Ep 3 Teamwork: Creating a stronger culture, team beliefs and the power of 'What inspires you?'

Culture is created either by default or by design. This episode will look at how to evaluate your team's culture, the steps you need to take to create a strong culture and understand the power of asking 'What inspires you?'

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http://thecrazy1.com/episode-3-leadership-culture-beliefs-and-the-power-of-what-inspires-you/
 
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Transcript

Stephen Gates : 0:00

famous actor once said, Go so crazy someplace else. We're all stocked up. Well dammit, he obviously never came by my house because it's been in real short supply around here. So welcome to the third episode of The Crazy One podcast. And this is the second in a two part series where we've been talking about leadership. And so in the last episode, we talked about what were some of the things that you could do, what were some of the insights, some of the techniques, some of the things that you could do to work on becoming a better leader? Well, now we're going to move on. And we're going to talk about leadership as it applies to a team whenever it's not just about you. But whenever it becomes about everybody else, and I have to say that this is where it starts to get a whole lot more interesting. But it's also where it gets a hell of a lot harder. Because in the last episode, we were talking about you, you can control you, you can control the things that you do. You can't control other people, obviously they have free Well, they have their own motivations. They have the things that drive them. And so this is where it gets a lot more interesting. And so where do you Start with this. And I think that one of the things for me has always been to really get people to understand that great teams, and great leadership are never about a single person. And I think that's always a myth, that it's kind of like, oh, somebody's gonna come in, they're gonna be a great leader. They're gonna show us the way why I think that the best leaders that I've ever been around the best people who have great teams really understand that to be successful, everybody needs to be a leader, that it's not just about one particular person, everybody needs to carry the message, and everybody needs to be empowered and be accountable to make a difference. And so if that's the case, and if that's what we're going to start, then I think that there's a really simple distinction that you need to be able to understand. And I think that you need to be able to take stock of your team to understand what are you working with just what what are the raw elements on your team, so you can start to put a plan together. And one of the things for me is to start to get people to look at the difference between the people on your team, who are the ones that are really Good at execution, who are the ones that are really good at doing things versus who are the ones that are actually really good leaders. And I think that this is two different skill sets. These are two different things that a lot of people really struggle to understand. And because the reality is, is that whenever you come in any industry, for me, I was a designer. Whenever I came in, I worked as a designer. Well, that's what I was really good at. But that was about execution. That was about getting a brief and doing a design and going from A to B and hitting a deadline. It was about delivering something creating something. Well, obviously, as I went on in my career, the challenge has become that I'm a designer less and less because I become a leader more and more. Well, not only does that mean that I have to fight for time to be able to actually do design, but it also means that it takes a completely different set of skills, because being really good at execution is all about deadlines, but being really good at leadership is about sociology and psychology and social engineering and, and politics and a whole bunch of other stuff. stuff that's completely different than what I needed whenever I was just a designer. And that's really the difference here, right is to start taking stock of your team and looking at who are the people that are the doers that are the execute orders? And then who are the people that are actually leading? Because what you need to start to do is to look at the people who are the executioners and figure out okay, how do I start to get them to be leaders and to think that way? It's not just about the deliverables anymore, but it really is about how do you lead people? And so I have a real simple test that I do. Because the problem is, and we talked about in the last episode, where most people don't really always tell you the truth. Well, the challenge with that comes into play here as well, because everybody will come into my office. I want people who are leaders, so I will ask them questions like, have you ever led people before? Have you ever managed somebody's career path? Things like that? Well, the problem is, is that anybody who wants a job is gonna say yes, who's gonna say no to that? So everybody who comes in will tell you that They have leadership experience. And it's something they aspire to that it's something that they're good at. And the reality is that what people say and what people do, don't always match. But what they do tells the truth. So what I do is I just have this little thing that I do to try to get them to see how they're going to behave to try to get them to just act a certain way, so that I can understand where they add on that executed a leader scale. And so what I do is is honestly pretty simple. I just will take a small project, a simple project, something that it's not high profile, like if it completely goes sideways, it's not going to hurt the group. And I give it to this person. And I give them a couple people to lead. Just a simple project. A few simple people, right? Nothing, nothing too big. And what I'll do is whenever I give them the project, I'll say Okay, look, you have I don't know what we'll say like a week to do it in the next day. I'm going to come back to them, and I'm going to purposely make something go wrong. Either. I'm going to drastically move the deadline up, I'm going to change the deliverable. I'm going to do something To make this person who I'm trying to kind of discover something about kind of panic. Because the reality is I know that a lot of people will maybe say, well, that's being evil, or that's manipulating people or something like that. And the reality is that I personally think that manipulation is a really good thing. I don't think that manipulation has to be something that whenever you say a word like that, do you think of Mr. Burns, kind of tapping his fingers and going excellent, like it's not that reality is that that leadership just is all manipulation. It is getting people to do something. But this is a case where I'm just going to simply manipulate the situation to try to get an answer. And so I make something go wrong. And I watch how they react. Because there's truth in that. And I think that there's also something that I've found that what I really want to see out of most people who I'm working with on my team, I don't want to see how they react when things are going well. Everybody does great when things are doing well, everybody. It's just it's easy. Whenever