Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:03 Welcome to the culture of things with Brendan Rodgers. This is a podcast where we talk culture, leadership and teamwork and plus business.
Speaker 1 00:22 Hello everybody. I'm Brendan Rodgers, the host of the culture of things podcast. This is episode nine. In this episode, the roles are reversed. I have become the interviewee and a friend of mine is the interviewer <inaudible> or as we know him Q from QN coaching and training asked me to come onto a video series he's running during the covert 19 period to talk about culture, leadership and teamwork and the impact this crisis is having in these areas. I'll have to say I really enjoyed being on the other side as a guest. Q is a great guy who really helped to make the conversation flow, so I decided to turn this interview into an episode on this podcast. During this episode, I share my definition of culture and the impact leaders have on it. We talk about the level of support needed for new leaders, the impact of remote working, and I share my number one piece of advice for all leaders. Q also shares a great story about his time as an assistant principal and one of his key learnings. So sit back and enjoy as Q opens up the conversation.
Speaker 2 01:30 Today's guest is someone who I know on a personal level, not only is a, is he a leadership and teamwork coach. He's also a cohost of a networking group here called LinkedIn local and he also has his own very cool podcasts. The cultural things. Guys, please let me introduce you to Brendan Rodgers. Thank you. How are you mate? Thanks for the introduction. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on my pleasure. I'm look, thank you for, for saying yes to me. Um, it wasn't a difficult decision, but you're a good man. So we're again, yeah, we've already talked a little bit at times, but always happy to help, help out. I really appreciate it. I know I've given everyone the really brief version of you, but can you just take a moment now just to expand on that and just tell us, you know exactly a bit more about yourself and what you do and how you help the business community.
Speaker 2 02:27 Look, I'm a leadership and team performance coach. What does that mean? I help leaders create conversation and opportunity for conversation, really focused on creating healthy team performance. So that's one aspect. That's lots of conversation. Lots of people in a room and working through tough issues. Cause I'm a big believer that teams exist to solve issues primarily. So that's where the team side comes in a lot. And there's a lot of work with leaders off the back of that as far as coaching. But the other side of my business is very much working individual leaders and helping them not become the limit on their team's performance. So you know, you can get to this stage where a leader may be learning and growing and fun. It is possible and I've seen it where they can reach this level and the team's improving and then all of a sudden the leader becomes the limit on the team's improvement and performance.
Speaker 2 03:17 So it's really about working with leaders to make sure they never become the limit on their team performance. And as you said, I'm involved with a couple of good friends of mine and that's how you and I met through LinkedIn, local central coast. So we love that community. It's full of fantastic people and just trying to help each other and build strong relationships on the central coast and particularly to help each other and maintain success in business and over this covert period. It's actually been quite good for me. I, you know, I've still been quite busy, like a lot of people, a different form of busy, but the podcast has given me some time to get that up and running. It's called the culture of things and again it's just talking all things, culture, leadership and teamwork, which I love to talk about. I love to get insights from real people, from people that are living and breathing.
Speaker 2 04:03 They're on the front line, like the health workers now that are doing such a great job, you know, they're on the front lawn, they're experiencing things. You've got pressure on your day to day and then thinking about culture and how it can be a better leader and how I can get my team working. You know, that's, that's a really hard balance to have when you're, when you're trying to do your day job as well. Most definitely. And I, I just want to add to that, cause I'm, I'm a big Mariners supporter or short short story when I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Terrible. Um, central coast here four years ago now and I, and I love football and
Speaker 3 04:40 We used to live in Southwest Sydney and we were following the Sydney Western Sydney Wanderers. And then my wife was like, you know, you love it. You were a member down there. Why don't you become a member for the mirrors? And they weren't, let's be honest, they haven't been traveling. Well not at all. And she, and I was like coming in hiring. I said, Hey, but I don't really want to follow like losers and there's no pressure for me. You make up your mind. But she goes, if you do sign up, I don't want to hear you complaining every week about how crap they are.
Speaker 3 05:12 So I bit the bullet and my first two years were taking me take my oldest son who was only three at the time and now as the whole family, we all go and it's great. And I wanted to point that out because your first podcast is with Josh Rose, who was a soup for the Mariners when he was playing and to hear and you talked about getting insights to hear his insights on a winning culture. And I losing culture, it's choking chase and to actually hear in the professional environment, the professional sporting environment is a context that you don't normally get to hear. Um, so yeah, my guys, if you do get a chance to listen to those deck, um, podcasts, um, because you'll be able to hear real life experience, real life conversations from a whole heap of different people.
