KF #34. Builds Effective Teams

Pete Mockaitis
Don, thanks so much for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Don Yaeger
I am so grateful, Pete, to join you. Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into some of your wisdom. And I got a real kick out of just the name of your company. My company is called Optimality; yours is called Greatness, Inc. So tell me, what does this word mean to you, what do you mean by it and what do you find so inspiring about the concept of greatness?

Don Yaeger
So, actually I chose “greatness” because I couldn’t spell “optimality”.

Pete Mockaitis
I always have to spell it on the phone. I mostly do business as How To Be Awesome At Your Job for that reason, but, yeah.

Don Yaeger
No, greatness for me was… I love sharing a little bit of the story because I’m so grateful to my father. But when I was graduating from college, leaving for my first job, I’m there with my dad, we’re in Indiana, I’m getting ready. My car’s loaded up, I’m headed to Texas for that first job out of college. And my father’s just sitting there in the driveway and says, “Don, because you’ve chosen journalism as your career, you are going to end up in the presence of some extraordinary winners, some people who have achieved things that all of us would love to learn from. And you’re going to ask them questions and it’s going to be great. And you’ll write the story and it’ll be awesome. But I hope that somewhere on this journey you’ll stop and ask each one of these people something that will benefit you. Ask them a question that you can learn and grow from.”
That was like Dad wisdom that sometimes you think is silly at 22, and then later in life you go, “Wow, I’m so glad that he said that and I took the wisdom.” So, I began asking the question of the winners and leaders and people of importance that I would study over the course of my time in journalism: “If you could name one habit that allowed you to become what your opponent couldn’t, what even some of your teammates were unable to become, what would that habit be?”
And they became the characteristics of greatness, is what they were called. And I kept a series of notebooks just on the answers that these great winners were giving. And then when I retired from SI a few years ago – I took an early retirement from Sports Illustrated – my first move was to grab those notebooks and start calculating out what answers do great winners give to that question.
And it was interesting how none of the answers were sporting. They weren’t about their physical gift, they weren’t about their knowledge of a game. It was about the development of disciplines that we can all learn from. And I thought that was really kind of cool, that these weren’t sports stories. These were lessons from great winners. Just as you might want to learn a great lesson from a Navy SEAL or a mountain climber, you don’t necessarily have to do those things to appreciate the lesson. That’s what I was getting access to as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is really cool. And so, you’re being humble and modest a smidge here. And we talked earlier about the audience is 50 / 50 sports fans. So, feel free to shamelessly name drop here a little bit. So, you’re talking about truly the tippy top of the great famous legends in their respective sports. So, could you maybe orient us to just a few folks who you spoke with and they said something that really stuck with you?

Don Yaeger
Sure. We’re talking about folks like Michael Jordan. I’ve worked with Michael for many years, and he’s a voracious competitor. He’s one of those people that just loves to scrap. And there’s just so much about him, whether you like him or don’t like him, that you should want to learn from, right? For me, the lesson that he taught me most openly, and maybe the lesson that probably sticks with me even to this day was, he talked about the idea of excuses, and how many of us have found excuses every time we don’t get what we want in our hopes to be something special. And we use those excuses to keep us from being able to achieve something better. He said once to me, “You know, Don, a loss is not a failure until you make an excuse.” And I thought, “Wow, that’s really powerful.” This is a guy who uses the mental strength that comes to him from losing to help make him better. Pretty powerful stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
That is good, yeah.

Don Yaeger
Many of your listeners might be fans of the movie The Blind Side. I had a chance to write the book with Michael Oher, the player who was the centerpiece of that movie. And there’s Michael – this kid comes from nothing. One of 13 children to a drug-addicted mom, and slept outside because she would be on binges and would lock him and his brothers and sisters out of their apartment, their housing project apartment.
And yet, when he became successful, when he signed a contract worth millions of dollars – changes the trajectory of his life – the place that he was the very next morning at 6:30 a.m. was the workout facility that he knew, was the facility that allowed him to get there, to get to the top. He was there working out again the day after he signs the contract.
And the reason was because he is a complete believer that the second you start resting on your laurels and you get comfortable with what you’ve achieved, somebody passes you. And he didn’t want to be that guy. So, pretty awesome to have the chance to rub elbows, go eye-to-eye with some of these folks and learn lessons from them.

