Team 360
In the wild.
By Matthew Laffer
July 29, 2022
360 Feedback: Operations Team - Session Two Musings
Team,
The 360 Feedback illuminates the realities of being a leader. First and foremost, it’s about people and relationships. If you want to know how good of a leader you are, look at the impact you have on others.
Do you do what you say you will? Do you bring your best intentions to everything, and trust that others do the same? Do you respect the people you work with? Are you respected by the people you work with? This is what makes a good leader, especially in today’s world.
Here’s what I heard from people during the qualitative interviews...
If there’s one thing this team could do to have more of a positive impact on the company, it would be to create a culture of Mutual Trust & Respect (MT&R).
There are many challenges with MT&R.
For starters, most everyone wants it, but very few people develop the skills to build it. It’s also not a sexy topic of discussion. People would rather talk about scale, profitability, and building moats around the business. The topic, while highly meritorious, can also carry with it a preachy vibe.
So, what’s the best way to solve for this? Let’s try describing its essence since MT&R remains an elusive concept until it’s experienced.
Here are five key themes coming out of the team 360 that can provide a glimpse into defining the opportunity and getting started.
Integration
Companies are made up of people who have different workstyles, beliefs, and interests. Because of these differences we experience conflict. But conflict does not have to be destructive. It can be *constructive*.
The goal is not to eliminate conflict. Eliminating conflict is discontinuing change. And while change can lead to transformation, it can also cause disintegration. If change causes disintegration, then the solution is integration. But integration of what? Integration of a diversity of workstyles, beliefs, and interests within a system of values.
That’s all well and good, but how? We can start by looking at every conflict as an opportunity to learn. Why do we disagree? How can we disagree respectfully, artfully, and honestly? What can I learn from it? Perhaps you see something that I don’t see or know something that I don’t know. Respectfully disagree with me. Why? So that we can learn from each other, and to build on each other’s ideas.
Implementation
The secret to success is in the implementation. It’s better to have a good implementation of an average decision than an outstanding decision that is poorly implemented or not implemented at all.
Here’s how you reduce risk around implementation. Start by including people responsible for the implementation in the decision-making process. Sequencing matters. A lot.
First collaborate (co ‘labor’ ate) for decision making, and then cooperate (co ‘operate’) for implementation (co = indicating partnership; with, together).
We may disagree with each other but when we learn from each other, we’re coming together as colleagues. The word colleague comes from the Latin word “collega” which means “we arrive together”.
MT&R is the bridge to collaboration and cooperation. And when we have it, we’re colleagues.
Decision-Making
If you make a decision alone, you cannot see everything. Having a complementary team with a shared common interest will yield better decisions and cooperation. With cooperation, the risk around implementation is much lower. If you don’t have cooperation, the risk is significantly higher.
It’s important to become aware of the different decision-making methods, and to learn how to choose an appropriate method for the decision being worked on. Not all decisions are created equal.
The mistake most leaders make is to keep the same decision-making methodology all the time. The problem is that no single methodology works all the time. You have to know when to use each method.
A key step in the problem-solving process is the making of decisions.
Setting Expectations & Asking Questions
Most leaders spend 95% of their effort on the “What” and “When”, and only 5% on the “Why”. Reversing this approach will yield better alignment for the results you want to achieve.
Given the pace at which this team works, including both an explanation of why you need something done and why you need it within a specific timeframe will help with having others take ownership in their part. Please and thank you works extremely well here and should not be underestimated.
Make sure to also share the resources available to help people with the request. Adding “How can I help?” can also be extremely valuable to ensure the result. But only if the offer to help is genuine. There’s no greater way to erode MT&R than to say you will do something and then not do it.
Asking questions is equally important when it comes to delivering better results and building MT&R. Questions should focus on the issue, not the person. They should help people to succeed, not to reveal their failures. And they should be designed to help people get to the underlying issues. Issues with individual performance are best handled privately.
We agreed to address the lack of accountability across the company in a separate response. Suffice it to say that you cannot effectively hold someone accountable if you have not first formed clear expectations.
Values
We’ll take a much deeper dive into values on Friday during Two Hats, Two Values, Two Norms. For the time being, is it fair to say that values are easier to understand in theory than it is to put into practice? This is why the presence of explicit norms are the single variable that most differentiates outstanding teams from the mediocre ones.
As we’ve discussed, many of these values are also *skills*. One of the biggest mistakes I see leaders make is assuming that everyone knows how to work on a team or in a group.
Here are a few actions that align with creating a culture of MT&R:
Say please and thank you
Listen and don’t interrupt
Do what you say you will
Start on time and end on time
While it’s not a complete list, it’s a good start. On the surface these behaviors appear easy to do, but they’re often quite difficult to act on.
Change happens not just by talking about it, but by doing it. Start small. Take a handful of simple things to begin with. MT&R has massive asymmetrical upside and will generate significant cultural gains across the company from making small inputs.
And experiment with employing this at home and out in the world. MT&R is a gamechanger for life – personally, collectively, and globally!
Please feel free to disagree with me respectfully. See you next Friday. Have a great week.
Matthew
Matthew Laffer is a 3x entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO at Goalspriing.