Speaker 2 06:00 Hi. Thank you. Mine. It's, look, Josh. Josh is a great guy. Josh and I first met quite a few years back, I think on joke on the podcast, who would've thought we met 20 years back playing football together in Brisbane. And yeah, 20 years later we're doing a podcast together, which was a bit a bit crazy. But look, I've got some, got some fantastic plans for the future with the, with the podcast. And I've been really fortunate through, uh, you know, being on the central coast and, and I guess my own football experiences, but also some work experiences. I've had a lot of interaction with, you know, past players and former players of the central coast, both when they were in their heyday and their glory days as we said, and maybe not so gory days. But you know, there's people that have got really good insights into, you know, into teamwork in a sporting environment.
Speaker 2 06:45 They've also, you know, they're making their way in successful in business. They've got philosophies around team performance, around improvement in youth development around football. But sport in particular, another lady on catching up with, we haven't locked in a date yet, but Joey Peter's, who's a, she was the Matildas captains that for many years and one of the most Paccar Matilda's players and another lady on her quite well. She's so passionate about, you know, youth development and, and kids and sport and again around football in particular, but she's doing great things up in Newcastle. So yeah, it's just really great. I'm so privileged to talk and, and know and, and just tap into the minds of these people. Like, cause they're real people, you know, there are people like you and I just try to make their way, do some good things and really help other people. So really fortunate nights to share some insights with these sort of people.
Speaker 3 07:38 Yeah, definitely. And just the last thing that it's um, they real people like you and I, but what, what's different is they've lived a different life. They, they bring a different perspective and that's how we get to broaden our world as well, by understanding and learning from people who have lived, live these different perspectives. So, yeah, highly recommended. Um, but may talking about culture, talking about culture and teamwork. That's what you're, what you're specializing is what you know, your expertise is in culture. It's one of those things where people say, I want a good place, good workplace culture. I want to have a great culture at my business. They just say it, but then they don't follow it up. Can you, can you define what is culture? Because it's kind of like you can't touch it and you can't, you can't see it. You can't feel it. So people kind of just say it and then dismiss it. Can you extend on that a bit please?
Speaker 2 08:31 Yeah, it's a, it's a good point. It's really, and that's the thing that's scary for leaders. It's, it can be hard to measure, it can be hard to quantify. It's not like a KPI, right? You know, where you've got maybe a sales target and you've either made it or you haven't met it. So it's, it's, it's, you know, I like to say it's not so black and white, it's, it's a bit gray and a bit muddy. And that's the way, that's the way great cultures evolve and develop them. I always say there's a, there's a quote there. Weak cultures rise out of neglect. Strong cultures right out, rise out of deliberate intent. And that's the thing with culture. You need to be deliberate about what you're doing. It's a, you know, let's say it's a strategic decision to focus on culture and teamwork and a hundred percent believe that it's not something that is just going to magically happen.
Speaker 2 09:17 You know, here's the magic wand. You know, some theory Dustin, and we've got a great culture. It doesn't work like that. So that's the first thing to really understand. You need to be deliberate about creating a culture, a great culture in teamwork. The other thing that's really often tough for leaders to wrap their head around is culture is a reflection of leadership. As you can imagine, leaders do find that a little bit hard to stomach and, and you know, they can take that a little bit personally. And it should be because at the end, and it's not that leaders are trying to create a bad culture. Again, we all have blind spots. We have, we have weaknesses. Some of us a little bit more attuned to those weaknesses than others and that that's where it comes back to conversation. You know what I, what I try and help create these environments where people can give each other feedback so that we don't have blind spots.
Speaker 2 10:08 You know, you may be doing a certain thing a certain way and that's really detracting from the team's performance and you don't know and the team's not telling you, so how can you do something about it? That's it's really those conversations that become really, really powerful. That's really culture. You know the, it's the behaviors that you accept or behaviors that you don't accept and it's like setting a standard, right? Go back to that KPI. The sales target example. That's a standard, right? This is the standard. This is what we're going to try and meet and we do what we can and we take steps and hopefully get supported to do that. We'll culture and behaviors are no different. What's the standard that we accept in our organization from a behavioral perspective that's going to help drive the right behaviors, which drives the right, right culture.
Speaker 2 10:56 Get clear around that. Yeah. Get some clarity. What are the core values around that and that's where core values can sometimes be seen as a bit of a wake word. That's because in my opinion, people don't understand it well enough and I don't understand the value that it brings. If you really do that well, it sets a standard. You can start to have conversations to that standard. It takes the emotion out of the equation. It's like, Hey, you know we, we, we said we're going to have open arms conversations cause we're trying to get the best results. I didn't feel like he'd been that honest and open in that you know, what, what's holding you back. You know, they, they really meaningful conversation to have that culture again a bit bit hard to, to measure it a bit hard to put your fingers on it, but you can be really deliberate about setting it up and making it very strong in your organization. And what happens then is when you've got a strong culture, the results I, the smart people start tapping into the smarts of everyone. Okay. So you've actually maximize the performance in your organization because people are feeling safe, they're feeling supported, they feel valued and they contribute so much to the organization and that's, that ultimately ends up the bottom line is much better if you're getting the best performance out of your team that you can.