Pete Mockaitis
That is really cool, yeah. So, you’ve also written many books, and one of them is about great teams. And you mention things high-performing organizations do differently. We love high-performing over here. So, could you share with us what are some of the main themes and findings there?

Don Yaeger
Oh yeah. So, when I retired from Sports Illustrated, when I took that early buy out 10 years ago, I began doing speaking engagements for a number of companies. One of those companies that hired me regularly was Microsoft, and one of their senior executives said, “We love the discussion of individual high performance, but we want to know why sometimes can win year in and year out. Why are some teams capable of being regularly relevant?”
And so I went on a journey. I took five years to research this next book, which was about great teams. Just sitting down with the best businesses and the best sporting organizations in North America to talk about sustained excellence. And the number one answer that came up was that the best teams understand their “Why”. They have a sense of purpose. They know who they’re in service of, they know why it matters.
They don’t just know it generically; they can put a face on who they service. And when you can do that, your team shows up to work differently. And again, whether this is a sporting team or a business team, they show up to work differently if they have that sense of who they’re in service of and they can feel that person. And that’s a real driver; it’s a fantastic conversation. I love doing it with audiences, but I loved writing it in that book as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, when you talk about they show up differently, can you maybe paint a picture, in terms of when you’ve got a clear “Why”, what that looks, sounds, feels like, versus when you’ve got maybe a fuzzy or a lack of “Why”?

Don Yaeger
Sure. I’ll give you a perfect example. One of the companies I’ve studied was a medical device company out of Minneapolis, called Medtronic. Medtronic makes devices that are implanted in people that keeps them alive. And during one of my interviews with the long-time CEO of that company, I was asking how the company grew from 10,000 employees to 40,000 employees.
So, as a consultant you know what happens when a company grows that exponentially – the culture of the organization fades, profit and loss seems to become the dominant theme and conversation. And yet, this company was growing at those numbers and still remained one of America’s great places to work. And I wanted to know how he did that.
And he said, “Yeah, I’ll tell you. There’s a number of things we did, but one of the most important was that we began a conversation that occurred every year at an annual company event, where for one hour we would take to the stage six families that are held together today because of Medtronic devices keeping one of them alive. And we would give the microphone to these families and let them talk to our employees.”
And he said every year there was some young woman who takes the mic and looks at the audience and says, “Thank you. Because your device did everything you promised it would, my daddy walked down the aisle this summer.” He said every year some young man did the same thing – he said, “Because your device is awesome, my grandfather was with us a Thanksgiving and they told us he wouldn’t be.” And he said at the end of that, they actually took the six families in the back of the room, they lined them up at table and they let all these folks come back there and they autographed pictures, just like they were rock stars. And those pictures hang all over the buildings at Medtronic.
And he said, “The reason this is important is that those people are our ‘Why’. It’s not about profit, it’s not shareholders. And yet, we don’t actually really sell to them.” Medtronic, they don’t sell to families. They sell to doctors and hospitals. He said, “But to know our ‘Why’, we had to find a way to get connected to it. And this event was how we connected.” And they did it every year, because they had turnover and the employees needed to be reminded.
But being connected, putting a face on the “feel it” moment that can occur for you when someone looks at you and says, “Thank you, you let my daddy walk me down the aisle” – it’s unforgettable and it’s game-changing. And they show up to work differently because that’s who they’re in service of. They’re not in service of some CEO or some manager or some bean counter. They’re in service of a young woman who got to walk down the aisle.

Pete Mockaitis
That is powerful and awesome. And so, it’s different six families each year? They’ve got lots of customers; I imagine they can keep bringing new faces.

