259: How the Best Teams Operate with Adrian Gostick

Pete Mockaitis
Adrian, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Adrian Gostick
Well, thanks Pete. Thanks for your interest in our work.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly. Well, I’m quite interested, and it seems like you are too, and you apply it in multiple contexts, when it comes to studying teams and great performance, as well as in the context of being a high school soccer coach. So, I’m curious what inspires you to volunteer this way and keep volunteering this way.

Adrian Gostick
Well, it’s something I’ve done for several years. I started when my son was the high school goalkeeper and I got involved, and it’s just great to see young people need that connection to team. It’s one thing we’ve noticed in our research too, is that especially Millennials, Gen Z coming up into the workplace, really sparked great teams. And unfortunately so many of us as managers, maybe we’re not as good at creating those great teams. So it’s kind of fun to try some of our philosophies out on the soccer pitch.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m intrigued. Any stories of sort of leadership, team management sparking goodness coming to life with the high schools?

Adrian Gostick
It’s funny – I think in life we learn more from our mistakes than we do anything positive that we do, unfortunately. And when I first started I was assisting the head coach, and I don’t think you realize the importance of these concepts of motivation. It was more about the Xs and the Os, and he was very good at that. But slowly over the years we’ve helped him understand that you’re going to get a lot more out of these young men when you begin to understand their drivers – what motivates each of them individually, and quit worrying so much about the Xs and Os and worry about each individual – what drives them, what motivates them. And now he’s got a team that for the first time ever was in the state finals last year. And he’s got a team of young men who walk through fire for him, but it didn’t come until he began worrying about the soft side of leading people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. So then, I understand as I’m flipping through here, that is much of the good stuff inside your upcoming book The Best Team Wins. Tell us what’s sort of the main idea within this book, and why it is important here and now.

Adrian Gostick
Chester Elton – my co-author – and I, we do a lot of work with large organizations – American Express is one of our clients, California Pizza Kitchen. We’ve got some really fun clients that many people have heard of over the years. But what we try and do as we work with the CEOs and the leaders of these teams, is to realize sort of what their worries are. So, for example about five years ago we were hearing a lot on culture, and we were lucky enough to become one of the first to write a big book on culture and how you build a great culture. It was called All In, with Simon & Schuster.
And then over the last few years we’ve been hearing so much about teams. I know we’ve heard about teams for a long time, but things are changing, and there are challenges facing teams today – working cross-functionally, with Millennials coming into the workplace, with the increased speed of change – that a lot of the CEOs and senior leaders we were working were saying, “Really, teamwork has changed so much in the last few years, there’s really no guide to help me and help our organization understand how to navigate the waters of teamwork today.” And so, that really was the impetus to write The Best Team Wins, was how do we face the challenges of leading a team in 2018?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s go into it then. So you’ve actually laid out five disciplines of team leaders. Could you maybe orient us a little bit with a preview to start and hear what are those disciplines?

Adrian Gostick
Now again, we’ve got about 850,000 people in our database that we’re looking at, so we’ve got a plus or minus here at a fraction of a percentage that help us understand really what the best teams today are doing differently. Now, The Best Team Wins isn’t a Bible of everything that you ever need to do to build a team; there are still some really solid fundamentals out there but there’s been lots written on those.
So what this is about is what’s different about the best team leaders today, and as you mentioned, Pete, five disciplines emerged that we saw in the best teams, that they had the highest performance, the highest engagement levels. The first was that managers really did understand there were differences in the generations that they were managing, and they learned that they had to manage, say, Millennials different than Boomers, different than Gen X. So we talked about that, but it was very data-driven, and we’ll talk about that in a moment, I’m sure.
The second idea was that while we do worry about the generational differences, the best leaders are managing to the one, especially helping people drive their career development. That’s one of the biggest differentiators today, is helping me as an employee grow and learn and develop.
The third was that they’re much faster. Great team leaders really speed productivity – they get new people and teams up to speed a lot faster than their peers.
The fourth idea was that these great teams that we studied really were challenging everything. They had amazing debate within their organizations, and almost we call it “discord”, where they were really challenging each other and ideas.
And the final thing we found was that great teams had a focus on the customer that was laser. Now, there’s probably not a team in America or wherever you’re listening, who doesn’t believe that we’re customer-focused, but these teams truly were. Every decision, every debate revolved around what really would be the benefit to the customer. So, at a high-level those are the five disciplines we found in the research.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yes, thank you for that preview there. And I would like to dig into each of these a touch. So, yeah, let’s talk first about these generational differences. And thank you for being data-driven – that’s what we love here. So, I’m a Millennial, I guess just barely, although most Millennials don’t like to be called Millennials. And that median listener – their age, according to my last survey… Maybe I need to get 850,000 data points, that’s awesome – is also in the Millennial age zone. So tell us – what are the “for real” differences amongst generations, versus sort of the “hype myth” differences between the generations?

