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The question of how do I get a team to transform its social contract with each other?
The book is intended chapter by chapter to give you a hero's story, of somebody doing it incredibly well, then some simple practices the team can try on.
It literally is fewer than 10 pages, each chapter for you to read the story, see the practices, try a couple of on, and start to experience what it's like to step up in the level of performance as a team.
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Let's make every conversation a winning negotiation.
Keith, thanks for joining us today.
I'm excited to be here.
It's a long overdue.
Yes, my friend, I appreciate you very excited to have you.
So how would you get it started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Well, I'm a coach of high performing executive teams. Traditionally, that's been the Fortune 100 largest organizations in the world.
I'm excited right now, there's there's a company the Fortune 50 over 200 billion in market cap, and it's looking to double its market cap.
So I coach teams going to transformation, but I'm also a venture partner at a firm called Lightspeed, one of the largest VCs in the world.
And with them, I coach portfolio companies, the unicorns, the fast growth companies, and these days I'm even coaching governments, working with the country of Bhutan to double the GDP while still holding on to that precious happiness that that country has.
Amazing. Amazing. And for the few listeners out here who are not familiar with Keith's work, multiple time, bestselling author, and then Keith, just, I want to at least say this, I'll tell a story that you will, you've probably heard 8 billion times from different people you've talked to, but for me, when I coming into college about 20 years ago, your book was a gift from my uncle and people would always ask me, Kwame, why do you have such a great network in the community?
And I would always refer to your book because even though I read it going into college I made sure to always put it into practice throughout my career, so just personally thank you for that and thank you for taking the time to come on the podcast. My pleasure.
My pleasure, I love this story.
Never get tired of hearing it.
That's great, that is great.
And I'm excited because right now We've got a new book!
Another gift from you!
So, let's start off by setting the stage, just telling the listeners about a bit about the book, and then we're going to break down how negotiation and conflict resolution will play a massive role and whether or not we're able to put the paradigm shifts from the book into action.
Beautiful! Love that.
So first of all, maybe I'll give a little context.
I've had two big jobs in large corporations before I started my own firm, my own research institute around high -performing teams. One was I Chief Marketing Officer of Deloitte and the other one that was Chief Marketing Officer at Starwood Hotels.
Deloitte at the time, we were the lowest of the Big Eight, not even noticeable back in the 90s.
And at Starwood, we were a fledgling brand just coming on.
We didn't even have a brand Starwood.
We created it out of scratch. We had just bought Sheraton and Westin, we hadn't created the W or the St. Regis just yet etc. And the two of those companies both had massive aspirations be at the top of the peak.
Deloitte achieved it and it achieved it because that was a group of a band of brothers and sisters taking hills together, strategically challenging each other, aligned but willing to kick each other in the butt, push each other higher, foster strong energy.
We loved each other, we went all over the world in extraordinary ways.
At Starwood we had an incredibly, incredibly innovative founder, but we were not a team.
We were competitive.
There was a lot of back -fighting.
There was a lot of turfing.
And it was when I left Deloitte and went over to Starwood, it really felt massively different.
It was shocking. And it put me on my heels.
When I looked back on those two experiences, I realized that at Starwood, we ended up having to sell the company to Marriott.
at below industry multiples.
Most of our great innovations got wiped out by Marriott and at Deloitte we achieved everything we wanted to achieve.
I absolutely look at the teamship as the leverage for us to be able to do that.
Now that's why I started this firm 20 years ago.
So just about the same time that I published my book and I left Starwood hotels, I decided to start a research Institute for high -performing teams. I knew it was the special sauce of unleashing extraordinary growth in individuals' careers as well as in organizational performance, and it absolutely has been an amazing 20 year run.
The book I just created, Never Lead Alone.
Obviously, a hat tip to Never Eat Alone 20 years ago.
By the way, this is the 20th year anniversary of that book.
The hat tip is we really have put way too much on the shoulder of a leader.
Leaders need to learn that it's great to give feedback, but it's amazing to get the team to give each other feedback.
It's great for a leader to hold the team accountable.
It's great, it's amazing for the team to hold each other accountable, for the team to lift up each other's energy, for the team to step up and share in leadership with the leader.
So that's, that's the shift from leadership to teamship that I want your listeners to begin to think about for themselves and for their, for their teams. This is so good.
So good Keith. And as I'm thinking about this, I'm, I know Simone in the background is hearing, Oh yeah, we're going to have some new mandates in the company because this is great.
