Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:03 Welcome to the culture of things point Brendan Rodgers. This is a podcast where we call culture leadership and teamwork plus business in school.
Speaker 1 00:21 Hello everybody. I'm Brendan Rodgers, the host of the culture of things podcast. This is episode four for this episode, I spoke with Martin West, who's a great friend of mine and mentor Martin is the owner of a consultancy business called X. Gap X kept focused on helping leaders create conversations that produce healthy team performance. Martin has also co-authored a recently released book called hard road. A leader's journey begins the books, a fictional story about a new leader's journey. It provides a five part model to help new and emerging leaders as they begin their leadership journey. We'll be doing this episode in two parts over the next two weeks. The focus of our two-part conversation is Martin's new book and the lessons for emerging leaders. This episode is part one and in part one Martin shares his experience in the air force and how it helped him find his passion and transition into his consultancy business. He shares the background to the book and we dive into the first and most critical part of the model. Here's part one of my chat with Martin Martin's on the other end of the phone where observing social distancing parameters at this stage in the in the world I'm with covert 19 so Martin, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 01:42 No problem. Good to be here.
Speaker 1 01:44 It's a pleasure having you like do you or just want to give our listeners a bit of an overview of your career today and what your, what's what's brought you to this point?
Speaker 2 01:53 I run a consulting company codec gap a bit. If I had to summarize the last 2025 years in a nutshell, it'd be 15 years in the military as an insider in autopilot. Loved that. Did that, tried out of school, decided I didn't want to stay in the military and I didn't want to do what a lot of my peers were doing, which was go to the airlines. So I started a consulting company and I've been doing that pretty bad. <inaudible>
Speaker 1 02:22 just described, really interested to understand your, you know, the FAA fighter pilot scenario and, and what sort of drove you, you know, like you said your peers went into probably the standard process of avail on industry. What was it that you liked about what you did as an FID fighter pilot and then moved you into that teamwork, uh, and culture space.
Speaker 2 02:43 The culture live force you'll learn pretty quickly when they join is you end up dying on one or two pilots are the Skype in the military, the clay procreate or eventually join Mahlon and I worked at early on, but I love flying, but there's something I love even more and that was a saying attains performance change. And I've got the opportunity to lead a unit a while as a miracles. And that unit was focused on training new protocols. I was an instructor and that experience being nodded in may, something I didn't know was there, which was helping attain, um, improve its performance, working with individuals in that same and more than just what was happening in the, so when that happened, I thought, man, I love this stuff. As much as I love the fine working with the team and helping them get improve their performance and working with individuals in it, I made the decision I'm going to try and build the next phase of my career and my strengths. And I felt like I've uncovered some strengths that were not just flowing. If I don't and our strengths, we're not going to be one that we're going to be utilizing male on industry. So the logical step to me was to look at <inaudible>, look at starting a business. That's what I did.
Speaker 3 04:15 And, and was there, was there a key moment or a key thing that happened in that, in that transition that really drove you to that point? You know, something about building teams and improving team performance that said, yeah, this is, this is definitely where my passion sits.
Speaker 2 04:31 Yeah. Hey was two things happened, expand out of them on the first floors are did I personality protocol when I was in their schools at a Baptist time account member. Exactly what the reason the catalyst was for me doing it. So I did it and then fail to have unbelievable clarity on one of the first pages, what my strengths were and my struggles, my phone with strengths and I phone with struggles and it just now like it was super accurate. And the second thing that happened, the bath of time, time, um, and I don't want to speak noting, it was just something that happened that was unexpected was I started to get feedback from people in the unit that I was leading, but it was really good at what I did. And you know, when you're flowing you get payback on your flying. And I felt I was a good pilot and then, you know, you have to be a good Pollock to go to audits.
