We’ve all been there – we’ve just made a mistake, and we need to know how to “fix” it.

In this episode I talk about what to do when you’ve blown it.  You’ll get some practical tips about how to clean up the mess that will leave you in a better place!

Listen now!

In this episode:

Resource Downloads:

4 Levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader – This easy-to-read graphic clearly illustrates the 4 Levels of Thinking, individually breaking down each level.

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Transcript:

Announcer: [00:00:00] Season 2, episode 2.

Sponsored by Geek to Great

Tom: [00:00:04] I spoke with Dr. Peter Bamberger from Tel Aviv University’s Business School about engineers becoming leaders. And he said…

Dr. Bamberger: [00:00:11] [inaudible 00:00:11] take an engineer and you want to turn them into your leader in an organization, you can’t just assume that you promote them and they’ll sort of learn over time how to become a leader.

Tom: [00:00:22] Right.

Dr. Bamberger: [00:00:23] Some of them will. The vast majority won’t.

Tom: [00:00:26] Some of them will. But the vast majority won’t. So here you are. You’re a talented engineer. Maybe you’re running a team of technical folks. But the fact is, they won’t magically get better at things like communicating clearly, or delegating effectively, or dealing with conflict in a healthy way. They need to learn those skills.

[00:00:49] That’s why I created Geek to Great 101. It’s a simple way for you to help your team members with an easy plan to improve these skills and more. For less than $500, your team can start to make progress. Find more information and get immediate access to your first free lesson at brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks. That’s brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks.

[00:01:17] Welcome to the Becoming a Geek Leader podcast. My name is Tom Cooper. As a geek, I’m on a mission to figure out better ways to lead others at work and at home. Through the Becoming a Geek Leader podcast I’m sharing what I’m learning so I can help make you more effective at leading people, too. Ready?

Introduction

Reporter: [00:01:39] The space agency says tonight, that a multi-million dollar spacecraft, sent to explore the atmosphere of the planet Mars, has been destroyed. It’s a setback to years of work already done. In the vastness of space, all it takes is one navigation error. In this case, NASA was off by 60 miles.

Tom: [00:02:00] Nobody likes to make mistakes, especially not those of us who have any sort of technical or engineering background. But as the Mars Climate Observer spacecraft debacle shows us, none of us is immune from making mistakes, even rocket scientists.

[00:02:17] The spacecraft crashed into the Mars’ surface instead of going into orbit properly. Why? A NASA review board found the problem was in the software controlling the orbiter’s thrusters. The software calculated the force the thrusters needed to exert in pounds of force. However, a separate piece of software took in the data and assumed it was in metric, newtons.

[00:02:42] In today’s episode, I’m going to talk about two aspects of making mistakes. The first is, when do you admit it when you’ve made a mistake? And the second is, how should you admit your mistake to others? I also have a special thought leader segment today based on a session I attended at an Agile conference, where we talked about how to deal with a business analyst who made life difficult for her Agile team.

[00:03:10] Today’s podcast is focused on lessons you need to learn if you’re at level two of the four levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader. The good news is you will continue to use these lessons on up through levels three and level four.

Mentoring segment.

Level 2

Tom: [00:03:55] We’re talking about making mistakes. This week, I stopped by a fastfood restaurant to pick up a take-out lunch for my family. While I was waiting in line, I watched the interaction between a customer and an assistant manager. The customer went up to the assistant manager and said, “Hey, you forgot to give me an order of fries.”

[00:04:14] I’ve got to tell you, I was intrigued as I studied the reaction of the assistant manager. She was wrestling with the facts. It was difficult for her to be able to process what the customer was saying. I could see from the look on her face that she was trying to figure out whether in fact a mistake had actually been made.

[00:04:31] Initially, I could tell she was convinced that she was right in counting the items that got put on the customer’s tray, and I could see the emotional struggle she was facing being able to acknowledge that there was a discrepancy. As she processed this input, she began to dispute the customer’s assertion. Now, the customer was confused. The customer insisted that an error had been made. The two of them went back and forth a couple of times and eventually, the customer just gave up and turned to walk away without the French fries.

[00:05:04] As the customer began to walk away, I could she had an aha moment. She recognized that she, in her response, had compounded the error. And then she thought, I’ve got to fix it. How can I fix it? And she says to the customer, “Here, take these fries.”

