151: The #1 Team Building Skill You're Missing to Lead Effectively | Brendan Rogers

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you've got to help leaders build the mentality that it'smost important what

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you say no to as much as important as what you say yes toand if you start to build that discipline and then allocate

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time in your calendar and when you've got time for your teammembers then that's when the real magic starts what's

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one more thing you want to leave our audience with u when itcomes to helping create and develop high performing

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individuals the the one thing I would say is that what's thesecret to making your team more engaged more productive

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and less likely to leave you may be surprised to learn it'sintentional and focused one-on-one meetings brandon

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Rogers is a leadership coach who used to believe that greatteams were built through occasional team meetings and

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annual performance reviews he was shocked to realize thatwithout consistent structured one-on-one

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conversations leaders lose control performance drops andteams fall apart welcome to the Learn It All Podcast the

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show for today's leaders who want to get ahead and stayahead because we believe great leaders aren't born or made we are

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always in the making i'm your host Damon Lmbby two-timebest-selling author and CEO of Learn It a live learning platform

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that has helped upskill over 2 million people over the pastthree decades in a

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moment I'm going to ask Brendan to share why weeklyone-on-one meetings are the most important thing a leader can do to

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drive individual performance his simple three questionframework to structure effective weekly check-ins and the

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mindset shift needed to say no more often to help you freeup time for what really matters how do you ever expect to

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maximize the performance of your employees and deliverconsistent results without spending deliberate and focused

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time with them every week jeez man i've heard that beforethat sounds fantastic

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it's for for me it's not possible i mean it's why it's why Iuse that question like it's it's meant to sort of raise

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the eyebrows and think geez you have to spend deliberatetime with people and I I go back to look I I've been managing

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leading teams involved in teams since since a young boy youknow playing sport i love team sport and just sort of

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coaches particularly when you were young not so much whenyou're older which I think is a downside of of some of the coaching but yourcoach spent time with

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you they spent deliberate time even though you're in a teamthey they came they seem to come up to you more as a child and just hey youknow maybe you

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try this or or have you thought of doing this or if you kickthe ball this way this might be helpful that sort of stuff

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and I don't know if it is like just that adult sort oflittle people relationship

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that they find it more comfortable as as we find it morecomfortable as adults doing that um it doesn't seem to happen

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as much as like adult to adult in the professional sportingworld yes it's really really important and and and does

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happen a lot more but it it's just not possible to get thebest out of your people if you're not being customized to

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them and having those deliberate conversations and and thisis where I'm very big on what reinforced to me myself

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my wife are involved in caring for kids we're foster carersand when you look at that situation you you said you've got

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young children and if you're not spending that one-on-onetime with them you're not building that connection

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you're not building that relationship sure it's great doingthings as a family but really the the intense times and

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those memorable times that come that you remember with yourchild is those one-on-one times you have and you you

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see them thrive and you see them want to do things for youand to please you and to you know to to really make you happy

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and and I think as adults we're no different to that so whenyou're leading a team of people again I reinforce that

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if you're not spending quality one on top one-on-one timewith those people week to week then you're really missing

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a trick and you're there's no way that I know of that you'regoing to be getting the best out of those people if you're

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not spending that deliberate quality time together and sowhat was it was it during sports or something in your

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professional career where you had that pivotal moment whereyou're like "Okay running structured one-on- ons is really

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the most impactful and important things leaders can do withtheir people." It was that dreaded time in the world

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called co heard of it yeah yeah haven't we all look I'm I'msorry to

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bring it up again all you listeners are thinking God whydoes bring up all the time but look it was that was the the

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time I guess as you know as entrep entrepreneurs as leadersthat that time gave us more time to think and we saw a

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lot of change happen in the world some good some bad from abusiness ownership and a business leadership perspective

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all of a sudden you had all this remoteness of workhappening and now there's sort of full remote and bit of

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hybrid and and bit back in person all the the mixes therebut what I what I found and when I started to think about

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this is that leaders had a really really tough time aknowing what their people were doing and then b knowing that they

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were on track doing the right thing but then getting thebest out of them and they just they they didn't know how to

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handle that so what I used to do before co when I wasworking with clients I used to concentrate a little bit on

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one-on-one meetings but a lot on team meetings and duringthat time of co I

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started to realize you know what a people haven't leadersgenerally haven't got the level of experience of

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facilitation that I was lucky enough to have when I ledlarge teams and workshops in my corporate career so

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that's a skill in itself and that takes time but spendingtime one-on-one is actually an easier gig for business

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owners and leaders i find a lot of people feel morecomfortable just having these one-on-one type conversations so

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then I started to create some more structure around thatbased on my own experience of doing one-on ones when I

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was in the corporate space now I was inconsistent with myone-on- ones as well i didn't have the discipline i didn't have the consistencyand

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basically I didn't realize the power of them for all of mycorporate or for most

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of my corporate career let's say but then co came started tounderstand that people were really struggling leaders

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business owners were struggling getting performance fromtheir people the frustration the annoyance the just all

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that angst that came with it and I started to really thinkabout hey you know I need to target in on oneon ones

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because that's where the performance starts you have highperforming individuals comes into high performing