Speaker 2 05:35 But once I was in the Potter Pollock community, I went from being good to being amongst a group of other people that were also very good. And so that made me probably somewhere in the middle of the pack. And so I'm in a job where I'm following the aircraft since a kid, I'm probably middle of the pack wise, but I'm getting feedback from people that I'm really good at this lady a unit. And so I wasn't looking for the feedback. I got really, really on. I go to all my first three months in the role and when I jumped in the role I kind of volunteered for that promotion in that role. Um, so it was just the frequency and the unexpected night show that played back that made me think I've got other strengths that I'm not using that <inaudible>. So those two things were the catalyst, the personality profile and the feedback I was getting it that the job volunteering.
Speaker 3 06:34 Wow.
Speaker 2 06:34 We really want to sit with, sit down with different parts.
Speaker 3 06:37 Thank you for sharing mate. The touching on those two very, very important things. We had an earlier episode, episode two actually where we had somebody on who was talking around personality profiling and how that's helped their business and their team interact together. And then obviously feedback and how important that is for improving performance. So it two pretty powerful triggers for pushing you into what you're doing today.
Speaker 2 07:01 Yeah. Yeah. And I'm a big fan of using cold calling as a coincidence to me making a decision to leave the
Speaker 3 07:14 fantastic mate. Let's, let's dive into the topic. As we've mentioned around, you know, emerging leaders and lessons for emerging leaders cause you have coauthored a book called hard road leadership yourself and your business partner Mark Bragg. Like how about you tell us a little bit about the background to hard leadership and the experiences leading up to this book, which has recently been released.
Speaker 2 07:40 The book has come from some lessons we've learned in our business and rhythms are falling is just another was signed screw ups. Um, so with my, the big pixels consulting business, the execution gap, and we've been running it for about seven times and with my 10 ships in that business as a result of mistakes that were made or some, some gaps that were <inaudible> and it's covered the three big gaps that we focus a business on and one of them. So when we first started, except we decided just to focus really on execution and helping clients get clear on goals and how they're gonna execute to those goals. And we stuck to that meeting for that. So <inaudible> has gotten a lot of good work out of that. Then we discovered something that was, um, a little troubling and what we discovered was we could predict which clients were not going to succeed and we can predict it really accurately.
Speaker 2 08:48 My business partner, Mike Bragg and I would chat about a workshop or a follow up meeting and talent. I think it's kind of working now, that part, it doesn't feel good and we're out of a time. And that led us to highlight that next big area that we had nothing focusing on. And that was really chained behavior out. So that point was really tight with some goals and actually additional goals that we could say Tim behavior and culture when it presented. So was holding some back. And because we say we thought we wanted to help people. So we then decided that the culture was entertainment. The behavior thing of tame actually has more impact on their success. Then the goals for themselves and how well they execute. They're still important. But the behavior, the culture is more important. So that was the first big shift we made was to emphasize, emphasize the behavior and the health of a team when talking about us behavior.
Speaker 2 09:52 And you know, we use a model I bought Patrick when she article the five dysfunctions of a team. So that accelerated the business. And then that brought us up to maybe three years ago where I personally learned and now the painful lesson, which is related to the book and the time to listen was head of clients and working with them for two years and been working on their team and the team had improved. And that was really, while we're hard, so help the team improve performance and help improve the health of the behavior. So you know, it felt really good about that, but it be kind of say to me that the next big change that needed to happen was the leader. The leader of the team was limiting the team's performance. And so my conversations with the crime came later shifted and I had to stop using language that was related more to the leader's role and have a leader was the limit.
Speaker 2 10:52 And I, I drew this diagram with my hand where my right hand was moving upwards representing the team's performance, but my left hand was capping the right hand and I said to this client, you'll the cap at the monitoring attempts performance, we've got to find a wife. He named it a Bay. The limits on the team's performance. That conversation didn't go as well as I'd like it to. We're really good friends to our good friends, but I don't even feel like we finished that engagement. Well, I didn't feel like that helped that person as much as I could. That was only because we hadn't really addressed this leadership capacity topic. The third topic at the beginning of the engagement, if I'd said to my friend, listen, how you operate as a leader will always be the limit on the team. And so they will, we're going to keep you ahead of the team and keep mindful of your leadership capacity. If I'd said that a lot at the beginning and building guys with in mind and it would have had a much better ad count. And so we thought we need to write a book about this, that helping later as negative become the limit.