[00:05:23] Maya Angelou said, “People may forget what you say. They will forget what you do. But people will never ever forget how you make them feel.” Now in this situation, I have no doubt the customer felt frustrated, challenged, and maybe even as if they had been called a liar about an order of fries, really? Oh, my goodness.

[00:05:45] Now, there are two things you could be sure of when it comes to being wrong. First, everybody’s wrong sometimes. And second, nobody likes it when they’re wrong. Now, Dale Carnegie said, “If you could be certain that you were right just 51% of the time, you could go to Wall Street and make a million dollars a day.” We all make mistakes sometimes. What do you do when you realize you’ve made a mistake? How do you handle it?

[00:06:14] Well, two things I want to share with you. First, admit it as quickly as you possibly can. Don’t try to hide it. Disclose the error to the people who are directly affected by it. Just make the information known quickly. Secondly, be as specific as possible about the error. “I made a mistake. I was wrong when I thought this. And the impact of my error is…” And then ask, “How can we fix this? How can I make it up to you?” It’s as simple as that.

[00:06:47] Now, it’s important when you are expressing your mistake, don’t hide, don’t make excuses, don’t justify, don’t be defensive. In fact, if the other person is upset by the information, let them be upset. And one thing to note here. Sometimes, people are upset even if your error was completely accidental. Even if your intent was nothing about them, it just happen to have an impact on them, people will get upset. If your action, or your inaction, your mistake somehow caused hurt to someone else, you need to apologize. It’s not about your intent. It’s about the impact you had on the other person.

[00:07:37] Now, one of my clients is the owner of a fast food restaurant. And when I shared the sorry about the fries with him this week, he was shocked. He said, “It is not worth making a customer feel bad. I tell my team to tell the customer, ‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’ And get them whatever they want.” When it comes to mistakes, admit your mistakes clearly and quickly. And that’s today’s mentoring segment.

Family segment.

Tom: [00:08:21] In today’s family segment, I want to share with you that being the father of seven children, it might not surprise you to know that we do have some conflict. When we have conflict between the kids, we strongly, strongly encourage them to try to work it out together. When it becomes clear that one of them is wrong, in our family, we teach the kids to say, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. Please forgive me.”

[00:08:51] Let me take just a minute to break this down. We tell our kids they need to say, “I’m sorry.” I’m sorry, not, “I’m sorry if I offended you.” Not, “I’m sorry you feel that way.” Instead, they need to simply acknowledge they are sorry. No justifications, no defensiveness, no rationalization, just, “I’m sorry.” Next, “I was wrong to do X.”

[00:09:23] One thing that happens from time to time, we’ve got quite a collection of Legos in our house, and kids will build a Lego creation, and somebody’s going to want some of the parts that are in that Lego creation. And then magically, one day, that creation is all in pieces and those parts are distributed, and the person who built it is pretty upset. So when we identify the culprit, the culprit says, “I was wrong to take apart your Lego creation.”

[00:09:47] Now, the thing is this is a tough one. It’s big. At first, you’re just saying, “I’m sorry for the impact my actions had on you, and I own it. I’m sorry for that.” Then we ask them to acknowledge they were wrong. Now, this is tough. This is a big battle. It goes against our pride to say out loud, “I was wrong.” It’s huge. Now, it’s not only important for them to say, “I was wrong,” but also to be very specific. So I mentioned the Legos, right? Taking somebody else’s creation apart, I was wrong to do it without your permission. I was wrong.

[00:10:26] Now, the third thing that we teach our kids to say is, “Will you please forgive me?” This is a business podcast. So I’m not going to go to deep spiritually. But I will say that because of our faith, we believe that when a relationship has been broken, there’s a need for forgiveness in order for there to be true reconciliation. So in our house, when there’s been a break in relationship because someone did something that was wrong that harmed somebody else, our standard is we insist the offender asks for forgiveness.

[00:10:55] Now, look, I’ve been in the workplace long enough to know that this just does not happen at the office. And I’m not suggesting that you should strive to make that happen in your office. But what I am saying is that when you have a willingness to acknowledge the part you played in causing the problem that you and the other person are having, that goes a long way in restoring work relationships. And, yes, at our house, even Dad has to go to a kid sometimes, too often in fact, and say, “I’m sorry. I was wrong to do whatever it was I did. Will you please forgive me?” And that’s today’s family segment.

Thought leader segment.