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teams which comes into high performing businesses so that'ssort of how it evolved then I just added a little bit

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more structure i tried to really simplify as much aspossible so that leaders could have a simple clear

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structure they could do certain things on a weekly basiscertain things on a monthly basis and certain things on a

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quarterly basis and the other thing that drove it was I'm avery much anti the whole yearly performance review or I

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shouldn't say I'm completely anti there's a there's a timeand a place for that but I think what happens the

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majority of the time is that those yearly performancereviews happen they um they don't happen regularly enough um

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in that they're just yearly rather than quarterly orsomething like that and then they get done the tick the box is

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ticked they get put away on the shelf and they're never tobe heard again about again until the next end of year

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and then people think "Oh we didn't do that we didn'tdo that we didn't follow up on this." Uh it just becomes not useful sothat there's no momentum in

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that so the structure I put together there's a lot of mmomentum week to week and it's very difficult to hide um if

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you're not performing and that's what I like becauseultimately business is about performance absolutely but a lot

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of times people look at uh structure and they say "Okaywell if you're too structured you're going to really stifle

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creativity but you believe otherwise." Let's unpackthat a little bit yeah I do i I believe the opposite i think

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structure actually um fosters creativity if if you thinkabout just even the

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podcasting process that we've got you know you've got afairly structured process there's you know sort of booking and some questionsand just teeing up

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some of the structure before we have this conversation i dothe same with my podcast well that allows for us to be on

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the on the same page we're moving in the same direction butthen I can add lib a

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little bit i can have a little bit of c creativity in theconversation because we've got a we've got a bit of a structure about whatwe're talking about

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well to me that's the same in in any business that structureallows for some freedom of thinking rather than thinking

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I've got to make sure I tick this box or I've got to followthis or I've got to I've got to make sure that happens you

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know we can bring in some structure that could be automationthrough systems um that could be some structure through

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your one-on-one meeting type process but then it createsspace for those other

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conversation you need to have and I think one of the otherthing that structure does for leaders particularly

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in a meeting space is that it stops them talking too much soone of those real

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problems I found with leaders and meetings generally isbecause they don't

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have a structure they just talk and talk and talk and theyjust become

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information sharing sharing meetings rather than meetingsthat are bringing people together to solve issues and to

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have robust conversations and those sorts of things sothat's why I believe structure is so good it actually does

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free people up um and I don't know what your your spacebehind you looks pretty

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tidy i'm sure your desk is fairly tidy mine's okay there's afew bits and pieces around that shouldn't be there

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but when my desk is desk is reasonably tidy and clear itdoes allow my head

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just clarity of space clarity of thought and I challengeanybody to to take that up as a as a challenge as an opportunity

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that just clear your space if you think you work well in anuntidy space then

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tidy it up get some structure to that and it's amazing thefreedom that that brings i couldn't agree with you more

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because I I feel like if if your desk is a mess and yourhouse is a mess it's just frustrating and sometimes you don't

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even know where to start i also really agree about if youdon't have a structured process for one-on- ones or

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or really for any meetings a lot of times leaders just comein and then they just wing it and they just and then the

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the individual who's there might not even know know what theagenda is and they sometimes even tune out and they

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don't feel like they're being listened to absolutely you'vegot a great three-step framework that's pretty simple uh can you share with uswhat

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that is so it it actually forms the basis of the wholemeeting process and I

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like to get me get leaders to start with the one-on-oneweekly performance

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meeting i don't want people to shy away from performancethis is not about oh you know we've got our employees and they're notperforming it's like how do

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you continue to get the best out of people one of the thingsthat I think it's I'm pretty sure it's Gallup because

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they're they're the biggest sort of research company in theworld around these sorts of things that there's um

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various studies around there that when people feel likethey're growing and developing in their organization then

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that's good for their commitment to staying they'll staywith the organization longer so this is again why

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I think spending that deliberate one-on-one time is superimportant so really there's there's three simple I

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think simple but deep questions in in some sort ofconversation around the weekly performance meeting and all all I

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get leaders to start with is what is the one two or threeagain ideally we get to

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three but even if you haven't done this before it could bejust one what's that one key thing you've achieved in the

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last week what's that one getting up to three but what'sthat one key thing you're focused

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on achieving in this next week in this next seven days andwhat support do you need from me in order to help you

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succeed in the week now there's some other structure aroundthat that we can sort of talk about if we want to but you

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know creating some strategic growth goals for the quarter sothat you know that work is leading up to something

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that we're growing in our role we're reaching a level ofmastery or we're at least on a path to mastery in our role

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but that what that does is I don't I don't start with thosesort of things i just start with get some consistency get

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some discipline in spending 15 to 20 minutes that's all ittakes 15 to 20

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minutes with each of your team members each week don't putit off don't cancel

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don't reschedu just get that discipline have thoseconversations around those three questions that builds some

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accountability in the in the organization and in in yourteam because the week coming after you've had that

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first oneonone that first question becomes really valid whatdid we do in the last seven days or what are we

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achieving in the last seven days hopefully it's linked towhat you said you were going to do in the next seven

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days the previous week and that's how we start to build thataccountability piece uh and that can come into the feedback

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culture that we start to create because if if somebody's notquite you know they're saying they're going to do something but then they'renot doing it