Don Yaeger
Yeah, different six families each year.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. So that is awesome.

Don Yaeger
By the way, I hope I’m okay with the 50% of your audience that are not sports fans.

Pete Mockaitis
[laugh] Absolutely, very good. And what percentage is crying right now, while we’re talking segmentation? I’m tearing up a bit myself over here, in all candor. So that’s huge. And I’m thinking the natural response is, “Okay. Well, Don, I don’t work for a cool company that’s saving lives, extending lives. Our impact is maybe a little bit more subtle or less viscerally big-feeling, not so much someone’s going to be alive to walk a daughter down the aisle or to be at Thanksgiving.”

Don Yaeger
That’s where I disagree. I think that the only way you can say that, if what you’re arguing is you work at a company that offers no value to society. And my guess is all of us, if we really try to break it down, could argue that we’re engaged and changing the world in our own way. So, how do we create those moments, or what do those moments look like for us?
I’m telling you, Pete – in the last two and a half years since I’ve been doing this presentation and since we wrote that book – I’ve yet to encounter a company where when they give me 20 minutes of time, I can’t walk them backwards into finding that young woman that stands on the front. It might look different; it might be seen differently than that. It might not just be around your product; it might be about what you do corporately for your community. It wouldn’t occur if you organizationally didn’t come together and work together. It might be the way that you interact with each other as teammates.
I own a company in Tallahassee; we have 18 employees. Not very big. You could argue we’re not in the business of saving lives or doing anything else. Part of the company is involved in public relations, the other part is my book writing and my speaking. We’re not saving lives. But what we set out to do a couple of years ago was we actually challenged every employee in our company to name for me one thing that we could do for you collectively, so that you knew we cared about you individually. And every two months we take a Friday afternoon off and we go in service of one of the members of our team.
One of our guys – our IT guy… And by the way, anybody that’s ever worked with IT guys knows that first off, they can find jobs anywhere they want to find because right now everybody’s in search of a good IT guy. But secondly, they’re sometimes a little quirky, a little difficult. And so our IT guy said, “You know what? I’ll tell you.” And we all knew that his grandmother had passed away just a couple of months earlier. But he said, “My grandmother lived two amazing years at the end of her life at this unbelievable nursing home, where they cared for her in ways that were so cool. And I want to do something for the nursing home.”
And so, we took off an afternoon as a company and we went and we served meals to the entire staff of that nursing home. And in between meals, they told us stories about his grandmother. And he told us stories about his grandmother. And we know him better because we are part of an organization that feels each other. And in a zero unemployment world where he could find a job anywhere, I promise you, this guy doesn’t want to go to work somewhere else. He doesn’t want to show up different. He wants to show up here, because he knows we care about him. That’s the choice. That’s what this kind of conversation really has within an organization.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. And so, the question there is, “Name one thing we could do for you.” Then one way that you’ve implemented that is every other month taking a day off. Mathematically, I’m thinking that’s six days in a year and 18 people at the company.

Don Yaeger
That’s an expense.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Don Yaeger
It’s not a cheap choice, but you know what? We have zero turnover within our organization. You know the cost of turnover, right? We have zero turnover within our organization, and we have high employee engagement. We work diligently at it, and it’s not something you do once a year. It’s got to be an ongoing part of the culture of the organization you’re creating.

Pete Mockaitis
So I’m loving the particular applications of the “Why”. So we’re getting a face to who you’re in service of, and that could be your customer, your end consumer, your colleagues, your community. And then you’re asking specifically, ”What’s something that we could do for you?”, and then putting that service into action. What are some other practices that bring this “Why” to life?