Tom: [00:11:51] In today’s thought leader segment, I want to share with you something that happened as I attended an Agile conference. Now, this was a fascinating experience involving a series of round table discussions with Agile practitioner.

[00:12:05] As companies make the transition from waterfall projects in software development to Agile software development, one of the key questions is, what happens to the business analyst’s role? What do you do with your business analyst? I’ve had some clients say, “Well, you just fire them. You don’t need them anymore.”

[00:12:23] Now, the waterfall projects, the business analyst are critical to the success of projects. They provide a link between the technology people and the business people. Their job is to translate business language into technical language and to work with a technical team to make sure what gets delivered actually meets the needs of the business.

[00:12:46] Now, Agile depends on multi-disciplinary teams working closely together. And as a result, some Agile practitioners believe the role of the business analyst is just no longer needed. “I’m going to have my developers talk directly to the business people. Why do we need those BAs anyway?”

[00:13:03] And I think that’s problematic because I think BAs can add huge value on Agile teams. But these practitioners sometimes believe that your product owner, that’s a new role, works directly with the development teams to represent the needs of the business. “And then why would we have these extra people who aren’t even really adding value?” Oh, my goodness.

[00:13:27] So that brings us to the conversation around the table at the Agile conference. One team’s scrum master raised the issue he was having with a business analyst who seemed to be working against the interest of the project. Every day, she and that scrum master would have one conflict after another. Nothing was good enough. Nothing was right. The BA seemed to want to control every aspect of the project. How could this be resolved?

[00:13:54] And we asked a lot of questions about the scrum master. We dove into a lot of areas and the conversation revolved around things like functional requirements, and prioritization of features, and backlog, and all those kinds of things, all these other elements relevant to Agile methodology. Now, the scrum master told us that he had chased down most of these ideas and had little success. Now, the group was stumped. We had no clear answers. But then one of the participants had a powerful thought. What if the problem was because the business analyst was actually feeling undervalued?

[00:14:33] In the waterfall world, the business analyst was the source of truth, the oracle who had the answers about what the business needed. But now, some of that role was taken over by the product owner and other parts were handled by the scrum master and other team members.

[00:14:49] The other participant asked, “Is it possible that your BA is struggling because she felt her contributions were no longer needed or no longer valued?” As we kicked this idea around, the scrum master felt this was a powerful insight that he had overlooked. He believed in the value the BA brought to the table and he did appreciate her contributions, but he acknowledged he had not made that clear enough to her and to the rest of the team.

[00:15:15] Sometimes, when we’re dealing with a difficult team member, it’s because they need encouragement, affirmation, and respect. Sometimes, it’s a feeling of insecurity or disrespect that fuels the behaviors that are hurting your team. As the conversation continued, the folks around the table helped brainstorm ways the scrum master could legitimately and honestly express sincere appreciation to the BA for her work.

[00:15:42] Now, I want to make clear and emphasize that we’re talking about sincere appreciation. I’m not saying you need to make stuff up or pretend like she’s adding more value than she is, but really find things that you appreciate and value about what she’s delivering. So let me ask you this. If you’ve got a difficult team member, is there a way you can express sincere appreciation for their contributions? And that’s today’s thought leader segment.

Episode hack.

Tom: [00:16:34] Today’s episode has really been about teamwork, working as a team member, really level two in the four levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader. Now, if you want more detail on the four levels of thinking, check out Season 1, episode 10, or you can download a copy of the four levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader from the episode page on brighthillgroup.com.

[00:16:57] Now, today’s episode, we talked about showing sincere and honest appreciation for a team member’s contributions. We also talked about how my kids handle it or how they’re supposed to handle it when they blow it with a sibling. For today’s episode hack, I want you to think about whether you need to step up and acknowledge a mistake.

[00:17:17] In the case of the Mars spacecraft, it was that conversion from pounds to newtons that caused the spacecraft to crash. Now, what I thought was fascinating about that experience is that engineers did have some indication that something was wrong because as it was headed to Mars, they had to make 10 times as many course corrections as they had planned to make. What I think is fascinating is no one took a look to see why they were wrong about all those course corrections, and is the end of the mission and a waste of a $125 million as a result.

[00:17:50] So let me ask you, is there a way that you have been wrong that’s having an impact on the team. If so, first, admit it as quickly as you possibly can. Don’t try to hide it. Disclose the error to the people who are directly affected by it. And secondly, be as specific as possible. If you took apart their Lego creation, tell them you took apart their Lego creation and say, “I’m sorry. I was wrong when I did this. Here’s the impact. How can we fix it? How can I make it up to you?” And that’s today’s episode hack.