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then okay what is it about you know what's happening in theweek that's you know not setting up for success what can

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I do for that so it starts to really you start to discernthe situation which really unpacks into that feedback piece

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so there's so much stuff that just starts to evolve fromsitting down and

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having a deliberate conversation with your team with yourindividuals in your team so if these meetings are 15 to 20

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minutes and they're pretty structured does it allow for timefor feedback or do you just make sure you

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cover what they have and then you need to schedule a secondmeeting if you need to go deeper into those types of

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conversations this is a really common question I get and Isay it's up to the leader okay so there are times when you

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get on this on this structure and this process where that 1520 minutes is more than enough and what I've experienced

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personally and with the business owners I work with when youget really good at this that is enough because there's some of those otherconversations happening

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just you know dayto-day and you know various check-ins orwhatever but these are really around that structure what

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what when I say it's up to the leader if the leader and theindividual have some time after that meeting they get they

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get through those three questions and then after thatthere's through the through the conversation um something's

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come out that you know we need to unpack a little bit orwell let's if if the leader wants to unpack it there and then

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um with the person then they can do that they can expand thethe time of the meeting cuz remember it's it's their meeting so how long itgoes for is up to

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them I give that 15 to 20 minutes as a guide um or if it'slook it's a little bit out of scope of this weekly

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performance meeting but hey how about let's do our meetingand let's make some time for that after that meeting which

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just runs into it but back to your earlier point I'm a bigfan of making sure that the people in the meeting know

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what this meeting is about because then they putting theirbest foot forward and they're knowing that this is the this is

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the lane I'm in this is where I need to focus on and that'sabout my weekly performance in my role if I'm coming and

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people are seeing an agenda and they've got Christmas partyhere and they've got um some CEO visit here and then they're

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talking about some other thing in their work like theirtheir head's all scattered they don't know what to focus on they don't know howto contribute

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well to the meeting so this is where I'm really big aroundagain the structure and keeping it aligned and up to up to

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the guess again in short to answer your question up to theleader to decide and the team member to decide have we got

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the time to unpack that now if not let's make some timebecause it's super important and I think you owe it to your

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team to be structured and have that agenda ready to goBrennan because if

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you don't you're not setting them up for success you knowthey need to be able to come prepared and be able to anticipate

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and understand what the meeting is going to be about rightand look when even what I again what I say to business

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owners and I do this with some of my clients one of myclients is traveling uh next week so said "All right we'll

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just do the email check-in." So with that structureagain it's very very simple to say "All right here's the

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here's the email or you know I've got it templated andautomated and those sorts of things but you know you've got those

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three questions." They just email back and then we canhave a bit of an email debrief or a WhatsApp debrief and stuff

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like that so I also try and make sure that the process issimple enough where

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if a leader is traveling and and or you know somethinghappens in business cuz things happen from time to time that

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there's no excuse to cancel that time is made it's ready andand in your slot in your calendar so the person as a leader

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you should be able to even if you haven't got it automatedyou should be able to send that email quickly and say hey just doing yourcheck-in and that

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person's made the time already cuz it's in their calendar todo that check-in so there's no excuses to not be focused on

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the performance and the grow and what leads to the growth ofthe individual in that team i think it was a similar

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Galllet poll it said I think 37 or 47% of all one-on- onsare either cancelled

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or rescheduled so a two-part question first of all why isthat happening and

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what is the negative impact that it has on your team memberswhen you you have a

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leader or manager who's constantly just shuffling you aroundand uh rescheduling you i'll answer the second question

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first is that um how do you feel if you you know a datestands you up or your friend stands you up doesn't feel good

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does it not like you're not respected or you're you're notworth it to them absolutely now obviously I've never

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experienced that cuz I'm a bronze Aussie and who would standme up Damon yeah no I I you got a good you got a good point

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there so that's why I wasn't sure you're going to even knowhow to ask the question cuz I'm sure it never happened to you of course notmate of course not

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so um but look so it doesn't make the person feel valued itdoesn't make them feel good so now again you most people

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are pretty forgiving and if if if you do need to rescheduleI'm not saying never reschedule there are times where you

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know things happen and you might need to reschedule ifthat's a rare occasion then that's okay you I'm sure your

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employees not going to hang you up and say you know you'reall of a sudden you're the worst leader in the world you don't care about meall that sort of

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stuff right but that should be on very rare occasions sothis why I'm really careful about saying don't cancel don't

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reschedu but the caveat is if you know if there's a life anddeath situation or or something there then go do it needs

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to be very rare and your employees will forgive you noproblems at all but if you're doing that week to week well it's

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just again it it it all of a sudden doesn't mean anythingthe employees not

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going to be as committed to it they're probably not going tobe prepared for it cuz they're thinking "Well they cancel every week sowhy should I put the time

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in to prepare for it i know what the structure is but it'sprobably not going to happen anyway." So you know that's that's the thefeeling that people will

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get eventually back to the first question my I I have nostudies around this apart from certainly working with

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some of my clients and being in the situ myself situationmyself as a leader i've had the you know the privilege of

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managing very very large teams both locally nationally andinternationally in my corporate career especially so um