Don Yaeger
To that secondary piece, about your community – how many of us work at organizations that regularly are contributing to charities within your community? Awesome. But you know what? Do you really feel that? It feels good to read the newspaper that your company gave X dollars to something. What if instead of just giving X dollars to something, we said, “You know what? We want to meet somebody who’s the beneficiary of what we get a chance to do here.”
And if that means that instead of just giving money to Toys for Tots, you’re actually going together as a team to deliver gifts to a family at Christmas – those are the collected experiences that bond people together in ways that are really cool. They’re the ways that teams come together and they’re the ways that instead of just stroking a check, we’re allowing the organization to benefit, because of an effort we were already going to make. Now we get to feel it, right? We get to feel it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. So, I’d love to get your view then, in terms of the components of the “Why”. You can see it in practice by engaging with those faces. You spelled out some subcomponents – who we’re in service of, why it matters. Are there any kind of key questions that you suggest teams reflect upon in order to zero in on the resonant “Why” and to flush it out all the more powerfully?

Don Yaeger
In working on this exact program and after having worked with a number of teams both in business and sports that had made that sense of purpose a centerpiece of who they are… I live in Tallahassee, Florida, and a professor at the Florida State University College of Business who’s really extraordinary in this space of team building actually put some academic research work into helping me create a list of questions that you could ask your team if you wanted to try to get your sense of “Why”, if you wanted to understand what do they think, why do they think we matter.
It’s one thing for a leader – for me as the CEO of the team, or the president of the organization to say, “Here’s why we matter.” It’s another if we sit and we go around the table and everybody answers the question. But sometimes they’re uncomfortable answering it around the table, so we wrote out a series of questions. I’ll tell you, I wasn’t intending to do this, but I would be glad to. Pete, I can either give you my email address now, at the end, whatever you want, and anybody who’s listening to this, if they put your name in the subject line, I’ll send them those questions.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Could you maybe give us just a taste right now, in terms of one or two of them?

Don Yaeger
I think so. The first big question is that – if you were asked, “Who are we in service of and why does it matter?” I did it within my own company. When they go around the room and they answer that question, the variance that you get is really amazing, because then you start to ask yourself, “Gosh, if they don’t know who we’re in service of, then, man, it’s my job to do” – just like that CEO of Medtronic – “It’s my job to figure out how they get it. And if I can’t help them get to an understanding of that question…” But you have to start by finding out what they think.
Now, if you asked the question to 15 teammates and they all say the same thing – kudos! Seldom happens, but it starts by just getting there. Why does what we do matter? What happens to this community if we go away? And these are really insightful questions. If they answer them well, you really do walk away with an understanding that, “Man, I’ve got work to do.” But you know where you’re starting from as a team, if people are all over the place. Let’s draw for ourselves a picture of the person that we’re in service of. What does that look like?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And I’m curious, in your particular instance, what were some of the range of responses you got, and then what do you do with that, in terms of, “Oh, I think this is the right answer”, or how do you steer or navigate that?

Don Yaeger
Well, what you do is you bring all the answers in, put them up on a big whiteboard and then we start talking about them. And I’m not calling anybody out. I’m fascinated by why we’re not on the same page. And I’m okay with it. We don’t have to all parrot each other, but it would be nice if collectively we believed, “This is the avatar of who we are serving.” So, what we ultimately realized is that…

Again, part of my business writes books. Part of my business speaks, either helps put me on stages. Part of my business builds virtual learning programs that I get a chance to teach. Part of my business helps other people tell their story through public relations. So what we realized was our commonality was that we want to be world-class storytellers. And we are in service of those who give us a chance to tell stories. And so, we want to be the best storytellers we can be, and to do that we have to be really good at what we do, but we also have to engage with people who have world class stories to tell.
And so, the further we got into that conversation, everybody gets this sense of purpose around, “Wow, you’re right, man.” Anyway, people began to get this sense that they’re working in a special environment. And you could argue that’s partially my fault that that wasn’t patently evident, just because they’re working for me. But at the end of the day, everybody gets caught up in doing their own thing, and sometimes they forget about the value that the team gets to bring.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome, thank you. So, the book has a subtitle: 16 Things High Performing Organizations Do Differently. We’ve mostly talked about one, and I’m fine with that, but I’d love it if you could maybe also share if that’s the big one – zeroing in on the “Why”, are there any that you would say offer just a big bang for your buck, in terms of a quick win, where it’s like, you know what, if you can just knock out this little annoying thing, it makes a huge difference?

