speaker 1>You have to be telling people how what they did benefited you so that they truly believe that they're making that impact right.

00:30:26.769 --> 00:30:36.884
<v Speaker 1>So thank you so much for effort because it helped me impact right and I think if we could do that we could see that gratitude go a whole lot further in building that sense of pro-social purpose.

00:30:36.884 --> 00:30:38.145
<v Speaker 1>Love that stuff.

00:30:40.008 --> 00:30:46.576
<v Speaker 2>If I can take the lead from anywhere and try and summarize it double-edged sword.

00:30:46.576 --> 00:30:53.393
<v Speaker 2>What's the biggest mistake people are making on leading from anywhere in this whole virtual, viral world?

00:30:53.393 --> 00:31:00.671
<v Speaker 2>And then the other side what's the best thing that people are doing to get great results in this virtual and viral world?

00:31:01.519 --> 00:31:15.094
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think the biggest mistake people are still making is not constructing what I sometimes call a ways of working document, not having a conversation about how we're going to communicate, how frequently, what mediums we're going to use, what are our norms and rules of communication.

00:31:15.094 --> 00:31:25.963
<v Speaker 1>Rules of communication Because when you're not with someone physically and a miscommunication or a misunderstanding happens, it takes a lot more effort and a lot more time to resolve that, and so that can be a huge slowdown.

00:31:25.963 --> 00:31:29.361
<v Speaker 1>Versus in the office, you know, you can walk down the hall, knock on the door.

00:31:29.361 --> 00:31:30.585
<v Speaker 1>Brad, what did you mean by that?

00:31:30.585 --> 00:31:31.807
<v Speaker 1>I don't understand right.

00:31:31.807 --> 00:31:33.441
<v Speaker 1>That can go a whole lot worse.

00:31:33.441 --> 00:31:36.307
<v Speaker 1>So we need to have really clear guidelines around communication.

00:31:36.307 --> 00:31:49.701
<v Speaker 1>I've yet to find a fully remote organization that I've ever worked with, studied, et cetera, that doesn't have very clear guidelines around communication, norms, what tools we're going to use, how we're going to use them, how we're going to keep people updated, et cetera.

00:31:49.701 --> 00:31:52.971
<v Speaker 1>So just thinking, oh, we can wing that and let people do whatever they want.

00:31:52.971 --> 00:31:55.785
<v Speaker 1>And hey, we're especially you see this a lot in hybrid organizations.

00:31:55.785 --> 00:31:59.913
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, we're in the office every Monday and Wednesday anyway, so we don't really need to.

00:31:59.913 --> 00:32:06.424
<v Speaker 1>No, you still do, because there's still a lot of work that people are doing outside of being next to each other, right.

00:32:06.579 --> 00:32:15.626
<v Speaker 1>So that's probably the biggest mistake, biggest benefit, biggest thing that really good is not to beat a dead concept, but is to think about that element of culture.

00:32:15.626 --> 00:32:19.650
<v Speaker 1>What are the norms, the habits of behavior, the ways we interact, the three to think about that element of culture.

00:32:19.650 --> 00:32:20.931
<v Speaker 1>What are the norms, the habits of behavior, the ways we interact?

00:32:20.931 --> 00:32:25.355
<v Speaker 1>You know, the three elements of the best team ever came out of researching remote organizations, right, because they're universal there too.

00:32:25.355 --> 00:32:31.641
<v Speaker 1>And that was the big realization that like, okay, if they're universal remotely and they're universal in person, then they're truly universal.

00:32:31.641 --> 00:32:33.244
<v Speaker 1>They're location agnostic, right.

00:32:33.244 --> 00:32:41.423
<v Speaker 1>So thinking about what it is to feel like a member of that team not just you know, do your people really believe that they're a part of a team?

00:32:41.423 --> 00:32:47.125
<v Speaker 1>Or are all those names in the email inbox just sort of like non-playable characters in a video game?