Speaker 3 12:10 Oh, most definitely. My, it's um, we often forget that, um, in most businesses the biggest expense with the biggest, uh, allocation of resources is people, the human resource. Because when business owners start to think of, Oh, what can I do to grow my business? They start thinking of, you know, what can they buy? What's the new system they can put in place? What's a, what's a new product they can sell? But actually they had taken the time to one as you said, ha, I love what you said because leadership and culture, they intertwined. Um, if they're taking the time to invest themselves to become a better leader, which then allows the workplace culture to become more refined and more cohesive, then as you said, the workplace environment is going to promote, um, risk-taking, creativity, essentially better productivity and then there's going to be a sense of accomplishment all around, not just from the leader who, who's actually looking after the KPIs and meeting them but also on, on the, on the, on the ground level where they're going to feel they're engaged in the whole process, every single step of the way they've given the, been given the freedom to, to be able to do what they need to do and they're going to feel supported in that if there is a mistake that the appropriate feedback is going to be given so that they can find a way to tweak it to, to move forward.
Speaker 3 13:34 Absolutely. I read, I read, um, something recently, um, that I'll say recently, it was probably about two years ago.
Speaker 3 13:49 Um, they said, our leadership skills come from our childhood, where our parents are, our leaders and the only type of, and it's no slight against, you know, older generations or parents because we only know what we know. But they said, you know, their type of leadership was whenever we couldn't do something, they would just tell us how to do it or they would just tell us no, or just just forget about et cetera, et cetera. So as we grow up and evolve into the workforce ourselves, that's, that's all we know. So we kind of give feedback that way or we lead on that front, you know, or thought authoritarian manner. But as you, and something that triggered, because I read a post would have been about three days ago, a question that we've all heard, is leadership natural or is it made, I would like to get your insights on that mate.
Speaker 2 14:42 Well, my, again, it's, it's really funny that you mentioned that because the podcasts were released just last Monday. We had a guest on called Melinda Ryberg Melinda's. A friend of mine haven't known her a long time, but she's just a great person, a real easy to talk to and she's been a corporate trainer in that leadership space for 20 years, almost 20 years. Worked in businesses like Ford, Volkswagen, Holden, Maya BBQ, squat, you know, some, some pretty big companies and you don't, you don't do that sort of training and, and hang around for too long in those organizations if you're not getting some sort of results. So she knows she knows this stuff pretty well. And yeah, the question was are leaders born or are they trained and cutting along long? Stuart, you know, if you want to know more detail gallon, listen to the podcast, but at the end of the day leaders are trained like you know there's, there is a inherent miss around motive around leadership and there is, there is two forms of what, two sides of motive, you know, there's leaders out there that they want to be leaders because it's more a reward centered approach.
Speaker 2 15:48 You know, look what I've achieved after all this hard work. And that's very much the wrong in my opinion. That's very much the wrong approach and the role motive to have and that motive will come through in all their decisions, in all their behaviors, which is not ideal for sitting a strong culture. The other side is that servant type leaders like you're there because you're there to serve people. Okay? And that's where, you know when you reach the role, the role or the leadership level that you're wanting to aspire to, then you know you're working even harder. You know, it's like a sporting person. If I want to be an elite player and I get signed by an elite club, well am I going to sit back and say, well, hard work's done or am I going to work my butt off because I don't want to let the team down.
Speaker 2 16:37 I don't want to let the manager down. I don't want to let the fans down. And that, that's where you're doing something for bigger than yourself. So that's, you know, leadership and, and having that most of or the right motive. And if you have the right motive, then particularly around that servant type and the serving others approach, then you work hard at improving leadership. Again, you know, leaders are trained, there's some practical skills. And, and Melinda mentioned a few of those. Delegation was of key key things. If it's the skill that you can, you can learn, but ultimately it's like I believe anything in life, if you really have a strong desire and a wants to learn something, then you can learn it. If you make the time and you've got the commitment and the focus to do it, then do it.
Speaker 3 17:25 So true. Uh, just to add on that, there are some behavioral Personality types that, um, make it easier for them to become leaders. But yeah, a hundred percent leadership is something that you can learn and some people learn it up off the cuff. Some people actually make a conscious effort. It's, if you want to become a good leader, you have to put the effort in. There's no doubt about it.
Speaker 2 17:49 Absolutely. And look, Melinda, Linda touched on it and again, I just so resonate with what she says because I sort of started, I was really fortunate from a sporting perspective. I, I led teams early, you know, in primary school and then when I started playing semiprofessional football I was, I'm still a crazily that the youngest state league captain in in Queensland at 21 I was leading a state league and saw, I was in these leadership positions early, but I've first led a corporate team at 24 and yeah, it was, it was the same old story, right? Yeah. There were other leaders around managers, but did I get the level of support I needed to succeed? No, I screwed up a lot. In hindsight, those experiences of screwing up have helped me today and hopefully that's helped me help other leaders not screw up as badly as what I did, but if I didn't have those opportunities, I probably wouldn't have got the message and the learning as strong as what I did, but you still need the right support.
