2. Trusting Teams | THE 5 PRACTICES (2023)

Introduction

How do we create an environment in which our people can work at their natural best?

Leaders are not responsible for results, they're responsible for the people who are responsible for the results.

This is the second of The 5 Practices outlined in THE INFINITE GAME.

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Simon is an unshakable optimist who believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together. Described as “a visionary thinker with a rare intellect,” Simon teaches leaders and organizations how to inspire people. With a bold goal to help build a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single day feeling inspired, feel safe at work, and feel fulfilled at the end of the day, Simon is leading a movement to inspire people to do the things that inspire them. Simon is the author of multiple best-selling books including Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, Together is Better, and Find Your Why. His new book, The Infinite Game, will be released in 2019.

Simon’s WHY: To inspire people to do the things that inspire them so that, together, each of us can change our world for the better.

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Website: simonsinek.com/
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Simon’s books:
The Infinite Game: simonsinek.com/product/the-infinite-game/
Start With Why: simonsinek.com/product/start-with-why/
Find Your Why: simonsinek.com/product/find-your-why/
Leaders Eat Last: simonsinek.com/product/leaders-eat-last/
Together is Better: simonsinek.com/product/together-is-better/

Content

Trusting teams I went on a business trip to Las Vegas.

And they put me up at the Four Seasons out there, which is a beautiful hotel.

And one of the reasons it's a wonderful hotel is not because of the fancy beds any hotel can buy a fancy bed.

The reason the Four Seasons is a fantastic hotel is because of the people who work there that when you roam the halls and somebody says, hello, you get the distinct feeling that they wanted to say, hello, not that they were told to say, hello, we're, highly tuned, social animals.

We can tell the difference it's like we can always tell when someone's working on Commission, right? You can kind of feel it right? We can tell the difference when somebody's genuinely being friendly or not they happen to have a coffee bar in the lobby they're at the Four Seasons in Las Vegas.

And one afternoon, I went and bought myself a cup of coffee.

And there was a barista working that day named Noah.

No.

It was funny and engaging charming I spent far too long standing there buying my cup of coffee because I just so enjoyed talking to Noah.

So as is my nature I asked Noah question, I said, do you like your job? And without skipping a beat Noah said, I love my job.

Now in my line of business that's significant, because like is rational I like the people I work with I like the job I like the challenge I, get paid.

Well I like my job.

Love is emotional.

It's.

A higher order connection.

Do you love your wife I like her a lot right? There's.

There's.

A difference Noah said, I love.

My job.

My ears perked up.

He has an emotional connection to this company.

This is interesting.

So I immediately follow up.

And I said, tell me specifically what the Four Seasons is doing that.

You would say to me, you love your job without skipping a beat Noah said that throughout the day managers will walk past him and ask him, how he's doing ask them there's anything that he needs to do his job better.

Not just his manager.

Any manager and then he also said, I, also work at Caesar's, Palace and they're.

The managers walk past us and catch us when we're doing things wrong and make sure that we're making the numbers and performing.

And there I like to just keep my head below the radar and get through the day and collect my paycheck.

He said, only at the four seasons, do I feel I can be myself.

This is the exact same human being.

And yet, the customer service experience that we would have meeting in at one hotel, or the other will be profoundly different, not because of the person, but because of the leaders because the leadership environment in which he's been asked to work I get this question, all the time Simon.

How do we get the most out of our people they're, not a towel? We don't wring them out to see how much we can get out of our people it's a flawed question, which means we're gonna get flawed answers.

The correct question is, how do we create an environment in which our people can work at their natural best? And the answers will be profoundly different.

If you do not have trusting teams, what you do have is a group of people who show up to work every single day lying hiding and faking remember a trusting team is when people feel safe it's, a trusting team as when people feel, they can be vulnerable amongst their own.

They can raise their hand and say, I made a mistake, or you promoted me to a position where I don't really know what to do I think I need more training or I'm having troubles at home and it's affecting my work or I'm scared or I need help without any fear of humiliation without any fear of retribution.