Adrian Gostick
That’s a really good point, because a lot of people start tuning out once you start talking about entire generations. It’s a little like saying, “Everybody in Costa Rica does this” or, “Every left-hander is this way.” Of course, that’s just ridiculous. But what we can find in the data are there are some big changes happening in the workforce that we need to be aware of as leaders.
So for instance, autonomy has long been heralded as one of the biggest drivers of human behavior. Dan Pink wrote a book called Drive where he said autonomy was the most important factor driving engagement and motivation for people. Well, what we find is actually that’s true if you’re a Boomer, it’s true if you’re a Gen X, but it actually is not true for the vast majority of Millennials. Most Millennials coming into the workplace – 80% in our data – really want to be coached and managed, and part of a productive team.
They value teamwork a lot more than my generation – Gen X did. We much more valued the cowboy – being able to do things autonomously and independently. Well, this is a new generation. It really does value working in a team, they found that they’re more productive that way, better things are accomplished that way. Well, that’s a big overall finding that as leaders we should at least be aware of, and it may change how we manage. Another thing that came out of the data…

Pete Mockaitis
If I could jump on that in a little bit more detail, please. That’s intriguing. So yes, I too have heard autonomy is the thing we all want. And so then, maybe I just want to get clear on definitions a bit. So, I think of autonomy as sort of the ability to do your work the way you want to and with the time horizon more or less that you want to, in the location that you want to. But how are you defining and viewing autonomy in your investigations?

Adrian Gostick
That’s a great question. And one of the things we’re finding is that of course, nobody likes to be micro-managed, do they? What we really think about with autonomy as we study this, is that if I am driven by autonomy, I typically prefer to be my own boss and I like to have a degree of freedom … I typically prefer working alone more than working in a team. I’m giving you the definitions in our survey of people. I typically feel I get more done when I work more independently.
Now, as I mentioned though, almost nobody likes to be micro-managed. What we’re looking at with autonomy are people who like to work more independently. What we look at though and what we’re finding is indeed, out of the 23 human motivators we found autonomy ranks 4th highest for Boomers, it ranks 22nd out of 23 for Millennials.
So that’s a huge data shift. Now that’s something we need to look at that says whether it’s because of where I am in my career, or because of the generation that I grew up in, where teams were more important – something is happening here, where people prefer now to work more collaboratively. And so as a manager, whether I’m managing Millennials or anybody coming into the workforce, I’ve got to find ways to help people work together more effectively, if that’s making some sense.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you, yes. And so, I suppose there is a natural tension. I guess as I’m thinking about myself, it’s like I want my autonomy, but I also want to collaborate. But in a given hour of work, it’s somewhat binary, in the sense that, of course none of us like to be micro-managed or be in crazy, pointless, time-wasting meetings. But I think you’re right – it’s like you’re either doing your thing your way or you are having a back-and-forth and doing something in, I don’t know, kind of like a compromise, or a jointly agreed-upon way, as opposed to any way you care to roll.