Speaker 2 18:46 You need some, some coaching, some guidance, some help. Again, that's where coaching, that's where mentorship comes in really handy. You know, we should all have that to help us be better. And we've all got blind spots as I've said, and sometimes it takes somebody else to give you that feedback. Secondly, Brendan, you know, when you do this, this is the impact that it may be having. And that's where, you know, leadership is very much around self-awareness. You've gotta be really self-aware. You touched on personalities, you know, we all, we can all use different personality profiling tools. And I personally use disc. Again, I've done a podcast episode with a client on that. Any, it doesn't matter what your personality profile is, you can be a great leader, but you need to have self awareness about where your strengths are and where your weaknesses are, your struggles and how you work through that. And also how you, more importantly, how you adapt your style to work with other people. Because as a leader, there are our expectations. Rightly or wrongly, people expect that you know, certain things or you can adapt to certain things. They don't seem to get that same realization that you're just a normal person and sometimes you do it well and other times you screw up. You're only human right. It doesn't. Just because you've got this leadership tag or management tag or CEO tag doesn't mean you're you. You're perfect.
Speaker 3 20:03 Most definitely my, you've hit the nail on the head there and you know how w we talked about how leadership and culture, workplace culture and business culture are intertwined. Sometimes we have the best intent, like we say we want it. We want this type of culture. We want everyone to be have creative freedom. We want everyone to be self-driven, self motivated, but sometime the reality is what you intend to do. The culture you tend to have doesn't match up with the reality. What are some things that would help, can help other business owners or other leaders identify or know that, Hey, my coach is not quite where I want it to be. This one
Speaker 2 20:41 Fancy tools out there and I don't, don't take it as knocking these fancy tools. I think unfortunately businesses jump straight to a fancy tool like, let me do a perception survey, let me do a staff survey, let me, you know, do all these sort of things. Let me get focus groups together, all this sort of stuff. And they pay people lots of money to to do those things or buy subscriptions. At the end of the day as a leader, go and talk to people, go and talk to people on the front line and you're very, you'll already know. But if you're trying to put your finger on things very, very quickly, you'll get an idea on what the culture's like just based on, on what you're hearing, what the feedback is. You know, your challenge as a leader is that people unfortunately will. Yeah. Until you build that environment that's really safe and then people feeling supported, then you'll always get the feedback with a little bit of sugarcoating.
Speaker 2 21:35 Right? So maybe just it might be here. Well actually you probably here on the, on the scale, so get out and talk to people and, and this is, this is the challenge I have with with leaders is that going back to the Polaroids before, you know w w we get so stuck in the day to day and it's really easy to do that. And I've been in that position and it's, it's tough, but you got to make time as a leader to pull yourself back. You know, the strength of people in leadership roles, particularly as you, as you move higher up the food chain, so to speak, is you need to spend more time on the people management side and far less, or actually no time on the smart side because you need to be able to help your team be as cohesive as possible because they're really smart people and they're probably hopefully a good people manager as well. But your job is to make sure this team's functioning and you can extract all the golden nuggets of intelligence and everything out of them to get the best, best source of truth, to get the best resolution for an issue. That's, that's your job as a leader and that's what you need to, that's what they need to focus on. If they do that, then like it doesn't matter what industry experience you've got, you can go into any industry and you can do a really, really effective job as a leader because you're focused on the people.
Speaker 3 22:55 It's so true what you're saying that there is no need. We get, we all, we all have shiny object syndrome. The reality is all you have to do is just get information from the right people on the, on the ground level. Um, it's something I call the unwritten ground rules. So you may have, but what are, what are they, what are they actually doing some of the best people to speak to, uh, one, you trust the people, but to someone, someone who is the least experienced person on your team or the environment. Because if, for example, if their managers ask the new person to do a report by this Friday and this new person asked a colleague, Hey, I feel I feel stressed. You know, they put me on the pump here, I'm new. Do I, what's, do I really need to bring it in on Friday? And then if they say, nah, don't worry, we'll just give you another week. Then you know what your coach is really like if the, you know, so it's definitely, you have to, you have to communicate. You have to be open on constantly, um, sitting down with people to find out what is actually happening.
Speaker 2 24:05 Look, the other source of good information is obviously customers, you know, talking with Casa customers will tell you and you know, just the way that people serve them in your organization. We'll give you a perspective on, or maybe what the culture is or how people are living, the core behaviors and those sorts of things. So, you know, there's so many, I guess at the, the root of this, and it goes back to some of the stuff I said before about leadership and creating healthy conversations. This stuff's free. Yeah, it doesn't, it costs. Okay. You can say, well, there's an indirect cost, so I'm spending time and you know, time is money and all that. I get that. But you know, you're not going to get an invoice for a subscription for a system. You know, spending time with people, quality time with people, having real conversations, getting to know them, get it, building trust, developing that relationship where people will start to feedback open and honest feedback is the most powerful thing you can do. And like I said, it's free. You don't need to pay anything for that. You just need to invest a little bit of time in doing it.
