The Secret to Building Great Teams: Create User Manuals [My article in Talent & Culture Magazine]

The Secret to Building Great Teams: Create User Manuals
The Secret to Building Great Teams: Create User Manuals [Talent & Culture Magazine]

I came across a dozen or so exceptional managers that used different versions of “user manuals” or “how-to-work-with-me-manuals.” They told me they were game-changers for productivity, performance, communication, and teamwork. They minimized and eliminated misunderstandings, biases and much more. What are they? Read on and learn!

Julie Zhou mentioned in her fantastic book, The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks at You.

In what scenarios would you use them?

  • Onboard new employees with teams
  • Build much better relationships and teamwork on existing teams
  • Use with people you would work within different groups
  • Use in working groups
  • Use during mergers and acquisitions
  • Use in conflict resolution
  • And many more scenarios!

Here is an excerpt from the article that discusses the strategy and how to do them:

“Learning how best to work with others is a huge challenge that often derails and stalls organizations. Over many years I’ve seen tremendously talented and productive teams struggle because of subtle misunderstandings, miscommunications and unspoken conflicts. Most business failures stem from these issues.

Leaders often talk about the importance of teamwork, but they rarely say exactly how to do it.

Here’s one game-changing step your organization and/or team can take: implementing a “How to Work With Me” manual and process. It’s a detailed instruction road map on individual preferences for areas such as communication, trust and pet peeves. It sets clear expectations on how to interact without trying to guess or infer what the other person means. It allows people to be authentic without being misunderstood.

It also instantly increases trust and team chemistry. You’ll see direct bottom-line benefits such as increased performance and fewer conflicts and miscommunications.

Organizations such as StripeDropboxNorselab and BetterCloud and teams at FacebookAmazon and Google are already using this approach and seeing an immense impact.

Guessing What People Want Is Not Communication

No matter how well we think we read people, everyone could use some help. None of us are perfect at it. But we can be much, much better.

We all have different personalities, communication styles, expectations and needs. We’ve been shaped by different experiences and histories. That creates challenging dynamics when you bring together leaders, managers and employees and expect them to accomplish difficult goals.

Organizations throw people together in teams and expect them to “magically” figure out each other’s personalities, preferences and hot buttons through guesswork, mind reading and trial-and-error. It would be similar to having to assemble IKEA’s most complicated piece of furniture without the instructions.

People often end up trying to analyze and predict what others like, hate, need and want, instead of asking them directly. This results in a rollercoaster ride of confusion, miscommunication, misunderstandings, unmet expectations, anxiety, fear and disappointment.

Despite all our best intentions, this process and environment is primed for broken trust, poor relationships and underperforming teams.

Social Wealth Book Review on Building Great Business Relationships [From Amazon]

“This book is one of the best-kept secrets I’ve come across in a REALLY long time! There is are so many tips for conversations and networking skills in today’s society. If you can master what Jason talks about in this book, you’ll definitely build long-term wealth! Many other reviewers have compared this to “How to Win Friends & Influence People” and I cannot agree more. Buy two copies and give one to someone in your network.”

It’s always great to read a review from someone you don’t know about the positive impact Social Wealth had on them. I’ve been fortunate to have more than 125+ five-star reviews on the book. If you are looking to build deeper, more meaningful business relationships (either in your company or through business networking), you may want to consider checking it out. It works for introverts and shy people just as well as extroverts.

Why Leaders & Managers Need to Build Self-Improving Teams

Creating a strategy of self-improving teams is a major strategic advantage for any organization. Team provides feedback that improves individual performance and effectiveness without complete reliance on the manager and/or performance review process. 

It also is proven to increase successes and improve learning from setbacks. 

In HBR’s May issue, it goes into deep research on why teams and teamwork should be the focal point for success.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/thriveglobal.com/stories/how-to-build-self-improving-team-manager-leadership/amp/

#teamwork #teams #performance #talentmanagement #hr #shrm #leadership #chro # #managertraining 

Why This Weekend’s Fastest Marathon of All-Time Was Special to Me (& Why You Should Care).

In Vienna, Eliud Kipchoge, the marathon world record holder, on Saturday shattered a record that had been untouchable. As a runner, this was something special for me.

I’ve run three marathons (Chicago 2018, Philadelphia 2018 and Phoenix 2019). It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done and one of the most rewarding. I haven’t accomplished my goal of qualifying for Boston, though I got close in February (3:20:13, and needed 3:19:10 to qualify and run the Boston Marathon).