00:32:47.125 --> 00:32:49.873
<v Speaker 1>You just send it off and get a response back like chat, GPT.

00:32:49.873 --> 00:32:53.848
<v Speaker 1>That's not very useful for long-term, sustainable remote work.

00:32:53.848 --> 00:32:57.263
<v Speaker 1>So really thinking in on that culture piece is the biggest benefit.

00:32:57.545 --> 00:33:04.144
<v Speaker 2>David, if I can be a little selfish and ask you a question here, we've found in our companies people that have worked with us and then went.

00:33:04.144 --> 00:33:09.423
<v Speaker 2>Virtual still works great Bringing on a new person into the team.

00:33:09.423 --> 00:33:18.527
<v Speaker 2>What's one or two things we can do to bring them in and have them, as a virtual team member, actually really cement them into the team as a virtual team member?

00:33:18.547 --> 00:33:19.769
<v Speaker 1>actually really cement them into the team.

00:33:19.769 --> 00:33:25.436
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so I mean, ideally, you're still creating moments of time where people are together, right?

00:33:25.436 --> 00:33:35.104
<v Speaker 1>Even fully remote companies are still, on average, getting their people together every six months or so, whether that's an all company meeting or whether that's just the direct team that they're on, so that you have some in-person time.

00:33:35.104 --> 00:33:43.009
<v Speaker 1>So in an ideal scenario, you're limiting your onboarding to people of when those times are coming up fast, right, because there is still something.

00:33:43.009 --> 00:33:46.045
<v Speaker 1>Remote, remote, fully remote is not impossible.

00:33:46.045 --> 00:33:54.823
<v Speaker 1>But in my opinion, the communication tools that we have, they really just stretch out the interval of time before we need to be in person building that sense of common understanding, right?

00:33:54.823 --> 00:33:56.145
<v Speaker 1>So ideally you do that.

00:33:56.606 --> 00:34:13.425
<v Speaker 1>If you can't do that, then I think the most important thing is, in the first week, a new person who doesn't know the team and isn't working on site with anybody, within the first week, if you can get one-on-one conversations between that person and every other person on their team or that they're going to interact with in their role, that are just get to know you conversations.

00:34:13.425 --> 00:34:14.909
<v Speaker 1>These aren't assignments, these aren't whatever.

00:34:14.909 --> 00:34:20.603
<v Speaker 1>If you can get that done, you can get really fast.

00:34:20.603 --> 00:34:26.005
<v Speaker 1>Then what this is not is hey, you start Monday and, lucky for us, on Monday you'll get to meet the whole team at the team-wide meeting.

00:34:26.005 --> 00:34:27.429
<v Speaker 1>No, there's too much of an agenda there.

00:34:27.429 --> 00:34:28.681
<v Speaker 1>There's too much stuff to get done.

00:34:28.681 --> 00:34:33.302
<v Speaker 1>They're not going to get to know everybody, but make sure you take the time to have one-on-one meetings.

00:34:33.302 --> 00:34:40.275
<v Speaker 1>Ideally, if you're the manager, they meet you, then they go meet everybody else, then they sync back up with you Thursday afternoon, friday morning, et cetera.

00:34:40.275 --> 00:34:45.010
<v Speaker 1>But those one-on-one meetings with everybody right in that first week is really going to set you up for success.

00:34:46.780 --> 00:34:51.853
<v Speaker 2>I could chat about this stuff all day, especially the employee engagement stuff, but listen.

00:34:51.853 --> 00:35:02.474
<v Speaker 2>Final question what's your best advice you ever got on the subject of success or the best quote you ever read on the subject of success?

00:35:04.001 --> 00:35:07.851
<v Speaker 1>Oh man, ok, so those, those would be two different answers and I give you both, as long as we don't go over time.

00:35:07.851 --> 00:35:08.981
<v Speaker 1>First would be best advice.

