How do you shape a high-functioning team from a diverse group of personalities? It's a question of paramount importance for any leader and in this episode, we've got answers. We delve into the wisdom of the Surrounded by Idiots framework to uncover the secret sauce of building a team that's not just successful, but also supportive. We also explore the notion of giving your 100% - a concept that can fluctuate daily. Spoiler alert: your 100% might not look the same every day, and that's completely okay!
How do you shape a high-functioning team from a diverse group of personalities? It's a question of paramount importance for any leader and in this episode, we've got answers. We delve into the wisdom of the Surrounded by Idiots framework to uncover the secret sauce of building a team that's not just successful, but also supportive. We also explore the notion of giving your 100% - a concept that can fluctuate daily. Spoiler alert: your 100% might not look the same every day, and that's completely okay!
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Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership and I'm your host, travis Moss, and you are listening to a special team interview with some amazing women, emmy and May. We are going to be diving into their actual real life experience with some of the lessons learned from Surrounded by Idiots, how they've applied them, what they've learned. There are 13 episodes in all. I know 13 is a lot, right? 13 entire days of listening to takeaways on Surrounded by Idiots, but there were 13 unique and complete thoughts about what you can do to use this information in your life to better your client experience, to better your employee experience, to better your business experience, to better your own experience. We didn't want to waste any of them. So there's 13 straight from the heart, life changing takeaways with lots of laughs and even some tears.
Speaker 1:
Emmy and May are some of my team members at Seed Planning Group and you can get a face with a name and more information about them from seedpgcom that's S-E-E-D-P-Gcom, and I want to encourage you to go there and look them up, because if they say something special or something that touches your life or leaves an impression to you, or you have a question about some of the things that they've mentioned because again they're living this they deserve to know how special they are. Let them know so, without further ado, please enjoy.
Speaker 2:
So let's just talk about teams then.
Speaker 2:
So, emmy, you've been, you know you're hiring.
Speaker 2:
Now, right, you're going out there and trying to find people to come on your team and your team is an interesting team because your team is kind of like this is the air traffic control for me, and I know that you mean it more from the client perspective and people calling and stuff like that, but it's still kind of like, you know, people are coming and maybe going from this position because it's a conduit to other career opportunities as well. If people want to, you know, go that way. And so, okay, all of a sudden now we're aware personalities and the mistake that most hiring managers make is they hire people who are either extremely weaker than them, because they can kind of bully them around, or they hire people just like them, right, and they're like so you get a room full of greens or room full of reds, or well, reds normally would not hire room full of reds because they're going to be like I don't like that person, no-transcript, because they want to argue all the time and it's like yeah, they're just like you.
Speaker 2:
No wonder why you don't want to work with them. They're pain in the ass, right, so it's like but greens, definitely a green or a blue, almost always Yellows and reds probably not. Most yellows are not going to be like I'm going to hire a roomful of people to compete with me Not really going to happen. But for greens and blues, definitely. You have this. We need more data, people.
Speaker 2:
Everybody needs data or oh, it's nice just going along with it. We have good harmony. Everybody needs more harmony, but the types of people that we bring together on a team are so important. So what's your experience with this kind of framework now, as you're looking at your own team and building your team for the first time in your career Like really, you have incredible power in that regard and how you put groups of people together.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, it definitely makes you look at it differently. And you in hiring I look at the person first and maybe the skill set or what's on the resume as far as experience second. When I look at the resumes, I'm looking what does it tell me about this type of person? What are they telling me that is about them? Are they super driven? Are they super goal-oriented? Are they focused on all about how amazing they are on their resume, which might tell me something different?
Speaker 3:
And we do it really cool here, where I get to do a meet and greet, usually first, and so it's a very relaxed go meet in a coffee shop, have a cup of coffee and just talk, which I love it. I love it because you really really get to know that person first and see kind of some of the qualities and characteristics they have. And with reading this book, the Surrounded by Idiots book, it has helped me kind of tailor the conversation or the questions as I see their personality coming out, to really maybe poke at some of if they seem like they're agreeing, maybe poking at some of those negative characteristics to see how they react. Or if they are a red, if I disagree with something they say, how are they going to handle that, because you talked about the ideal team player book as well, and that Hungry, humble, smart framework really goes well with this Surrounded by Idiots book in a lot of ways Because, like you said, you don't have to always correlate the color with a negative.
Speaker 3:
There are a lot of really really good aspects of each color and a lot of really strong things that they can bring to a team. If you have a team all of one color, chances are you're not going to be productive, you're not going to be effective and you're not going to be a strong team. You need the different colors to be able to help each other and lift each other up, which is the most important thing on our team is supporting each other and lifting each other up all day, every day, and making sure. One of the things actually me and May just talked about this a couple of weeks ago is your 100% is going to look different every day.
Speaker 4:
This is good.
Speaker 2:
Your 100%? Tell me more about that. What's your 100%?
Speaker 3:
So when you say I'm doing the best I can or I'm giving it all I can give, today that 100% really could only be 20% that day. But that is your 100% that day, because different factors go into how you are doing your work, how you are managing your life, how you're managing your relationships. We're all human. None of us are perfect. None of us are going to come in every single day and truly be able to give 100% of every piece of us to everything we're doing. And when you have the different colors and you structure your team with the right people not just bodies and seats to do the work, but with the right people if today my 100% really is 50%, I got the other 50.