Speaker 3 25:03 W we normally associate culture with workplace, you know, our physical space, the way the world currently is, you know, we're all working remotely. You know, w we have to be online and we have to, we're working from a cloud space. From your perspective, how has that impacted culture, uh, for those businesses and companies that are working remotely?
Speaker 2 25:24 In my mind before this, if you, if you pick the situation, you have this magical crystal ball that we all wish we had and you said that this situation is going to happen or this is going to be really bad for businesses cultural wise and teamwork wise. But in my experience with my clients, there's, there's some, some really good learnings. Some of them I working in the space I work in, I'm really pleased that they'd got to this realization because I guess I knew that, but they weren't quite maybe getting the concept. And one particularly talk about is nothing brings a group of people together as a team more strongly than a commitment to a collective goal. So if you think about that situation now, a collective goal at the moment it's, the words may be slightly different, but it's pretty simple for to get everyone on the same page in a team and say, well actually the goal is to get through covert or to keep everyone in jobs.
Speaker 2 26:22 You know, it's, it's something around this immediate crisis. So actually the feedback I've had from a number of my clients that maybe were a little bit challenged with that concept around, you know, they use this word team really loosely, but okay, what are you working together on as a team? And they can't answer that question. So they've sort of failed the first test of actually being team because they're not working together to achieve anything. So yeah, sad is that, is that we're going in this situation today and I've seen business, they've been affected on me. My business has been impacted, you know, like anybody else's. But there's been some solidification, I guess, of neural learning and the realization of the learning that Hey, this crisis has brought our team closer together. We're actually working as a team much better than what we did before because the goal is clear and we've sort of taken our department head off and we're working together to help achieve this collective goal and to get through this thing, this crisis.
Speaker 2 27:20 The other part of that, which this, this is where my clients have really educated me, is that there's four types of, generally there's four types of meetings. There's the daily check in or some people call the huddle. There's the weekly or the fortnightly staff meeting, preferably weekly. There's the monthly or ad hoc strategic type meeting and then there's the quarterly strategic meeting. Therefore basic sort of meeting structures. Again, we won't need to go into that in this podcast, but what I generally say to clients is that if you weren't to do one of those meetings, probably the least important is the daily checking. Okay. Now, but over this time the realization is that that has actually fast become the most important. Meaning that they have people checking in at a certain time every day. Now, not most peak, you know, eight 39 o'clock is pretty standard time.
Speaker 2 28:11 Eight 39 o'clock everyone dolls in zoom, Microsoft teams, whatever the choice is and they just check in first and foremost, how are we going, how's everyone coping with this? And then part of the process of a, of a daily checking or a huddle is, you know, what's on your plate today? Just two or three things, you know, w where's your focus? And the team understands where everyone's at. They know where they can support each other if doing that well normally remove the need for unnecessary email crap because everyone's on the same page. So they're two really big things in my mind that again, one are new around the collective goal and was, you know, hammering that bandwagon to help people understand. But the daily check in how that became the most important meeting for these teams because people were missing that human to human interaction.
Speaker 2 29:05 They wanted to connect just to say how you going and you know what we're doing today. You can see my office behind me, I can see where we're at. You actually get to know a little bit more about people. Okay. That's that wall there I didn't know were into, you know, bill Bryson or whatever, you know, it, you actually are creating a little bit more vulnerability about each other and that I don't like the virtual backgrounds or I just, you know, again, I don't have the background to make it look any good mode. I look like a scary person with the, you know what I mean? Like it's, it hasn't got the right background, but what put that up, you sort of putting up charade. Let, let, let people into your home. I mean I've, I've done some sessions and the dog's been on my lap again.
Speaker 2 29:47 No one's been Aw yeah, they just get to know a little bit more about you. So it's, it's creating that vulnerability when you've got that strength and starting to build those relationships and vulnerability happens and that creates better conversation. They know that you're coming from a good, a good place again on a massive supporter of two. Have you ever woken up in the morning and said, I'm going to do a bad job today? No. I mean realistically does. Would anyone do that? And this is the thing. Yet we work within Tufts structures and sometimes you know, regulations and all that sort of crap and politics in offices can kind of happen, but generally people want to do a good job. And our job as leaders, you know, wrapping this up, is to help people do that and provide the support so that they're waking up in the morning enthused, excited about helping achieve a greater thing other than themselves and what they're doing next and drive that forward and help the organization be better and help their team be better.