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when when I postponed or cancelled a meeting often

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most often it was because I didn't know what I was going tosay i didn't know what the structure was going to be and

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then you know 10 minutes before the meeting I'm like ahshivers what's going to happen what am I going to do it's

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easy to cancel it so you just cancel it or you postpone itand then if it's postponed you get to the next day and

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the same thing happens so this is what I found and againthis is why I come back to structure that if you have structure

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and a consistent structure around some of these things and Ido the same thing with team meetings depending on which team which type of teammeeting it is

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if you have that structure then what I've noticed is thatthere's less chance

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of cancelling or rescheduling because you're confident inthe structure and that also leads to one of the areas

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errors I think that I spoke about a little bit earlier inthis conversation where it also stops particularly in the

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weekly one-on-one performance meeting it stops a leaderspeaking too much because they've got three key questions ask the

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question and listen and seek information understand fromyour employee so that's

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what I found so let's move on to feedback because we talkedabout that a little bit i mean feedback I believe

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both giving and receiving receiving feedback can be fuel forlearning a lot of leaders struggle with

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it so if you're somebody who struggles with giving feedbackum as a new leader or an experienced leader what is step

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one to get out of that habit and start giving betterfeedback that can be

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really actionable for your team members i think just look atyourself to start

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with and think about the situations that you may have had inreceiving feedback

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now that could be from a friend a a partner um a brother asister it could

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be any at at some stage in our life doesn't really matterhow old we are to be honest we receive some level of

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feedback now we probably not receive in a in a formal waythat sort of can happen sometimes in a in a business

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environment but um I I maintain that when somebody gives youfeedback and

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feedback can be that appreciative type feedback it could bethat constructive type improvement type feedback it's just

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it's just feedback and a different style of it but wheneverI've been given

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feedback from someone I've been very appreciative of thatand I've actually felt like hey you know what that person

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cares about me enough to take some time to share that heythey really liked

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whatever I did here or actually they've seen me do betterand they've they've told me that hey I know you can do

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better in this and I thought if you did this it would havebeen a little bit little bit different so that's where I

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think is a really powerful step to to take us forward reallyquickly into okay

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so if I feel like that why wouldn't I want to make otherpeople feel like that

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so Damon I love it how the preparation you've done for thispodcast and you

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know some of these really thoughtful questions you knowreally reinforces to me that you put some time and effort

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into understanding what I think I like and enjoy and andwhat helps leaders grow and and what helps teams grow so

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like that's fantastic that like that makes me feel good thatyou've done that and I hope in me sharing that

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information that's made you feel better and and you knowsupported in what you're doing you're going to keep doing that so that that'sthe feeling that

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people get and don't people remember how how you made themfeel that's what they say isn't it yeah of course so this this

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is where I think it's a really important um step um and I'mnot sure that I I

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hear this sort of too much in in conversations I hear andand you know podcasts I listen to about feedback but

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just think about how you feel when you've received feedbackboth appreciative and constructive and

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sometimes yes it can be confronting getting some of thatconstructive feedback but at the end of the day I found that you appreciatethat person

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more and you trust that person more so yes um there'sthere's an element of

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trust that has to be there you know if somebody comes fromoff the street you know and and all of a sudden just walks

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up to you and says "Oh you Brendan and you know Ireally don't like your podcast or whatever." You're like "Yeah goodon you buddy you know what the hell

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do you know?" But you know that that's a bit randomright but there there's some level of of relationship that you should

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have uh and if that's there and you have the courage and youthink about it from yourself and how you feel about it then

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you know I think if you can keep that in mind I really thinkit pushes people over that that hurdle I suppose of hey

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this is some you improvement type constructive type feedbackam I going to give it do I care about Damon enough yes

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I do do I care about people improving enough yes I do so I'mgoing to I'm going to take that step i'm going to be vulnerable and I'm goingto put it out

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there if you say you're somebody who wants to get feedbackbut the second somebody on your team especially somebody who reports to youshares with

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you feedback and you get all tense and up upset with themthat's just going to stop right and when people see that

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happen it's going to permeate through the organization andthen you know people are going to have a hard time being open and and andcaring and

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sharing with people and you and I almost even talked aboutthis before we came on air having healthy debate and healthy

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and and even difficult conversations are really healthy fororganizations right

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absolutely it's it's quite it's quite funny actually i'vebeen in R and this was this was more in corporate days

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where you know a leader's gone on you know some sort ofcourse or program or whatever that they put them through and

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you I know you our organization does a lot of that stuffwhich is again I'm not it's it's all really good stuff but you

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know people get pedpp and and a course and they come backand I'm going to ask my team for feedback and they they put a

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question out there and say you know what could I do betterand then they don't wait for the answer and stuff and and

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they move on and I'm like what just It's almost like I tickthe box of I've asked

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my team for feedback but I'm not sitting there waiting forwaiting for anything to come in so I I it's one of the things

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I really there's a lot of things I love about what I do butone of the things I love is actually setting up that

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structure back to some structure around some feedback and Ilove the sort of stop start keep exercise really simple

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around feedback and again you know just can be little onepage or just a bit of butcher paper or whatever but you know

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what is that one two or three things again depending on youknow where the organization's at and where the trust