Don Yaeger
The one that really stood out to me that kind of surprised me… So we have back-to-back chapters in the book and sessions in this program that I do, where the great teams aspire, strive to build camaraderie within the organization. That makes total sense. Everyone believes we should have camaraderie. First off, it’s important to define what camaraderie is – an understanding and appreciation for each other.
But then the second piece of that was, camaraderie sounds cool, but it doesn’t always happen. So, what’s the flip side of that? Which is dysfunction. And if we know that dysfunction is real… And it happens in any organization that’s high-performing. Any high-performing organization has dysfunction within it. So the big question is, how do we shorten the lifecycle of the dysfunction?
And the biggest piece of that is opening by, the great teams see dysfunction differently. Most of the rest of us put our hands over our ears or cup our eyes and, “Let’s see no evil, hear no evil. Let’s try to avoid this.” The great ones address it openly and see it as actually a sign of passion. We possess people that have passion, so let’s use that as a strength as opposed to a negative. And how do you manage dysfunction? The best teams do it; they don’t let it overtake the mission, and as a result they are able to get back on track more quickly.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, so you just take a bright light to, “All right, what’s dysfunctional and how do we get out of it quickly?” And so those are your key questions. Any other prompts that make a big impact?

Don Yaeger
You mean another characteristic?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh no, I mean in terms of getting to the bottom of that dysfunction.

Don Yaeger
The key is that you have to have leaders who are willing to be uncomfortable, because addressing dysfunction in an organization is an uncomfortable position. And if you know that we have two people within the team who are regularly sniping at each other, that are regularly just taking backdoor shots at each other, talking about each other – you as the leader, someone, has to take control of the situation.
Pull those two people together and say, “Look, I get it. I don’t need you to hang out, but I need you to be respectful. What is it about her that you cannot respect? What is it about him that you cannot abide? Talk to me. We’re going to talk this out and we’re not leaving this room until we do. Or if we do, not all three of us will be leaving this room.” And you have to be willing to do so. That willingness to take it on, which most people do not want to do, because it’s nasty, it’s messy, it’s uncomfortable…

Pete Mockaitis
“We’re hoping it’s just going to take care of itself, Don.”

Don Yaeger
And it never does. It only gets worse, right? So, don’t be foolish. The best teams are not foolish. And so, it’s not about just shining a bright light; it’s about literally engaging in conversation.

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

Don Yaeger
Ah, no. The only one of these other characteristics on high-performing teams that really stood out was that the best teams have a mentoring culture within the organization. Not a mentoring program, but a mentoring culture. It’s that belief that those of us who might’ve been around a little longer are actively engaged in helping to raise up those who might not have been here as long, to understand. And those who might be younger might be teaching those of us who are a little older about ways to do things more efficiently. But it has to be a cultural value within those great teams, that allows mentoring to become a part of how you see each other.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, thank you. Well now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Don Yaeger
My favorite quote comes from a legendary basketball coach named John Wooden. And he used to love to say, “Make each day your masterpiece.” And that fascinated me because it’s such a simple quote: “Make each day your masterpiece.” It’s five words. But it’s the hardest advice someone can give you, because it means that in order for today to be a masterpiece day, I have to prepare well. I have to actually show up well, I have to deliver on commitments. In order to make today a masterpiece, it’s a lot of work, but if I do it and I string a few of those together, I’ve got a pretty good week. And so, focus on today and make today a masterpiece. Really incredible. My favorite quote.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite study or experiment or a bit of research?