His feat was running a marathon (26.2 miles) under two hours.

There is A LOT of application for all us in our professional career and business, starting with his quote:

Anything is possible.” – Eluid Kipochoge, 10/12/2019

Breaking this record was insane. Some people call him the Roger Federer or Michael Jordan of running. No one has done this on any marathon course. None of the analytic gurus or race experts thought it could be done until much later.

“Just how likely was this? When researchers from Australia crunched data from marathon world records over the past 60 years, they concluded that there was a 10 percent likelihood that the two-hour mark would be fall in May of 2032, and just a 5 percent chance it would happen by 2024.”

There are some who are criticizing this as a “fake run.” To be fair, this wasn’t a sanctioned marathon. It was a course that was flat (but not downhill) and manufactured.

But for anyone that’s run a marathon and knows what it takes to complete one, this is anything, but fake.

If you look at Kipchoge’s history of running, you’ll also see his TOTAL domination of the sport.

“In actual races, Kipchoge continued to be unmatched. He now holds the official world record for the fastest marathon with his performance at the 2018 Berlin race, when his 2:01:39 finish shaved 78 seconds off the previous mark. He followed that up by winning his fourth London Marathon in April of 2019. That put his marathon win streak at 10 straight, including an Olympic gold in 2016.”

He’s also a great humanitarian.

“I wanted to run under two hours and show human beings can do a good job and lead a good life. It shows the positivity of sport,” Kipchoge said. “I want to make the sport an interesting sport whereby all the human beings can run and together we can make this world a beautiful world.”

Three main lessons I want to focus on:

First, like everything in life, there will always be critics. People will point to anything negative they can or “manufacture” their version of the truth.

Instead of replying back, Kipchoge is staying positive and focusing on how this can help others (and other runners). That’s how you can control the conversation. Otherwise, you play into your critics and get into a comparison discussion.

The key is to “swim in your lane.”

In this case, it’s comparing himself to other runners, race conditions, etc.

Second, it highlights how much WORK it takes to accomplish great feats. It took the greatest runner of all-time his entire life to be able to do this. Great feats take a long time. Professional success isn’t instant like an “ESPN highlight reel” and “social media” news feeds.

Think about the successes you are most proud of. They probably took years to accomplish when you look at your first-step and last-step.

Third, Kipchoge first attempt at sub-two hours failed. Nike made a documentary on it in 2017. It took him two-plus years to try again and be successful.

Rarely do we get this right on the first attempt. That goes for extraordinary athletes too. Failure and success are married. They are flip sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other.

In interviewing more than 1,000+ successful entrepreneurs, leaders and managers for my book, Social Wealth, I asked them a question. “How many things do you get right on the first attempt?” The average response was three. That means 70% of the things very successful business people do they fail at the first time. They also said he often took them multiple failures to find the right answers.

They had to learn to pivot, learn their lessons, implement them, and then succeed.

The most forward-thinking companies understand how to leverage failure. You can read up on what Google X does to incentivize individuals and teams to failure.

Harvard has shown through research that the most successful teams report more failures than other teams. That’s one of their “secret sauces.” By communicating failure, you actually progress much, much faster. Plus, you create psychological safety in the process, which creates the optimal environment for high performance.

Best Things in the Workplace Are Free – Connection

“Best Things in Life Are Free.” That’s the classic song in MadMen when Burt Cooper dies. It’s signifies the #1 asset and “secret sauce” that leaders typically overlook. 

People value and are starving for true connection, complete trust, & teamwork with people who deeply care. 

It’s that emotional bond that enables us to accomplish and create the seemingly impossible. 

It’s also what brings the very best out of us individually and collectively. 

People after the fact point to success as the stock price, profit, sales, etc. But that completely misses the mark. That’s the effect, not the cause. 

The gold is in first creating the unbreakable foundation for “the together team.” It’s not to get distracted by process, strategy, etc. Because then leaders make lack of time excuses why they built the foundation on sand. We know what happens over time when they do (and the huge financial cost and emotional turmoil for poor teamwork).

Coco Chanel said, “The best things in life are free. The second-best things are very, very expensive.”

When leaders and managers behaviors and actions prioritize the business over the team, it requires them to pay a very expensive price. 

Here’s the video from MadMen that’s worth a watch: https://lnkd.in/e8gD2HF

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