How To Get Great Players To Play together – Linda Murray

TRANSCRIPT

CFA09 Linda Murray – How to get great players to play together
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Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1996 and took control of the company when he returned. Apple was just 90 days from bankruptcy. Steve, took Apple from near bankruptcy to 400 billion in net worth in just 15 years. That’s nothing short of spectacular. So how did he do that? In today’s podcast, we’re talking about a core element of his philosophy that really helped them along their journey. Steve said in an interview that wasn’t published in its entirety until after he passed away, a team working really hard on something that they’re really passionate about. It’s through the team, through that group of talented people, bumping up against each other. Having arguments, having fights sometimes, making some noise, working together, they polish each other, and polish the ideas, and what comes out of these is really beautiful stones.

It’s hard to explain, and it’s certainly not the result of one person, but it really was a team effort on the new Mac. Steve understood. The importance of having the right people in the right place, but also having the right culture to help them flourish. And that’s a huge part of what turned that company around from being nearly in bankruptcy to being the 3. 5 trillion business that it is today. as part of my CEO Masterclass, Linda Murray of Athena Leadership Academy talks about the importance of having the right culture for your organisation and how to develop it.

Welcome to the #CriticalFewActions™ to improve your business podcast. I’m John Downes and I’m here to help you cut through the overwhelm and prioritize what matters most to improve your business. Let’s get started and discover the #CriticalFewActions™ that have the biggest impact.

Linda’s been my, coach for nearly 10 years now. , I’m a great believer that, , every high performance individual needs a coach. They can’t just do it all by themselves. And whether you’re in sport or whether you’re in business, leadership or, doing things in the community, I think it’s always good to have someone to bounce ideas off and to reflect on.

Linda’s been an important part of my, um, professional development. So it was a reciprocal arrangement. JD and I met about 10 years ago, as he said, and he has been my mentor ever since. So we have a, a dual directional relationship, which has been a joy and history backgrounds always been psychology and philosophy, um, always had a passion for human behavior, what makes people tick, what makes them thrive.

And also the opposite of that, of, of when do we come crashing down occasionally and we recognize bad behavior. So that’s, always been an interest of mine. I did have a brief stint post uni where GST was coming into play in Australia and I decided to jump on that. So I set up a bookkeeping company and, um, grew that pretty quickly to 25 staff in my twenties.

And in the process of that realized that I really didn’t know with my philosophy degree, how to run a business. So appointed a business coach, um, and realized pretty quickly that I liked his job better than mine. He got to play with textures and go and write on whiteboards and all these sorts of things.

So we basically succeeded me out of the business. And I sold that just before my 30th birthday to join him in his business coaching company, and then you know, 15 years have gone by and that, um, has evolved and really when I sum up what Athena Leadership Academy is all about is I get to create leaders who people actually want to follow, which kind of sounds novel, but we don’t see nearly enough of it.

And we create organisations that people love working in and careers that people love to live. That’s kind of the, the essence of what I do. We do that through one on one coaching workshops, larger scale programs, future leaders running a four month program. So everything we do is sort of bespoke to the needs of the individual businesses that we’re working in and we tailor it accordingly.

So that’s how I come to be here because if I look at where JD and I fit nicely JD’s great on sort of that strategic side, the nuts and bolts of business. Um, my, my sweet spot, my strength is really on the humanistic side. It really came down to high performance. How do I create a high performing organisation?

And we know we can’t have a high performing organisation without high performing people. And I think in order to have high performing people, we need to create a culture or a container, if you like, that really enables that high performance. What happens so often in business, as I’m sure you are all aware, and I am too, as a business owner, we get really caught up in the BAU of things, um, and focus in the business as well as on it.

But really, I think there’s an opportunity for us to be polishing a few things in the area of our people and specifically our culture, because as my very wise mentor has said to me many times, STOP working so hard. And what he doesn’t mean by that is doing so many hours. It’s like stop doing all the heavy lifting.

And I think this is one area where culture can be a, a lever that you can pull, if you like, to help drive that high performance in your team, where you personally as the CEO are integral to the setup of that, but it’s actually everyone in the organisation’s responsibility to keep that culture alive.