Closeout

[00:18:30] If you like the podcast, can I ask you to give me a hand? It turns out it’s a big deal to have a rating in iTunes. Now, I’ve heard other podcasters asking for ratings and reviews, and I wondered why they kept going after it again, and again, and again. Do you want to know? Because almost no one actually does it. It only takes a minute, and it’s a huge help.

[00:18:54] So why is that? Great ratings helps iTunes decide that this podcast is worth promoting. And when you put up a rating or a review, it helps it appear as a top podcast in the iTunes search. Could you please take a moment to do it right now? There’re three simple steps. One, go to the iTunes store, podcasts. Two, search for Becoming a Geek Leader. And three, give the podcast a great rating. Thanks.

[00:19:26] This is Tom Cooper. Thanks for listening. Be sure to join me next time for another episode of Becoming a Geek Leader. Join me and my mission of discovering better ways to lead others at work and at home.

Listen now!

In this episode:

Resource Downloads:

Trust Contract – Get this list of good business qualities to help your team visualize and promise to keep the characteristics of a good team member.

The 4 Levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader graphic* – This document explains the details of each level and helps you find which level you currently belong to. *Updated from last episode.

Transcript:

Man: Becoming a Geek Leader. Season two. Episode one.

Sponsored by Geek to Great

Man: [00:00:07] Have you ever had one of those really annoying customers who always seems to be looking to start an argument? Have you ever had a team member who just couldn’t let go and delegate work, but was always complaining about being buried? I’ve been there and I know how frustrating that can feel. I also know these things don’t generally get better on their own. People need help learning exactly how to communicate, delegate, manage conflict with others, and plan more effectively.

[00:00:38] Now, you know it would be great if you had a simple plan to address those needs, but you’re crazy busy too, right? That’s why I created the Geek to Great 101 program. It’s a simple system designed for you to take a portion of your already scheduled team meetings to play a video for your team, ask a few questions from the Leader’s Guide, and your team members will be able to fill in their own personalized action plan. It’s a great way to put a simple professional development program in place. Your team members will be able to share their plan with you, and you can help them actually do it.

[00:01:14] Train your whole team for less than $500. Find out more information and get immediate access to your first free lesson at brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks. That’s brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks.

Tom: [00:01:33] Welcome to the Becoming a Geek Leader podcast. My name is Tom Cooper. As a geek, I’m on a mission to figure out better ways to lead others at work and at home. Through the Becoming a Geek Leader podcast, I’m sharing what I’m learning so I can help make you more effective at leading people too. Ready?

Introduction

[00:01:55] Welcome to season two. I can’t believe I’m here already. It seems like season one just flew right by and I’m excited about what we’ve got in store for you for season two. In season one episode ten, I introduced the four levels of thinking as a geek leader. Now, in season two, you can look forward to even more action-oriented ideas about how to be more effective in getting people to want to help you. We’re still gonna have the segments you’ve enjoyed before, and now I’ll also be tying the ideas and answers to the Coach’s Mailbox questions to the level of thinking that you need for that answer.

[00:02:36] Now, in today’s episode, just in case you missed out on the season finale of season one, I’m gonna be briefly reviewing the four levels of leadership that you need as a geek leader. And then we’ll talk about how to develop a team culture even if your company already has a culture. And especially if that culture is, well, not great. In the Coach’s Mailbox segment, I’m gonna talk about how do you deal with a team member who is incredibly self-absorbed. And then finally, we’ll wrap up with a family segment on the importance of prototyping to get great design and great results.

[00:03:16] Also, don’t forget that you can download from the website a one-pager with the four levels of thinking as a geek leader. And I want to encourage you to get your copy. But right now, let’s jump right into that reminder about exactly what the four levels of thinking are.

Man: [00:03:34] The four levels of thinking as a geek leader. Level one. Individual. At level one, you may even be a superstar technical resource. Level one focuses you on improving your technical skills.

[00:03:51] Level two. Team member. Level two is where you work well with others, and together you all succeed.

[00:04:00] Level three. Team leader. Level three. As the boss of a team, your job is to recruit and develop individuals and team members who follow your lead.