Don Yaeger
Probably this research on great teams. We all see great teams and we know what they look like when we work for one or maybe we played on one. But what is it about the magic? And what do those who have been engaged in them say? That was probably my favorite thing.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Don Yaeger
It’s funny. This one usually surprises people when I get asked that, but I don’t read much fiction. But I had the opportunity a few years ago, I was invited to be part of a two-person book signing in Charlotte, North Carolina. And the other person was Nicholas Sparks, and he wrote a book called The Notebook that he gave to me when he and I talked about my mother, who suffered Alzheimer’s. And I still read it at least once a year, because it allows me to think about my mom, which is pretty awesome.

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

Don Yaeger
Probably my favorite tool is… I’m an incessant thinker. I’m always thinking of some crazy idea or something. And so I have a quick recording tool on my phone that allows me to quickly capture and share crazy ideas, which I have often in the middle of the night divided them between the folks that get to work with me. And we are regularly trying to grow what we do and expand our influence. But anyway, it’s a neat way for me to be able to do it. No matter what’s happening, no matter where I’m driving or where I’m traveling, I could share things really quickly.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s the name of it?

Don Yaeger
I was afraid you were going to ask me that as I was telling you about it, because I wasn’t prepared for that question. And I don’t have my phone in here so I don’t know the name. I literally have it as a single button on my phone, so I am embarrassed to acknowledge that I don’t know it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, no worries. If you could just let me know and I’ll include that in the show notes.

Don Yaeger
Awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
We’ll get that going. I use OmniFocus myself for that kind of thing, and it is awesome. I’ll find I have 100 plus ideas just randomly surface – anything and everything from, “Do they have nannies on resorts? Find one. Find such a resort, that’d be fun.” So, it’s cool. Great, and how about a favorite habit?

Don Yaeger
A favorite habit is, I love closing each day with trying to… I’m a man of faith, so a big piece of closing each day for me is a little reading of the Bible. And I’ve got a pretty good prayer sequence that I try to go through every night to make sure I’m covering that piece of my life and reminding myself how important it is.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you’ve used two of my favorite words next to each other – prayer and sequence. So if you’re able to disclose, what are some of the components there?

Don Yaeger
Well, I begin by sharing my gratefulness and recognizing how fortunate I am for all that I’ve been blessed with. Then I try to focus on those I know to be in need and try to think about things I hope or pray for for them. And then, I always close with talking about my family. And it’s interesting, because I used the word “talking about”, because that’s kind of the way I look at it. You know what I mean? So, that’s the way I round it out.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful, thank you. And tell me, is there a particular nugget you share in your speeches or books that really seems to connect, resonate, get quoted back to you, retweeted, etcetera?

Don Yaeger
Yeah. It’s that phrase that I think I used earlier, when we were talking about some of the folks that I get a chance to work with. Michael Jordan, when he was sharing this lesson to me, saying, “A loss is not a failure until you make an excuse” – that comes back up often, because that’s really impactful. Even the great ones lose, but the great ones know how to keep losing in perspective, and they learn something from losing. And that’s a real game-changer for many people when they hear it, because a lot of times we don’t associate losing with some of those folks, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And Don, tell me – if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Don Yaeger
So, my website is DonYaeger.com. I’m active on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, so I regularly respond. In fact, I spent a good piece of this morning responding to different questions and requests that were on those four mediums. So those are probably the easiest place for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Don Yaeger
I think that the challenge… When I thought about the model of what you’re building here, Pete, and the question – the reason I brought up the Michael Jordan quote twice is because I think that’s the differentiator between the good and the great, especially at work, is a willingness to not go looking for an excuse every time something doesn’t go your way. And then if they’re committed to stopping the vicious cycle of excuses that seems to wave over all the rest of us – if you can stop making excuses when things don’t go your way, I think you’ll find a degree of opportunity that’s off the charts.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Don, thank you so much for sharing this. Your compassion and just caringness shines right through, and it’s powerful and it’s a real treat. So, I wish you tons of luck with your books and your speaking and your companies, living out the “Why”, and just all you’re up to!

Don Yaeger
Pete, thank you very much, buddy.

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.