Right, so I guess that’s why maybe I stopped working so hard is you don’t have to be the one monitoring and policing and doing all this. It’s like, how do we put some things in place to create that culture or container that drives high performance for you?

And I think that’s a crucial element, regardless of whether you’ve got 10 people working for you or 103, um, is how do we, , provide a culture or establish a culture which is, , self fulfilling, , and preferably not self fulfilling where everybody watches you, , do the job that , they’re being paid to do. Which is always a bit of a, uh, a challenge, particularly, uh, as we have smaller organisations, but very much, how do we actually empower them to actually, um, do a good job and, and to know, actually know what a good job is.

Yes. So, I guess, like, if I could put it to you of what actually is culture? So let’s just make sure we’re all on the same page in terms of our understanding.

I guess it’s the unwritten rules and the written rules about what we do and don’t do and the way we treat each other. And I would say, uh, yes, unwritten and written and often, even when we have the written, how does that turn into unwritten? Like, what are the behaviours, if you like, that are the result of those rules?

Yep, totally. So, um. So culture is the set of values, beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and practices that characterizes an organisation, and it really encompasses, as JD said, the unwritten rules and the written ones, and norms that guide how employees interact with each other, how they make decisions and their approach to work.

It’s the personality or the vibe, as you say. of the organisation. So it’s, as I said earlier, I think of it like a container that holds everything that happens within your business. And that is for better or for worse. And the idea is that we make it for better by actually being quite deliberate with that process.

So often organisational culture gets created quite organically. There will always be an organic element to organisational culture, but as leaders, we need to be more specific and more deliberate with the container that we’re wanting to create, because what that does is it then becomes almost like an antidote to when you might hire someone, or you might have an existing, often high performer who might have certain toxic behaviors.

For example, the culture becomes the antidote to that rather than that person potentially almost creating your culture. And as CEOs, you’ve all worked way too hard creating the businesses that you’ve created to allow that to possibly happen. So culture’s the way we do things every day. It’s the norms as a team.

It’s your tribe, and I think never have we thought more about tribe and belonging than during and since COVID. It’s the DNA of your team and your organisation. It’s why people choose to work here and it’s why people choose to stay here. It’s what enables productivity, engagement, unity, and belonging and accountability.

So I like that word choose, um, because at the moment more and more where obviously, you know, we’ve all ridden the COVID coaster. Then just when we least needed it, the great resignation happened. I’m sure you’d all agree that finding good staff and also keeping them is not exactly easy.

Um, and so we really want to use our culture as a way. of attracting the right people into your organisation, but also retaining the goodies. And maybe even using the culture to manage out the baddies. Like if we can create that feeling of what it’s like to belong here, and this is how we operate, then there might be certain people who, if they are not a cultural fit, chances are you don’t want them.

And ideally they might, um, might help them self select themselves out. and maybe free up their own futures. Here’s hoping. So I came across this image. Um, this was back in 2020, one of the Paralympics in Tokyo. And it really made me think about culture because obviously this is a paraplegic, um, culture is all encompassing.

It’s all around us and we can’t necessarily see it, but we can absolutely feel it. Right? And we can feel when it’s working and we can feel when it’s not. And when it’s done well, it really becomes an enabler of your people. And that’s what I love about this image. This guy on land would not usually be able to walk, but put him in the right culture or in the right environment, suddenly he can do things that he wouldn’t otherwise be able to do.

So I just thought that was a cute, um, yeah, cute symbolism, if you like, of culture.

So I’m going to throw it back to you to come up with examples of great cultures that you’re aware of.

Right. So it could be businesses you’ve worked in, could be the business that you’ve created. Um, it could be Australian businesses, global businesses, big, small, whatever you like. What are some examples of really good, strong cultures and why and this goes for anything that we’re learning is we have so many examples or role models around us of things done well and things done poorly. So culture is just one of them. Every business you go into, whether it’s your local cafe or your, your. Dealing with IBM, right? Or Google or one of the, one of the big guys is think about what am I noticing?