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levels are at it might just say what is that one thing thatum you'd like your leader to start doing what is that one

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thing you'd like your leader to keep doing and what is thatone thing you'd like your leader to to stop doing so that's a really again areally simple

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structure that gives a little bit of safety to peoplebecause you know people buy into that um simple process and then

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we just start to have the genuine conversation around thatand unpack that we always want to make sure obviously

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when we're getting feedback both sort of appreciative typefeedback or constructive type feedback that we're

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going to put something into action if we're getting someappreciation type feedback so that's awesome like I really

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appreciate actually I didn't really I didn't understand thatthat's how you were taking it and the audience really appreciate that i'm goingto do more of

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that or actually when I'm doing lots of ums and in myconversation and and it's

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taking away from the the gist of the story and andsomebody's giving me that feedback that's really important that's

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right i'm going to take that on board i'm going to work hardon that so you know this is where you've got to make sure that feedback isreally good

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somebody's taken shown the courage and taken the time toshare that with you hopefully you got to make sure that

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there's some action that backs it up so that that reinforcesthe message to them that you're prepared to take action

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you're prepared to improve and guess what you don't have tobe rocket science rocket science to realize that when

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people see that which is to your point then they're probablygoing to be even more emboldened and more courageous to

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give you more fab feedback in the future which is going tohelp you improve even more so all of a sudden we get in this

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virtual cycle of improvement and that's a pretty good thingfor business right because we're in as individuals if we're

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in a virtual cycle of improvement then individuals improvethat leads to the team improving that leads to the

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business improving that always leads to the cultureimproving and that always leads to much better results in business

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better results lower attrition people more motivated andbought into the to

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the work and I think one of the key things you said rightthere is that if somebody gives you feedback and you and

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you implement it follow up with them later and just say"Hey thank you for sharing that with me." You're right i do

27:22

say a bunch of ums and a's and hey maybe check out thislatest episode with me and tell me if I got a little better at it if not youknow keep sharing with me

27:29

and what I found Brendan is when you do that just exactlylike you said people will give you more feedback but also

27:35

ideas will bubble up all over the place uh from frontlineworkers and everywhere because they just feel like there's more

27:42

trust and there's more openness where they can come and havethose types of conversations absolutely mate and you know the I guess

27:48

the thing that's quite amazing and I say this a lot is thatit doesn't cost anything right and again I know I'm sure

27:56

you're not you know doing all these free trainings oranything for people need to pay for certain things i get that but

28:01

some of these fundamental things or I believe arefundamental things in in leadership and business you don't need

28:07

to you don't need to pay for there's no all it is is a bitof an time investment and being deliberate about certain

28:13

things so you know why wouldn't you do it it's it's notsomething it adds to your bottom line but it's not taking

28:18

away from your bottom line look yes that's what Learn Itdoes we do leadership training and and soft skills

28:24

and all that kind of training and um that's great i mean Ithink it I think it's super important but a lot of real

28:32

learning happens in the flow and in real world situationsand examples um that

28:38

really helps with the retention and stickiness of it give mean example whether from your sports days or your

28:43

corporate days of a great learning experience you had thathelped you grow as a individual i don't know if you're

28:50

gonna if you or your listeners will like this answer becauseit's it's a really simple one but it's it's actually been

28:56

the most powerful bit of feedback I've ever got because itcomes in my mind many many times every single day a

29:05

lady that was in my team back in it was around that

29:13

2005 period 2005 to 2007 and she said to

29:19

me that Brendan you're actually quite seems weird but you'reactually quite a like a

29:27

a fun and sort of engaging type person and easy to talk tobut your emails

29:32

don't come across like that they're actually they start justvery direct i said "Well what do you mean?" And she

29:40

said "You know you just start Damon or Cheryl orthere's no dear something or

29:47

hey something or whatever." It's just just like that'show I've always written emails that's just how I you know we

29:53

leared to do emails so every email like since that time I'veeither started with

29:59

dear nowadays I'm more say just "Hey H E Y hey Damonhey such and such." So every

30:06

single time I write an email I think of Cheryl because she'sthe lady that gave

30:12

me this feedback and I think that is just such a a simplepowerful bit of feedback that's made me hopefully a

30:21

little bit more authentic on email just by that one littlethreeletter word in

30:27

adding and being a little bit more friendly on email so it'sagain I use

30:33

that example so often because it's it's so simple it's sopowerful it was so

30:38

random that the the feedback that came and that certainlywasn't anything I was expecting but I think of that and I

30:44

think of Cheryl very often around these sort of things iactually I actually wrote to her a little while back cuz I

30:49

hadn't spoken to her for many many years and I just wrote toher and said uh look it was on a Facebook message I think i

30:55

just want to tell you like I still so much appreciate thatfeedback you gave me because it stayed with me forever and

31:02

it'll stay with me until I die because it's just somethingthat hey we use email every day right so you know this

31:07

this woman lover or hater she is forever stuck in my headwell here's here's what

31:14

I why I do really like that example because it's not somecomplex example that you have to do all this hard work

31:20

to change it's one simple thing that makes a big impact andcan really make a

31:27

big difference because a lot of times let's be honest peoplecome across much different over email than they do in