[00:04:14] Level four. Team builder. At level four, you’re developing team members and team leaders who will take over and grow their own teams as they become great leaders themselves.

Tom: [00:04:29] In the mentoring segment today, I want to talk about creating a culture for your team. Now, this segment is focused on thinking at level three, the team leader level. But I want to point out if you’re a team member, if you’re level two, your job is going to be embracing the culture that your leader sets and participating there. But as we dive into this content, think about level three.

Mentoring segment.

Tom: [00:05:33] I remember back in the day I was working for a Fortune 500 company. I was in the IT department and we were so big that our people had people. We were bureaucratic. We were stovepiped. We were incredibly inefficient. Each department was responsible for a specific set of work. Other departments were responsible for a different set of work. Heaven help you if the work you needed crossed the departmental boundary because nobody wanted to step into the gap.

[00:06:03] When I became a formal leader, I stepped in to lead a team in that type of environment. It was my team’s job to build interfaces that would integrate enterprise systems. That meant our purpose was to fill the gaps between systems. The problem is there were far too many gaps for my team to be able to handle them all. Our project list was a mile long and our team capacity was not huge. Our operational responsibilities, just the day-to-day keeping-the-crank-turning stuff, consumed a majority of my team’s availability. It was a mess.

[00:06:41] In addition, at the time I stepped in, our team had been struggling with a leader who was frankly a little over his head. He had a great deal of challenges in his personal life that were effecting his sleep and his capacity at work. And for a long time, he was literally falling asleep in meetings. He focused on low-priority items and he frustrated his peers and his leaders.

[00:07:01] Now, when I took over, I had a small team of just a few people. How in the world was I going to establish a team culture in the face of a corporate machine that was optimized for no one? I didn’t have the formal authority to do much of anything. In fact, I used to say the default rule was unless you were explicitly granted permission to do anything, the answer was no. Don’t do it.

[00:07:27] However, in the face of opposition, I was able to build and train a team where I wooed multiple people to take significant pay cuts to join my team. Now, that’s not because I was chintzy. It’s because the corporate pay structure was so poor they paid far under market, and in order for me to recruit the right people I had to talk people into being willing to work for less money.

[00:07:49] The thing is they loved working with each other in spite of the fact that they had given up some income to join the team. One of them said to me, “Truly you have changed my life.” Years after I left, one of them said to me, “Tom, when you left, the magic left.” Now, here’s the thing, I am not magic and I didn’t have amazing powers. So what did I do?

[00:08:15] And an interaction that is as unique to your team that augments the corporate culture…because the company I worked for actually didn’t have horrible corporate culture, but it had a number of things that caused people’s behaviors to be antisocial. So what we did was we built a culture that really was interdependent for our team. Our city within a city had a different set of standards than the rest of the organization had.

[00:08:41] One of the first things I did was I said out loud what those standards would be. I didn’t have them this well-organized at the time, but they fell into the following categories. There were three of them. One, “We’re going to look out for each other.” Two, “As your boss, I will always have your back.” And three, “Our team will aspire to be excellent in the work that we do.” We look out for each other, I will always have your back as your boss, and our team will aspire to excellence in the work that we do.

[00:09:17] Let me start with looking out for each other. I told people that my expectation was that we were going to be a team. We were going to work together. We were going to help each other out. That meant we were going to make sure that the needs of the team were covered, rather than just my interests being covered.

[00:09:34] For example, I would literally say to my team, “I have lots of stupid ideas. I know that. And when we’re working out how to solve a problem, how to figure out how to do something, if you think my idea is idiotic, tell me. I will hear you out. We will go for unanimous agreement. That’s the best possible situation. If we can get everybody on the same page, that is the ideal situation.

[00:10:05] But we understand that unanimous agreement is not always possible. If the majority of the team concludes that an idea that you personally hate is the best available approach, we want to hear about it right up to the point that we make the decision. After the decision is made, we are all going to defend the decision in front of customers, and we are not going to say, ‘I told you so.'”

[00:10:34] See, the problem we could run into is if one person was strongly in disagreement for an idea, they could say, “See, I told you that was a dumb idea.” That doesn’t help build a team. It builds the individual up for saying they’re right. Also, we were no longer going to throw team members under the bus. If one team member dropped the ball, we all dropped the ball. We’ll fix it, but we’re not going to say, “Well, John insisted on doing that. I thought it was a dumb idea, but John did it anyway.”