What am I feeling? As you said, it’s the vibe, even customers feel the vibe, right? When they have these interactions with organisations. So start observing, start noticing when you see good culture in action, or when you see bad culture in action, what’s the cost of it, what does it look like? Make it a very conscious process to then ask yourself, how are we doing this in our business?

Because there are lots of great, um, examples of organisations doing it well, especially on the global scale. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel. Look at what the, the big organisations with huge budgets who have whole culture teams, whole culture departments, look at what they’re doing and think, so what’s the more micro version of that, that I can start incorporating into my business.

I’ve given J. D. a a worksheet, something like that, a couple of pages of the sort of questions and exercises and what have you, that you can take yourself and your business through to really start distilling your culture

and it’s, it’s basically taken straight from, if I was to go into an organisation and spend a day with their leadership team, nutting this stuff out, I’ve kind of created a bit of an excerpt from that sort of workshop, which JD will share with you. So that you can answer these questions. But look, really, the essence of it is, I think there’s a few key components of culture that you can focus on.

And this is in that handout for you. I think of these as like the five key ingredients. If you like to culture, so just to whiz around this circle, and then we’re going to deep dive on a couple of these. So, first of all, is the vision. So, obviously, this is the long term goals and aspirations of an organisation that really provide that sense of unity and clarity for your people.

The vision can inspire your people that creates commonality in decision making and performance. This is something that I know you did as part of the CEO masterclass and I think it’s something that, um, it’s easy for leaders to do, and then it becomes a set and forget it becomes a driver for you as a CEO.

But if I was to go to every single person in your organisation, could they tell me what your vision is? And could they tell me in a way that they feel like they’re contributing to bringing that to life?

You know, I love the, um, the story where back in 1969, JFK did a little site tour to NASA and he went to the bathroom and was speaking to the janitor and he’s like, so what’s, what’s the role you play here?

He’s like, oh, I’m putting a man on the moon and I love that. He’s the janitor and he totally is putting a man on the moon because he is part of the cog of the wheel that is NASA, right? So he’s obviously bought into that vision. As I say, imagine if I was to go and ask everyone in your team across your whole organisation, would they be clear on your vision?

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And the difference that they personally are making towards that kind of comes back to the stop working so hard thing. It’s like, how are you as a leader creating this, this current or slipstream behind you that your people are all jumping into? And they’re coming on that ride rather than you feeling like you’re behind them, sort of pushing them to your outcomes and what it is you want to achieve.

The second one is values. So values. These are the core principles and beliefs of an organisation. When we think about our own personal values, it’s kind of like the, the ethical blueprint by which we as individuals live. The same applies for an organisation. These are the foundation of behaviors. The foundation of how people make decisions in your organisation.

They’re a huge part of that vibe that people feel when they come into your organisation or when a customer has an interaction with you. So who would say that they are, they have clear organisational values. So I think this is a really important thing that you need to come up with is your values. I also think it’s really important that even if we have clear values, that they are something that, again, everyone in the organisation can say, but everyone in the organisation knows how to behave in alignment with. So, I have a little Linda Murray social theory, right?

When I go into an organisation and their values, uh, and their mission or vision is on a plaque in reception, as I say, it’s not scientific, it’s just a Linda Murray study that I do with myself, is guaranteed most people in the organisation don’t know them. When I go into an organisation where there’s no representation of the vision and the values, but I’m feeling a positive vibe, I could ask anyone and they’ll know what the vision is and they’ll know what the values are and how they can behave in alignment with them.

So it’s really key that we start to understand what our values are. And if you haven’t done them yet, can I encourage you to make it a team event, like it’s not just some words that you come up with, everyone needs to be involved in it, or maybe not everyone, just depending on the size of your organisation, but there is broader involvement, but also don’t go for the standard integrity, honesty, trust, safety, one team.

Right. Don’t just go for the basic ones that we could Google most on chat GPT. What are the most common values of organisations? I want you to really start thinking about the, that vibe, that container, that culture that you’re wanting to create. What are The ethics and the standards that would bring that to life and it’s interesting.