Speaker 3 12:03 That's absolutely fascinating. This is so many angles could, uh, tight those, those three aspects. And I guess the first point you mentioned around teamwork, it's what, what you're really saying or how I'm paraphrasing that is that, you know, teamwork and, and having people interact as a team is really the glue behind so many things.
Speaker 2 12:21 Yeah, no, I mean that's exactly rod. And that was, it talks how much to go. It's what we call the health of the team. The trumps, the goals and goals were still important. But that really described that first pivot as a business will emphasize the health of the leadership team or leadership team.
Speaker 3 12:42 Let's focus on our honor, our emerging leaders topic and, and take that last learning about dot. I really love that sort of saying I'll have to get it right that, that the leader is the limit. I've always loved your direct style and, and you know the ability within your business, which is absolutely paramount in giving feedback cause it is that it's sort of that medicine or that, that vitamin to for healthy teams. Well just give a bit of a perspective on the nature of the conversation you had with that leader. Cause that that would have been a tough conversation.
Speaker 2 13:14 Yeah, it was, I mean it happened on a series of conversations I could because a lot of our work is that offsides changes. Normally it'd be cortex, um, as a tame and then monthly coaching with the individuals with its own. I'd go to those quarterly off sites and for the first few I went really well for the niche. You those started to challenge and I felt like literally the later was the challenge. And so I said to this person, I think we're playing a struggling and eventually automate sign out of a two or three copies. The crawdads just pretty direct. Tell me what you think is the real challenge. And I said to her, I think the challenges that you have become the limit to the team's performance, but I don't want to make this conversation about you because you hired me to help the payments.
Speaker 2 14:11 He said, now I want you, we really, really direct. What do you think on me to do differently to help? They'll become, the limits are the same. And I said, Oh look, I don't know if you're capable of doing what I'm about to say to CS and you will progression as a leader. So I'm ready to tell you. Please tell me. And so I listed at that point to do and um, that's really have that conversation. And look, it was about the end of the engagement. Then guys went down, planned when you're in God's from. But I just felt following home from my particular offsite and that series of coffees I'm told over the weekend that man could have done so much better. Though all I've really done is give the crime some instruction. We should really have been having this conversation progressingly right from the beginning.
Speaker 3 15:06 It sounds like a really humbling experience from, from both sides and the learnings from, from yourself and from that later. And uh, I would say it must've been really, really satisfying and particularly to hear the leader, you know, wanting that feedback. Cause that's, that's really a big part of, of the work that you do is, you know, leaders need to be open. They need to have that humility and know that, you know, they can improve on, on various areas. So for say for a leader to be sitting there and demanding you to give that feedback. I think that would have been really satisfying.
Speaker 2 15:33 Yeah. Well, and I try and carry this lightly, but I've, I've got a phrase I use with clients on the is if you see something, say something, you know, cry for giving us the privilege to work with them and we know on the whole that their teams won't tell them because, you know, I don't want to tell my boss something that feels important that might not go there. And well really there's no one else to do it other than, um, someone like a consultant or coach. And so I personally use that mantra. If you see something, say something, they of course you've got to use it, um, with humility, with Grice, with kindness. Um, and maybe there's times you see something, it's not worth saying something. You know, I tried to articulate the thing that's sitting in front of the leader and the team that no one else is saying. I'll try and put that on the table least.
Speaker 3 16:33 I love it, mate. That's fantastic. If you see something, say something, I think that will probably find its way onto my LinkedIn post at some stage in the future. And I will make sure that I credit you.
Speaker 2 16:47 Bye.
Speaker 3 16:50 Let's, let's dive into the, into the Balkan and how about you just give a bit of an overview. So as I said before, the book is called hard road leadership. A leader's journey begins. Tell us, give us a bit of an overview of the books or you know, fo a fictional book on a young executive core Christian Short his journey. How about you share a bit of an overview about what this, what this story is about.