Adrian Gostick
Exactly. And by the way, nobody of course is one-dimensional, just as you say. Actually autonomy is one of my strongest drivers. As a Gen Xer, that is really one of my strongest drivers. I love to work more independently, but other times… Yesterday I went down to work with our little 12-person team, and it was invigorating and it was wonderful. And today I’m working alone in my office. You’re right – we’re all a mixed bag, but again, we’re talking about trends right now and what we can do with them.
One of the other trends we found, which was fascinating, is that Millennial-age people, especially those in their 20s right now, are about three times more likely to be driven by external drivers like recognition than older workers. And yet, where do most organizations spend their time recognizing people? It’s people who’ve typically been there a little longer, who achieve big things for the organization. Where, who needs the recognition? People who are newer in the organization, those who may be a little bit more even insecure about their role. Recognition helps them understand really what they’re accomplishing and how valued they are to the organization.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, recognition here – we’re talking about kind of public. Is that fair to say? In terms of, “Hey everyone, we’re presenting the Rockstars of the Year awards. So come up on stage and we’ll clap for you as we say something cool you did this year that was meaningful for us.”

Adrian Gostick
Yeah. And really, when we look at recognition though – those are nice, but that’s once a year and maybe it’s once every five years. Those really don’t drive that individual performance. What we’re finding with recognition, especially with younger employees – that it’s it’s got to happen frequently, it’s got to be specific though. It can’t just be, “Boy, Pete, you sure do good work.” No, no. It’s, “Pete, I listened to your podcast last week. Insightful questions…” You can see already, I know what you’re doing.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m motivated, Adrian. You’ve got me motivated.

Adrian Gostick
Yeah. So what we’re finding is recognition has to be much more frequent, specific and timely than it’s ever been, as we sort of think about managing a new generation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So that’s a top tip there for the Millennials. Anything that you would say in terms of a top driver for the other generations?

Adrian Gostick
Well, one of the things we find, and again this kind of leads us into our next idea of, while we’re being sort of generic here, what we do find is there are certain things that happen as we age. One is that we become a lot more interested in ideas like variety in our work. The worst thing you can do if you’ve got somebody who’s in their 50s working for you, the worst thing typically you can do is make their job rote – just the same thing day after day. We become much more interested in variety as we age, much more interested in ideas like developing others, leaving a legacy, creativity becomes actually even more important as we age, to challenge ourselves.
What we also found is that there are some things that are really quite similar though, in our DNA, no matter what age we are. We all want to make an impact. Or I shouldn’t say “all”, but really the vast majority of us have “impact” as a top driver. Another is learning. And what was fascinating to us is that it didn’t matter if somebody was in their 20s or 70s – learning typically fell as a top driver for the vast majority of people. So a couple of really interesting findings – we’re more similar than we may think, and there are also some interesting little differences we found.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And so you were getting at, rather than going into broad groups of people, manage to the one, in terms of the particular drivers for an individual. And so, I’d love to get your take on, how do you elicit some of those drivers and then play to them effectively?

Adrian Gostick
Yeah, that’s a great question because I may be sounding like I’m talking out of both sides of my face, because I’m saying in one way you’ve got to understand generations, and that does help us understand from a mass perspective who’s working for us. But really the best leaders that we’ve studied over the last three or four years as we’ve been writing this book, really do get to know their individuals too.
And in the book we have a lot of ideas about how you figure out the specific drivers of your people, but this all leads to an idea we call “job sculpting”, where really you’re going to sit down with each of your people, and many of the great organizations we’ve been studying, they do this as often as monthly with their people, and they have career development discussions every single month with their people: “Where are you going? Are you having the right training, the right opportunities, the right challenges to get you where you want to go in your career, even if you may leave us one day?”
What we’re finding is organizations that worry about their people’s careers are cutting turnover dramatically, and they’re increasing engagement levels. And this is something that’s well within the control of every manager. I might not be able to give you a huge raise at the end of the year, I certainly can’t impact probably your bonus structure too much, or your benefits, but what I can do is meet with you and talk about your career and how I can help you with that, as a manager.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So the sculpting then is kind of like, “Okay, now that I know that you’re interested in analytics, I’m going to be on the lookout for some analyticky pieces of work that are coming up and try to get that flowing your way.” Is that what you mean there?