Speaker 3:
Yes, and then you get into supporting each other in such a productive, efficient and relation building way, it makes your team as strong as it can be. And when you understand the value every single person can bring and what might be this person's strong suit, this person's little weaker in, and supporting that and celebrating that, like Mae, mae is amazing with clients. She's amazing with everybody, but our clients love her and they get so excited when she is the first face they see that is a strong suit with her. It's not a negative that maybe others on the team don't have. That that is something that is great and that is something to support and celebrate. And maybe for a day I can do that and I can be that for her if she needs to step back, and knowing that you have each other's back in every way possible, including with all the color characteristics that each person brings and being ready and able to support that. It just is amazing to see that in action.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, and with that Travis, I kind of want to go back to when you were talking about the receiving right. It gives such an opportunity to not only be able to show up for someone else and to give that, but also to receive it on the other end and to know that if I don't show up and I don't have it that day, that I don't have to mask it, I don't have to be fake, I don't have to do anything other than communicate and say, hey, this is where I'm at today and let that other person meet me and be able to receive the same thing that I am trying to give.
Speaker 2:
The whole respect thing, because that's what you're talking about is respect for each other, and I think that that's again people trying to be colors that they're not or wanting to do things that they don't. A lot of people look at other people and idolize. I'm like I've had people say I'm really trying to work on my presence in a room. You know, I have a friend that they go in and they meet everybody and they can talk to everybody and I can't do that. So I'm trying to get better at that and it's like what you just said May comes in and May is the shining sun to everybody and I mean you might be able to do that for half day if May is down, but she rocks it, you do it. Yes, right, and for her, her power meter for what she does at 50% would be you being at 150% in that role, right.
Speaker 2:
The amount of juice that it takes her to do what she is good at and what it would take you to step in for her, Like you'll go home after four hours. It could be you, it could be me, it could be anybody. You go home after four hours and you're just like I'm exhausted. I don't know how the hell that woman does that, Right. And then she comes in the next thing. You're like, yeah, I got it, no problem, it was awesome, but. And then she comes to like, okay, it's like normal for her, Right, but.
Speaker 2:
But it's like that people a lot of times they want to be in charge of stuff or they want to be important or something it's like, but you know what it entails. Do you know the amount of energy that this is going to take? Because if this doesn't match up with your personality, it is going to suck the juice out of you. Right, you may be able to step in and do it, so you might be able to do my job. But when we talk about stamina and endurance, right, you're gonna have a heart attack and be gone long, like by the end of the week. You know? I mean and that's the, that's the respect for that what the different colors bring to the table. You know, Like May's got a battery when it comes to people where, and she's got an empathy for people.
Speaker 2:
That it's genuine and because it's genuine, it's easy right and I'm not saying that there's anything about caring for other people, that's easy, but it comes easy to her Versus. If you're a balloon, you gotta fill that role. That's like you know. You might as well stick a fork in your eye and that like bodies in the seats. That was an awesome term, because most businesses make this mistake. We gotta put a body in the seat. We got an open job, we gotta fill the job. And then you look at it and you go.
Speaker 2:
But they have the right credentials, they have the right experience, they fill the job and they don't look at the personality, they don't look at the person. And we talk about this with our meeting process. You know about going and finding a person that you find interesting first and then working backwards like can they do the job type of thing right, because we put people in the seats that on paper look right but they can't step in it. They are incapable or unwilling to step in and help refill that power meter right or fill in the blank when it's down. And the one thing I thought was really interesting where I thought you were going to power meter is not where you actually went. I call you at the power meter.
Speaker 2:
I think you could also say so. Correct me if you said this and I'm taking it wrong, but I think I had a thought on top of your thought, because I thought your thought was amazing. But you could take May, and May comes in today and she's feeling 100%. She's feeling good, right, she's A plus May, right, and A plus May can do X amount, right. So she does, you know, just put a number on it, she does a hundred. And then May comes in tomorrow and you know her husband's sick and she was up all night helping him and the car broke down and she has a hole in her pants and you know it's just been a horrible morning.
Speaker 4:
That's very well happened yesterday.
Speaker 2:
And so May comes in and she's at 60%. But 60% of May is still like 90, right, yep. And so May, who is struggling that day compared to me, I'm going to come in and try to do May's job, and me and my A plus day trying to do May's job, so my 100% like I'm all in day, I'm a 30. May on a bad day still twice as good as me on a good day, right. And so it's also that understanding about how powerful each person is in the roles that they're in and what they can bring to the table. How do we get May into more situations where her power meter is just pulsating, right, Like she is just running laps around everybody, and I think we get it wrong all the time, like I think we've learned a lot to try to get it right and do a better job.
Speaker 2:
But I think we put the wrong people in charge of stuff, or we ask people to do things and then we get mad at them because they can't do it and it's like, well, no shit, they can't do it, like that's not who they are. You know you're asking them to burn the candle. They call it. You know, burn the candle on two ends. Well, it's like you took a blow torch to the thing and you just started to melt it, right? You didn't even bother lighting it, you just torched it.