I was actually listening to a podcast this morning. So they were talking about different cultures. And this HR company had done a poll of when you see a job ad

and they talk about their culture, what words would attract you as an employee, as a potential candidate. So let me show you what they came up with. Kind, like a family, performance and fun.

Now, interestingly, so many of you said performance. I own a business. I know I want performance, but it’s just interesting in terms of the language we use like we, as leaders talk about, we want to have a high performing team and that would sound really fun for people to work in. Actually, when you look at these results, you go, interesting, people are actually wanting to feel something.

And then the performance will come from the feeling.

So rather than just talking about, we are a high performing team or a high performing organisation, your people’s performance will come from the environment that you create for them, how safe they feel, how much they want to rise. That’s where we’re going to get that performance. So I just thought that was a really interesting thing.

So coming back to this whole process. So we need to get clear on our values and these core principles. The final three are the ones that I want to come a little bit deeper. with you on. The first one is psychological safety.

What do we mean by basically this is where um, your company is somewhere where people feel like they can show up truly authentically. We can have the courageous conversations. Um, we can challenge the status quo together. It is an environment where I don’t feel like I have to be less or that I’m going to be called out if I make a mistake.

Right, and I’ll share more info on that with you in a moment. Then we’re looking at the behaviors. So, behaviors are those observable actions. That have been playing down in your organisation. This is the day to day. This is what if I came in and did a site excursion, a site tour, what would I actually be seeing and hearing from people?

Values and vision are great words. It’s the behaviors that bring them to life. Right, and it’s the psychological safety that makes it okay to behave a certain way to bring your values and vision to life. And then lucky last, we have the recognition rituals and cues. So what are the systems, if you like, that are embedded in your organisation to Recognize and call out the great behaviors, like how we encouraging people to do more of what we want them to do that positive reinforcement.

And similarly, when we see something that’s not aligned with the culture that you’re wanting to create, how are we calling that out? Right, how are we giving your team permission to call that out? So, as business owners, I’d love you just to take a moment to 5 on each of these. At a high level, how, how clear is your vision and how well communicated is it? How clear are your values? Does everyone know and understand them? Psychological safety, do people feel like they can just be themselves and have the tough conversations when they come to work and challenge the status quo occasionally? Behaviors. Have we defined the key behaviours that we want to be seeing from our people?

And then what are those good things we do to reward and recognize,

I believe, and I’m sure you will resonate with this. I think as a CEO, your business, I think about like a dashboard of a plane. There are so many things for us to focus on. And just when we get everything settled, then a red light starts flashing over here.

And so we press that and then something else starts beeping over here, right? There’s always things to do. And this is one of those many things. And it’s very easy to. For our attention to get drawn to BAU product, you know, the things that make us today’s dollars. I think of these concepts as the things that can potentially help us with tomorrow’s dollars.

Because we’re building the right culture, we’re attracting the right people, we’re retaining the right people, and we’re doing less performance management. Because the culture is managing that out for us to agree automatically. So what we might do is have a little look at this whole concept of psychological safety, because this is the birthplace of innovation, of creativity, of building in new systems.

It’s the antidote to we’ve just always done it this way, right, which can create some stale processes in a business. So where this whole concept, I guess, became famous from was Google. Arguably one of the world’s best organisations was keen to understand what made it one of the world’s best organisations.

So obviously their products, good, their technology is good, but what, what was some of the key differentiating factors and what they discovered was that they, so they did a huge study over about nearly three years, 37, 000 Googlers across 180 teams, they were doing this study to find out what was it about these high performing teams so that they could ideally duplicate that broadly across the organisation.

And what they actually found was it was less about who was on the team, which is what they thought they’d find, that on each team there was some gun, that we need to recruit more people like that. It was less about who and more about how the teams interacted together. It was how they operated. It was that, that cadence, that rhythm, how they communicated, et cetera.

And this was the origin of this concept of psychological safety. So let me just share with you what we actually mean by that. Psych safety, and this is what they found out as the key criteria, was when team members contribute approximately equally. They encourage one another to take risks, they make it feel, make it safe to feel vulnerable in front of one another, and they support each other when things go wrong.