Speaker 3 30:45 Oh man. You get to know, I think that the key that what you said is no one wakes up or no one goes about their work or the daily life with an intent to stuff up or to do something wrong. It's innate within us. We have the intent to do what's best, but sometimes we make a wrong decision or a wrong choice. As a result, the the outcome is not what we expected it to be, but the intent was still there to, to have the best day or two to do what's best for yourself or your team or whatever it is. You have to remember that as late as that, yeah, things may not have gone to plan, but they still had the best intent.
Speaker 2 31:21 Always intent is in so many things, you know the, the intent behind everything. It goes back to that mode of I said, you know, you can, you can still be a leader, but if your intent is more around reward for me versus serving others, then the decisions that you're going to make are going to be very different and that will flow through the organization and that culture will become more self serving. And that's where we go back to that phrase, culture is a reflection of leadership.
Speaker 3 31:51 Oh, a hundred percent I have a quick story to share because the intent and you know the collaborative goal. So back in the day when I was educating, I became a assistant principal after two years of teaching because I jumped the ranks so quickly, I felt in the night pressure to deliver only now upon reflection after, you know, that initial leadership period, my intent was to not let my principal down was to hit all the milestones here, all the brief, um, the targets that we've set as an executive team, you know, by, by me not shouting, but you know, giving that one way communication, that direction of what our goals are, why we need them without any input from my team. We essentially didn't get much done because they went in engage in the whole process that the motivation wasn't there. And because of my innate desire to please my team to, to show that I was worthy of being a leader, I've bent over backwards for them.
Speaker 3 32:53 You know, I started picking up the Slack for them. It meant I was starting to get frustrated with my team. Ultimately they know that I was frustrated with myself because I was like, if this is leadership, then it's shit because it's not what I signed up for. Turning point for me was to have structured communication. I then realize this is what I'm being told to do, but is it what they want? You know, how can I support them? What's best for the students? You know? And once we started doing that, being able to sit down can insight into what they want. So it was something as simple as, Hey, these are our goals. How can I help you to support them? But also what do you want to achieve out of this as well? You know? And some of them were like with the whole education system, some of it, a lot of them were temp temporary on temporary engagement contracts.
Speaker 3 33:45 They were like, okay, so if we can facilitate this and get results here, this will look much better on your survey and it will allow you to talk more confident about it when you go into the interview process. From that point on, you know, we could see that by having regular structured feedback, structured communication, I was able to one provide point of need, support point of need, um, training to them. But also they started to take ownership of ideas that allowed them to take an idea and grow or go with it. Allowed them to be creative, you know, have that freedom because no one likes being micromanage. The result, you know, we we productivity for for teachers was I would say I want to say increase cause they already had working but it was more effective productivity and it fostered, improved re learning and results for, for the students.
Speaker 3 34:40 And more than that, and this is what I think brought a home for me, I was able to foster personal and professional growth within them. So increasing their capacities as teachers. And I'm proud to say that some of the staff that I had under my team then had gone on in, into leadership roles. So taking it away from me but back to them so that they can continue to achieve what they want as well was, was a massive learning curve for me. And it's an awesome example that you share and think about. A good measure of a leader is not what they're doing today, but it's what their people are doing tomorrow. How have they developed, how they gone on, whether it's in the organization or whether it's succeeding somewhere else because that's where their journey's taken them. You know, we need to hopefully be proud of our contribution, all of that as as latest to help them develop and, but think about your situation might take things back to sport. It gave, you know, we're both football lovers,
Speaker 2 35:38 I think about young people in sport today and not just today but over the years. Yeah, it's professional. Sports are a hard thing and there's lots of aspirational young people that are there, but they get the knock and they don't get the support they need and stuff. I that you know, some quality or play with some quality players over the time they've been quality at 14 1516 but you know, they're, they're nothing past that because they haven't got the resilience, they haven't got the self reliance and they've just not been nurtured in a way that's, that's given them the grip to move forward and overcome hurdles. Think about that from a leadership perspective. He didn't have some of that self-reliance, some of that grit. Then your experience would have remained a bad experience and the potential of you as a leader may not have ever been realized because you'd be like, I last time I did that was terrible and I don't want to touch it again.
Speaker 2 36:26 I mean, how many, how many people are we putting through that? Because we're not giving them the support, the coaching, the, and companies especially are not, they're just saying, you know what, you're really good at your job. I think you should be a leader and you'll do a great job. Here you go. And that's what they, that's what a lot of them do. And some of them worked through it. Others and a lot think, Oh, this leadership thing, this is not for me. I just, I don't want to want to do this crap. This is too much stress and I'm, I've, you know, it's the worst job in the world. Put me back to where I, where I want to be and it impacts confidence, doesn't it? It's, it's, it's a big problem.
Speaker 3 37:02 Yeah. People will get promoted to leadership roles. They get given leadership roles and responsibilities based on the wrong things. We have to change the discourse on that too, so that we can get not just ourselves, we know we understand this, but you know the wider community to say that, Hey, just because you're, you're great at writing or you're great punching numbers doesn't mean you're going to be a good leader. They may just love that technical work and they're happy happily there.