Adrian Gostick
Exactly, yeah. And what we do is we give people the structure to be able to talk about this, because in many cases they really don’t know what gives them that skip in their step every day. And so we give them a series of questions they can go through, and then they can begin having these conversations with their managers that they can sculpt their jobs and say if it is analytics that drives you…
Unfortunately sometimes we as leaders sort of peg people into, “Well, Pete – he’s the creative guy, so he always wants to be creative” or, “Susan – she’s the behind-the-scenes, detail person. I always give her those assignments.” Well, maybe Susan wants to work with some clients and challenge herself and push herself. So really, this is a two-way conversation, to be able to understand what drives our people, and also if there’s a chance, to be able to give them a few things that’ll motivate them. In many cases people will actually even work harder if you take the time to work with them in that way.

Pete Mockaitis
So then, I’d love to hear some of those excellent questions that help surface the stuff that people like and gets them going.

Adrian Gostick
Well, a few of the things we really challenge people to think about in this case, is, “What is it exactly that you’re doing on those days when the day really flies by? What are the activities that really you are undertaking?” And also, “What are the activities that frustrate your work, that on those days when you have to do them, you hit the Snooze button? What exactly is it about those activities that demotivate you?”
So we just start driving down. You’re using the Socratic method of saying, “Why?” “Why does that demotivate you? What is it about it that’s frustrating you?” So very simple questions that we’re pushing there. And what you do is you start near-term and then you move farther-term. So you start with the day-to-day – what’s motivating, what’s demotivating – and then you go bigger picture.
For example, “If you had three wishes for your career, what would they be?” Because then people typically are thinking a little further out – 5, 10 years. And then you can sort of talk about educational, skills, opportunities that’ll be needed, different things that’ll help you get to that point. And of course too, as a leader, you’re also helping temper expectations and say, “To get there, this is what you’re going to have to do” or, “You may not be ready to get there yet”, and just be able to have those honest conversations with people.

Pete Mockaitis
And what I think is so powerful about this is not only sort of the content that flows from it for job sculpting; it’s also the content that flows from it from an organizational perspective. It’s like, “Oh, we’ve got a process that’s just broken. You hate it because it really does not make any sense that we do this dumb thing.” Or, “Oh, in this certain area the decision-making roles are just wildly unclear. Well, no wonder that just sucks. So let’s see if we can clean that up.”
So I guess it helps them both in terms of the assignments they’re taking on, as well as cleaning up little messes all around, as well as just conveying that, “We care about you.” Because I don’t know, maybe you’ve got some data on this – how many organizations take the time to have these conversations? And I guess it can vary even leader by leader inside an organization, but if you had to give a rough guesstimate here, what proportion of leaders are having conversations like this on a regular basis, versus aren’t right now?

Adrian Gostick
Yeah, that’s a really good question. I don’t have the specific data; we just know what we’re showing is this is what the best leaders that we found were doing, those that had the highest engagement scores. But also, when we would go into an organization to study them, we would… For instance we went into Danaher, which is a 70,000-person technology company and we said, “Okay, give us your best manager.” And they would send us to XYZ person and we would interview that person.
So typically we’re getting the best of the best, and this is what we’re finding the best were doing. And they were having these sort of career discussions, these job sculpting discussions, as well as regular weekly updates with each of their people about what was happening in their jobs. So really, this is what the best of the best are doing. If I had to guess, probably 10% of managers, I would say, are probably really good at these types of things, but those 10% are blowing the doors off of performance.