And one of the things that immediately hit me is that, before the leader of the organization has the conversation or the announcement with the team to say, hey we're making this shift from leadership to teamship there needs to be an internal shift that happens with the leader themselves.
Because a lot of times delegating sharing responsibilities it can make people feel scared, sometimes they have issues with control, they might not feel comfortable sharing the responsibility or sometimes, if it's an ego thing, the praise that comes with leadership.
And so what does that internal conversation need to look like with the leader?
Yeah, that's so smart.
Well, first of all, I like, and I do this in the book, I like to focus on the promises.
If you want to free up 30 % of your time and be able to expect more from your team, it's very easy for people to point their fingers at their team.
But But the point is they should be pointing at ourselves and asking ourselves, how are we leading differently to get the team to step up?
We can be faster in our innovation.
We can be bolder in our transformation.
We can be more resilient and more joyful, more engaged among each other.
And we can do all of that while freeing up time by 30 percent of the leader.
Now that's the promise.
All I have to say is, even to you, you know, it's like this book is intended to be a set of simple practices, I call them high -return practices that over 20 years I've seen the highest performing teams do and replicate, and I want to make sure that you can replicate those same practices of those high -performing teams. And so it really is like, don't trust me, just try some of the practices.
The question of how do I get a team to transform its social contract with each other.
The book is intended chapter -by -chapter to give you a hero's story of somebody doing it incredibly well, then some simple practices the team can try on.
It literally is fewer than 10 pages each chapter for you to read the story, see the practices, try a couple of on and start to experience what it's like to step up in the level of performance as a team.
Incredible. And I love the practicality.
In all of your work, it's always extremely practical and actionable.
And I think that's missing in a lot of literature today.
And when it to these conversations, too.
One of the things that I think is so fascinating and also is one of the things that distinguishes it from a lot of other leadership work is the fact that we are empowering the team to hold each other accountable.
Because a lot of times we hear these leadership books that's always talking about you hold your people accountable.
But tell us more about peer to peer accountability, because that's really not.
So there's 10 shifts in the book, shifting from from conflict avoidance to candor, where, and in that shift, I talk about how do we get the team to be candid with each other?
So it's one thing for the leader to be candid.
It's another thing for the team to be candid with the leader.
But very infrequently, does the team challenge each other?
People think of that as if I challenged my teammate, that would be throwing them under the bus.
But there's another philosophy.
There's a wonderful company called Elf Beauty.
Elf Beauty is led by a great CEO named Terang, and the largest beauty companies in the world are getting crushed by this little company.
This little company has kicked the butts and taken market share from the Estee Lauder's, etc. And they're doing it because they have a very different way of working.
And these big companies could take two years to do a new product, and Elf Beauty can be two months.
And a part of that is a reduction of cycle time, is the team, as a commitment to be in service of each other, to never let each other fail.
So when you're in a meeting with a teammate at Elf Beauty, you will be giving critical feedback to each other.
Hey, I think you might have missed this.
Hey, have you ever thought of this?
Hey, I think I can help.
They refuse to let each other fail.
That's a different social contract than I won't throw you under the bus.
Right? So that shift is a shift from being in your isolated, in your isolated silos to stepping up and being willing to not let each other fail.
It's massive shift. And you could imagine the benefit of getting all that feedback.
Now, the question is, how do you do that in a psychologically safe way?
First of all, we assign it.
Meaning, instead of just giving a report out on some updated project you're working on, you step up and say, I'd like to stress test this with the team.
So a stress test replaces a report -out.
And a report -out, somebody would give a presentation.
Here's what we're doing.
Here's where we are, et cetera.
In a stress test, people have to say, here's what I've achieved.
Here's what I'm struggling.
Here's where I'm going.
And so the willingness to say to your team, here's where I'm struggling on this project, it opens up the dialogue for potential critique and the team helping each other be successful.
Then what the team does is it goes into breakout rooms. In groups of two or three.
Opens a Google doc.
And is now assigned to be challenging.
So the team has to write in small groups, here's something that you might be missing.
Here's a challenge I have for you.
Here's an idea that I want to offer you, an innovation.
Here's where I can help.
You've taken the kind of culture that we all dream for us and you've turned it into an assignment.
And it's Interesting because people do it.
If you are in a big group of people and you said, like typical report out someone's done and then the CEO says, any comments, it'd be crickets.
In this case, we've said, I'm gonna put you into breakout rooms to challenge what this person has said, to give them ideas and innovations and to offer support and help.
So it's simple as that, you begin to get a team to do this stuff by assignment.