00:35:08.981 --> 00:35:16.489
<v Speaker 1>Early on in my career I was doing a lot of different stuff had a podcast, had doing virtual summits and all sorts of things to build the brand and build the audience.

00:35:16.489 --> 00:35:24.563
<v Speaker 1>And I remember in one of them I was interviewing Daniel Pink, who was like an intellectual hero of mine, a model of mine in terms of the writing and what have you.

00:35:24.563 --> 00:35:26.990
<v Speaker 1>And I remember asking him a question I was having.

00:35:26.990 --> 00:35:35.905
<v Speaker 1>I don't remember what my particular struggle was, but this was like off air, after we had already finished recording, and the first thing he said, before he actually offered any advice is.

00:35:35.905 --> 00:35:41.932
<v Speaker 1>He said well, you got to remember that I've been doing this for 20 years and you've been doing it for three.

00:35:41.932 --> 00:35:44.641
<v Speaker 1>And then he actually didn't even say anything else.

00:35:44.641 --> 00:35:50.072
<v Speaker 1>And it was that idea of like, give yourself some longer runway.

00:35:50.072 --> 00:35:51.500
<v Speaker 1>I think we set the goal.

00:35:51.500 --> 00:35:56.903
<v Speaker 1>We get a little dopamine hit because we set the goal, and then we get really frustrated because we're not at the goal.

00:35:57.443 --> 00:35:59.764
<v Speaker 1>Some things take time.

00:35:59.764 --> 00:36:11.672
<v Speaker 1>Right, I've been being paid to give talks and lead workshops for senior leaders for 10 years, but I wasn't at the point where I could actually leave the university until six or eight of those years.

00:36:11.672 --> 00:36:21.139
<v Speaker 1>You have to some things you just cannot speed up right, and so you have to kind of, and the more time you give yourself, and the more forgiving about that I think, the better you soar right.

00:36:21.139 --> 00:36:29.364
<v Speaker 1>It's no surprise that the largest airplanes with the longest range also require the longest runways to get up to speed right, and I think life is kind of that same way.

00:36:29.364 --> 00:36:31.610
<v Speaker 1>So that's my best advice you've ever received.

00:36:31.951 --> 00:36:34.182
<v Speaker 1>Best quote if we have time.

00:36:34.182 --> 00:36:39.380
<v Speaker 1>I've always been fascinated with the uh, the Goldman Meyer quote about the harder I work, the luckier I get Right.

00:36:39.380 --> 00:36:43.452
<v Speaker 1>I think you can't control success is going to have some element of luck to it.

00:36:43.452 --> 00:36:45.103
<v Speaker 1>You cannot control that.

00:36:45.103 --> 00:36:48.492
<v Speaker 1>What you can do is make sure you're ready when those opportunities pop up.

00:36:48.492 --> 00:36:56.601
<v Speaker 1>And the irony is the harder you work to make yourself ready, the more likely it is the opportunity that luck favors you for is going to pop up Right.

00:36:56.601 --> 00:36:58.246
<v Speaker 1>So I try and keep that top of mind as well.

00:36:58.266 --> 00:37:01.659
<v Speaker 2>Luck favors you for is going to pop up right, so I try and keep that top of mind as well.

00:37:11.387 --> 00:37:11.688
<v Speaker 3>Love it.

00:37:11.688 --> 00:37:13.068
<v Speaker 3>David Berkus hit the show notes.

00:37:13.068 --> 00:37:15.050
<v Speaker 3>Follow like study, read do all the things.

00:37:15.050 --> 00:37:16.311
<v Speaker 3>This is the Big Success Podcast.

00:37:16.311 --> 00:37:17.032
<v Speaker 3>I'm Brad Sugars.

00:37:17.032 --> 00:37:26.568
<v Speaker 3>To learn more about how to achieve business and personal success, as well as how to level up or listen to past episodes, visit wwwbradsugarscom.