And when you think about it, what is innovation? Innovation is just a series of mess ups because we are challenging the status quo until we finally land on something that really works. If you’re in an environment where people don’t feel safe to be able to challenge systems, challenge the status quo, come up with ideas, Then we’re not psychologically safe and as businesses we’re missing out.

So this point to encourage one another to take risks. Just to reassure you taking risks doesn’t mean going out doing crazy things. A risk for someone could be putting their hand up in a meeting. A risk could be calling out bad behavior. A risk could be, and there have been studies on this, a nurse telling a surgeon that they’re about to amputate the wrong leg.

And there were huge studies in the medical system about psychological safety or the lack thereof because of the importance of status. Because a surgeon is so important, you had these nurses seeing what was about to happen and not feeling confident to call it out because they felt it was commercially risky, right?

So we want an organisation where people are going to call that sort of stuff out because they feel psychologically safe. So let me put it to you. What happens to behavior or even what happens for you personally when we don’t feel psychologically safe ? Yep, they don’t contribute. What else? Yeah, and we’ve seen this, you know, like with the Exxon explosion, for example, people knew that was going to happen. They’ve been plane crashes with 300 fatalities. Certain people in the business knew that was going to happen. They might not know it was going to happen that day.

But they knew it was an inevitability because of lack of maintenance or whatever the problem was, right? We need people speaking up. We need people making mistakes and owning them. People leave. Yeah, because it’s yucky. Like, we spend a lot of time at work. If you’re stepping into what feels like the dragon’s den, it’s not going to take much for you to say, Actually, I can do this better somewhere else.

When I speak to my mates on the weekend at the barbecue, they’re loving their jobs, and they don’t have to put up with toxicity or fear, like I’m feeling. So therefore, what happens when we do feel safe? If you’re creating a culture of psychological safety, what, what’s the upside? What do you get to enjoy?

Great ideas. So we’re growing, we’re changing, we’re making things better. We’re building inefficiencies. There’s probably more profit. There’s working on an old system and we’ve always done it this way. We learn, we grow, we want to go the extra mile, right? We get more out of people when they feel psychologically safe, right?

So this is definitely a key thing for you to think about. And really it’s about asking people, I guess that’s going to be the, um, the action off the back of today. Is getting on the ground, whether it’s anonymously or not, and just asking how people feel, what could we do to make you feel comfortable to speak up more?

Or if there are certain people who seem to be shutting down, what’s going on? You know, you can create the environment where they can speak to you and maybe share something. Maybe there’s someone in the team who’s who is shutting people down, right? Who knows? We need to find this out so that people can be the best versions of themselves.

Again, more than happy to provide resources for you on site safety, but also the how, specifically of how we actually create that vibe, again, turn this into part of our DNA. So we’ve got our vision, values, psych safety, then the one that I think is really crucial is the behaviors. So as I said before, when we have our vision that we’ve worked really hard to come up with and as CEOs, you’re very passionate about bringing that to life, we’ve got our values are the blueprint by which we hope people will live.

We’re trying to create an environment where people feel safe to speak. What are the behaviors that we need people to be doing or not doing to bring those values to life? Because as I said, values are words. And in fact, there’s so much words that my definition of a word might be your different to your definition.

So this is why I don’t like values like integrity. I think that’s such a big word that doesn’t come with any real description. What might be living in integrity for me might be quite different from living in integrity for you. So one of the great cultures that’s done this really well is Southwest Airlines.

Over in the States, and they have historically been voted as number one in terms of culture, historically, um, but what I wanted to share with you that I think they do so well, you know how I was saying, make your make your values real, don’t just go for stock standard, whatever you could Google.

They’re a really great example of not only coming up with cool values that people buy into being these bold words , but in the finer print, are the behaviors that they’re asking people to do in order to be a warrior spirit.

But I think the point here is they’ve got fun values. That people will connect with, and you remember, um, on that poll , it was talking about fun being one of the values that people want. Not everyone wants to just work in a fun culture. We also want to achieve. We want to succeed. We want to get stuff done.