things are going well. What I want to see is when it really hits The fan. And I find that way to be personal to be professional to be anything because I think whenever it hits the fan and something goes really wrong, that's when you really understand what you're dealing with. Because that's the moment when somebody is true personality will often come out, and you understand what they're working with. So in this case, I'm going to make something go wrong with this project, I'm just going to watch how they react. And without fail, one of two things is going to happen. Either one, they're going to pull everything back and do it themselves. Or they're going to stop and come up with a plan and start to delegate that work out to the team. Well, out of those two kind of outcomes, what you'll find is that the person who pulled everything back and did it themselves, leans much heavier on the execution side, they're there so more of that Dewar mindset, because a big part of leadership is getting to the place where you can trust other people where you can lead other people that if you don't have those skills, or if you haven't started doing it, the only person you trust is yourself. So you pull it all back and you do it yourself? Well, if you have started develop those skills, even if it's in a really rudimentary way, well, then what you're going to see is you're going to see them start to work with those people, they're going to put a plan together, they're actually going to lead. And I think both of those are fine. And so you know, this isn't meant to condemn somebody or to say that, you know, somebody is not going to have a good career path or anything like that. That's not the intent at all. Because in the last episode, we talked at length about how even the best leaders are made, they aren't born. And I know that was certainly true with me that this was a skill set that I had to learn that there were kind of two main inflection points in my career that I had to get over. The first was whenever I went from just being a pure, straight execute, or just a pure designer, who just took what somebody wanted and designed it. Well, I had to go through an inflection point when all of a sudden I had to be able to start to think for myself that they weren't handing me the solution to the problem. I had to not only do the design, but then I had to start to think on my own. That's one challenge. I think of the other One that you'll see is this moment is starting to learn those leadership skills. Because most people just don't have this inanely. And there are very few, if hardly any companies that I've ever been around that recognize this problem and start to teach it. And this is why I think you'll see at both of these points, people's careers will flatline. Because if they don't have the mentorship, if they don't have the leadership, if they don't have somebody to help them go from just being the execute or into being the thinker, and then from being the thinker into the leader, their career will flatline because in each case that the next step requires those skills. But like I said, these are skills that not everybody has. And so this is one of those things where, for me, that's why I want to do this test, because I just want to get the baseline to understand what am I working with? How good are these people at leading because the reality is, whether it's the most senior person on my team or the most junior, I want everybody to be bought into the team. I want them to lead, whether it's just the way that they're going to learn Lead the way that they actually execute their work or if they're going to lead the team, I need this mindset, I need people who are going to start to buy into this. And because the reality for me is also for the fact that I want to be able to promote people within my team into leadership positions, I don't want to just keep hiring in from the outside, you can do that it's good to keep that kind of fresh blood coming in. But it makes it really hard to hold on to the culture if all of a sudden you're changing out these major pieces. So from leading a team, that's where whenever I come in, I started just doing that simple evaluation. So from there, usually there are just three things that I want to concentrate on, because I think there are three essential components to the great teams that I've ever worked with. The first one as admittedly unsexy as it is, is process that I think that just simply the way that you do things is really important. And so for this episode, honestly, we're not going to talk about process because I think that process is something that really depends on your company, your team, your project. session to really understand what's going to work really well. I'm sure that I'm going to do a later episode on design thinking that tends to be the process that I use for for my teams. Because I think that it's something that works really well for the type of work that I do. That process is just a little bit too hard to be able to go through and in such kind of a big picture format, like we're doing here. So the second thing to focus on for me has always been been the product of the team, what is the thing that you're actually outputting? What is the thing that you're producing? Like, in my case, the product of my team is creativity, that for me, ideas are the thing that we need to be able to be known for. You're interested in finding out more about creativity, go back and check out the first episode that I did, which was all about creativity. There's no need to come back and do it here. Again, just go back and listen to that episode. And so the third one, and I think the most important one, but probably the most difficult thing to actually put in place his culture because the reality is that I found is that culture happens one of two ways. Culture either happens by default, or it happens by design, for most places that I've worked at simply happens by default, because it's one of those things that's hard to create. It's one of those things where it's just simply much easier to let people come together and let them work the way that they want. You know, if it does happen, it's in that very HR sort of way, or it's the posters on the elevator that tell you what we believe it's the big kind of overblown statements that you know, while they sound good. It's hard for me to understand how does it affect me? And I think that's where even the places to try to do this and so many cultures, that's where it breaks, because they're these big statements that sound good. But I have no idea how to apply it to me, I have no idea how do I make it relevant? And so I think that the art of being able to do that is to be able to create culture by design. And the whole reason for culture. And the whole reason why I think this is so important is because so much of leading a team, so much of leading other people really comes down to building leaf? How do you get them to believe in something? How do you get them to overcome the fear? How do you get them to overcome the obstacles that we talked about in the last episode? To be able to get them to a place where they can really do things differently? Well, for me, I always think that that comes down to belief. They have to believe in themselves, they have to believe in me as a leader, they have to believe in the team. But belief is obviously very difficult. Because