Now, are they gonna be, is every one of their inner voices gonna get to the outer voice in the first time they do it?
No, but over repeated practice, you're gonna get better and better at it and it's gonna elevate the level of candor.
We do this thing called a candor break in the middle of a meeting.
Send everybody to breakout room and say, what should be said right now that isn't being said, and let them talk about it and come back in.
And you get the answer.
It's like, if you had just said to a group of people in a room at 12, it's like, hey, what's not being said that should be said, crickets.
Send them in to breakout room, have them have a conversation, have them come back, have them report out, you hear the answer.
So one of the shifts, moving from conflict avoidance to candor, is easy to do with a set of simple practices.
And Keith, what I love about this is that we have operationalized this for the team.
So a lot of times what I've seen with other companies is they say, hey, we're going to move from conflict avoidance to candor.
And that sounds nice, and then they don't know what to do.
But what you've done is you've broken it down.
Exactly. What does that mean in practice?
Yes. Yeah, I mean all of our research is in practice.
We've been studying 3000 teams over 20 -some years and we look at the practices of high performing teams and I'm just giving you the practices in the book.
32 practices across 10 critical shifts.
There are some shifts more important than others.
Kander is one of them.
Peer -to -peer coaching and feedback is another.
Like that company, Elf Beauty, does both of those incredibly well.
And you know, I'll give you a practice, A fun practice to do, you can do it with your team, is an open 360.
So a 360 is if you do it in a company.
Usually somebody goes around and collects information about each person quietly, privately.
And then that person gets that information.
Everyone's like holding their deck like this, looking at it.
Alternatively, you say, okay, everybody go around and we're going to start with Keith.
Everybody goes around, Keith, what I've most appreciated about you is X.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
And then everybody goes around and says, Keith, because I care about your success, I might suggest. Boom, boom, boom, boom.
And then we do the same thing for Kwame.
Imagine if everybody does that for everybody in your team, what a beautiful, supportive way.
Now, I would recommend you read chapter 10 of the book, which tees it up.
And it tees up the story and lets your people get in the right mindset that we're not throwing each other under the bus, we are serving each other, elevating each other, caring about each other.
So it's that repositioning in the story that I tell that helps the team experiment with the Open360 in a more courageous way.
Hello my friends! Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question.
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That's powerful, and I really love the way that we introduce that because I care about your success.
And then it leads into that because if we don't have that preamble, a lot of times people might impart their own part into there and say, because I hate you, I'm going to tell you this, right?
So yeah, no, this is great.
And now a lot of people are listening to this and they're saying to themselves, okay, I'm recognizing that the culture needs to shift, we need to move from leadership to teamship.
Now, they might be struggling with a lack of trust, a lot of organizations struggle from a lack of trust. And that's something that's been one of the quintessential elements of all of your work.
So if you're trying to make this shift from leadership to team shift, but you are at a trust deficit with your organization, how do you build the trust to get people to feel psychologically safe doing this?
So trust is born from three layers.
There's a professional trust, structural trust and personal trust. Professional trust, let's say I'm a marketer and if you're a finance person, we may have a trust breakdown based on how we see the world.
You might be thinking I'm spending money like a drunken sailor, and don't have a return and investment.
I might be thinking, you're myopic, and don't have a perspective on growth.
And that breaks down trust in a professional basis.
Now you might have structural breakdowns, like a boss with an employee.
Like my trust is broken down.
I'm not going to be as free flowing with a boss.
I'm not going to be as free -flowing with HR because they're the ones that are weighing in on my raise, et cetera.
So there's a structural trust element.
And then most importantly, there's personal, which is that's a friend.
They know me. They care for me.
I care for them. I know about their children.
I know what they're struggling with.
We share openly with each other.
We can be vulnerable with each other.
If you have a personal relationship with somebody and you have a professional trust breakdown, you can walk into their office, shut the door and say, hey, what the hell?
Like you got your head up your butt.
Let's figure this out.
And similarly, I've done this with my bosses in the past, when I have a personal relationship, I can have a very different conversation with my boss that I might not have if I didn't have a personal relationship and those are the structural barriers.
So what we do with the team is recognize that professional breakdowns and structural breakdowns always happen, but we help the team build the personal trust. And there's an entire two chapters on that.
One of them is around how does a team make a commitment to each other's resilience?
And the other one is, how does a team make a commitment to the relationships of the team?
There's a fun practice, where if the team does something called a monthly energy check, where everybody goes around and shares, where is their energy these days and once draining it, You'll hear about how I'm struggling with my son right now.