In fact, they say these things with confidence that their leader, their boss, their colleagues were rushed to them to support them.

If you do not have trusting teams.

What you have is a group of people who show up to work every day who will hide mistakes for fear of getting in trouble.

They will not admit that you promoted them to a position, and they actually have no clue what they're doing they're going to just keep faking it.

They would never tell you that they're suffering undue stress because of something that's happening at home and that it's affecting their work they're, not going to tell you that they're scared and they're, definitely not going to ask for help for fear that they'll find themselves on short list for the next round of redundancies.

And eventually cracks will show up.

And eventually the organization will break not because of the people, but because of the leaders leading those people, we know what this looks like in the extreme I'm.

Sure you all remember a couple of years ago, United Airlines had an incident where they dragged a paying customer off their aircraft with a broken nose, broken teeth and a concussion, I feel sorry for every single member of that crew, because 100% of them knew that that was the wrong thing to do.

But none of them spoke up, none of them intervened, because they feared getting in trouble more than doing the right thing.

They did not work on trusting teams.

This was not an anomaly.

This is a steady build over the course of years that eventually culminated in an event like that I was witness to a scene that played out years before with United Airlines that gave a flag that something was wrong.

A scene played out in front of me as I was preparing to board a plane where one of the passengers attempted to board the aircraft before their group number was called which as you all know, is a serious crime.

And that is exactly how the gate agent treated this passenger step aside, sir I haven't called your group.

Yet, please step aside and wait till I call your group is how she talked to a paying customer.

And so I spoke up I said, why do you have to talk to us that way? Why can't you talk to us like we're human beings? And she looked me in the eye and said, sir, if I don't follow the rules I could get in trouble or lose my job.

What she revealed to me is that she does not feel safe in our own organization.

Her leaders do not trust her to do the job for which she's been trained to do and guess who suffers company customer and her.

The reason we love flying Virgin Atlantic, for example, is not because they have some magical formula to hire all the best people it's, because the people who work there feel safe in their own jobs.

They feel trusted to do the job for which they've been trained to do and guess who benefits customer company.

And the people who work there.

It is a leaders responsibility to set an environment.

Leadership is not about being in charge.

Leadership is about taking care of those in your charge leaders are not responsible for the results.

They're responsible for the people who are responsible for the results.

And if you get the environment, right, you get people like Noah.

If you get the environment wrung, you get people like Noah it's, not the people it's.

The leaders almost always when there are performance issues, almost always when there are customer service issues, it's so rarely the people.

Yes, we have anomalies, of course, but if unbalanced you find that there's issues, it's almost always the leadership in the leadership environment and usually it's the lack of trusting teams, the job of leadership is to create trusting teams.

And if you want to play in the infinite game, you must have trusting teams.

One of the worst things about trusting teams is how you build them because they're not traditional in the sense that we set a target we're gonna build our teams of trust.

And we set out to build them it's more of a practices like getting into shape it's like going to the gym.

Yes, you want to get into shape.

Unfortunately, you can't go to the gym for nine hours and get into shape it won't work.

But if you commit yourself to go to the gym every single day for 20 minutes, 100% you'll get into shape Simon.

How long is it gonna take me to get into shape I, don't know and that's the problem someone some will respond quickly and some will respond slowly.

And there is no formula.

But we all 100% know that the process works.

We a hundred percent know that if you work out every single day for 20 minutes and eat healthily, 100 percent of us will get into shape it's the same in leadership, there's, no, five, magical, things that I can tell you to do there's.

No one day course you can go take or one off-site.

You can have with your team or all of a sudden they become trusting teams.

Yes, those things are important, but they're part of a process, a process that we trust in that process is called leadership.

Leadership is a lifestyle.

And even when you achieve your goal, even when you get into shape, even when the trusting teams are built, unfortunately, you have to keep going to the gym for the rest of your life it's a lifestyle.

Leadership is a lifestyle.

And the purpose of that lifestyle is to produce teams who take of each other who love each other and feel valued and valuable in the organization where they work that is your job.