31:34

person and I think a lesson out there for our listeners andfor everyone is if somebody is coming across in a in a

31:41

different way than they than it seems like how theycommunicate with you in person I think you should do what Chill does and callthem out on it and find

31:48

out otherwise you might be thinking "Oh this person'supset with me for some reason." Absolutely and look you you

31:53

rais a good point there like the feedback doesn't need to besort of this massive big thing and it can be just a a

32:00

small hallway conversation around something like that thatyou know somebody really values i I there there

32:06

was one other bit of feedback again I've had many many bitsof in improvement

32:11

feedback especially um so that's that's been good for me ihope I'd reported to

32:17

the the global CFO in a role that I was doing and um she'dsaid to me and again

32:22

I unfortunat I didn't get on well with with her but at leastshe was quite direct in some of the feedback she gave and she said Brendan thatsomething

32:29

along the lines that you know everything might you know it'sjust because it's a nail doesn't it doesn't mean you need to

32:35

use a sledgehammer every time and and what what shebasically meant when we unpacked that a little bit was that like

32:40

I was always looking for the ultimate answer like I've got avery you know in my DNA is trying to find the best result

32:46

the best answer the most accurate answer that sort of stuffso that means you know I can deliberate too long I can procra procrastinate allthose sorts of

32:53

things so you know in her world what she even though she wasan accountant pretty stuffy accountant mind you but she just

32:58

wanted to make sure that even though you know she was doingcertain things that um she passed on this feedback to me and

33:05

making sure that you know I wasn't just trying to move fromsort of A to Zed you know you can it's okay to move from A to

33:10

B know what zed looks like but just take those incrementalsteps and and I have to say that that is a really really

33:17

powerful bit of feedback that I received fairly earlyreasonably early in my career which has helped me particularly

33:22

in the coaching world because I think if I didn't if I keptthat sort of mentality and didn't challenge myself to

33:28

just say you know like like some of the basic structure withone-on-one meetings it's okay to just start here just have

33:36

the meeting here's a few questions that can help even ifyou're just getting one from your team member about what they're

33:42

going to focus on week to week that's okay we know we canbuild it up to three or four but if I try and start if I

33:48

still have that mentality of saying well you know no this ishow you do it this is the best way to do it then you I'd probably alienate andI probably

33:54

wouldn't have the clients I have today because you know it'sit's a big step for somebody to go from you know here to

34:00

here it's okay to take those incremental steps and be okaywith everything doesn't have to be as accurate or or as

34:06

correct as what you'd like it to be what are some roadblocksin the way right now that's preventing either them from being

34:13

high performers or preventing them from helping their teammembers become high performers oh I love that question and

34:21

I'd have to say I I actually did an interview just yesterdayon my uh one of

34:26

my podcasts Cultural Leadership and the chap I had on calledhe talked about

34:31

time debt and the concept of time debt was effectivelyprioritization I suppose

34:37

but th this is the thing I find hardest for leaders to makethese dec and in my

34:44

own business like you know we got to be really clear aboutwhat we do do but we've got to be even really clearer

34:51

about what we don't do what we decide not to do probably youknow as well as I do mate

34:58

the amount of requests that we can get on LinkedIn theamount of touch points you know I'd love to have a conversation

35:04

and and all this sort of stuff and I love buildingrelationships i love connecting with people but you can't do

35:10

that all the all the time you can't do it every every day soI'll make sure I've only got a couple of limited slots

35:16

in my calendar every month and when those slots are fullthat's it i can't take any more i can send people a link

35:23

and they can you know book in and we can have some of thoseconversations but you just you you've got to help leaders

35:29

build the mentality that it's most important what you say noto as much as

35:35

important as what you say yes to and if you start to buildthat discipline and then allocate time in your calendar to

35:42

what you do say yes to so make sure that you can actuallyfit in what you think you can fit in in the week then that

35:48

makes a diff big difference from the business ownerperspective and their ability to manage their time and to

35:54

manage their week and then what I find that allows them tohave time for their

35:59

team members and when you've got time for your team membersthen that's when the real magic starts because it's not

36:06

as business owners we're not we're not feeling like theweight of the world's on our shoulders we're not feeling like we've got to doeverything we've got to

36:13

micromanage we got to cover this we're making calls at allsorts of time at night or we're receiving calls at all time or not got morestructure because

36:20

we're more deliberate about what we're doing one of thethings I've always seen is that business owners a lot of times

36:25

they're the bottleneck be and for not being able to uh scalebecause they have to be involved in everything and and

36:31

maybe because they're saying yes to everything or they don'thave enough trust in their people to be able to do it what is I know we talkedabout this a

36:38

little bit but saying no is hard what is another piece ofadvice you have for

36:43

somebody to get better at learning how to say no tosomething the simplest advice I can give is make the choice to

36:49

say no it's comes back to that mindset right again everyeverything we do Damon

36:54

you know as well as I do you would not have grown asuccessful business if you weren't deliberate around stuff you've

36:59

got to be deliberate you know I'm going to take thisdeliberate action doesn't always work out and that's fine that's the learningprocess but I'm going to do

37:06

this i'm going to do this i'm going to make sure thishappens i'm going to be deliberate about it well the same thing