Pete Mockaitis
And I guess now I’m wondering if someone’s listening and you’re in an organization like, “Dang, I wish my boss did that, and we just don’t.” Do you have any pro tips on trying to do a little bit of steering the change or starting the shift within, if you don’t have sort of a big power title authority from a positional perspective?

Adrian Gostick
Yeah, a couple of things you can do. The Best Team Wins really is a book for anybody who leads a team, but also anybody who aspires to or anybody who tries to influence others around them. And so there are lots of sort of hacks for all of us to help us become better at this. If you find yourself as a member of a team and maybe your manager isn’t as good at this as perhaps he or she should be, you can always hopefully set them up for success, to be able to give them a few of these ideas, to be able to say, for instance on this idea of job sculpting, “Hey, here’s what I read in this book. This is what some great leaders are doing.”

Pete Mockaitis
“Buy it!”

Adrian Gostick
Yeah, buy them a copy of the book. But that besides, “This is what some of the great leaders are doing. They’re having regular career discussions with their people. Doesn’t cost them anything. It’s a 15 to 30-minute conversation once a month and it helps them sculpt jobs, find out what’s frustrating them, helps them give direction. I’d love to do that with you. Is that something that you feel like you could commit to, just for a few months to see how it goes?” There are some simple things you can do to help your manager see the power in some of these very simple ideas.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you. So, I want to hear maybe just a quick bit about speed productivity, because I want to go into some depth on healthy discord and challenging things. So, how does one get productivity flowing all the faster?

Adrian Gostick
Well, what we find is there are a couple of things here. One is that we have to help people understand this idea – it’s security, if you will – it’s overcoming the fear factor and understanding that, “Look, you now belong on this team. You may be a new employee, you may be brand new to our team, but here’s why you were invited, here’s why you are important, and here’s the role that you play.” Clarity is so huge in this process.
The second part – and I’m giving you very fast here – is context. It’s helping your new people understand not only where they fit in the team, but where the team fits into the entire organization. You think about it as you’re in the mall and there’s the red dot that says, “You are here.” Well, I know it sounds odd, but we are so poor in most organizations at helping people understand not only the big picture, but how the widget I’m making or the thing I’m selling or the customer I’m speaking with, really impacts the big picture, and giving me that context.
And the last one may sound really warm and fuzzy, but in great teams that speed productivity there’s a greater level of affiliation, which basically means friendships: “I feel like I’m accepted here, I’m valued as a human being.” We found one bank in our study – it was a call center – that simply had everybody go on break at the same time, versus the old system, where people would sporadically go when they could.
The entire team went on break for 15 minutes. It was a silly little thing, but they had to do a lot of work to send the phones elsewhere, but all of a sudden productivity soared, and people started looking out for each other. And why? Because they knew each other’s families, they started talking about things. All of a sudden they became a tighter team. So there’s lots of little things you can do to build these ideas of affiliation and context and security to help build a great team, and fast.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. And that notion of security, I think really does help enable folks who feel capable of engaging in some healthy discord and to do some challenges. And so, I think that you had a great turn of a phrase about “disagreeing without causing offense”. And boy, what a skill for our time and place right now, and I think that it’s huge. And so, I’m a believer and I’m so curious on your take on this. Any sort of data-driven insights, and particularly how do you get there, especially whether it’s sort of changing from within: “When people disagree with me, I feel offended.” I know you can’t change people exactly, but influencing others to adopt that same kind of a mindset, where they too can be challenged and not think, “Well, this person’s dead to me” or, “They’re an enemy of mine.”

