Team Leaders Do's & Don'ts - Why are some teams better than others?
In our latest episode of Bob & Jeremy's Conflab, we dig deep into the do's & don'ts that differentiate a thriving team from a struggling one. This episode is jam-packed with our personal research, tips and tricks on effective leadership, emphasising the need for leaders to be more than just bosses - but coaches and talent scouts, ensuring the right team members are on board and performing well.
We've all heard leadership theory, but what does it look like in practice? We're giving you a quick tour of leadership with a humorous twist - discussing the do's & don'ts, from the importance of praise to the pitfalls of acting like a youth football team coach. The ticket to successful leadership is not a one-size-fits-all approach; it's about empowering, empathising, and setting clear expectations.
As we wrap up this enlightening journey, we're not just saying goodbye to a year well spent, but we're also looking forward to a promising future. We take a moment to appreciate you - our listeners, and reflect on the milestones we've crossed together in the past year. Here's to making work more enjoyable and cultivating positive team environments in 2024! We can't wait to continue this journey with you, and we guarantee you won't want to miss what's coming next!
For more info, free resources, useful content, & our blog posts, please visit realitytraining.com.
Reality Training - Selling Certainty
Team Leaders Do's & Don'ts - Why are some teams better than others?
In our latest episode of Bob & Jeremy's Conflab, we dig deep into the do's & don'ts that differentiate a thriving team from a struggling one. This episode is jam-packed with our personal research, tips and tricks on effective leadership, emphasising the need for leaders to be more than just bosses - but coaches and talent scouts, ensuring the right team members are on board and performing well.
We've all heard leadership theory, but what does it look like in practice? We're giving you a quick tour of leadership with a humorous twist - discussing the do's & don'ts, from the importance of praise to the pitfalls of acting like a youth football team coach. The ticket to successful leadership is not a one-size-fits-all approach; it's about empowering, empathising, and setting clear expectations.
As we wrap up this enlightening journey, we're not just saying goodbye to a year well spent, but we're also looking forward to a promising future. We take a moment to appreciate you - our listeners, and reflect on the milestones we've crossed together in the past year. Here's to making work more enjoyable and cultivating positive team environments in 2024! We can't wait to continue this journey with you, and we guarantee you won't want to miss what's coming next!
For more info, free resources, useful content, & our blog posts, please visit realitytraining.com.
Reality Training - Selling Certainty
Bob and Jeremy's Conflat the Reality Podcast.
Speaker 2:Good day to you. Thank you for pressing play Bobby Morel and Jeremy Blaker with you. Bobby and his white shirt looking pristine, I'd say.
Speaker 1:Thank you, you don't say bad yourself.
Speaker 2:With my blue semi-worker top.
Speaker 1:And it's nice to see you've got a couple of balloons behind you.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, well spotted, that's Martha, who's now 18. Fantastic, and we're not going to take the helium out of them as much as they requested.
Speaker 1:Well, I hope that they don't eventually just fade and gently lower as time goes on.
Speaker 2:What should you do with the helium balloon? Listeners Answer's on a postcard, please let us know I could find an eight year old and a one year old and recycle one Good idea or an 81 year old.
Speaker 1:That's nice, we have got a nice little episode for you tonight To today. Tonight, a nice little episode for you.
Speaker 2:Today. It's the night show.
Speaker 1:It's the night show. This is actually the last Bob and Jeremy's Conflat of 2023. So the next time we do one for you, it'll be a new year, and we've had some fun recently with various podcasts on different challenging subjects quite amusing subjects in some cases, but we've also been very heartened by the fact that our popular do's and don'ts series, which includes conferences and exhibitions and various other subjects, has been very, very well received, and we've had very high numbers of downloads for those shows. So we thought we'd finish the year with a do's and don'ts section for team leaders. Now we say team leaders, you could be a middle manager. Basically, you run a team of some kind, regardless of what your title is. You have a team of people that you're in charge of, and we do a lot of work with team leaders, a lot of management, training, management, development, and so we have compiled a list of do's and don'ts that we thought we'd go through and give team leaders a few tips on how to lead effectively.