37:12

with any change we want to make is the first thing that weneed to do is say you know what I'm going to be deliberate

37:19

about getting better at saying no and then when you makethat decision what I encourage particularly again leaders

37:25

when you're leading a team or working in a largeorganization those that are closest to you whether that's peers or

37:32

whether that's again for me ideally team members cuz they'rethe ones you're interacting with a lot then you tell

37:37

them you know what I've said yes to too much it's notbecause all of a sudden I

37:43

don't want to work but for me to be the best leader for thisteam and to make sure I've got space for each and every

37:48

one of you I need to help you guys or you need to help me sosay no to things

37:54

i'm working on saying no to things because I need to be moredeliberate i need to have more time in my calendar

38:00

when you see me or even if you come to me and ask me to dothings and you think I should be saying no challenge me like

38:08

tell me hey is this really something you should take onshould you know Fred do this because he's the he's the person in

38:14

the team or should Jenny do that you know she's an expert inthis space so make the decision be deliberate about it

38:20

and then bring in some accountability partner or someaccountability partners somewhere that are going to keep you

38:26

honest every single day if you do that then um you know atthe end of the day all of that is still a choice to make

38:31

sure that if someone's keeping you accountable you're goingto listen to that there's that feedback link again and you're going to dosomething about it and if you you're committed to doing

38:38

that and you do that enough times then you're just going toget better and better and better at doing it once I got better at saying nopeople are okay with

38:45

it they just kind of move on you know they're like"Okay cool." And sometimes they even tell you "I appreciate it

38:50

because I would hate for you to have taken this on and notto been able to contribute and overpromise and underproduce." So I thinkpeople respect

38:57

you and I think that's just something that's worth keepingin mind mate once again you pick up on a perfect point it's it's back to thatfeedback thing if

39:03

if people are taking time and they care enough and beinghonest then when somebody gives you that improvement type

39:10

feedback again you know that you know that there's a there'sa bit of angst involved in that but you know that when

39:15

people give you that sort of feedback then when they do giveyou appreciative

39:20

type feedback they they probably mean it because you knowthat they're being honest about that and the same in this

39:26

situation that we just talked about that you know doing thatit it builds trust

39:31

because you think well they're going to do that and they'vebeen really consistent with that so that that's what I found anyway what aresome ways maybe

39:38

in a group setting or outside of one-on- ones that you canhelp elevate uh individual performance this is where

39:45

team meetings come in or that group accountability so Ireally I really love

39:50

the nature of team meetings as well i'm a big fan of ofmeetings again I don't don't sort of misunderstand that that

39:56

all of a sudden I just think everyone should spend all theirtime in meetings that's not it but I do believe that

40:02

leaders need to spend more time in productive meetings soit's it's no different to to coaching isn't it and

40:09

that accountability piece that I found that when when if I'mrunning some some group sessions with people and we're

40:16

coming back week to week with certain actions or we'vecommitted to certain things then very very

40:22

infrequently particularly when the group that you're workingwith are all people

40:28

from different organizations or different teams and stufflike that you don't want to be that person that hasn't

40:33

done their homework so this is where team meetings canbecome valuable if we're let's say we're having a weekly

40:40

operational type meeting tactical meeting so we're focusedon the business for the next seven 14 days and again

40:46

there's some other structural pieces that need to be aroundthat whether it's our KPIs and our metrics and our individual priorities allthose sorts of

40:52

things but week to week and the last thing we want to do ina team meeting is wrap up so what have we agreed today and

40:57

who's going to do what and if that's all you record from themeeting I I've personally believed that's enough because that's just the keyactions and

41:04

what's going to happen and then distributing that to thegroup um I

41:09

found nothing more powerful than that group accountabilitymaking sure that everyone's clear on what the people or

41:16

what individuals in the team said they're going to do andthen nine times out of 10 unless there's something

41:21

really drastic that happens nine times out of 10 people comeand they've done what they said they're going to do and

41:26

that works really really well again it kind of goes back toyour your structure talking about and team meetings tend to

41:35

be a lot more successful if you if you do end them withhere's what we discussed and and here's our next steps

41:41

and follow-ups and very clear direction on who's going to dowhat and that people will come back more prepared and

41:47

they actually I believe feel like that their time is morerespected and valuable than just throwing people into

41:54

meetings uh left and right absolutely look there there'snothing worse than

42:00

attending whatever meeting you're attending and you leavethe meeting you think what the hell was that meeting about what's happened fromit what have

42:06

we moved forward what have we improved like and you I haveto say probably 85% of the meetings that I

42:13

attended and and probably even a higher percentage of themeetings I ran when I was in corporate ended up like that

42:20

there was no sort of action they were just sort of moreinformation sharing so look I'm I'm speaking from a place of experience nowbecause I stuffed up so

42:26

many times for so long and I started to evolve myself andand learn a bit i'm I'm a big fan of actually the the table

42:33

group and Patrick Lencion from sort of around that well Ithink he's they've moved into I think they've moved into

42:40

Nashville or something now but they were in the SanFrancisco Bay area the table group um but I really love some of their

42:45

structure around team meetings especially they don't seem todo much on the individual one-on-one meetings but