Speaker 2 17:12 Okay. Well we wrote the book, uh, because of the stories I've just been telling you about later taking the, and we thought, okay, how do we stop this from happening from later to becoming a limit? And my big was proud and I had a conversation with Brian. Basically we touched around this thought, well, we'd had a consultant working with one of my team members and all the gentlemen and he might've come back. That really stuck with me. He said, you know what, ladies could just learn some of the harder lessons in the first or second role as a leader. It wouldn't hold them in such stead because it's all my thing possible to learn some of these lessons later on as a later. And so that's got my curiosity and pace and this facilitator was working with those seats. Ex-army, very senior in the army can work with junior soldiers.
Speaker 2 18:05 He pulled in the Vietnam war. He's not him. As Tony said, Tony, so what do you mean? He said, well often these leadership lessons as sitting, looking at your team, pricing them personally and being able to give them good news, bad news, give them directions, give them paper, but it's not like that stuff becomes easier. You become more senior because as you become more <inaudible> a Molly's are meeting you. The rollies berries present themselves to train you on the pain and say, what was that conversation with them? I cannot assign, we need to write a book. Can you ladies? If we were never to meet them again, we'll never meet them at all. What would be the three or four or five things we'd want them to take on board that we know would hold them in really good stead for the rest? They breed and help them become better thing and leaders and hopefully avoid some of the challenges we say simulated.
Speaker 2 18:59 Um, or we'll get vice with, uh, at the moment. And so, um, we decided to write a book. We wanted a rod, something that was interesting. We put the lessons down, we put the lessons for themselves are not really interesting. I read the starter Serato fictional story about AI. Uh, we calculate to these fog lessons. Please. Korea was pricely, uh, easy to ride by. Some many, many clients have interacted with paper-wise, uh, and took their news and this young guy Christian is in, he's been a great style and the fictitious companies hamartic the leadership of the worst team in the company. And the book traces his journey as a new leader and the book's title is hard road lady's journey begins and Christian Price, some big challenges. And the very first one is his claim is not happy. That keeps the young ops staff as the town they are later on. The person chronically challenges. Chris <inaudible>.
Speaker 3 20:08 Well, I first started leading a team, had the opportunity at 24 years of age and I wish you'd written this book 20 years ago made it would have been very, very helpful for me as a young leader
Speaker 2 20:19 would've been helpful for me. Okay, fine.
Speaker 3 20:27 Absolutely. And look, I was lucky enough to catch up with you face to face a a fair bit before the, the whole coronavirus issue came about and you gave me a C a signed copy of the book, which I really appreciate it. Um, I've been through it, I've read it in full front to back and, and you know, got bits and pieces through it. It's, it's an absolute must read my, in my opinion for not only emerging leaders or leaders that have been in a, in a role sort of early on, but I think yeah, as even as experienced leaders, there's so much that can be taken from this book and we're going to dive into that. Like what I want to, as we are diving that in early on in the book there's a section called the meeting from hell and I've picked that out specifically because I'm pretty sure that there's not any one person that would not relate to being involved in what they may determine as the meeting from hell. How about you give us a bit of an insight into the meeting from hell in the book and maybe some of the stories you've had that, that sort of conjured this story up that you put into the book.
Speaker 2 21:32 How uh, early on in the book, and we might, we put that in the book because it replicated a lot of what was sung with cots and essentially the best time behind that meeting, the new ladle thinks he's got everything sorted. Christian has gotten very clear in his mind, uh, exactly what he wants to tell pain exactly how he thinks I should respond. Um, and it's around goals and their ability to achieve goals. He's got a style pocket, which he pretty much a little each girl, she's walking to that meeting with just a pocket and nothing else. But he thinks, you know, I'm the new leader, I'm going to run the meeting, I'm going to walk in with the pocket and then boom, everyone get on board and sign on. So the meeting goes badly because the team I've had zero buying, there's not a special, how are we going to hit the targets?