Speaker 2:Yo, that's what we're going to do when we come back next year. We're going to start the new year helping you get sorted, and we're even going to make a free resource that our listeners will get, and so we've got an exciting kickoff in the new year. But first of all, you're a team leader. You run a team. There's some things you should do. There's things you should don't do. We've done our own research. We're keen to see what each other's coming up with or what we think is important. Do we start with the do's, bob? Do we mix it up? How should we do this?
Speaker 1:I think we do do the do's. Oh, that's great, we do do the do's, but I think the chances of us having similar ones will be high. So I think we need to have a look at them and tick them off and then do alternatively, and then we'll have a nice list of do's and then a nice list of don'ts, and the don'ts are probably slightly more amusing. And I've got three questions, for three is the magic number, which we'll come on to later, yeah, so okay, let's start with do's. I'll give you the first one of mine. Really simple Give praise.
Speaker 1:Beautiful, beautiful. And I think a lot of people struggle to give praise. They struggle to effectively say that was really good, that thing that you did, it was excellent, well done. They feel it maybe sounds slightly patronizing and so they don't actually do it very well and maybe they think it doesn't sound true or doesn't sound genuine. I think to be a good team leader, you've got to be able to take someone to one side. So I really thought that was great and just give people praise. That's not my first do, jeremy Well.
Speaker 2:I've got an extension of that, so I'm going to mine slightly similar, but I want to extend it. It's continued. That it's your actual attitude towards what Bob's focused in on praise it is looking for what's going right rather than looking for what's going wrong, that's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you want a little bit of fun psychology on this, it's actually how you make better children you look for what they're doing right rather than continually telling them off. So it's exactly the same in a team. If you come to work and all day long your leader's going, hey, you've not done that right. Hey, rather than hey, that was really good. And eventually do you know what folks you get? More good, nice and simple. What's your number?
Speaker 1:two, and my next do is coach. Yeah, learn to coach, coach your people, coach them as much as you can. In fact, coaching should be the main focus of your job, and we'll come onto this later when we look at don'ts, but it's really important that you are an effective coach, jeremy.
Speaker 2:My number two is higher. Well, because if you just accept whoever's given to you and you bring someone into your team who is not the right person, suddenly your job is a nightmare because you're trying to integrate someone that doesn't fit. I think team leaders have to be involved in the hiring process. They usually are, and if we use the classic expression of A's higher A's and B's higher D's, if you're a team leader, that's not great and you're a bit of a B, you'll feel threatened by good people. So if you're listening to this and you manage team leaders, perhaps and some of your team leaders are a bit B then you must be involved in the hiring process, or they might hire some D's to join their team who don't show them up. But please get good people joining your team. Don't just put bums on seats and fill up the numbers because you've got an extra seat that you need to take or we need another rep over there. Take more time to hire good people. Of course, these could be roles in any business, but higher wealth.
Speaker 1:Number three empower people. Simple as that. So, Link, coming on from coaching, If you're coaching people effectively, what you're doing is empowering them to be better at what they do, take more responsibility for the various things that they do, and developing them. Empowering them is development, so that's a really important part of a team leader's role.
Speaker 2:My number three is what's the plan? What's the vision? If you go to work just to sell more stuff or to improve your marketing or to be better at HR, it's not really much of a plan. I think good leaders have plans that are short-term plans, mid-term plans and long-term plans, and keep the plan visible. If it's kind of close to your chest, then you are either translating, hiding Nobody knows quite where they're going. No one's got any certainty. Human beings love to know why we're doing this and where we're going and as the leader, you can be saying, hey, this is all going to plan, this is great. Let's adapt the plan, let's do more and don't hide it away. Have it written down, not brand values, no, where you're going, why you're doing it.
Speaker 1:OK. Number four Lead by example. Now it's frank no, no, this is a tough one for certain people because they don't really know what it means, and I think a really good example of this would be let's imagine you're trying to improve the way that you communicate with your customers, and that means changing some of the order in which you do things, ie changing the way that you habitually sell to people and as a team leader. If you rarely speak to customers, then you're not going to be able to lead by example. So that's really important.
Speaker 1:And the other side of it is that if you're having to make a change, that is hard, it takes energy and time and commitment to make that change. If you can lead by example and show that, yes, this is difficult for me as well, but I'm still trying to make that change, then that is where your people can go right. Yes, he's finding it hard. Okay, fair enough, I'm going to find it hard as well, but it is worth making the shift. So leading by example isn't just doing it, it's showing that, good or bad, you are going to make this shift yourself and therefore you're going to make your people follow you more effectively.