Adrian Gostick
Yeah. It’s unfortunate, but how often do we… Probably most of us have worked at some place or other over the years where debate is just quashed, whether overtly or covertly. I had boss who stormed into my office once after I debated with him in one meeting and he told me, “You’ll never do that to me again.” Do you think anybody was giving their best ideas in an environment like that?
So really, what we found, and we do have quantitative data that says those environments that are more about the debate, are more innovative, etcetera… But this is more on the qualitative side, that when we went into these great organizations, we would ask them, “Okay, how do you create this discord without it turning into a … and it turning into, as you said, where feelings are hurt, etcetera?”
So typically they have some sort of ground rules – things like, “You challenge the position but never the person, you don’t make things personal.” And again, the ground rules come up and the leader of the debate may say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, I think we’re crossing over the line there. You remember our rule is…” For instance, another one: “Seek to gather facts and don’t jump to conclusions.” Okay, so another rule we heard in another team. Another one was, “Remember, you’re in a competition to win. The best ideas win. You’re not here to ram home your points.”
And so, I could go on with the rules, but really that’s the “A-ha” from this, is that there are rules, and that there are some rules to make sure the debate is lively. All of us want to argue out things. You think of your last family event. Did you guys sit around and just make small talk or did you start debating politics and sports and all the things you’re passionate about? Of course, we do it in our personal lives. We want to debate in our work lives; we want to make things better, but there do have to be rules that help keep us positive and focused on the right things.

Pete Mockaitis
You said we could go on about the rules, and I really would. I’d love for you to go on about the rules. Could you share a couple more?

Adrian Gostick
Yeah. Another one is – and this is an interesting one – is that one other word we heard quite often was, “Look, after the team makes a decision collaboratively, we’re going to support it, even if it wasn’t our own idea.” Now that’s huge, because you may not agree with it after you leave. And it doesn’t mean we all have to be automatons and robots here walking around, but the point is if we are a team, we’re going to support the team.
And one of the things we heard, one great CEO that we interviewed for the book said typically 98% of the time he says, “My team as they’re debating, is able to come up with consensus.” He says, “I really don’t have to make a decision as a leader, because it’s so obvious by the time we get there.” And there are a couple of things he says you’ve got to do though. He says typically you may have somebody on the team who hasn’t spoken up, and you’ve got to make sure they’re really bought in, because they could leave and sort of undermine everything.
So he may say, “Cindy, you really haven’t said anything. I need to hear from you. What are you thinking? Do you feel like we’re on the right track or not?” And he says, “There are times where I do have to make a decision, I do have to say…” But he says you can still be very respectful about that as well. So for instance he may say, “Boy, this has been great debate on both sides of this issue. A reasonable person could go either way. I feel like we’ve got to make this decision and go this direction this time, but thank you so much for this excellent debate.”
Now, really simple, right? He says by doing that, next time people feel free to speak up, and when they leave the meeting they don’t feel like they’ve been quashed. They feel like their voice has been heard. So just some really simple little things we can do to create this environment, where we lead debate and we help steer it toward a great conclusion, where people are still respectful but the best ideas emerge.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect, thank you. Well, Adrian, tell me – anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Adrian Gostick
One of the other things I guess I would say with this is – and it’s always fun to hear – is that now and then after we put out a book… And I think this will be the same way – our book’s coming out February 13th. So typically I get some emails afterwards about different things and how people are using this in their work situations. But what’s been really fun is that people will send me an email and they’ll say, “I’ve now tried this at home and it actually does work.”
Some of these different ideas about debating healthily, or the ideas about understanding what drives each person, or figuring out what our collective challenges are, what our purpose is within our families or our relationships. So it’s fun to see this work at work, but it’s really quite heartening to see these also work in our homes lives too, in our personal lives. So there’s just one little thought.

Pete Mockaitis
That is good, thank you. Cool. Well, now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Adrian Gostick
One of the things Maya Angelou once said was that people don’t care or they won’t remember what you say or they won’t remember what they do, but they’ll always remember how you make them feel. And really, what our whole career has been about is helping leaders and managers and people who want to become leaders of others succeed.
And one of the things that really we have to remember as a leader is that we don’t know where people have been their other 16 hours they’re not with you during their day, but the 8 hours they’re with you can be the best hours of their day. But really it’s a sacred charge; we’ve got to realize these people in our care are literally in our care. And how do we motivate them, how do we engage them, how do we challenge them to do more than they ever thought possible? That’s our charge.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, thank you. And how about a favorite study or experiment or a bit of research?