Speaker 2 22:24 Um, there's a mix of senior people in the team and junior people. Those only things Christian doesn't know. You know, he hasn't done some of the things that we advocate doing lighter in the book. So he's just looking at the same, he doesn't know that several of the team members have been through this whole iteration before. Some of why Adelaide did sound a bluffing. All of that results in a meeting where the tame this guy Matt, not happy. We've got more questions now than wait, we've got answers and Christian will completely disliked it. And yeah, we wrote that because there's a key reason behind that. And I think the lesson is you've got to get buy in from the team and there's a why to get boring. And the white Christian tech is that first attempt at the pain meeting was not the way to get boring. He subsequently goes and get some help from a mentor he uses in the book. Um, and I am spy by giving some thoughts on how to read tech mating and do some other bits and preparation completely. Ray doesn't meeting has a completely different outcome. We put that in there because we say a lot of ladies that aren't really sure how to do that. Critical events came meeting and getting the <inaudible> tape out of it.
Speaker 3 23:41 Might I have to say maybe one part I do disagree. Is that the meeting? Hell I, it actually sounds like it's just a normal meeting in a normal normal organization. You made it sound like it's an exception.
Speaker 2 23:55 Yeah. I mean you're attaching on touching on a passion of ours, which sounds really unusual to have as a passion came meeting. We think team meetings, uh, cool to attend performance and its process the game, um, on out. A lot of coaches do really, really well coaching the clients one on one part of our day. And I though I was going to go to the game and trust the game we're making. So when we're working with pods, we always go to the team meeting and help them improve the team meeting. Um, it was many of them and not done well. And with just some simple changes like can change, uh, completely. But the guy going to the guy, he's going to the same meeting, pain, waiting, easy to game it's way she didn't say the school progress to the school. Um, what do we need to do differently? But you're right, a lot of meetings, meetings get a bad rap because many meetings are bad. We can take, can be paid.
Speaker 3 24:56 Yeah. Mine, I couldn't agree with you. More meetings, other meeting is, is the big game. And uh, yeah, there's, uh, there's, there's much improvement to be had in, in sort of life in general in the, in the working life around meetings. And I know you're passionate about it. You've taught me a lot about meetings and how to improve those, which I really appreciate. And, uh, yeah, there's, there's a lot of work to do in that space and that's a whole other subject of a podcast is no, I didn't no doubt about it at all.
Speaker 2 25:22 Yeah. I mean, it's, it's one of the five lessons we cover in the book, but it's an important moment.
Speaker 3 25:29 Right. That's a great segue. Let's get into the, the model that you guys, you, yourself and Mark are put together in the book because the way the book's written, the Meg and I don't want to reveal everything obviously to the, to the listeners, but the fictional story really relatable, which is fantastic. But then there's the learnings at the backend and a model associated to those learning. So about the, there's five parts to the model. How about we dive into the first part where two, which is self-awareness and team first mindset. What does that mean?
Speaker 2 25:56 Yeah. Um, there are some models and each them has many stories that have come out of our experiences with, so the far past and, um, we think every late in particular, new leaders need to be able to cross them off. So the first one, self-aware. Uh, the next is building strong relationships. Uh, the third is called abiding alignments with buying, uh, from the claim, the full cause, building an accountability discipline and the faith is coaching individuals on the claim of improvement, self-awareness, relationships, alignment, accountability, discipline and coach coaching. So the first one on self awareness, this is critical because what leaps out to me when I think about self awareness is several stories. One of them relates to feedback I got when I was a junior instructor. I've been in shocking for some time and I asked my students for some feedback and I gagged me some feedback that I had.
