Hey everyone, welcome to the Vander Bloom and Leadership Podcast where we help you build, run, and keep great teams. Thanks for being here. Let's dive in. All right, William. Well, today we are talking about what makes up a great team, the anatomy of a great team. What are just some of your initial thoughts to think about what actually makes up a team like that?
SPEAKER_00So many things. And I'm still learning. Um when I was younger, it was like there's no I in team, but there sure is a me. That's not a good idea. I think I'm learning uh lots of things. So in in no particular order. Uh I think the first thing would be a common goal and a common plan.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00So what do I mean by that? Uh we'll give you a business example and then a biblical example. Uh business wise, I've got a friend who he like in his spare time loved to read company business plans. All right. Pretty fun guy to be around. You'd take him to the party. Uh no, but he literally read like 10,000 business plans of successful businesses. So he kind of became an expert on business plans. And people would say to him, Hey, well, we'll call him Jared. I'm not gonna out him. You know, I don't want him to get bombarded with invites to parties. Uh, Jared, what's the best business plan you've ever read? He said, Oh, that's easy. Everybody leans in. What is it? He said, the one the whole team agrees to. It doesn't matter what the plan is. What matters is whether everybody's got their hand in the huddle and they all know what they're doing when they're doing it. That's the key to success. And he said, I've seen people have this kind of plan and this kind of plan and this kind of plan, and then I've seen people with a beautiful plan that nobody really follows, or it just becomes paper on a, you know, in a desk drawer somewhere after a fun retreat. The real plan that works is the one that is lived out day in, day out, all hands in the huddle. I could give some great corporate examples, but uh biblical one. Now I have messed this up before teaching, so I'm probably gonna get hate mail for this. Okay. But if you go to uh the prehistory, like the first 10 chapters of Genesis, okay, right? Before we do 11 chapters of Genesis. Before we get to Abram, we've got all this prehistory, this flood, da-da-da-da. In buried in there is a really interesting teaching inside the Tower of Babel. Okay. Um everybody knows the Tower of Babel and there's software called Babel. Uh we actually, our friends at Life Church actually developed a first version of Babel before. Oh, yeah, yeah. Because they had uh we've done search work for them over the years and they had an online church in different countries, yeah, and there were prayer rooms. Well, what happens when the person in France is praying for someone in Spain? Yeah. So they had to have translation. That's amazing. So you'd write your prayer in French and it'd show up in Spanish. And that's amazing. Those guys are smart people, they're really fun to watch. By the way, they have a common plan that everybody follows. And it's not a complex plan. It's really simple, but everyone's all in. If you go to that story, The Tower of Babel, uh I I don't know it verbatim, but the gist of it, the William trans, you know, living William translation. Okay, the LWT, is uh people looked up and they said, I bet we could build a skyscraper all the way up to heaven. This is before Led Zeppelin, right? Yeah. So, like we can build a stairway to heaven. And so off they go and they're building, and God looks down from heaven and he's talking to the heavenly host, and I guess Jesus and the Holy Spirit are there too, and he says, Oh my goodness. He wouldn't say, Oh my god, I think, because that would be like, Oh my me. Oh, he he says, Oh my. If they all work together, there's nothing they won't be able to accomplish. We can't have that. And then, you know, the different languages are we're cast into different languages, there's confusion, and we're not able to do anything. But think about the power of what's said before the now we got to stop this. If they all pull in the same direction, if they're all committed to the same goal with the same plan about how to get there, there is nothing they can't do. Now they were trying to do something wicked, but think of the redeemed side of that. Yeah. People underestimate the power of a team. They really do. And if you can get your team pulling in the same direction all at the same time, all with the same idea of what success is, I think that that right there is the anatomy of a great team.