Speaker 2:I liked the Chris Mott has said story that I heard when he was running toy. When he kept just on that point, he said why are we not selling enough to customers at this time? What's the problem? And he got loads of ideas. He said everyone, stand up, remain standing, those of you who have given ideas. Everyone's just calling him out. If you've spoken to a customer in the last I don't know six months, everyone sat down. He said okay, should we have this meeting again? Well, you've all actually, rather than sitting distanced away, just chucking your ideas, very good, my number four I think we're up to four, aren't we now? Yeah, is get to know them and you can do the Jeremy test.
Speaker 2:This is where you get a piece of paper. You draw a line down the middle and you write your name on the left. You write their name on the right and you write down everything that you know about them, and then you don't have to actually hand it to the team person. You go. What do they know about me? And if you've been wobbling on about your children, your dogs, your holidays, your cars, you go. God, I just talk all about me and I can't even remember the names of their kids. I don't know when their birthday is. So if you don't know this stuff, then the team feel that you don't know them. So if you don't know them then you don't care about them, and so on. So actually make some effort to get to know them.
Speaker 1:Well, it's like one of your social posts for people getting on at parties. So, yeah, make sure you don't forget all that stuff. Now my number five is make time, and what I mean by that is make time to lead and when we look at the don'ts later, we'll think about this a bit more, but it is very easy to let your time be taken up with things that are not leadership based. If you are a team leader, the clue is in the title you are there to lead. That is a really important skill, more important than anything else, actually. So time management and how you actually make that time available to yourself is essential.
Speaker 2:My next one harks back to our wonderful work we did with John Seddon. There's a better way to make the work work and the team leader can remove bottlenecks. What do I mean by bottlenecks? We go into organizations that run fairly bizarre, convoluted systems. Customer rings in. I do this, goes in a brand envelope, she types it up. He then rings them. It's uploaded on a CRM. What If you map out the workflow of this stuff? Sometimes it's ended up in a team leader. You can go why are we still doing that? Okay, let's remove that phase. Just go and tell her let's remove that phase where we then write the complaint back up. Whatever you can improve the end-to-end workflow of what you do Sounds desperately dull if we look at it in a kind of scientific way. But in a very basic way, how can we absolutely make this simple in the exchange between each other and in the exchanges between us and the customer, reduce the number of stages?
Speaker 1:Okay, number six delegate, or learn to delegate. Make sure you're able to help with the empowerment of your people by delegating certain tasks or projects to them, which will motivate them and help them develop and improve what they do.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. My next one is and I'm going to try and make it clearer than just the headline communication. But what do I mean by that? I don't mean living in your email, just sending your team emails when they sit two yards from them. Choose the right channel of communication, depending on what the message is. Go and talk to them. Invite them to somewhere off site. Send them a WhatsApp voice message, because then you can put your tone behind it. Make a phone call. Write it on a piece of paper and put it on their desk. Send them a letter. So many people try and get across communication just in an email and remember when I read the email, my voice goes off. I read the words as I would interpret, and this is what leads to a breakdown in communication. Okay, go and talk to people. There's Zoom as well, there's all of this stuff, but let's actually make sure people know what we mean, and the best way of doing that is looking at them.
Speaker 1:Now number seven motivate. Part of leadership is motivation. It's a really good idea to look up great examples of leaders and how they motivate people, but part of your job is to motivate your team, so that's a really key point. There are lots of negative ways to do that, which we'll look at in a bit, but one of the positive ways that you can motivate people. That's a key skill Do motivate.
Speaker 2:Hmm, what did Zig say about motivation? It's like bathing. That's why we do it daily. I've only got one more, one more dude.
Speaker 2:Okay, and this is very different to being obsessed with targets and numbers. But what you should build is evidence of performance, and what I mean by this is here we are. In the first six months, we've spoken to this many customers, for example, this many proposals, this many have gone for silver gold. This many have taken two weeks to buy. This may have taken three weeks. I'm now. I'm talking in sales stuff now, but it could be anything. You've actually got to know how you're performing and a team leader can do that. This is very different to just watching the scoreboard and typing in how many they've sold that day. This is the bigger picture stuff where you could stand there and say, team, this is where we are, this is where we're going, these are the trends. You've got a fantastic overview without just saying you've only done 10 today. I need 11. Big difference, but an overall picture of the performance. That's my last one. Have you got any more?