Speaker 2 27:02 I, I'd, I'd idea I was doing something. Um, the basically this course I was taking tell me I talk too much in the air. Listen to this code listeners mine up is price. I wasn't aware of that or getting that feedback was critical. I made big adjustments to my air instruction based on that. And the other reason this really raised nights for assays, there are a lot of times not onsite. It's nobody to blame, um, people. But there are a lot of teams who have been laid by ladies that have significant blind spots. And when I say that, not think of the people come on and we probably all have blind spots. It probably Brian's work is, I have such an impact on attain lady. You have a behavior that's holding you on the pain back that you will know to of us. I mean that's a tragedy and the upside is find the blind for, it's not hot, it's really laid back where in the back of the boat. So they self awareness. There's really getting awareness on your self first. Uh, what are your strengths and weaknesses? The chain obtains strengths and weakness. And then the third part of it is situational awareness, which was really just trying to anticipate what is going to happen next in your chain. The big pops. So soak away enough and came away. Strengths or weaknesses or,
Speaker 3 28:32 that's fantastic. So really, I guess to summarize, sum up Pat and I don't want to over simplify it cause you know I was just thinking when you went through the initial overview of the model, it sounds, it sounds so simple and it's really, I guess what we say to light on the detail, but the, the, the challenges in the application of all these things. So you know, self-awareness is, is really around understanding how your, your interaction, your behaviors are impacting on others and being aware of those so you can make changes.
Speaker 2 28:59 Yeah, that's exactly right. And like I'm an application proper person. So the effort types for this is if I was working with someone on site right down the pipe, what you think you'd helped create strengths on your top three weaknesses or struggles. We've all got them. We'll hold up now and go to three other people one on one and ask them to complete the time shake about you and ask them to be brutally honest and have them fill it out with a standing. They get that feedback. We liked even profiling tools. Is that the good cause? They're often good at highlighting strengths and weaknesses as well. So the challenges, I see senior leaders that have behavioral weaknesses that are blaringly obvious and then rather willfully Tarzan or ignore them or I don't know about them. And so I'm just in the Brooklyn were highlighted how easy it is to eliminate the don't know that it's just two or three people.
Speaker 2 30:03 Most people are aware that <inaudible> the 10 times are not aware of the impact they're having. And so by asking some people just that simple exercise is a really, really powerful and some crowds they get, we do it in question. I'm starting point off to Facebook where you're tough. And then for the claim it's exactly the same thing it's working at. Who does you obtain service? Um, I've, I internal customers or external customers and again, we'll do workshops where we try and find, uh, help cans on some of their go and to Mycenae amount of times they don't want the feedback to be, we'll talk to, my satisfaction would be one of their goals. And we're taking our Chi. You, you're serving someone, you're on serving and other team in turn, lay or take Stanley or both. Shouldn't you find that walk by think of how well we doing it to a job as a team. Start again. It's a sign like if it's on me or ask, I'm referring to the whole claim. External, internal classmates. What do you think of our team's performance? What are their strengths, what are their weaknesses?
Speaker 3 31:13 Bye. Thank you for sharing that perspective and the example of the of the exercises and amazing that you know an exercise that so simple to do really costs you nothing but a bit of time but the power that can come from an exercise that exercise or that is just unbelievable. Before we go into the second part, the relationships and building strong relationships. I just want to ask you one thing, which to me is, is is glaring when you work with a leader, what is there a key quality that you really need to see or are looking for that will give you some confidence that high they can get some self-awareness or have some self-awareness so they're willing to be more self aware?
Speaker 2 31:57 That's a great question. Pretty good question to Brendan. I think that if it's not crazy is a red loss and I'll use a couple of words to describe the choice. One word is coachable and the other word is a degree of humility. What I mean by coachable is can titrate back model, have a strong ego, which is fine. It needs 20 years for some roles it can take fade back if you count played back. Uh, I think you know, you've automatically limited how far you don't progress as a person or labor. And that requires humility. And again, this is a short story. I remember when we were flying there fighting. When we're looking at future thought or pilots, the amount of times we'd have the same conversation over and over and over again and it will go like this. We'd say a great shooter who's great and a great potential take man.