[00:11:04] If a team member was having some challenges in their personal life, we were going to find a way to cover for them. We’re going to make it possible for them to focus on the important non-work stuff. Because we weren’t a group of people who were individual contributors, we were a team. We were going to work as a team. We were going to win as a team. We were going to lose as a team. Period.

[00:11:26] The last section that I want to talk about here, under looking out for each other, is we would look for opportunities to be positive. Not only would we skip out on public criticism of a team member, we’d also intentionally, specifically, proactively look for ways to catch each other doing something good. And we would be intentional about noticing and giving credit to somebody else rather than looking out for ourselves.

[00:11:56] The goal was to set an example of saying good things about each other. Now, I will tell you that one little thing makes a big difference in team interaction. And why? Because it’s so rare. So much of the time, so many of us are looking out for our own interest and trying to find a way to tell everybody how great we are, that when somebody says, “Hey, I think Sally did a fantastic job,” it stands out because it’s just not done.

[00:12:26] Okay. So that’s looking out for each other. Now let me talk about, “As your boss I will always have your back.” I saw my job as a team leader to make sure team members had everything they needed to be successful. It was my job to do everything I could do to anticipate the problems they were going to run into and remove impediments from my team. I could only be successful if they were successful.

[00:12:51] When they dropped the ball, and it did happen, I never threw them under the bus. My job was to protect my team members. I’d share credit, even publicly praising my team members to my boss. When the boss would say, “Hey, Tom, good job on getting the system implemented,” I would say, “You know, I really couldn’t have done it without Desai. He was all over that thing. He took care of it. And Otto was the man who was checking out the details and making sure we got all that stuff right.” I wasn’t looking for opportunities to build myself up. I was looking for opportunities to build up my team members.

[00:13:28] Now, sometimes it happened where a team member made a decision that was really, I mean, even indefensible. They just made a bad choice. Everybody does that sometimes and nobody wants to get thrown under the bus in that situation.

[00:13:42] So I’m in a meeting and a customer is really unhappy and one of the guys on my team had really blown it. Rather than saying, “I’m going to talk to so and so. I can’t believe he made that decision,” I would say, “That’s a decision we made.” I wouldn’t say, “John did what? That’s crazy. Why would John…I’ll take care of this.” That doesn’t help John.

[00:14:03] Remember, I said we were gonna say positive things in public. Now, if it was obviously wrong, and sometimes it was, again, I would say, “That’ a decision we made. If we need to revisit it, we can do that. Let me go talk to the team and see what we can come up with.” See, we win as a team, we lose as a team. I made a commitment that in private our team would be transparent and in public we were going to back each other up. And I’ll tell you, that a big difference.

[00:14:33] So we talked about looking out for each other and how the boss needs to have the team member’s back. Let’s talk about our team aspiring to be excellent in the work that we do. Here’s the thing, most technical experts have made their careers, you’ve probably made your career, on the back of your technical skills. I told the team members we would aspire to be excellent in our technical work. Of course we would. That’s necessary. We got to do that, but it’s not sufficient. It’s not enough. We needed to be excellent in technical skills and have business skills and have people skills.

[00:15:10] Now, I challenged my team, when it comes to professional development, to think about two additional specific areas. I told them I was going to measure their success differently than they’d ever been measured before. Of course you’re going to do well in technical skills. We’re a team of technical experts. But I also expected them to grow their skills in dealing with people and in understanding and communicating the language of our business customers.

[00:15:43] So my job is to be the chief cheerleader. My job is to help team members grow. But nothing happens without a plan. So the first challenged area that I laid out was they needed to be technical experts, and deal with people, and communicate in the language of our business customers. And then also they needed to have a plan. I challenged my team members to create a professional development plan that was gonna help them grow technically, in business skills, and in people skills.

[00:16:16] Now look, not everybody is cut out to be the front person, the lead team member, the one who’s out in front, or the one who’s leading meetings. That’s okay. I wasn’t expecting the team members to become like used car salesmen with a plaid jacket and a loud tie standing up in front of the room, rah rah rah. That’s not it at all. I was challenging them to not be the guy that was so difficult to work with that nobody wanted to work with them. They had to be okay at those kinds of things.

[00:16:45] So those are the three areas that we talked about. “We’re gonna look out for each other,” “I will always have your back,” and, “Our team will aspire to excellence.” Now, I made lots of mistakes as a leader, but we learned together and we grew together. And we trusted each other. We supported each other. We created that city within the city, a culture within a larger corporate culture.