You'll hear about a problem with Someone's mom and assisted living or a spouse who is getting an operation You'll hear about these issues and it breeds empathy But it also breeds trust because we want to be in service of each other when we hear about these things We want to help each other particularly if we have a an agreement a contract, but that's what we're gonna do So we structurally do this A energy check and the average team on a scale of zero to five relative to its bonded and connectedness is in the mid twos.
But after these energy checks with an agreement to help each other, it gets up into the high threes.
So we can build that foundation, the book has three different layers.
It's the foundational layer at the bottom is the relationship trust, psychological safety layer.
The next one is the growth candor feedback layer.
And then the third is something totally different, which is how do we grow up in the 21st century collaborators?
How do we use the tools that we have?
How do we use AI? How do we keep up with the pace of innovation that's going on around us?
So it's that layer cake.
And you just ask me about that bottom layer, that personal layer, which can be built in practices, like I said, energy checks, etc. Right.
And Keith, one of the things I love about this is the fact that we expect some of the breakdowns to happen.
Like you said, in the professional level, in the structural level, those will happen.
And I feel like one of the challenges that people face is that they have this mindset, whether understood or whether it's subconscious, it might just be completely unspoken that if there's ever anything wrong or break down of trust, then it means there's something fundamentally bad with the person or the organization.
But this really turns that perspective and says, hey, listen, this will happen.
And we need to be resilient enough to stick together and work through it.
Amen. It's like a family commitment, you know, and you want to be able to breed that into your team.
Yes. And now I want to lock in on a couple of words here, because I love the word commitment that you just said, and you've talked about the social contract and the agreement.
And I really want to hammer this home for the person listening today too.
Because again, this does not happen by accident.
And so when we're codifying these things, do you see suggest actually like writing these things down?
How do we actually create that social contract?
Yeah. So the way again, the way the books written is you read a chapter by chapter with your team.
And so you read chapter three about candor shifting from candor to conflict avoidance, and you read the story and you get the practices and you're like, yeah, that feels that feels interesting.
But when you get in the room, you take the diagnostic, there's a diagnostic in each chapter and there's just a few questions like we challenge each other in the room when it's risky to do so right and most teams are low on that question and so when you ask the question and we do a private diagnostic you start to see where you are so it starts to establish a gap and frankly as i said most teams are pretty mediocre in terms of how they show up and how courageous, and bold and capable they are, at this standard of a high performing team.
So, you know, you show up and realize that most teams are mediocre, you see the diagnostic, you then try one of the practices.
And you're like, wow, so I, for instance, the other day, I had a team I was coaching.
And their their score was low, it was one point three, in terms of its willingness to be courageous and candid.
We did a few exercises in the room on real business issues.
When I coach, I don't train.
I coach around real business issues using these practices and we touched on some really sensitive stuff and I said, hey everybody, I want you to to go into Survey Monkey and let's write on a scale of zero to five what level of courage and candor do we have now?
Scale of zero to five.
So remember this is a team that says normally we're one point three.
We put some of the toughest issues on the table and they were all fours and fives.
The practice is alone was the switch that turned it on.
Wow, that's incredibly encouraging, because I think a lot of Now doesn't mean that the next meeting I'm not there.
They're not gonna slide back into a two.
I think it's sort of like, they say the first time you go into an AA meeting, you never look at a drink ever again the same way.
And I think it's the same kind of thing.
If you've gotten yourself to the realization that We are a mediocre team.
And we are not courageous and candid.
And it lacks integrity to be so.
I think you'll start climbing that ladder, particularly if you've now got these new practices to use.
I agree. I mean, that self -awareness by itself is just powerful.
And now let's say there's somebody listening here who's saying, Keith, I vibe with this.
I've read all your books and I especially love this one, but I am not the ultimate authority in my organization.
I recognize these challenges.
How can I manage up and get them on board?
Well, the book was written as a simple workbook, but it's also hopefully a motivational book.
So if you believe that, give the book to your boss and say, hey, I was reading this thing.
Here, I heard this guy, might want to listen to the podcast, right?
That's one. But the other thing is, you could always show up and even recommend a practice as a team member, not a leader.
So So you could show up and say, Hey, I'm working on this initiative.
Do you mind if I ask, can we stress test it?
Like, I want to get the team's feedback.
Let's stress test it.
And the boss will be like, what do you mean by that?
Well, here's what I want to do.
I'm going to show up, I'm going to give a quick presentation.