Speaker 1:I've got three more, so the next one for me is equality. Demonstrate equality across your team and how you treat them. Nothing more to say than that, really Just be, fair, even handed. Number nine have agendas for meetings. Don't just have catch ups or one to ones. Have agendas for meetings. Don't have a meeting without an agenda. That's it. And lastly, number 10, show empathy. In fact, I would go as fast as say empathy is everything. Understand your people and your lead well. If you don't understand them, that's where you're going to have problems.
Speaker 2:It's funny, I think we said on a previous recent podcast, I got an email from a company saying the new type of leadership is required. And I'm going okay, I'm reading on. You now, today need to be an empathetic leader. I'm sorry you needed to be one, since the day someone went to the front of the tribe and said I'll lead you. I mean as if that's new. As you say, it is everything. It's simple as that. Thank you for listening to our podcast. When we're not recording these, we deliver sales training and management programs for our company, reality Training. For 20 years, we've worked with major brands and ambitious businesses to help them sell more, retain customers and manage their people more effectively. Contact us via our website realitytrainingcom.
Speaker 1:So let's go on to the don'ts. So my first don't and it's going to be tough for many managers to hear this, but it's the truth Don't prioritize tasks. Okay, don't prioritize tasks Because that is not as important as all the other stuff that we've just been talking about. Okay, none of that is that important. You may well have to do administrative tasks on a regular basis and you'll be so busy that you sometimes will put that administrative task to the back of your list, but you've still got to do it, to the point where it takes over and means you can't do anything else but that.
Speaker 1:Now, admin is relatively important, but it's no way near as important as empowering, getting praise, coaching people, leading by example, making time delegation all that stuff which is actually you doing your job is way, way more important than doing some task that is just something on your list of things that you have to do that doesn't actually contribute anything to the development of your team. So if you have a manager yourself who is saying I need you to do this for me, if that's a task which doesn't actually deliver, then you need to be able to know how to manage upwards, and so I'm sorry, I'm not going to be prioritising that task. I'm going to be prioritising performance. That is the most important thing.
Speaker 2:I wonder if my number one don't can nicely tag onto this. I think it can connect. I've come up with a stat I made it up don't go to 75% of your meetings you're asked to go to. So good, how many meetings prioritise what? What you've just said, I've got to coach you, jackie. Yeah, I'm going to coach you, just not now. I've been called into a meeting by someone more senior because they want to chuck some numbers at me and talk about figures, whatever, fine. So don't go to half the flipping meetings because you're going to have a meeting about a meeting, about a meeting. If you want to have a whole episode on meetings, then you can look at our dissecting the obsession with meetings episode. But I think as simple as that half of the things you're doing is going to a meeting rather than coaching, inspiring, having powerful ideas, sessions, all the stuff you know that you should be doing.
Speaker 1:Okay, number two Don't blame your team. That is a real issue sometimes that people will say, yeah, we've had a bad month, but this person was doing this and this person was doing that. And no, no, no, you are responsible for the team. You are a team leader. You're deferring responsibility by blaming them for various shortcomings. Take responsibility, don the performance of your team and do not blame them. It's a real tough one, but that is leadership.
Speaker 2:The next one really could be my last one, but we'll go into some more detail, which is don't focus on the outputs, don't look endlessly at the numbers. How many have you done? What are you doing today? That was six. How much was the value? Again, easy to talk in sales terminology, because if you just focus on the outputs, you're not doing all the stuff we said in the do, which is focusing on the inputs, the behavior, the attitude, the skills, the training, the coaching. Just don't endlessly obsess yourself with the outputs, because if you talk about the outputs all day the results you have or the results you haven't got, you don't change any of the inputs. It's a waste of time.
Speaker 1:Number three well, we just said you're not going to blame your team. You're also not going to take credit when things are going really well. Be magnanimous enough to accept that success is a team effort and everyone's contributed to it, and therefore it's not just you taking credit. If there's a pat on the back, everyone should get one. That's really important.