Speaker 2 37:30 That raises a great point, Mike. A lot of the time people aren't even ask, Hey, cute, do you, would you like to lead people? And it's okay if you said no, I really enjoy what I'm doing today and that's where I want to stay. Great. We know that that's an open, honest conversation. How do we help you be the best you can be at that? But if you do have leadership aspirations and you aspire to those, again on that on a massive believer in, in a hate hearing, when people are promoted based on technical competence. Now I'm not saying technical competence isn't, isn't important. You can't have a level of trust and you can't have a level of competence without technical competence as a leader. But if you're promoting people and moving people into leadership positions based on technical competence over behaviors, it's a recipe for disaster.
Speaker 2 38:19 The people who have the right behaviors, the right mindset, the right virtues around themselves and their impact on others and behaviors and that sort of stuff. Then if they're not quite up to speed on the technical side, they'll get there because they've got the right mindset, they got the right behaviors, but if you just take it on the technical competence end, you know, they may be great at their job, but they'd leave this trail of destruction behind them. Culture is not good very, very quickly. We've covered a whole whole range here of leadership and cultural points. If you were to narrow it down into say three key things, what are the three key things to look out for to implement or to take action on to either build your leadership or fine tune your workplace culture? What would that be? I think there's a, there's a couple of angles we could take a let.
Speaker 2 39:11 Let's, let's focus on the individual leader cause I think this will relate to a lot more people straight away. So if you were an individual leader, either in your business or leading a team in a corporate organization, one of the first things that I believe you need to do is ask for feedback. How am I going as a leader get, you know, you don't need to go out to the whole world, but it might be two or three people in the organization that you are the part, certainly part of your team. Some of those people need to be involved in that. But it might be, you know, a person outside of the team that has known you for a while and worked with you or whatever. So get feedback. Know it might be two or three things on what strengths do I have as a leader?
Speaker 2 39:51 What do you think I'm doing well and two or three things on, what do you think I'm not where, where can I improve? Because then your removing some of those potential blind spots. Okay. If you know about it again and some of it might be perception feedback's a choice, you can take it on and not do anything about it or you can take it on and do something about it. It's like a gift on wrapping. You keep it or you're, you know, you're re gifted, you put it out to someone else. So feedback and asking that question is absolutely vital. Then what you do with it. Okay. So if you take the feedback on both the strengths and the way, it's not about to say focus on the weaknesses or the challenges, but what you do about it, then it's important. So how are, what are you going to do?
Speaker 2 40:34 So this is your current level and where do you want to be your future level. Then how do I get there? Okay. And I'm not saying this is a process you do by yourself. Again, your team may be involved in that, your leader, so your, whoever's you report to or maybe you've got a coach or a mentor or something like that. Somebody that can help you be accountable and keep you on track. What are the steps that you're going to take to move from current to future? That is coaching in a nutshell. You know it, I mean you, you're a coach. You, you do it in your business. It's the same but but different. Yeah, we all got the same stuff, but we apply it slightly differently. At the end of the day, you've got to understand current level, where you want to be and how can I support you to get there.
Speaker 2 41:16 So it's maybe not three separate pieces of advice, but there's three steps to that. Get the feedback to understand your blind spots that will understand character performance, have really good conversations about where do I need to be, where do I want to be that's going to help me focus on improving and then how can I get there? What's going to support me? If you, if you follow that process as an, as an individual leader, then you're well on your way to, to really doing some good things. And, and it's, it's a repeatable process, right? There's always things we can work on. So if you feel you're getting better on those, okay, wait, where's my next lot of feedback? How have I gone with that? You know, how do you think I've, I've adjusted for this summit? Am I, am I doing what I said I did? And asking people to keep you accountable. Hey Q, you know how you, you know how we spoke about this and you know, that meeting I saw your, maybe you fell into a bit of all behaviors. You know what, Brandon, you're absolutely right. Thanks for keeping me on spot. And you know, I'm doing it because I care about you and I care about improvement and that it comes back to that intent, right? So if we do that as a starting point, it will just make a massive difference to absolutely anything that you're doing.
Speaker 3 42:22 And I'll just add onto that like we talked about before, but one having that collaborative goal. So I'm sure wherever you work there, there's a business, there's a business or the company vision, but as a team, what's that collaborative goal? You know, what are you all striving for? What are you aiming to hit? We have to get them to understand and make them realize that they have an active role to play in this as well. You know? Um, and then we w you talked about this right at the start. And the next thing for me is the standards that you have around behavior. So not just the standards that you have for yourself as a leader, you have to think about what, what type of behavior are you willing to accept from everyone else? We accept gossiping around the office. We accept, accept back chatting or sniggering when someone's made a mistake is the standard that, Hey, if someone's made a mistake or there's been an error made, we have that supportive feedback to pinpoint and help them through it so that they can, you know, not make it again and last but not least is communication.