Adrian Gostick
Let’s see. Well, we do so many research studies ourselves. One of the bits of data from The Best Team Wins actually is – and this really shocked us, but we found it over and over again – was that how much time people typically spend today in working collaboratively. Deloitte has found that 80% of an average employee’s day is spent working collaboratively. Now, that is definitely a change from even just a few years ago. We’re moving at light speed toward a world where we no longer work alone. We work with others, and we really have to figure out how we work best with each other, and in many cases change our thinking about this.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Adrian Gostick
Let’s see. I just finished a terrific book called Beneath a Scarlet Sky, I believe it’s called. It’s about during the Second World War an Italian young man who helped Jews escape across the mountains, the Alps, during the Second World War. And it was one of the best reads that I’ve read in a long time.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Adrian Gostick
I travel a lot, so I’m always on the Weather Channel app, I’m always sort of surfing blogs. Really, it’d be hard to nail it down because I really do believe whether I’m reading The Wall Street Journal online or the Harvard Business Review blogs, that there are so many great ideas out there, and unfortunately so much of it can start sounding the same.
And what I really look for, and as a team, our little company is called The Culture Works – we’re firing things back and forth every day using Slack actually – one of the tools we use – and, “Hey, did you read this article?” Like yesterday there was an article from ESPN on the Patriots and sort of the dysfunction that’s going on right now via communication in their team.
And we started talking about what’s falling apart for a franchise that’s done so many amazing things for so many years. And we started talking about that idea – it’s communication, is Belichick having problem with generations, and this, that and the other. We just started bouncing ideas around; it was a really fascinating discussion. And so, I think that’s one of the things we have to do, is keep pushing ourselves and our teams to learn and to grow and to think about problems from different perspectives.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent, thank you. And how about a favorite habit, something you do that helps you flourish at work?

Adrian Gostick
Well, one of the things, every day I’ll probably put in three or four hours of writing. Sometimes I’ll be out working with a client, but if I’m in my office probably half a day will be spent writing, but the other half will be spent reading. So, I think it’s so important, whether you’re reading a new business book or articles in journals or publications, or blogs, or listening to podcasts like yours – whatever we do; I think that one of the things I try to do is make sure I’m learning and growing and I’m not stagnating.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget or a piece that you tend to share with clients or audiences or readers that you find is often repeated back to you? An Adrian original that’s really resonating?

Adrian Gostick
One of the things we try to help people understand is, because everybody is so focused on the customer, and we let them know the customer experience will never exceed the employee experience, that you’ve got to start the service profit chain with your people, because if you care about them, they will care about what you want to care about. But they’ve got to know you care first.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And Adrian, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Adrian Gostick
TheCultureWorks.com. We’ve also got a website at CarrotGuys.com, so we’d love to connect with you. Send us a note, pick up the new book The Best Team Wins, and we would love to hear if it’s working for you and your organization.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Adrian Gostick
I think probably the most important thing is really every day you’ve got to be focused on… If you are a leader of people or you’re a leader of projects or teams, the little things really do make a big difference. And what we’re saying from all of this – I’ve thrown out lots of ideas and talked about a lot of stuff today – really, try one thing at a time, and don’t try to eat the elephant.
Is there one thing you can add tomorrow to your management style, your leadership style, the way that you are part of the team or operating the team, that may make you more effective, that may make you more valuable to your people and to those around you? Don’t try to do everything. In the back of our book we’ve got 101 ideas for real team leaders. Grab one of those and see if it makes your team better. That’s what I would recommend, is don’t try to do everything. Just try one thing and see if it works.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Well, Adrian, thank you so much for taking this time and sharing these perspectives. I think this is so powerful and has the opportunity to be transformational in many ways for many work places. So, I wish you tons of luck with this book and all the things you’re up to!

Adrian Gostick
Hey, thanks, Pete, and thanks so much for your great questions. Appreciate it.