Speaker 2:My next one bit of fun, but I've seen it so much. Don't act like a youth football coach leader by standing on the touch and I go come on. Okay, yes, keep it going.
Speaker 1:That was one of mine. Don't clap, oh, and the clapping what?
Speaker 2:is it? You know you haven't got a load of telling me. When I clap is when my dog, axel, goes off too long with Bertie and Axel, hey, axie, axie, good boy, it's for distraction.
Speaker 1:I don't go clapping around people, no, so condescending, we used to say years ago, if you clap on your own, somebody threw your fish. I mean, that's such an old joke, but it's just true, isn't it? It is Don't clap Now. Another thing you shouldn't do Don't belittle people's ideas. In fact, don't belittle people in general. But if people have ideas even if the ideas are very good, at least they're coming up with ideas, at least they're thinking about things. Encourage it, because they might come up with an absolute, brilliantly one. So don't belittle ideas.
Speaker 2:One of mine, which is hard, and I try and use it for parenting because there's lots of connections. I think I once wrote an article about being a team leader is a bit like raising teams, but don't feel you always have to have the last word. Okay, guys, we got all that, yeah, right.
Speaker 1:Let's get out, oh dear, that's good, why not let?
Speaker 2:someone else finish the meeting, why not someone?
Speaker 1:else.
Speaker 2:That's great. I mean, I was given that on a talk about parenting and I thought, yeah, that's probably the best. Now you go in your room and that's that, and oh, shut up.
Speaker 1:It's also feasibly a rule for marriage, but anyway. Yes, it is Another one Don't discipline for revenge. So if you've got someone in your team who you can't bear, don't try and out them because you just can't stand them. It's tempting because you've got the power, but don't do that.
Speaker 2:That's good.
Speaker 1:So what sort of people do that Listen to our previous episode on the SFC model? Next, what's yours?
Speaker 2:Well, let's try and give this a name Ignoring minor stuff that actually is highly destructive. Let's call it that.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So somebody in your team. You hear them on the calls if they were selling. They're in the marketing team and they say things they're in the accounts and they come out with this language and you just keep going. I'll let that go. What it actually is doing is highly destructive. It could be the way they talk to a customer and they always say this bit of total bull that is disloyal to the organization. It makes you seem amateur. You've got somebody who at the end of the call says, yeah, and if you ring us next year I'm sure we'll do you a deal. And you thought, okay, he does it. At the end, he's made the same. No, these minor awful habits need to have a serious stamping out. Don't let the minor stuff pervade. Yes, bobby.
Speaker 1:So the next one I've got is a really simple piece of advice Don't be unavailable. So don't be like Gareth in the office when Tim's trying to talk to him and he puts his hand and it goes wait and it's an inordinate amount of time before Tim can speak because he's in the middle of something. Just be empathetic, but also be available to speak to people. Don't make sure that your priorities are always more important than anybody else's, because that's just really going to put people off.
Speaker 2:That connects quite nicely to what I'm going to say. Don't leave them none the wiser. So you know, I was just thinking about team leaders I had and they go okay, I need to have a chat and you sort of talk. They'd say this sort of babble, corporate guff, and you go what was that? What do we do? Did she say that we do, and it's in such a kind of corporate spiel it makes no sense at all. So what you're got to be careful of is you are called in by your boss and they say something to you.
Speaker 2:The four of you, the next level of manager, that you might be, 10 of you, whatever don't really get it. You'll go off and Chinese whisper it to the next lot and everybody just doesn't really get what it is. So, rather than leaving the room and pretending you get it from the senior manager, just say can we really just spend a few minutes discussing this together because I'm going to go and tell my team this? Can we all agree on the language, because often they won't do that work. They'll get okay, got it. Does that make sense, all that cat? And you go, yeah, yeah, but you don't get it. So work on the message. Don't go and deliver a half ass message. So your team are none the wiser.
Speaker 1:Don't have favourites. So we talked about equality earlier. So I'm not going to discipline members of my team because I don't like them, and I'm going to accept that I covered a mixture of personalities in my team. It's very easy when you're a team leader especially if you've been promoted from that team to have a favourite who's in your little clique. It's so difficult not to do it, but it's important that people don't feel that they can't communicate with certain people because of a friendship that is too close with the team leader. So that's an important one.