And then I want everybody to beat it up and tell me what they think.
And the boss, like, well, that's courageous.
Go for it. Another one could be, you know, you have some offsite coming up, and instead of just bringing everybody into an offsite spend all the money and doing small talk, you could say, Hey, for dinner, I want to run a little exercise.
There's this thing called an energy check.
I want to hear where people really are.
We're all together.
We haven't seen each other in a couple of quarters.
Let's do an energy check, see where people are.
Let's check it. I feel like you, and this is the point of team shift, I will say to a team when I'm coaching them...
I'll pause. Let's say where I could watch the team, it's gone into a rabbit hole of getting off topic.
And I'll raise my hand and I'll say, excuse me.
I'm just curious, I'm an observer, but did we just go off track for minutes, many minutes?
And are we in some rabbit hole that doesn't seem to be really valuable for all of our time right now?
I don't know, but I'm just asking.
And people are like, yes.
I'm like, great. But before we move on, I'm curious, who else could have did what I just did?
Why did I need to stop the meeting and say we're in a rabbit hole?
Whose job is it to hold this team accountable if we really believe in teamship?
Any of us, and they all agree.
So, as a coach, I'm coaching these new behaviors, but the point is, anybody can be courageous enough to be a leader of a team.
I've seen this, by the way.
I've gone into teams where I'm going to be the coach and I meet somebody and I'm like, well, I've been watching what you're doing.
You've been coaching this team all along.
And it's just one member of the team might be a bold, respected, courageous member of the team, but why couldn't anybody be that this is also a guide for you to be a coach of your own team, even though you're not the leader.
You'll probably be the leader faster if you take on this role, then otherwise.
This is incredible.
Yeah, because essentially, we are promoting ownership and accountability.
Exactly. Right. So we don't need to say..
If you're a leader, why wouldn't you want to get your team to step up and own?
Exactly. Exactly. That's powerful.
Very differently. Amen to that.
Exactly. And then also, just from a career development perspective, I'm just thinking for me as a leader, if I heard somebody on my team say those types of things, now I'm looking at this person very differently.
This is great. That is really great.
And I also love the foot -in -the -door technique, too, because we're not saying, hey, let's put all of these practices into play and just completely revitalize our company.
Ok, baby steps. And then you see the effect.
It's like, hey, let me try something else!
And you want more! And you want more!
That's it! That's powerful.
You've absolutely honed in on the most important stuff.
Thank you for this.
Thank you for this time together.
I really appreciate it.
Oh, it's my pleasure.
It's my pleasure. And before you go, when you think about this one, the book.
There's so much richness in here.
And when you think about the folks who are in the audience, what would you say is the number one thing they need to do to put this into practice?
Well, again, I would read the table of contents and see which chapter calls to you.
Because it's intended to be eaten like popcorn.
It's not this massive overwhelming methodology.
You can just read the chapters and feel where you think you have the greatest gap and what calls to you the most. Keith.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
I really appreciate it.
My pleasure. It's been a lot of fun.
Thank you. Man, you crushed this.
This was great. And then, Simon, want to give you a moment?
I know you're busy.
Keith, we've got just one last question.
Yeah, sure. And then we'll be good to go.
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I'll catch you later.
I've never been in a leadership position, but I had an experience with a leader that I had when I was working on designing kitchens.
He said, hey, I am old, now I need you to take the lead and design new kitchens.
So we did it, but as we were designing, he would come and say, oh, I don't like this kitchen, can you change this?
so after that, the kitchen was exactly the same after one month.
So he had bad habits and he wanted to change, but he did not allow the change to happen.
So how can we address that?
Love that. Look, one of the things there's a wonderful story about a leader named Sergei Young and he was a very command and control leader like it sounds like your former employer was.
And the team started stepping up and becoming a new team.
And his natural inclination was to continue to be authoritative, et cetera.
But now you've let the cat out of the back because the team has a formal process that they can give that feedback.
And the team has a formal process that will allow the team's voice to be heard finally.
In the olden days, there was no formal process.
You didn't have an energy check, you didn't have an open 360, you didn't have stress testing.
These are now things that you do regularly which will give the feedback back to the leader.
look, any leader that wants to shoot themselves in the foot can obviously say, screw it.
We're going back to authority.
You know, it's my way or the highway, but I have not seen that happen.
I've seen most leaders be appreciative of the fact that they need coaching too.
And this is the ability for the team to give them that coaching.
Oh, well, thank you so much. Amazing.
This is good. This is great.