whenever you believe in something, just turn on the news. Look at politics, look at religion, look at all the things that you're not supposed to talk about at a dinner party. The problem is because whenever you believe in something, anything even at work, people can judge you for it. Because you've taken a position you've taken a stand you actually are about something. And it's interesting because that is oftentimes one of the biggest barriers to leadership that I've seen inside of a company because leadership is much, much simpler and much easier. If I don't take a stand if I don't say this is what I believe in. Because what that allows me to do is I can float around, I can just go with the status quo. And wherever the company goes, I'll go with it. Well, if I actually stand for something, that means I'm not floating around anymore, and then I may be going against convention. And that whenever I do that people can judge me and who likes that? And worse than judging me, they can try to blow holes in what I believe they can try to tell me why I'm wrong. They can. I mean, this is the CNN and Fox News of the World, right? Because if I'm on one of those sides, whatever the other side says, has to be wrong. Well, but the problem is, is that just like politics and religion, people need to believe in things. And as a leader, you have to be willing to go against convention and be able to take that stand to do this. And so I always think there's also another really simple test. I have a lot of these little simple tests. And this one isn't foolproof. But I think if you want a simpler way to kind of understand if somebody is willing to go against convention or not. One of the things I'll do whenever I interview people is ask them a very, very simple question. Which is just what web browser Do you use. And I'll give you a second and think about which one you use. This doesn't kind of glorify or condemn anybody. But one of the things that I have seen historically is that anybody who uses like an Internet Explorer or Safari or something like that, are usually the people who have a hard time going against convention, they have a hard time taking a stand, versus whenever you see people that will use Firefox, so they use Chrome or they use something like that are usually a little bit better at it. And for me, I The reason why I asked this question is because something like Internet Explorer and Safari come installed on your computer. They are the convention they are the thing that is there that that is you don't have to go do anything to us, as opposed to using Firefox or using Chrome or something like that. Unless you you've gone out and you're one of like the five people that own a Chromebook. You have to install these onto your machine. You have to actually go through the actions of saying I don't want what the standard thing is. I I want to be able to do something different. And like I said before, this is not foolproof by any stretch. But there is just these little windows. And that's one of the little windows that I'll use is just as a starting point to kind of see how willing are they going to be to go against convention? And so how do you build belief? How do you do that? I mean, I think you have all the things in the world to try to do. Belief can be one of the trickiest because telling somebody what to believe, especially in a work setting can get very, very tricky, very, very difficult. And so what I've done is that I will usually come into a team and create what I will literally call a set of beliefs. And what these things do is I use them to define the mentality and the standards that we're going to work by. And the funny thing is, is that whenever you come in and do this, you'll often find that what these standards are, are not anything even close to rocket science. I've done this with multiple teams over the years, and the things that end up being in these beliefs. Everybody kind of Oh, yeah, well, no, we should, we should definitely do that. So that there is a shared kind of vernacular, a shared experience in that, if these insights aren't rocket science, the funny part is holding people to them, writing them down, putting them up on a wall, making them part of a playbook or like, whatever you want to call it, right? That seems to really be rocket science, because nobody will ever kind of come in and go, Wow, I've hardly ever worked at a place that will actually kind of like come in and define something like this. And this is usually a huge part of what I'm doing during kind of my first 60 to 90 days and taking over a new team. Because for me, I know that one of the most dangerous things that I've seen is to come in blindly and assume that what it is that I believe the things that I've done in my other job, will work at my new job, different team, different people, different politics, different challenges. So I can use that as a starting point. But I want that first two or three months to just be able to go through and see what are the challenges that this team is up against what are the places where they lack belief they lack conviction. And and how can I define that? How can I set the standard. And so obviously, that the sets of beliefs that I've created for my team are proprietary to the intellectual property of the companies that I work for. But I also have done this for myself. And it's usually done in a very similar structure. Because I found that as an individual, a person, a leader, and anything, I need to also understand what I'm about what are my set of beliefs. So I'm going to put the link to the full list of these in the show notes. Just go to podcast, Stephen Gates calm, come in and be able to look for this third episode. And what you're going to see is you'll see an article that lists all these out. But what they do is that I have them for me broken into five different categories. And the categories are about learning, collaborating, Id ating. Craft, as in how well do I actually do my profession as in a craftsman and leading and I'll give you a quick example for each of these. So for something like learn what I'll put in there, something That says like, never stop asking why that I have to constantly ask why to understand the purpose, the cause and the belief behind every decision asking why, if you do anything creative is a foundational element. But putting it in writing and saying it's gone to the partner here actually ever meet me, and you get one of my personal business cards. All of these are printed on the back of my car, they're on my website. These are things that I'm very public about. And it's to the point where some companies whenever I've interviewed will love it and go, Wow, we really think that's fantastic. Other ones will look at it and say, You know what, you're not the guy for us. I'm perfectly fine with that. Because the whole point is, if our beliefs don't align, if I want to go stand for something that you don't if you don't want somebody who's going to come in and ask why you just want somebody that's going to come in and do what you say, I'm not your guy, you're not gonna be happy, I'm not going to be happy. So again, by putting that out there, it's something that's really important. So for something like collaborate, it'll be something like design as a team sport that my team's always work collaboratively with no rock stars and no departments, that everyone is responsible