42:51

yeah just being deliberate about what is that meeting aboutkeeping a bit of a a

42:56

clear swim lane on the topic of the meeting being preparedso people can come to that meeting to you know with

43:03

some ideas or whatever they're trying to solve and we canmake um have good conversation be really clear about why

43:08

we're here we can have the best people in the room that canhelp contribute to solving that issue and then we can move forward with actionand if you do that

43:15

then they are really the fundamentals of meaningful andproductive meetings

43:21

that's great i mean Brandon you've been awesome and we'regoing to wrap up soon but I I I've got a question for you uh I

43:26

was looking at your uh site what do you mean that leadersaren't born they're um

43:33

designed i believe it's one of these questions isn't it younot born they're made and all this sort of stuff well

43:39

because you know let me just stop because you know mytagline is uh great leaders aren't born or made they're

43:44

constantly in the making so that that's why I saw yours andI was like "Oh this is this is pretty cool." So I want to I want tosee what he has to say so I I

43:51

actually think you and I are exactly on the same page wejust say it a little bit differently so that when I say

43:57

leader by design um one one of the things I believe is thatwe're all in different we're all in different

44:03

situations in our life we've all had different experiencesso when I work with a client and this is where the

44:08

design came in yes there's this word again there's structurearound what I do and how I might do it and you know

44:15

eventually we sort of get to a place but everyone's comingwith a slightly varied

44:20

or different problem they're trying to solve and this iswhere the by design comes in so from a coaching side we can

44:27

start at a at a different point all the time depending onwhat the what the issue is and I think from a leadership

44:33

perspective is the same thing you know some leaders I'veworked with have had fantastic experience with one-on-one

44:38

meetings and so they're really bought in and they've alreadygot that process in place but they've never really done team

44:43

meetings very well or you it could be vice versa orsomebody's really confident on the feedback side but you

44:49

know they're not really um you know they they haven't reallyset up performance metrics around their business and their

44:55

and their individuals and stuff like that it's really sayingwe are design everyone's designing their own journey

45:00

my job is to really find out where they're at and startbased on what I think I know and and my own experiences

45:07

how we can design that journey on a path that helps themmove from where they are today to where they're going tomorrow

45:13

and you know back to back to the tagline you used is that'sthat's always in the making right that's always evolving you

45:20

know what's that saying the more we know the more we realizewe don't know and to me that's the leadership journey every

45:26

single day and that's why leaders we talk about open andfeedback and being vulnerable all those sorts of things

45:32

well ultimately leadership is not it's not a it's not a roleit's not a title

45:37

it's action if we're taking action every day to improveourselves we're taking action to be better then and and if even

45:44

if better if we're taking action to help other peopleimprove then that's leadership you don't need the title to

45:50

do that you know we can do that as fathers um we can do thatas parents we can do that as friends we can do that as

45:56

as you know volunteer people in organizations we can showleadership every single day ultimately that comes

46:02

back to choice as to how you want to act every single day soas we wrap up here what's one more thing you want to leave

46:08

our audience with u when it comes to helping create anddevelop high performing individuals the the one thing

46:15

I would say is that there's always a better way now itdoesn't mean to say

46:21

that what you're doing today is is not working i meanthere's very very successful business owners out there

46:27

doing fantastic jobs but there's always things that we cando better there's always things we can improve we don't

46:34

have to have the solution we may not know what the solutionis but if you

46:39

keep that mindset of improvement we know that things can bebetter then we can seek those things out so that's that

46:46

learning that's that growing that's that always evolvingalways moving if you've got that mentality and mindset around

46:52

everything you do then I think there's nothing you can'tachieve yeah that mindset and and always being curious and

46:58

and I couldn't agree with you more that uh there's always away to get better and do things differently well Brandon

47:05

you've been awesome i mean we talked about the importance ofbeing deliberate having structure how running one-on-

47:12

ones consistently is one of the most important things youcould possibly do so I've really liked all of what we've

47:18

talked about i think my favorite thing about you though andwhat made me really like you is what is the work you do or

47:24

the love you give these foster kids you know for somebodywho loves children I just want to thank you for doing that i mean that's that'swonderful to hear so

47:32

where can our listeners connect with you at i'm on LinkedInso LinkedIn's a

47:37

really good place to connect on uh or if they want to knowmore or or learn sort of more about me they can go to my

47:43

website leaderbydesign.auu AU and there's blogs there'scontent there

47:48

there there's podcasts the leader by design podcast is anarrative style podcast I do and there's cultural

47:54

leadership podcast as well there which is an interview stylepodcast which you will actually be appearing on at some

47:59

stage in the very near future yeah thank you and I want tojust point out to our listeners as I was preparing for this

48:05

interview I went through and I listened to mostly of yourlead by design and those individ they're like 15 to 20

48:11

minutes and they're great nuggets of of of learning you canjust go for a walk with the dog and knock him out so I

48:17

highly recommend checking that out and so do me a favorlisteners check out

48:22

Brandon's work check out his podcast and everything he doesand until next time everybody stay curious keep growing have

48:30

a great day you have an a unique voice you have a unique wayof putting words

48:35

together to express ideas and that way will become

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