Speaker 3 43:27 This is the one that people go, do we really need to have another meeting? Do we really need to talk about this? But actually if you have it in a structured way where it's a single focus, this is our fortnightly feedback conversation. Have you found this? How can I support you? What are some challenges you anticipate coming up? Then you're able to give them up to provide them with the tools to succeed moving forward. And that's kind of the culture that most people would talk about
Speaker 2 43:57 Struggle to, to action. Look, again, you wrote so many good points and then sort of reinforcing that. A mentor of mine, trying to think of the exact quote, hopefully I don't get it wrong, but he says something like, there's so much good on the right side of a conversation. Again going, it's like the feedback process I said is if you take that even down further to the root cause of so much evil around culture is that people aren't having the conversation they need to have. So when you see your behavior, and this comes through in the stats, you know, I use some team assessment stuff and I wouldn't say it's scientific, but that's where, yeah, if leader wants to see something from and concrete, well yeah, here's the team assessment. We do that, the whole team understands that and that's as a question. Then we debrief that and we get focused on a behavior and it's, and it's the team.
Speaker 2 44:46 It's, there's so many times I do that exercise and you know, it's a, it's a process around it, but you know, people look, Oh I don't think we're like that. Oh well hold on. Everyone in the team, you know, I can see the individual results as well if you want, if you want me to show you that, but this is what this is the team result. So you can't say as a team you don't agree with that because you answered the question that way. These sorts of things become powerful instruments to create conversation. If you focus on the instrument or the tool, you miss the focus. The focus has to be on. These are tools that create opportunity for conversation. Then you've got to be courageous enough to actually have the conversation. If you do that, then the world changes. I'm not a mind reader.
Speaker 2 45:30 You are not a mind reader. We need to have a conversation. If there's something that's troubling or impacting on us working together well, we need to be able to talk about that. You have a foundation of a relationship. This is why I'm a big believer that relationships are just so powerful. If you have strength in your relationship, then you feel much more comfortable at how about having that conversation. I'm not having a conversation with Q because I want to have a dig at you. I'm having a conversation with you because I care about you and I want to help you improve and you care about me so you want to help me improve and that makes conversation so much easier if you have the right intent around that a hundred percent it's the purpose and the intent of the conversation. So because that absolutely holds the main of the conversation.
Speaker 2 46:15 Brendan, if they wanted to shoot your question or ask you any, any more about leadership and teamwork and workplace culture or if you wanted to wear like also where can they work? Can they find more about LinkedIn? Local central coast is what is your podcast? Tell us how we can get in touch with you. You can search for me, Brendan Rogers on LinkedIn and you'll find me fairly easily. I think there's a few Brendan Rogers, but you know, hopefully I can put near the top. My website is www.brendanrodgers.com.edu you can contact me through my website. My email is brendan@brendanrodgers.com.edu so either through LinkedIn, through my website, feel free. Again, you can do a weekly podcast. I do a weekly blog. It's all on my website. I send out a weekly newsletter each Monday morning as well, which is a bit of a, just a cultural things update so you know what's happening in the podcast or blog and just a few things to action upon this. I try to give people just like what you're doing, mate. Just little snippets of information that doesn't overburden leaders, you know to think, Oh, and I've got to do all this as well. Just little snippets that if they just focus on these things during that week or over the course of their leadership
Speaker 1 47:30 Journey, that it will help them become a better leader.
Speaker 1 47:44 After this interview, I think my listeners will have heard enough of me for one week. With that in mind, or keep my summary short, I want to focus on three key points that have been brought to the forefront for so many of my clients over this covert 19 period. The first key point. A commitment to a collective goal brings a team together. Having a collective goal is so easy in a crisis. Often it just happens naturally. The key for leaders is to ensure teams have a collective goal when we aren't in a crisis. The second key point distance is no excuse for teams not to meet distance between people has been forced upon us due to covert 19 this has meant leaders must create deliberate time to gather their team each day using various forms of technology. This deliberate time has brought teams closer together.
Speaker 1 48:43 Ladies must continue to meet regularly with their team after the crisis. The third key point, the skill of coaching must be developed in liters. The social isolation period has highlighted a big skills gap in this area. Ladies must get better at coaching. When they do, they will see far better outcomes across their team. So just recapping these three key points. A commitment to a collective goal brings the team together. Distance is no excuse for teams not to meet the skill of coaching must be developed in liters. If you have any questions or feedback about this episode, please feel free to send me a message@brendanatbrendanrodgers.com.edu thank you for listening. Stay safe. Until next time,
Speaker 0 49:42 Thank you for listening to the culture things podcast with Brendan Rogers. Please visit Brendan rogers.com to access the show notes. If you love the cultural things podcast, please subscribe, write and give a review on Apple podcast. And remember, healthy culture is your competitive advantage. <inaudible>.