to work together. To create the best idea, here, again, plenty of teams I work with that don't believe in kind of working collaboratively this way they like going out and kind of doing things on their own. So I'm very open with that, around ideation. For me that the concept is that there is there are no cover bands, Todd Henry, in one of his books, he had said that a cover band never changed the world. And that's something that I always really took to heart because I really want to build culture and empower teams that have original ideas, not copy what other people have done. I don't like conversations that start with, oh, this is your version of another brand solution. I want to try to do things that are that are original. Again, putting that out there and kind of putting that and waving it around as a flag is something that a lot of people aren't used to doing in craft because I think that for me, you always have to stay dedicated to your craft. Because here again, for me as a designer, where the culture was where design was where technology was where a lot of different factors were in the world of design. Were very, very Different whenever I started then where they are now, and I've talked about this in the past, but so far crafted something like creativity is a blue collar profession that, you know, we've to put in the work and to think differently to build cultures and understanding grow everybody's values that I have to stay dedicated and continue to work at my craft, that it's never going to be something where I can kind of go like, okay, yeah, I feel like I know enough. And obviously the last one that is going to be leadership. And I think that obviously hits home very close to this. One of the things that most anybody who's worked with me will tell you is I really try to live this next one, which is to be respectful and confident, but not delicate. That for me, I always think that like breakthroughs really happen when we take risks when we trust our instincts, and we speak our minds in a good discussion about ideas, and we're not tiptoeing around each other, trying to not say the thing that everybody knows. And I think that's been something that I'll try to hang my hat on is the fact that I'm often the guy that will say what everybody's thinking. They just lack the conviction or the pleasure capital to actually be able to do it. And so these are just these kind of big buckets that I'll do. And I'll come in. And usually after that 60 or 90 day period, I'm going to sit down with the team. And I'll go through these beliefs. Well, the other reason why I do this isn't just to kind of define the standard. But because if you're going to lead a team, especially if you're gonna lead a big team, the challenge that you need to have is how do I get a consistent set of beliefs across a entire team that may be in multiple locations across one particular team, a particular group? Or then as we talked about before, how do I make it relevant down to a particular person, when this is why there are five buckets and whenever I'd said these kind of like five groupings in the beginning, you might have thought to yourself, man, that seems like a lot. Why are there so many? And if there are three in each, that could be 15 or 20 of these and I actually think that's important, because the reality is, is that by doing this, this gives me a terrible structure, that I can coach and lead the team. From. So I can pick a few of these and say, okay, just as an entire organization, these are the things that we need to focus on, I could pick in one particular studio and say, okay, your problems are slightly different. So we're going to pick maybe three different ones for you to be able to focus on, I can take a group inside of that studio and say, okay, your challenges for your makeup, again, are a little bit different. So you're going to focus on these things. And I can take it down to an individual person. And for them to be able to say, look, you know, we need you to work on being a little less delicate. We need you to work on that blue collar work ethic, like I can take these and apply them across this wide range going from an entire organization down to an individual person. But in every case, it's a common vernacular. It's a common thing that we're talking about, so that everybody understands it. And it becomes something that even people within the team can start to coach and even police each other with because I think ultimately what I want is I don't want these beliefs and I don't want the culture To be mine anymore. I, the best teams that I've ever worked on have been the ones where the team starts to adopt the culture, the team starts to use these beliefs to be able to call other people out whenever they've done something really well, but also to call them out whenever there's something that they need to work on. And I think that's what this sets the stage four is this kind of common, shared vernacular, around beliefs, but it also gives me a way to be able to lead to make that culture tangible, at every level, because like I said, Before, I think this is so often where I see this breakdown, is that I can get the organizational directive, but I don't know how it breaks down to me, well, through this structure, this is the best way that I found to be able to do both. And so like I said, go over and take a look at the show notes. And there's going to be the full list of kind of what I believe in, which I think will give you a little bit of a better idea about kind of what it is I'm talking about here. And I think it'll start to give you a framework where as you go back to your team, your organization, your profession, whatever it might be, that it's going to give you a structure that you can start Start to work with. So from there, I think that the other thing that is so often overlooked and leadership is the fact that the best leaders that I've ever been around, do some things that are very obvious. And they do some things that quite honestly are just kind of behind the scenes, because I think that there's a lot that goes on that I think that the best leaders don't ever tell their team about their fights, their struggles, their successes, their failures, that they try to keep from them, because there's usually just a lot that goes on that you don't want them to concern themselves with. And so I think that part of this leadership piece is how good are you at politics? How good are you at understanding how to position your team to be successful? And to do it inside of an organization so that your team has value? Because I think that's another one of the biggest things that I've done with a lot of the groups that I lead is to understand, what is there value and then how do I communicate that back out to the organization because most teams whenever they see Start to lay out whenever they start to fail, whenever they start to not do well, it's oftentimes because leadership is failing to demonstrate that value to the organization. And that these groups are becoming a commodity. Because without value, you are a commodity, you're something that can be replaced, you can be replaced with somebody that's better, faster, cheaper. But if you understand how to position that group, if you understand how to demonstrate whatever the value is to the organization, the groups that can do that are so often really critical assets. And here