Speaker 2:Rather than telling you how to coach, let's start from the don't aspect. My tip is don't be a teller, and this happens all the time to team leaders. Hey, how do I do this? What you do is you do that. Hey, how does that work? What you do is you press that. If you just do that all day, your team will come to you forever because you're just telling them what to do. The first thing you can do is what would you do if I wasn't here? Well, I'll probably press that and that, okay bye. What would you do if I didn't know the answer either? Ask someone else, okay. And if they weren't there, work it out, okay. Do you want to work it out? So many people are leaders who spend their days having their kind of ill-informed flock coming to them asking them how something works or what they should do. Do you ever actually want to train them and teach them and develop them, or let them work it out themselves? Stop telling everybody what to do all the time.
Speaker 1:I think that's the first time you've used the term ill-informed flock. I think you should write a book about it. It sounds like a great title the ill-informed flock. God, that's a great business book right there.
Speaker 2:It isn't bad. Actually, it's a really good one. It's the shepherd, the leader, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the ill-informed flock.
Speaker 2:But hang on, I got it. The shepherd's the leader, the farm manager is the next level and then the big evil landowner is the corporate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a sort of Well, there's a whole plethora of options there. Now, my next one is I talked about having agendas for meetings as a do. You shouldn't, don't have boring meetings. If you have boring meetings, you're better off not having them at all, because people dread them. So, just don't have boring meetings, have less meetings and when you do, make sure they're good with good agendas. And my last one and it links to some of the stuff that Jeremy's been talking about don't lose your integrity when you're a leader. Okay, because that will emanate down to your team, which means you have a risk of a whole company losing its integrity, and then you have a world of disloyal bonding, which is another episode, and nobody wants that. Jeremy.
Speaker 2:I've got one that is really deep and profound, but also wonderfully simple. Don't be a leader if you shouldn't be. Mmm, how many people? Because of the hierarchical structure of pay scales. How can we pay this person more when we make them head of towels? How can we pay them even more, make them head of haberdashery or whatever soft furnishings? That was the middle class ridiculous example.
Speaker 2:For an Italy middle class yeah yeah, yeah, it's great, but it's all invention, isn't it? If you really want somebody to earn more money and stay with you, how about paying them more but not making them a leader? Revolutionary idea, hey. But if you shouldn't be a leader, don't just accept it, go. No, I want to do what I do really well. Take Mrs Blake, Mrs Morel, teachers who make the decisions. Every teacher makes the decision. Do I want to teach? Do I want to lead teachers? And some of the best teachers carry on teaching because they know actually running a department isn't for me. These are just the kind of people who have to make that decision. That's me, Dom.
Speaker 1:OK, so let's now do three is the magic number. Ok, my question to you is who's the best team leader you've ever had?
Speaker 2:That is Joy Marsh, who sadly is no longer with us. Very good, very thorough and my first decent team leader. Bless her. She had integrity, she was earnest, she listened, she was encouraging and, yeah, she was a bit of a stickler for doing it right and a company person, but at the same time she knew we could all do better and encouraged us to do that and was good, she was great, excellent, well, I started with the opposite of that, I'm afraid. Yeah, go on. Which means you can't naisally name who's the worst team leader you've ever had.
Speaker 1:That was my next question. So it's really difficult. I've had various team leaders over the years. I'm going right back to the start of my career and I remember having some team leaders who were so ineffective that it was just ridiculous. I mean, sometimes they wouldn't speak to you for a whole day, they'd just sit at their desk working and never speaking. And it's really interesting that there were some. I don't want to name any of them, but there was one who.
Speaker 1:I was just so demotivating. He was literally a grey, and I want to say grey. His skin was grey. A grey-skinned man in a brown suit. And in the end you need some level of inspiration, some personality, or there is no leadership, there's just work and that's not great.
Speaker 2:So you're mine Again. I better not name them, but I was working in a trendy bar on the Cowley Road and I only kept my job for two weeks because the guy who'd handed his notice in was taller, better looking than me, all sorts of things, and they just took him back. But the only leadership and direction I got was one day I was talking to a customer who was an older chap and he was just having a cappuccino I'd made him. There was no problem with my skills of making drinks or anything and he just said to me don't talk to the customer so much. And this old chap heard him and looked at him and looked at me, went out to him. He just said to me ignore that. And I thought that's weird. And then the next thing he did he said if you get to learn some more cocktails, you'll have more women than you can throw a pooey stick at. And I went are you right?