SPEAKER_01That like-mindedness, team continuity, some would say, kind of the culture of the team.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and if you're gonna build and run and keep a great team, you as the leader and the leadership team have to constantly beat that drum. Oh my goodness, we can't quit beating the drum. The the Ritz Carlton's a great example. It's not a church, but uh, did you know um ritz? Like you were here, oh, that's a ritzy place to go to dinner. Like it's actually an adjective. It's before Riz. Yeah, I don't like Riz, no Riz. Okay, so I don't. So I just I learn because I have kids. Uh, but uh think of it like Riz, but old school, okay? All right, T Z. So is Ritzy. Well, that was to describe something really luxurious, very high-end, very well done. And the word came after the hotel, the Ritz-Carlton. Wow. So they built a brand around excellence, yeah. And they built it so well that they became an adjective. I don't have any idea what Vanderbluminy would be. It can't be that good, but like Ritzy, their brand became a word. Yeah. Well, how do they do that? They have these things. I described this. Uh I wrote a book, uh, gosh, it's been seven years ago now. Yeah, um, where we studied workplace cultures and of uh companies that were building best places to work. Yeah. So great teams. And you when you when you have a great culture, you're not only gonna have a great team, but they're gonna bring all their friends to come to work too. And you don't even have to recruit, you'll never have to hire us. So maybe you don't buy the book. No, seriously, uh, in the book, we studied the Ritz-Carlton, and this is a fabulous read for leaders if you're working on your culture at all, which is a huge part of having a great team. For the Ritz-Carlton, they decided their culture of excellence was this was the gold standard for how everything gets done. They have four, they called them uh instead of cultural values, they called them the four gold standards. So the book to go by is called The New Gold Standard. And it's basically how they took those four values and drove them through the culture every single day so that everyone employed by the Ritz-Carlton is talking about these four values every single day. And so it here's how this goes. At every shift change, whenever you know, say you're uh uh Sioux chef and you show up for the dinner prep at 3 p.m., right? Everybody's there at 3 p.m. You've got uh everybody's assigned a pod of a team, you know, not a huge one, 10, 12 people, something like that. And uh you'd have a stand-up meeting at the beginning. Okay, okay, so so stand-up meeting would be like, oh, it's Jared's birthday this week. Yay, Jared, happy birthday. Oh, it's Raina's, you know, seven-year workversary, yay, Raina. And now we're gonna do this. Everybody pull out your gold standards. On the back of their name tag are the gold standards. Wow. And now, Jared, it's your turn, and they just take different turns each day. You tell the team where you saw one of these gold standards at work through one of the people here. So that's the sous chefs. The CEO does the same thing with his team every day, every day, every day. That's amazing. That's how your brand becomes an attitude.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So now that's that's one way of doing it. It's not the best way, but the whole team's committed. We know what success is, and we're going to drive it. Here's how that actually plays out. My daughter worked for the Ritz Carlton right out of school. She's in hospitality. Uh, she worked at the Bacara in Santa Barbara, and she was in the management uh part of things. And so she did the gold standards just long after we wrote the book. She was 22 and just out of school, and like assistant manager for one part of the property. And they the the company gave her $2,000 a day to solve problems. She they trusted her to know the standards. Yeah, they said, you know them well enough. If you see a guest that's having a problem, spend up $2,000 fixing it, or maybe just a few hundred dollars. Give them a trip to the spa, buy them a nice dinner, do send a bottle of champagne to their room. You figure it out. We know that we've driven these values into you enough that you'll know what we're trying to get done.
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SPEAKER_00Think of the freedom that comes with that. Yes. And the the agility and mobility that can happen. She had authority in her hands, not just because they were letting her be a boss, but because she knew the standards. So, as a leader, if whether it's Tower of Babel or Ritz Carlton, are you consistently obsessed with sharing what a win looks like and how we get there and what we value? That will lead to a great team, no matter what kind of team it is. So I think unity of purpose, unity of how we're going to get that purpose accomplished. Um, and and if you can add on culture, unity of how we're gonna behave while we get that done. Though those are the components that are very, very rare. But when it happens, you get some pretty special results.
SPEAKER_01What would you say, you know, most teams are probably doing okay in some of those areas and maybe a little bit worse in some and good in others. If there were any out of that maybe group that you would say, hey, if you're if you're kind of at level zero, so to speak, on all of these, you need to make sure this one's right before the other ones are, because this one is the the the one that's gonna make the most impact in your team.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, what's the what's the North Star? Why are we doing this? Yeah. And most organizations don't have a clue why they're doing what they're doing. You know, when I was a pastor, I I can say it clearer now because I'm a little older. I was young and arrogant. I did know everything in my 30s, that was kind of cool, but not anymore. Uh yeah. So but but now I can say the North Star, if you're gonna, if I'm gonna pastor your church, the North Star God's put on my heart that we're gonna use is we're gonna overpopulate heaven. That's the goal, right? There are other people like we're gonna make disciples who make disciples who make disciples. That's awesome too. But like, what is the North Star? Is it winning new believers? Is it raising up disciples that can raise up disciples? Is it we're gonna be the best mission organization? If you're at Palmer Church here in uh Houston, they serve breakfast to homeless people better than anyone in the city, and they're not the biggest church. Like that's the thing. So, what's what is the North Star? If you if you don't know that, it doesn't matter how good the other things are.