[00:17:08] Now, the key thing here is culture is the idea that we can trust each other. We can predict what the team is going to do and we’re going to look out for each other, to have each other’s back. One of my mentors is a man by the name of Scott Fay, and Scott has a skill in fixing things that are broken. He comes into organizations and teams and he identifies where the problems are, and he finds ways to fix things.

[00:17:34] Scott owns a number of companies and he worked with one of his teams to create what he called a trust contract. And I love this idea; a trust contract, and I’ll include a copy of his trust contract on the webpage so that you can see the example. The trust contract answers questions like, “What will I do when I’m convinced that I can’t deliver on a promise I’ve made?” Having that type of discussion with your team to create their own trust contract, wow. That’s really powerful. And that can help you be seen as someone

Coach’s Mailbox.

Tom: [00:18:45] This next question really is targeted at level three, but it’s important to note that the self-absorbed team member is probably operating at level one, and you’re going to ask that team member to step up from level one to level two. So let me remind you what level two is.

Man: [00:19:04] Level two. Team member. Level two is where you work well with others and together you all succeed.

Tom: [00:19:15] For today’s Ask the Coach segment, I have a question that I get all the time. Today I got an email from Ian. He writes, “I’m a leader in an engineering firm. I’ve got a talented young engineer, we’ll call him Joe, who has stepped into a management role. Now, he’s doing an adequate job, but he is frankly struggling sometimes. In particular, his team members feel like he’s demanding they do things his way, and he doesn’t seem to notice how much his command and control, “do it my way” attitude, upsets them. I don’t think he sees it at all. His attitude seems to be, ‘Look, we’re talking about engineering. What do your feelings have to do with it?’ How can I help Joe develop a better sense of self-awareness?”

[00:20:01] Wow. This is a common question, as I mentioned, and my clients do run into this all the time. The other day, I came across a quote from Neil deGrasse Tyson. He said “In science, when human behavior enters the equation, things go nonlinear. That’s why physics is easy and sociology is hard.” You know, we’re responsible for being sociologists as leaders. It’s something that we probably don’t talk about enough, or don’t talk about at all.

[00:20:32] But the fact is that when you think about something going nonlinear, that’s right. The most predictable thing about people is that people are unpredictable. We like to think of ourselves as engineers who are rational creatures, but the fact is we are emotional creatures who come up with a rational justification for whatever decision we make.

[00:20:55] Most of us are so comfortable in the rational, quantifiable space we might not even realize that we are making decisions emotionally and then coming up with a rational justification. When it comes to self-awareness, what you’re really talking about is the question of empathy. And I’ll tell you that sometimes we don’t realize how important empathy is to our relationships and to our success.

[00:21:20] As technology folks, sometimes we feel like the best technical solution is all that matters and we focus on that. We don’t even realize what’s happening. So Ian, one question I might be inclined to ask Joe is this. Joe, I’m curious. If what you sincerely believed about working with your team was wrong, would you want to know?

[00:21:45] See, the problem is that Joe believes that his way is the best way, and he’s been successful in his career so far as an individual contributor relying on his training, and his thinking, and his judgment, and his work ethic. And all those things have combined to lead to his success. I see this all the time. This approach, my way, has worked so well for so long that sometimes we believe this is all that we need to do to be successful. But as you know, technical skill is necessary but not sufficient. It takes more than excellent engineering to be an engineering leader.

[00:22:24] I might say, “Joe, we all know engineers who love the technical work and who bristle at working in a team or interacting directly with customers.” My question for you is, is it your goal? Do you want to be one of those engineers, or do you want your work to impact more people? I’d probably go on to say what you believe about technical acumen being all you need for success is just not true.

[00:22:48] Now, I’m curious, is that something you’d like to work on? My guess is that, for Joe, he’s never taken the time to think about that. He’s been frustrated perhaps with his lack of cooperation from team members, and he has had success when he’s taken on the work. We have expressions like, “Well, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” And that’s because we haven’t set the expectations appropriately. We haven’t managed the team members appropriately. We haven’t fought through and communicated what it is we need.

[00:23:25] And one of the challenges we have is that we sort of expect that whatever communication mode I prefer is correct and everybody else is weird. And so the challenge is when you think differently than I do, when you communicate differently than I do, then I think that you’re broken.