So I like that they’ve got the fun factor here, but then the behaviors are, um, more serious. They’re actually driving positive outcomes for this organisation. Right, so the key here though is really that link between these are our values that people are going to connect with and we’re clearly specifying the behaviors that we want to see people doing and acting in order to bring our values and vision to life. So for you, and this is going to be in the worksheet , is I’d love you now just to think about your organisation, whether your values and vision are clearly articulated across the board or not, just think about the utopian version

of your organisation, like the, the front page of the newspaper version. What are, what’s your vision and values? And therefore specifically, what are a couple of behaviors that you want to see that would enhance that? That would bring that to life. And then what are a couple of behaviors that you’re aware of that are actually detracting from that?

What have you seen, heard, smelt in your business that is actually a withdrawal on the values and vision that you’re trying to create? So just to even jot down two of each, some that enhance and some that detract. So just to call out the obvious, which is this could be a full day or multi day offsite

these are all really big questions. I appreciate that. We’re just sprinkling across the top, but the beauty is you don’t have to share what you’re coming up with with anyone. None of this is being set in stone. This is really just to give you a bit of a snapshot, a slice of how to start thinking about this process of culture.

So the lucky last piece of that ring that we were talking about was recognition, rituals, and cues. So we know the vision, we know the values, we create psych safety, we’ve got the behaviors that we want to see more of, and those that we want to see less of, is the question becomes how can everyone be positively reinforcing and buying into the right behaviors and everyone placing and managing and mitigating the crappy ones that we don’t want to see.

Cause I think culture is everybody’s responsibility. It’s not just something that you, it’s not a top down that you as a leader say, this is how we show up, how we want to be everyone to live and breathe it because culture is the sum of every conversation, every interaction, every email that gets sent every, you know, sideward glance when we’re in the cafeteria making a coffee, it’s the sum of everything that happens every day.

And as a leader, you simply cannot be across all of that all the time, but we also don’t want things getting escalated to you. All the time. So really think about what are some ways that we can actively recognize positive behavior. It’s like I’ve got, I’ve got a seven month old puppy and I’m learning all about positive reinforcement

so even when there are times that I want to ring it by the neck, you can’t do that. It’s all about recognizing and reinforcing the positive. So same, how are you doing that? In your organisation, how we actively calling it out and then similarly, when things aren’t going to plan, how are we making it easy for our people in a psychologically safe way to observe and call out behaviors in other people.

So it was, um, it was David Morrison, head of former head of Defense, and I think it was 2016 Australian of the year who said that which you walk past is that which you accept. We want our people not accepting. When they see behaviors that are not aligned with what you as an organisation agreed. So I thought I’d just share an example of done well on the positive side and done well on the calling out negative behaviors so that you can start thinking about and chatting with your team about how do we do this.

So I, um, used to do quite a bit of work in one of my clients who was one of the leaders , we were talking about exactly this concept and she went away with her team and they came up with their values. Now they came up with seven values. I’m going to be the first to say I think that’s too many.

It’s too hard to remember, but what they did do really well was they came up with an acronym of their values, which was CRAP TIE, like a necktie, a crap tie. And that was for, you know, um, competence, respect, authenticity, et cetera, right? It’s spelled out there, seven values spelled out CRAP TIE. Every Friday afternoon they would get together, this is pre COVID, when everyone was in the office five days a week. Every Friday afternoon, they would get together for the Crap Tie celebration, which was that people would come to that final hour with examples of when they’d seen their teammates do those values. Right, so a call out of one of their peers when they did trust really well or whatever it was, and they would throw these in the ring and talk about them.

And then my client, the leader, had bought the most horrendous necktie you have ever seen in your life. It looked like someone had vomited down. It was like brown and orange Paisley. And so whoever was voted by the team as the best example of values in action would be gifted, you know, over their head, gifted the crap tie.

And they would then get to hang that crap tie on their locker for the week. And then the following Friday, they’d do the same ceremony and the crap tie would be ceremoniously handed to the new recipient. How much does a crap tie cost? Two dollars? From a variety store, like this is, it doesn’t have to be big expensive.