SPEAKER_01That's amazing. And you even talked about a little bit of culture and you kind of hinted at it too. And one of the things that I've heard before um in church, business, nonprofit spheres is um what you basically saying, hey, you need to coach the culture because what you tolerate will become what's normal. And what tips would you say to a leader who maybe notices some things in their culture, they're like, uh, that's not that's not a part of the North Star, you know, that's not a part of what we're going at here. And I need to course redirect.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, let's burrow down on the, you know, you need to have a sense of where you're going, your mission, right? Your vision. Um, but if your mission is what God has called you to get done for Him as a church or school or a nonprofit, I think your culture is how we agree we're gonna behave with one another while we're getting that thing done. I love that. So, you know, most people don't have cultural values defined. You know, in the study we did of the best places to work, worst places to work, uh, there was a very large company, seventh largest company in the world, and it was growing very, very quickly. Um, and they had in their hotel or in their elevator lobby in the main building uh four walls and four values, and I'll get them wrong, I'd I'd have to go research, but it was something like trust and integrity, and you know, the two others were very similar. Uh, that was a company that was called Enron. So if you we live in Houston, so we know this story all too well. Um, it just, you know, Houston does innovation well. We did, I mean, we built the Astrodome, innovation in sports, uh, we built MD Anderson, innovation in healing, people from cancer, but innovation in accounting didn't work out so good for us. Uh, there was no trust, there was no integrity. Um, so people don't have a good sense of what are our values. And and it can't just be four nebulous words you pick out of nowhere that don't reflect how you're behaving. You know, for us, we I I've often asked the question, and we developed our values, saying, when we're at our very best, what do we do that's common to us but uncommon to other teams around us? And I've said that a lot over the years to some people who have heard it before, but it's a really interesting question because we have a little bit of crazy things here. I mean, like we we really value responsiveness. When we're at our best, people turn on a dime to go make something happen. And not everybody would enjoy working in that environment. So we've been really uh some years better than others. We've got a lot left to learn, but when we're doing really well, we're pushing those values, we're hiring through those values, where so that there is a sense of, hey, this may be crazy, but it's our crazy. Yeah. And these are the nine things we do that make us distinct and who we are as some sort of family. Only then can you start to say, ooh, culture's off.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00When you don't know what the values are, it's hard to know, you know, what what's not working. There's some fundamental things about cultural health. We actually developed a software tool for it. We found eight key categories of general cultural health. Like, is this a healthy place to work or a toxic place to work? Uh, I think it's theculture tool.com. People can go there and see how they map out of against like 10,000 Christian organizations. Yeah. Show notes. Yeah. But but that's just general, like, can I trust leadership? Is there enough communication? And what I'm talking about, the secret sauce to a really great team, is getting all those things right and then saying, and what makes us not just generally culturally healthy, but what's specific about our cultural values that we can say, now we know this person fits in, now we know they're off base, or now they've come to a different place in their life where you know they've got other demands, and it's it's okay to step off the team for a little while if you're not able to live in those values. But where I really find this helpful, um, let me just ask listeners, and uh uh you you you can just be honest with yourself and not answer me. But has anyone out there got someone on their team who's working just hard enough to not get fired? I've asked that in uh conferences, and there's this general in the crowd, you know. Yep, because everybody's got and church is the worst at it because we love people, and I mean we wouldn't fire anybody. Jesus never fired, yes, Jesus that's a different podcast, but um sometimes when you know church people aren't in sales because you can't you you can't measure did they make their numbers or not, and we're gonna fire them. It's a lot different. And uh cultural values, knowing what it is we value and how we're going to behave with one another, that can be the litmus test of whether somebody needs to step off the team or a person coming in is gonna fit and enjoy. There are so many smart people that would hate working here. I I mean well, you don't have to nod right away, but oh thankfully, we have a lot of alien. Honesty of youth. Oh, Jared, there was no guile in him. Oh, yeah. No, there are a lot of smart people that would really not want to be here because the way we do things is very particular, and there's smart people that don't do it that way, and that's okay. I think for for the anatomy of a great team, if you're gonna build and run and keep a great team, you've got to know what are those linchpin values that we do. And the best way I know to get to that is to ask that question. When we're functioning at our very best, it's a cool meeting. Get your whole team together and say, let's talk about days where we got it right. Yeah. Somebody tell a story about a day that we that was a good day. And everybody likes that meeting. You say, Well, okay, now what are the common threads? So when we're at our best, what do we do that's common to us, that's uncommon to other people around us, other teams around us? I think that'll start to ferret out, you know, what the particulars of your team are so that you can hire people through that framework. You can uh you can reward people for living out that framework, and you can then have a stand-up meeting and say, today we're gonna talk about how I saw the value of ridiculous responsiveness when Raina, who's our producer here, uh had set up for me to do a bunch of videos and done a great job. And I said, Oh, by the way, I can't do it then. Can we do it sooner? And she was like, Yep, no problem. Turned on a dime. I don't, you know, no questions.