again, this is a bit like when we talked about process, how to do that is going to a very depending on you, your team, what it is that they bring to the table, where your company is at what are the things that they value? So again, this is this is a tough one to be able to kind of say, like, do these three things. But it's something for me that I do think is incredibly critical, because when you can demonstrate that value, you can rally a lot of people to your side, you can get them to see why should they support you. Why should you be To do the sort of things that you want to do, I'll often describe it as they can see that I'm crazy, but they know that I'm not stupid. And that's a really key difference, because you never succeed alone. There has never been anything that I've ever done, that was successful that I did alone. You need other people with you. And so I think that this is one of these things is to understand this sort of a thing. And to understand that also on your team, you need people with you. And I think that one of the biggest hardest lessons that I've had to learn was how to make the culture and to buy in and invest in the people in my teams. To understand that as a leader, the other thing that I needed to do was to be about more than just the nine to five more than just the work that the reality was in, in many, many cases, I was spending more time with the people on my team than I was with my wife or my dog or my family members or anything like that. That is not an insignificant investment in time in emotion in my life. And so to be able to do that And understand that other people were also being asked to do that, I had to start to think about the fact that I needed to become about more than just the work. And I really had to go through and start to completely rethink my leadership model to try to bring this to life. And so one of the biggest mistakes that I had made was that I wasn't creating any space for people to grow outside of whatever it was they were doing every day. So here again, I lead a design team, I lead a creative team. And all we would ever do whenever it would be my leadership meeting is that we would go around the room, talk about what was going well with projects, talk about the people who were obstacles or problems that we needed to solve. And that would be it would just be this slow kind of uninspired, march around the room with everybody checking in and reporting Well, here again, if you want to do something different, especially if you have to do anything creative, people need more fuel than that they need more than just that sort of a utilitarian approach to work. So what I did was, I had this realization that I as a leader had really been failing and doing this. And so what I did was I went back and totally rethought what was my leadership meeting going to be. Whenever I got my team together, what did I want it to be? And what I realized that I needed to do was I needed to create a space wasn't about work, that what these creative people needed was that they needed a space to talk about creativity to talk about where did we want to take the group, where do we want to take the work and not have it be associated to a project or a deadline or, or something that was that was going to be due in the near future? Well, the other thing I started to think about was that to create a space like that could be this really interesting catalyst for change, that that was often probably a need that a lot of other teams had as well. So here again, to think about how to position my group. I went back and I just said, Look, anybody who wants to come to this can come and we're going to have this opportunity for this non project based discussion around creating And innovation, because the other thing that I realized is that when we talk about creativity and innovation, there's a trap that most people fall into, which is they're thinking about creativity and innovation only as far as the next project in front of them. Because that's the only runway we have. That's the only point of reference we have is that I understand that I have this project with this much budget and this much time that allows me to do this much innovation. One of the things that had come out that I found incredibly interesting during the trial between Apple and Samsung, was that Johnny Ive the head of design at Apple revealed that he will keep the next five generations have every Apple product in his office in some sort of a design. Well, whenever you think about this, the reality is is that if you think about whatever it is the iPhone 24 or whatever is going to be in five generations from whenever you listen to this. It's not probably going to look anything like the what's sitting in his office today. But the key thing is, is that they're thinking about it and they're thinking more multiple generations ahead about how do we want to evolve this, they have a Northstar that they can start working towards. It's not just simply, okay, we have this much time before the release of the next iPhone, what do we want to do to be able to kind of make the button shiny or something like that, that it's this heads up approach to innovation and creativity, that was kind of giving them a roadmap. And I realized I had none of that in my team that we really were just stuck in this rut of all we were doing was innovating as far as the next project in front of us. So I brought everybody together. If you were a member of my team, it was mandatory that you come because what was my my leadership team, so I could say that, and then anybody else who wanted to come could, and in the beginning, there weren't many takers from the other teams. And what I did was I gave everybody who showed up a really simple assignment. And what it was, was that for every one of these meetings, I wanted one person to get up into give a 20 minute presentation on what inspires them. And we put together a calendar so that everybody knew when they were going to have to present and everybody in My team was going to have to be able to do this 20 minutes unscripted with no more direction than what inspires you? Well, the fascinating thing about this is that it became probably one of the most fun, most enjoyable, most talked about things that we did on the team. Because one is if you get any group of people together who are creative or competitive, they will start to really try to one up each other on this. But we would start to get presentations. Like there's an amazing designer and Caroline who loved beer, which I know on the surface can sound like with every college kid loves beer, but I mean, she loves it to the way where she honestly should have gone and taught like a class at a university somewhere about this because she came in and had this beautifully designed presentation to talk about the barley, the water, the hops, the yeast, how it came together, she actually brought in a tasting of four different beers to understand, you know very much the way you would with wine, the difference between all these sorts of things, and she really brought her passion to life and really showed how much more it was than just going out. Getting a beer after work for her. It also showed that any time we went out she needed to order the beer or you knew she was kind of silently judging you. We had other people, there was a another designer who I had, who was a DJ in college, he came