Speaker 1:Well, he's probably right.
Speaker 2:Well, so all he was telling me he was, like you know, transactional. He'd go rah, rah, rah, or he'd go nice one, rah, rah, rah. He was awful. And actually two weeks later, when this other chap came back to get his job, I took off my apron and just said well, thanks, and this has been very bizarre, and I just walked out. It was odd. No leadership at all.
Speaker 1:I should also mention who my best team leader was. It was a guy called Marcus Brazier, who's still a friend of mine.
Speaker 1:And we had a great laugh back in the day and I remember once I was having a giggle with one of my colleagues and Marcus came out of a meeting and went, hey, bob, have you phoned everyone? And I said, and I said what in the world? I said no, actually I haven't. I said I managed to get through China eventually, but it took a bit of time. I mean, it was just very, very funny. He was a good guy. Okay, so who do you think is the best team leader that we've ever trained? God, that's good.
Speaker 2:Well, again we can't really name them. I can't remember the one I'm thinking. Well, I can name them, but I probably shouldn't. I might upset other team leaders. There's one I'm working with right now who is a woman in a very male dominated place. She is impressed hugely early on, but I better not say any more because there are other leaders who she works with.
Speaker 1:That's fine, that's fine, that's fine.
Speaker 2:I think the reason being is she listens intently before she speaks. So let her team get all the stuff out, and then she'll listen, reflect, reflect and then go. Hmm and what about that? And does it in a really nice way, so she doesn't interrupt them. It's a real skill.
Speaker 1:Well, my one is also a lady who we trained in Stockport in Manchester a few years ago and she was one of the most conscientious people we've ever worked with. She took on what we trained her in and she applied it to her team, coached them, recontracted with them and went from being sixth on the floor to first in a couple of weeks and stayed there because she just was like a sponge who just soaked up new ideas, new ways of doing things and made it work. And her team followed her and, yeah, I've never forgotten her. She was a real inspiration who just learnt and implemented. That was what she did and it was very positive.
Speaker 2:Right. The last question is if you were to really pick one single thing that the team leader of the future must be brave enough to do, even if he has to fight some internal battles, or she has to fight some internal battles, what must the future team leader who can drive the United Kingdom to prosperity and growth, what must they do?
Speaker 1:I've got a really good answer for that. So I remember a few years ago we went to visit a office and this office were trialling mornings, so they chose a morning every week where people weren't allowed to open their laptops. Okay, just a morning a week where they had to focus on non-laptop based activity. Okay now I thought, well, that's at least a step in the right direction. But I actually think that team leaders of the future must prioritise focusing on the performance of their people, and only that. So if there is administration stuff that they need to do, somebody else should be doing that. So a sales leader, a performance leader, a service leader who is actually in charge of making sure that the people operate as effectively as possible that should be their focus. Anything else is just cack, and they shouldn't do so. I think there should be a definite change between how you work with your people and all the administrative crap that comes with it. That needs to go.
Speaker 2:That's really good, lovely. Well, we've got a whole wodge of do's and don'ts for you there. Listeners, team leaders do's or don'ts can just as much be applied to many leadership positions, of course, but, as we know, the team leader of the person who's closest to the customer has the most significant impact on the relationship of their team with the customers. So it's the vital part in any business to get right.
Speaker 1:Thank you all for listening to Bob and Jeremy's Conflab this year. It's been a record year for us and we're looking forward to having an even greater year next year. We wish you all the very best for the festive season and we look forward to catching up with you all in 2024, but in the meantime, thank you for listening.
Speaker 2:I'd just like to say there's people who told me they forwarded it on to people, which I know takes a bit of time and effort, and I really want to thank you for doing that, because it's the ideas. If you can get these two people and they act on them and they have a bit more fun at work, do something better and make an impact on a team member, a customer, you know that's why we're doing this. So thank you, thank you from me.
Speaker 1:Thank you, bob and Jeremy's Conflab the reality podcast.