We’re not sending people off to Nobu for dinner all the time. It’s more about the spirit. And the key I loved in that was they were recognizing those behaviors in one another. It wasn’t the leader. Okay, so that’s an example of a great recognition ritual done well.

Then actually, this was a client that JD and I worked on down in Melbourne, who, um, large organisation, Australia wide, and the, um, predominantly male.

Like, what are we saying, JD? 98 percent male? Yep. It’d have to be close to that. So when the leadership came team came together and did something similar, there were some behaviors that they wanted to iron out. You can imagine that the culture, uh, possibly had a few rough edges on it and they’re wanting to attract new talent.

They’re wanting to do things different. They want to, wanting to attract women in to the environment. And so what they did was came up with a yellow card system. They were very sporty, obviously, blokey culture, and so when someone saw someone else do something that was not in alignment with their values, or the behaviors that they had all agreed is how we want to be going forward, all they had to do was go, Matt, yellow card and keep walking, right?

So it’s not like you’re sitting down with your peer going, I need to give you some feedback. That was not cool how you just did that. But it’s saying, I saw that we agreed. Not cool. So all you do just verbalize it. They don’t end up getting handed a yellow card or have to stick a yellow, yellow post it note on their computer.

It was just, mate, yellow card. So this is what I mean. They’re, they’re then self policing. Okay, so just a couple of ideas of how you can start doing this stuff in your organisation. So we have gone around the wheel. You will get the worksheet if you like for you to be able to write all over.

Have conversations with the people in your team about this sort of stuff. And as I said, happy to share resources. How do we keep reinforcing them? So CrapTie would be an example. Um, another larger organisation I work with, they have what they call spirit awards.

So they do spirits, not values. So they do quarterly call outs. And this is like a 2000. person business. So a smaller business, I reckon you could almost do that monthly. Could be part of, I don’t know if you do a town hall or whether there’s a monthly comms that goes out. Do we call out someone on that?

It’s something that your team needs to run, right? So I would even speak to your team and say, Hey, We’ve got our values. Are we clear on what the behaviors are? How can we celebrate it? Like, let them give you ideas because it’s about being meaningful to them rather than being meaningful to us as leaders.

So I put out to them and go, what’s something that we can do more regularly that will be fun and keep these, keep these alive. Maybe even part of it is checking in and going, look, we created these five years ago. Do they still work? Do they still resonate for you? Do they still come to the heart of you and what you do?

Yeah. And if not, what would? We actually had, uh, one of the businesses I worked with, um, they have a series of signals, seven signals, which were these beliefs and behaviours, um, and, uh, as often happens when you change CEOs every five or eight years, fly another one in. Um, the question is, well, you know, you got to make a mark, put a stamp on it and do something different.

And, uh, so he was quite keen to actually replace those signals. Um, and, uh, and there was a bit of resistance, uh, from his exec team who, who sort of said, well, you know, let’s just check whether or not they, they should be thrown out. And so they actually surveyed the organisation and found out that the organisation said, you know what, those signals are actually still important, they’re still relevant to us and we might stick with them.

And so rather than throwing them out, what they then did was actually went through a systematic process of actually refreshing and renew, not so much refreshing, but reinforcing them and actually having a, it was actually a weekly process of calling out one of these, uh, examples of one of these behaviors, um, every week.

The pretty well, 52 weeks, and it was a great way of actually just. Reinvigorating people’s connection to them and certainly having experiences, I found it to be a really worthwhile way of getting people just to think about it. You know, when they, there could be discussions about something that had happened when they’d gone and seen a client, and this was an example of that particular signal, or it was the way that they’d actually had a conversation internally and how.

You know, the talk straight had worked out effectively, or, you know, they had fun and celebrated. Not that I can remember those things off the top of my head like that, I didn’t get anything to my DNA. Well, that was exactly the case with, uh, this business that Linda and I were working with. They, you know, their number one largest Uh, most successful salesperson, um, had some of the shittiest behavior, um, and, and it had been tolerated for six, seven years because he was so successful.