in and did a DJ set talking about the different beats per minute and the way that that would correlate to different styles of music. We had other designers who had talked about escaping dictators in South American countries whenever they were a kid, or it was just it was this insanely inspiring, eclectic collection of people and what inspired them. So that all sounds great, right? Why did I do this? Why did I think that this was a thing that needed to be a bedrock part of this? Well, I think that selfishly, for me when we talk about the parts of leadership that are hidden. What it allowed me to do was to be able to gauge a number of different things and let me see, how did these people do just given very little direction, completing the assignment. It let me start to understand their creative process and it let me understand kind of where were they at? And what were the things that really inspired them. Let me see their presentation skills and their organizational skills and a whole host of other things. So that was selfishly, why I did it. But the more important part of why I did it was because it humanize the team. Because when we talk about belief in part of that being believing in the other people that you work with, you have to see them as more than their job description, you have to see them, for people for what their talents are and what their passions are. So by doing this, the person that maybe you never got along with the person who you thought was a little bit prickly, you could maybe understand that okay, well, they're actually a volunteer firefighter who's going out and fighting fires and supporting their community every night, and oftentimes, they're maybe coming in on very little sleep, and that that might be the reason why some days they aren't always in the best mood. And so you would watch these interpersonal dynamics completely change. But the other thing that you have to watch is because by just this simple Nature, the simple act of answering the question What inspires you? The answer has to be inherently incredibly personal. So by standing up there and answering it, you're saying something very personal about yourself, you're risking something. So the other thing that I would start to see is that the team would start to come together based around these people kind of risking these things, because now I knew something about somebody else that the team was getting closer, and they're trusting each other because of the fact that I now saw them and they were dimensionalize to me is much more than just their job description. So the work started getting better, the team started getting closer and all these things that honestly I think most of the teams never had any idea that that was why I did it. I think that for them, they just thought that it was a fun exercise. And it was something that was interesting to do. And it was a nice distraction. But there was a method to the madness. And as we started to do this, a funny thing started to happen that all of a sudden, the engineers from the tech group, people from the brand teams, people from other disciplines all started to show up because they'd heard about this exercise because they'd heard about how great these meetings were. And I would have engineers who would come up to me after they would do this presentation who would honestly tell me that having to do that exercise to answer what inspired them was probably the single hardest thing that they ever had to do their entire time working at that particular company, but that it was absolutely the most rewarding, and it was something that they never had to do before. And you would then watch them start to take it back into the tech organization to start to do it there. And you would see it start to catch on and really become this kind of catalyst for change around something as simple as the question is what inspires you. But that was the thing. They saw the obvious part of it, and that some of them may have in some of them might not have understood what was just below the surface and why it was working and the effect that it was having. And I think that doing things like that really become important. And whenever we talk about how do you start to lead a team of people and what are the things that should really matter? And what are some of the things you need to focus on? I sat down and again, try to come up with a list because I like there to be some sort of a tangible takeaway when you're listening to this. And in this case, I think there are kind of like six things that are really important to focus on whenever you're leading other people. The first one of them is to empower people to find their own solutions we talked about this a little bit earlier is the fact that everybody has to be part of the solution, whether it's culture, whether it's leadership, everybody has to be bought in. And I think you had to be very clear about that fact. Because like one of the things that I'll do, anybody in the entire group can come and talk to me, I give out my cell phone number I at any point, you will schedule a one on one great, I will caveat that with the fact that one, if you come to me with a problem, understand that I take it seriously and will act on it. So if you're just coming to complain, or if you just want FaceTime, probably not going to end terribly well. But I think that the other thing is that if you do have that problem, what I want is I want people to not just show up and complain. I don't need a team full of like human YouTube comments that are just going to sit around and complain about every little thing and what's wrong because especially In a creative team, a lot is gonna be wrong. Creative is debatable. it's arguable, it's conceptual, it's all these sorts of things. And it's something that oftentimes you have to get it wrong a lot to get it right. So if we were just going to start on point out the challenges, there's never any shortage of those. But what I do want is I want them whenever they come to talk to me to not just come with the problem, but to come with and to be to know that they are empowered to come and talk to me about what do they want to do to fix it? Because I think that's the key part of it. Because if you come with what you're thinking and how you want to fix it, that allows me to then have a conversation with you about, is that a good solution? Is it a bad solution? Is it right? creatively, strategically, politically, I mean, a lot of these different things and it lets it be a coachable, teachable moment for us to be able to have that conversation around it. So I think that that's one of those things is to empower people and expect people to solve their own problems, because I think this is one of those things when we talked in the last episode about fear and comfort, and if you're an Team, or if you've inherited a team, those are some of the things that can set in. So you have to be able to start kind of rooting them out and getting people to come up with their own solutions. I think the other thing for me and we talked about this before, right about manipulation, or testing the team or doing these these other things, but I do think that it is really important to constantly check in to test the mental state of the team, because leadership is a constantly evolving concept, the makeup of the team, the attitude of the team, the attitude of your clients, or the