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it just sounds like what you're saying is having a great identity and having an accurate view of you know what's most important to the team.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Now, aside from that, let me let me share some uh really bad mistakes I've made in trying to build a team, and maybe I can save some people some stupid tax. Okay. I still make mistakes. I mean, nobody's perfect at hiring. I mean, what's the old line? Uh, Jesus hired 12 and got one of those wrong. That's right. So you know. So um when I was a younger pastor, I got to first Christopher in Houston. I was 31 years old and super arrogant, sure I knew everything. And we needed four new associate pastors. I thought I'm gonna go get the four most talented people and we're gonna take off. It's gonna be amazing. And I got four young guys, and they were all great, and they were all really, really good. Um, but I didn't bother to say, will they complement one another? In fact, after a year of being there and doing a lot of hiring, because when you're new and it's a big church, you you know you hire a lot of things. We had one of the uh we had a consultant in for you know our vision and values, and we did a personality test to see how uh the team, you know, parses out compatibility, yeah. Well, like a disc kind of thing. How many D's, how many I's I mean, and we all got feathers, right? And so the the I, the high personality, high life of the party, uh had a peacock feather, and uh, you know, the the long story short, nearly everyone I hired had the same feather I did. And we all thought it was a great big party, but you can't work with one personality type. Yeah, I ended up hiring people I like, and guess what? I like me, so I hired people like me. It was a disaster because I am like I if I were on a basketball team, I should never be on one. I don't play well. Um, but I would be like, give me the ball, give me the ball, give me the ball. Well, when you hire all people that are saying that, you start to understand why no one wants to coach the Olympic men's basketball team.
SPEAKER_01That's very, very true.
SPEAKER_00So and and it took me a long time to realize it. In fact, it was probably I probably only really started to quit doing that when we built this company. And my wife, Adrienne, who's a great compliment to me and and she has questionable taste in men, but uh she she said, we can't hire more you. We've got plenty of you. We need to hire people to compliment you. So we hired incredibly detail-oriented people. I I would I would I tell people I would call them OCD, but they'd get mad because that's not alphabetical. It's just like C D O is the better way to say that. So yeah. Uh, and it worked. You know, I can go create chaos and growth and all this, but if there's not structure and system behind it, we're gonna sell stuff we can't deliver, we're gonna make promises that don't get followed through on. We, because of Adrian's wisdom, we hired people who were high detail, and now I can go look at nearly every phone call, text, and email we've had with people over 17 years and 3,500 completed searches. So I would never have done that on my own. And a young William would have just hired a bunch of peacock feathers and we ought all had a party and not gotten a daggum thing done.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I've heard it said before, you know, you need to staff your weakness. Like you need to understand, hey, I'm great in this spot. This spot maybe needs a little bit of love, maybe needs a little bit of work.
SPEAKER_00It's Paul talking about the body of Christ, you know, each part has a part to play. You can't have all eyeballs. That would be like that crazy vision of a person in uh Song of Solomon. I mean, like that kind of looking thing. No. Learn what your weaknesses are, leader, and then hire around that. And it's gonna make you crazy. Like If I were in oil and gas here in Houston, I would not work well with engineers because they you know how long you have to talk to an engineer before the conversation's over? As long as it takes. Might be a minute. Might be a minute, might be six days. I'm done in a minute. And I've had to learn, like, okay, Jared communicates this way. I have to bend toward him and serve him. And so it's not like all fun and games when you get a fully complimented team. But if you can get a team that's not just like you, you will miss uh the stupid tax that I hope I've already paid for you.
SPEAKER_01That's right. That's right. Well, I love this conversation. And actually, in the few weeks following, we're going to be diving even deeper into the anatomy of a great team and talking about specific attributes that make up a great team. Thank you for joining us today, and here's to making your team better. Thanks again for joining us on the Vanderblumen Leadership Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you're looking for more leadership resources, you can find us at Vanderblumen.com and on socials at Vanderblumen. We'll see you again next week where we continue discussing how to build, run, and keep great teams.