Speaker 2 32:57 It's got to be a great fighter pilot. It couldn't because every mission we debrief, we talk about what works, what didn't work, and you can see the body language signs. You get onto the what didn't work, what could be done better. And some people just refuse to allow a conversation to happen. And to be honest, I thought it Papa's a junior pilot as well. But eventually I learned it wasn't a bat. Nate was a bat, the whole claim, it was a backpack. We all get better. So the one site is coachability and if I have to make it very specific to, and some people don't, you know them, we all know them that you can just tell the instant something's coming there. Why that I didn't expect that, like, or that agree with or the I attended the body language and facial expression changes. I just do not want to hear, um, when I'll say someone locked that I'll think, you know, to be brutally honest, you're down. You're never going to take this beyond where you are right now. And I'm used to having, when we had these polyps, we think gripe, pause, contact, feedback count. They kinda thought, cause you just signed up for a career of feedback because one thing that stands out and finally, if I didn't, the flying was fun. But it was literally a career of feedback. Every single guy, every single nation, every move is daybreak. And that's not quite as intense as that in business. But you gotta be a tech payback.
Speaker 3 34:31 I think that's a great analogy. You know, using your experiences, they've had a fit and fought a polyp, right? There's some pretty serious consequences if people aren't willing to accept and take feedback on and improve in that sort of situation. But you know, I really think in an, a passionate, as passionate as you about, I think that serious seriousness needs to be taken into leaders, uh, into, into leader and leadership roles because it's absolutely paramount for the improvement of the person aim for ultimately the improvement of the team. And really going back to your point around, you know, the leader reaching the limit that the team may be open to feedback. If the leader's not, then that limit is probably going to reach there pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 35:10 Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's right. And Hey, next top. I'll get that my most people are open to it. Like every now and then you'll start someone that is completely closed to it. That's going to be tough.
Speaker 3 35:27 <inaudible> Martin is a fascinating person to talk to. This was a wonderful
Speaker 1 35:38 opportunity to pick his brain around culture, leadership and teamwork. It's a real honor for me to speak with Martin and to share this with others. His experience and success in the spices evident through the stories he shares. And now culminating with the book hard road leaders journey begins, which he coauthored with his business partner, Mark Bragg. Given what Martin shared, it was tough to any pick three key takeaways this week from the first part of our conversation, but this is what I went with my first key takeaway. The leader was limiting the team performance. In other words, the leader was the limit. If the leader isn't growing and learning, this will limit the growing and learning of the team as a leader. Don't be the limit on your team. Barton used the saying, if you see something, say something. I love this. We have to be honest with our clients as quite often people within the company won't be as a consultant.
Speaker 1 36:39 It is agile bet. If we see something, we say something, this will help to try and avoid the leader becoming the limit. My second key takeaway team meetings are core to a team's performance. Barton referred to it as going to the game and the team meeting is the game. Just imagine a footballer who didn't like playing a game, you'd call them crazy. The meeting is the same for leaders. It's the big game and the leader has to learn to run great meetings. The team meeting is where you should see the school, the progress of the school and experience the progress of the team. My third key takeaway, self-awareness, this is absolutely critical and is the first part of the model in hard road leader's journey begins. There were three parts to self awareness, the awareness of yourself and your strengths and weaknesses, the awareness of the team and the team strengths and weaknesses, and then what Martin referred to as situational awareness, which is about anticipating what is going to happen next in your team.
Speaker 1 37:50 Barton referred to two traits that were important to have to be self-aware. Those traits were coachability and humility. The ability for the leader to be coachable and to have a degree of humility. Martin summed up coachability as the ability to take feedback. A leader must be able to take feedback if they can't. It's a red flag as to how they will progress as a leader. So just summarizing my three key takeaways, the leader was limiting the team performance and the leader was the limit by second one. Team meetings are core to a team's performance. Thirdly, self-awareness, absolutely critical around self, team and situation. Martin's contact details will be given at the end of part two. In the meantime, if you have any questions for Martin or I, please contact me via email@brendanatbrendanrodgers.com dot IEU. I look forward to bringing you part two of my conversation with Martin next week. As we dive into the other four parts of the model, shading hard road leader's journey begins and continue our focus on lessons for emerging leaders. Thank you for listening. Stay safe. Until next time,
Speaker 0 39:14 thank you for listening to the culture of things podcasts with Brendan Rogers. Please visit Brendan rogers.com <inaudible> to access the show notes. If he loved the culture things podcast, please subscribe, right and give a review on Apple podcasts and remember a healthy culture is your competitive advantage.