company or the economy, or a lot of these other things will force us into being a constantly shifting puzzle. And that's why this is one of these things where I constantly look and try to reevaluate from a leadership standpoint, from a belief standpoint, from an approach standpoint, are we doing what's right? Because as things change, and as they evolve, I have to be able to check in on that. manipulation is only a bad thing. If either people are aware that you're doing it or you're doing it with ill intent, that for the rest of the time manipulation is leadership. It's getting better To do something and I think to be able to do that, you have to understand what's the problem that we need to solve for. The third thing I, like I said before, is to really embrace failure. As the path to success. One of the things that I will often talk about is the fact that I want to build a culture of failure. I think you obviously have to explain that. And if it gets taken out of context, you go get a lot of strange looks and emails. But for me, a culture of failure is the fact that for us to grow as a team for us to get better for our product to get better our process to get better our culture to get better, those three foundational building blocks. We have to try things to see what is gonna work and what isn't. And I think that again, if leadership is a constantly evolving idea, you have to be open to this to trying these things to say, wow, that worked really well. Wow, that really didn't, but to constantly look to improve, to constantly be willing to blow up your process to make progress. And I think that too many leaders get to dial in on just how do we succeed they become so just overwhelmed with it and paralyzed with it that then this is where the group will start to lose its value, you start to lose your ability to demonstrate that because you're so worried about constantly only being a success that you become paralyzed. And so you see this a ton of times in teams who have started to have success. It's like, wow, things are going really well. Don't change anything. Know that. That's the time when you need to keep doing that. You need to just simply embrace the fact that you need to keep failing. You need to keep trying these things, because that's the only way that you're going to continue to evolve and get better and not get overly complacent with where you are. The other thing that I think is that so if I'm going to go through and I'm going to try to affect people, if I'm going to try to get them to believe things, this isn't always going to go well. There are going to be challenges here they're going to be times when we need to move somebody from one headspace into another we need to change things. And that can become very difficult, partially because it makes you invest time and understanding the person the problem the circumstances, and to come up with a plan that you can give them to coach them on what they need to do differently. And it's that coaching piece of it that I think is really important here. Because too often, what I see people coach is behavior, you coach the way people behave? Well, the problem is that behavior is an expression of the way that they think. And so if you're just coach behavior, I'm coaching a symptom and expression. I'm not really getting to the root of the problem. And so for me, it really has become about making sure that I'm trying to dig in, and I'm trying to coach and change the way that they think, not the way that they behave. Because if I just am coaching the way that they behave, I may be able to stop a symptom, I may be able to stop a bad way that they do something. But the underlying thinking means that if I haven't fixed that, it's just gonna find a different way of expressing itself. The problem is going to come back but the way that it comes out, the behavior will be different. So you have to make sure that you're coaching the way that They think not just the way that they behave. I think that the fifth thing and I've referenced this a few times as we've gone through, is the importance of teachable moments. Whenever something goes right, whenever something goes wrong, whether it's as an organization, a group or an individual, that you take the time, usually as quickly as you can to make sure that it's a teachable moment, because I think one of the things that I'm a big believer in that I will preach to my entire team, is that the first time you do something wrong, it's a mistake. The second time you do something wrong, it's a choice. Because you know better the first time you might not have known better, you didn't have the reference point, you didn't understand why you shouldn't have done it. Well, the second time it happens. You did have that reference point, you did know that you shouldn't have done it, but you did it anyway. So I think this is why it's so important to stay engaged with the team to make sure that whenever these things are happening, that you don't let them sit, because this is the challenge because too often I see someone who's difficult to work with a team that's difficult To work with a challenge, it's hard to overcome a behavior or a way of thinking that is problematic. Well, the reality is from a leadership standpoint, dealing with these unpleasant things isn't fun. That's not why I'm getting out of bed every day is to sit somebody down and to say, look, the way that you're thinking about something, the way that you're going about something is wrong. And it's creating a problem. That's not the kind of conversation that's fun. But the problem is, is that it is a conversation that is incredibly critical. And that too often people take the easier road, they take the way of looking the other way of just kind of glazing over it, and hoping that it'll change. I'm not a big believer in hoping that it will change as we said before, with something like culture that it either happens by default or design. I like the design road pretty much every time and so I think that this is one of those cases where if you see somebody who is struggling, if you see them not doing something right, you have to sit them down and you have to make it a teachable moment you have to correct it. And you also have to make sure that that is instilled through your entire organization. So that the people in your org structure that are one down two down three down, are all doing that to the person who is either parallel to them or below them. So the team gets better. Because here again, you also cannot wait for me to stand around and catch every single little thing. Because if I have a big organization, I can't be every place at once they haven't approved the budget for the cloning machine yet I don't have the technology. So I can still just be in one place at one time. I have to instill this into the culture for people to be able to kind of get through and do this. And so the last thing, the sixth thing, and this really almost brings us back to where we started, because when we started, we talked about what were some of the obstacles that you had to overcome for leadership. And we talked about fear, we talked about utility, we talked about comfort, we talked about all of these different things that are going to be the barriers to being a leader and I think that whether it's for you as an individual, or for you leading other people, those are not insignificant things because they