Episode #65: Leadership Tips to Strengthen Your Team Culture
Welcome to THE CAREER ACCELERATOR, the podcast where corporate managers will find tips and tools to deliver results through others.
Today I will provide three lessons to help you strengthen your team culture.
I’m your host, Percy Cannon.
In our last episode I gave you three lessons to help you become a better leader, based on the book The Wisdom of the Bullfrog, recently written by retired U.S. Navy Admiral William McRaven:
1. The first one was Admiral’s McRaven’s definition of leadership: “Leadership is accomplishing a task with the people and resources you have, while maintaining the integrity of your institution.” All three elements — people, resources and integrity — have got to be there to excel as a leader.
2. The second lesson I shared was: “When in command, command.” If you are in a leadership position, lead. Don’t delegate the key decisions.
3. And the third leadership lesson was: “Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.” Become the leader who takes the initiative and motivates and expects this type of behavior from their team.
Today I want to share my reactions to the top three messages I took from the excellent book No Rules Rules, written by Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings with Erin Meyer. The book is full of provocative practices that have influenced Netflix’s continued success during the last two decades.
But before I jump into it, I want to share what made me read this book. A few weeks ago, I reconnected with a former colleague from one of the corporations I worked for. Although she had less than two years working for Netflix, she managed to significantly grab my curiosity on how things are done at the company. To put it in more corporate terms, I became quite intrigued with what the Netflix culture is like.
Well, it was a fascinating read. I generated a long list of insights that are applicable to leaders inside the corporate world. However, rather than just repeating what I found in this book, I will build on my four decades of inside and outside corporate experiences to suggest how you can adopt and adapt these Netflix cultural elements into your organizations.
After this long-winded introduction, let me start with the first of the three suggestions I have for you today:
1. Build your “talent density.” Being an engineer myself, I loved the application of the physics concept of density to qualify the caliber of talent needed in Netflix. The message is clear: Employee quantity is not the way to assess your talent strength. What counts is the quality of the people on the team.
This concept took me some three decades back to a situation that created a long-lasting impression in me. At a head-count allocation meeting with two of my peers, we had to decide how to assign the available talent in our brand marketing organization. In reality, this was a negotiation between the three of us, as we were, of course, aiming to get the top talent onto our respective teams. At one point, after one of my peers had been insisting on getting a specific person for her team, she threw a curve ball at us, proposing to “trade” two of her allocated head counts for this one manager. She explained it this way: “This one manager can deliver a bigger business impact than two of the more average-performing employees.
In other words, she went for “talent density.”
Independent of the type of company you work for today, make it a key component of your management philosophy to hire, develop, reward, and promote high-density talent and to continuously increase the number of high-density talent.
2. Err on the side of providing feedback, above, below and sideways. This should not come as a surprise to any of you, our podcast listeners. I don’t think you need to be sold on the benefits of providing constant and constructive feedback to those who work with you. Unfortunately, the problem is that it just doesn’t happen often enough. Why would you not take advantage of asking for and providing feedback to your team members, your peers, and even your boss?
Here are some reasons I have uncovered throughout the years:
- I am not sure how to give feedback and don’t want to risk it.
- I don’t like to be judged.
- The culture of the organization does not foster feedback.
- I don’t see it as part of my job.
- I provide feedback only at the annual performance review.
- I don’t have enough time.
- I fear retaliation from my boss or peers.
Overwhelming, right?
Start with baby steps, or rather, with one baby step: Take the initiative. Ask to receive feedback from your employees. Listen carefully, play it back to the feedback deliverer, give thanks, and ask if the other person would like to listen to your feedback.
After this, rinse and repeat. Do the same with the rest of your team members. After that, try it with your peers. And after that, if you feel brave enough and believe your boss will be open to it, go for it.
Remember, it only takes one baby step to get started.
3. The last suggestion is to treat others the way they, not you, want to be treated. This is a very powerful way to build trust across the board. Netflix found a broad range of how direct employees can be in their interactions when they went international. But you don’t need to go international to find the different ways that people want to be treated.
In my first job after finishing my MBA studies, I remember how I ran into peers from the same city who were very assertive while others were more thoughtful. Some were more skeptical while others were more receptive.
After that, when I moved from Peru to other countries in Latin America and to the United States, I ran into other cultural differences, especially in the way people debated issues. Some were more confrontational, whereas others were more accepting. Some were louder, others were quieter.
What can you do differently? Become self-aware of the way you treat others and be curious to learn how each person prefers to be treated. It may require some trial and error, but little by little, you will get there. And through this process you will have built massive levels of trust with each person.
After all, who doesn’t want to be treated the way they, not you, want to be treated?
Summarizing, I have shared three lessons today that can help you strengthen the culture in your team:
1. Build your “talent density.” Employee quantity is not the way to assess your talent strength. What counts is the quality of the people on the team.
2. Err on the side of providing feedback, above, below and sideways. Start with one baby step: Take the initiative. Ask to receive feedback from your employees.
3. Treat others the way they, not you, want to be treated. Become self-aware of the way you treat others and be curious to learn how each other person prefers to be treated.
In our next episode I will provide more tips on how to accelerate your career growth.
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This is Percy Cannon, working to help you make the rest of your life…the best of your life®.