Um, and what are we going to do if we lose him? Um, and. You know, it’s the old story. What if he stays? Well, because of the ability to actually, um, talk openly and honestly about these things, uh, and also talk seriously about, you know, this behaviour is not sustainable, and it’s not acceptable around here. He actually did change, and he moderated his behavior pretty significantly, and it was quite extraordinary to watch.

Um, and he’s still one of their best sales performers, but his, his team actually liked working with him as opposed to tolerating him

in having these spoken behaviors that we all have agreed on, it’s not that you’re telling people they have to behave a certain way. The team have said, this is going to make us thrive.

Like, this is where we want to work. This is what’s going to drive our performance is then that becomes something that you can measure against as opposed to when you try to call out someone’s behavior. And often this person who’s the top performer, top performer. Let’s say gun salesperson, because there’s way more to performance than just figures, right, is it becomes hard to have that conversation because often they’re kind of blind, often they lack self awareness to the challenge that their behavior is posing, or even that their behavior is a challenge.

So to come up with certain behaviors and how do we measure ourselves against these? Then you get to have the conversation about this, the figures.

The results we’re seeing, et cetera, the measurements rather than you and your behavior is a problem because that’s a much harder conversation that we easily avoid. And especially when they’re a big money bringer in a, um, but we’ve got to look at if this person’s bringing in a million dollars and the person who’s coming second is bringing in half a million dollars.

So we’ve got to keep this person, even though we’re toxic, I would say to you, if you got rid of that person, have a look at the figures of everyone else rise. You’re going to make up for that medium pretty quickly, pervasively across everyone else because that psychological safety is back. They feel like they can breathe.

They feel like they can perform again.

Well, something that Linda and I like to factor into our thinking is the five languages of love. It’s well understood by, by people. You know, a large proportion of the population. What’s what’s probably not known is that, that, um, uh, the people who came up with the five love languages, um, what’s the name of the guy?

Yeah, and I’m just holding up the book that you’re probably referring to. Yeah. He also partnered with Paul White out of the UK to put together five languages of appreciation. In the workplace, which was very much taking a similar set of constructs, which is how do we like to actually show appreciation?

And how do we like to receive appreciation? That was, um, founded particularly in volunteer organisations, because it’s very difficult to tend to a volunteer, say, okay, well, you’re fired and you’ve got no income. Well, they’re volunteering anyway. So income wasn’t their motivation. So the question then became one of, okay, so how do we actually show appreciation, but also how do we actually, , provide boundaries as well?

And I think that, that, you know, regardless of how much we’re paying staff, and particularly in a time now where it doesn’t matter how much you pay them, there’s quite a lot of volatility in the marketplace, um, understanding, I mean, which is appreciation, understanding how the team wants to actually behave together as a culture, or even a micro culture within a culture.

Um, I think it’s absolutely essential as part of our leadership, um, development.

Which also talks to feedback and making feedback a regular conversation. Feedback is not what we do when someone’s done something wrong or what we do at the time of, you know, twice yearly performance reviews. Feedback should be weekly or even daily.

Like after you present something to a client, right? We get together and you can make it quick. 10 minutes. What do we do? Well, what didn’t we, what are we going to do different? It can be easy. How much time are we investing in the positive feedback we give people? Are we giving enough of that? Or is feedback actually something that people rightly associate with when someone’s done something wrong?

Because that’s the only time we ever get feedback. How much positive feedback are we giving? And as I say, investing the time, if you have to have a challenging performance conversation with someone, how much time do you put in the prep? Like probably half an hour we think it through. What are examples?

What’s the behavior I want to see? Like, we, we give it that, um, that credit. What about when you give positive feedback? Do we spend the same amount of time to really nurture that conversation? Because that’s actually the ones that we want to be doing more of so that we have to do less of the negative feedback conversations.

Thank you so much and as I say, reach out, all my details are there, but reach out if there’s any other resources and things that you would like books, podcasts, et cetera, because, um, I know a few.

Linda Murray. Thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it today. Thanks. My pleasure. Thank you . Bye.

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