are deep rooted, they go to people's want to be able to help protect themselves, their livelihood in so many other things. And I think when we also talk about the fact that not everybody loves a leader, is the fact that not everybody is always going to rally behind whenever you want to come in and make a change until you start to become successful. And then it's amazing how they'll all come running in and they knew all along how you were gonna, you know, do this really well. But the challenge with leadership is it's so often to overcome that your leadership is got to be stronger than their excuses. Because whenever I take that 60 or 90 days, and I go through, and I come up with this list of beliefs, whenever I sit down, and I walk the team through it, at the end of that I'll tell them very plainly and very openly that we're at a fork in the road, that oftentimes, these are beliefs. And these are things that were written and were created based on where the team wanted to be the things that they told me. They wanted to aspire to the changes that they wanted to make, I guess we've talked about before saying those things is incredibly easy. doing them is something different altogether. But when you hit that fork in the road, so now we know what we believe now We know the problem that's in front of us, one of two things is going to happen. Either we're going to start working together, we're going to start taking a leadership position, we're going to start solving these problems, or we're going to start making a whole lot of excuses. Why not? Because it's hard because people don't like us because it means work. Because it means I have to do something different. I have to overcome a fear or I'm not comfortable, or a lot of these other things that are going to be a wall or a wave of excuses. And it's a natural thing to do. But as a leader, you have to be the one who is going to stand up and say no more. And I will be very playing with my team. After I we walked through the beliefs and we walked through the structure, that that's the fork in the road. And then if we decide as a group to walk down the path, we're going to start solving the problems. We're going to get to where we need to go that it's not going to be easy. It is not going to be fast, but that is where we need to go. But I will also be very frank and telling them that if as a group, we Choose the path of the excuses that whenever we are faced with a problem, we decide that the excuses the right answer, that I will make changes in the team until that stops, the size and severity of that will obviously vary wildly depending on what the problems are, what the excuses are things like that. But this is the thing, right is that we have to be stronger than the excuses, there has to be an Or else, there has to be something where they know that you're serious, because this is the promise, the only way that I can overcome that is to shove them off the cliff is to say that we're going this way, because that's what's so much of leadership is, is being the most confident, uncertain person. Because I've created these beliefs. I've created the structure in this system. And I've said that this is what we want to do, based on my experience based on the things that I'm seeing, but I don't know for sure that it's going to work. In a lot of cases. I'm probably sure that in many cases it may not this goes back to that culture of failure. So I'm almost expecting that in some cases, I'm going to get it wrong. But in any case, we have to start, we have to start moving, we have to start getting past this, we have to be stronger than our excuses. Because if you're not, then you start to become that person who just manages the problem, who accepts the status quo, who just looks at things and says, You know what, the problem is too big. The organization is too big, the legacy is too long, you lose the forest for the trees. And if you want to do that, that's fine. But for me and for the people that I want to work with, and for this, so many people who want to come and work with me, they aspire for more, just with many of them, they need somebody who can stand up and be that most confident, uncertain person who can be the one to force them into the change because they just simply have been taught through the futility through the fear or through the comfort that it's just it's hard and then it might not work out. And I think this has been my role has been the guy who is going to run up the hill first, and go get shot, to prove to them to walk my talk to do all the things we talked about in the last episode, to show to them, that this can be real, that this can work that I myself am stronger than the excuses that I'm being told around this stuff. Because the funny thing is, is that when you're the the first one who runs up that hill, a whole lot of people run up after you this turns into that like crazy, Braveheart moment, whenever they see the first person go. And he survives, because he may take a few bullets on the way it may not be easy, he may fall down a few times, but he's going they find the strength to do it too. And I think this to me is the biggest part of leadership is to be the one who's willing to run up the hill and get shot, not killed, but shot. Very important distinction. Because again, I think people whenever I think about my career and what I want to be known for, I hope that at the end of it, somebody will look at me and say, You know what, he was crazy, but he wasn't stupid that he was the one who would do it. What it was He said that he didn't always get it right. But that he tried to treat people the way he would want to be treated, that he tried to be more stronger than his excuses. And that he really tried to invest in the team. Because I think that's the essence of leadership. It's also the essence of why. And I said this at the beginning, there's not going to be a magic bullet, there's not going to be a part of this, where you suddenly have all the answers. Because the reality is, is that even if you do have all the answers, you're just gonna have it for a minute or two before everything is going to start to change again, and you need different answers. So that's what I have to say about leadership. I think this is for me trying to be as honest as I can be to give things into teach the things that I've learned about leadership over the years. So obviously, go to the website podcast, Stephen Gates Comm. You can listen to any episodes that you've missed. You can look at the show notes. If you have any questions. If you really agree with something really disagree with something if there's something you really wish I would talk about more some of you didn't understand. shoot me an email. It's asked at Stephen Gates. TPH n gates comm if you like the show, feel free to go over and leave a review. You can do it in iTunes or do it in the Google music play store. And if you didn't like the show, honestly go to the website you can find my address there right the reason why on hundred dollar bill, shoot it on over and I'll take it under advisement. As always the boys down illegal want me to say that everything I've talked about here, all my views are my own. They don't represent any of my current or past employers. And all I can say is thanks for the time. I know that for everybody that is truly the biggest luxury. And so until next time, and we meet again, stay crazy