[00:23:43] There’s a tool I like to use when I’m working with teams. It’s called the DISC Assessment; D-I-S-C. DISC provides an easy-to-understand model of how you prefer to communicate and interact with others. Many times, with folks like Joe, just understanding that not everyone thinks like me and not everyone communicates like me and that’s okay, just that idea can be a big breakthrough for my clients. DISC is one of those assessments that breaks people into four quadrants. That means that 25% of the population thinks like you, communicates like you, but 75% doesn’t. And that’s okay.

[00:24:21] And a lot of times, just having that understanding that people are different, and different is not wrong can be a huge help to my clients. And once we understand that people are different from us and that’s okay, we can work on understanding what it is that they want, what it is they need, and we can adapt our communications and adapt our style to what they prefer. And that can be a massive help to effectiveness. It can transform the way the team interacts.

[00:24:48] So let me give you an example. Are you a task-focused, bottom-line, high-speed performer? Or maybe you’re a facts-focused, get-the-details-right expert. See, those are just two of the four options. And you can see easily how a focus on moving fast might come into conflict with taking the time to get the details right.

[00:25:09] See, if I value speed and you value quality and I give you a fast answer that’s wrong, you’re probably not going to be too happy with me. If you think that you need to write a 7-paragraph email with a 10-page attachment, and you’re communicating with a bottom-line, high-speed, task-focused person, you’re both gonna be frustrated.

[00:25:29] DISC assessments are inexpensive. They can give you great insights about you and your team. My clients find that when they’re teams begin to understand this model of communication and the way they interact, that their team communication improves and their understanding of others improves, and team members are much more effective in working with each other.

[00:25:47] So, my key takeaway for you, Ian, is that the first step is to introduce your idea that not everyone thinks and acts like he does. Different is not wrong. And not only is different not wrong, but diversity of background, diversity of thought, diversity of approach and opinion can lead to far, far more elegant technical solutions.

[00:26:10] A challenge we run into is the process is a little messy and is probably going to fall outside Joe’s comfort zone. But if he really wants to deliver great technical work, he’s gonna have to grow beyond delivering all the work himself and really get the best possible performance from others. And that’s today’s Coach’s Mailbox segment.

Family segment.

Tom: [00:26:48] During today’s family segment, I’m talking about prototyping. Now, this skill is appropriate for all levels of thinking as a geek leader, but it’s most applicable at level one.

Man: [00:26:59] Level one. Individual. At level one, you may even be a superstar technical resource. Level one focuses you on improving your technical skills.

Tom: [00:27:14] Now, one of the things that I love about having a wife who loves learning and teaching as much as I do is that we home-school our kids. Now, homeschooling is not for everybody, but it really works for our family and it fits the needs of our kids. One of the things that we do is we participate in a co-op where we get together with other homeschooling families and we work on classes and activities. And one of my boys is working on a group project right now.

[00:27:39] In their History class, they’re studying Vikings and the teachers assign them to come up with a project that reflects that time period. My son and three other teen boys, they’re in a group together, and they decided to make Viking weapons. I mean, they’re boys after all, right? We decided we were gonna help them out by setting them up in the workshop to begin to work on creating those tools.

[00:28:05] I’ve been supervising the boys in the woodshop as they design, manufacture, and assemble those weapons. This has been a massive learning experience for them, and I gotta tell you, it has been a blast watching them work on problem-solving. But it’s not the most efficient approach, because they wanna jump right in and work on the cool stuff.

[00:28:23] They’re learning that making a plan and prototyping actually can save them a ton of time. If you start out with a really hard design idea and you don’t prototype, boy can you waste a lot of materials. That process of creating a smaller scale or even full-size items out of easier-to-work-with materials has helped them think about how to simplify their design, how to choose different materials, how to work as a team to figure it out.

[00:28:51] For example, they decided they were going to do an axe and they thought it’d be really cool to have a curved axe blade with a beveled edge. Now, that seems like a great idea, until you start thinking about now exactly what type of tools do you use to cut a curve? And when you cut the curve, how do you do a beveled edge to make it sharp? Now, it was a beautiful design, but it was really complex, and so they started, and I challenged them to start by sketching out their ideas and then create a sample from some MDFs, some cheap disposable materials.

[00:29:25] And that gave them an opportunity to learn what their tools could do and what the tools couldn’t do. And when they recognized how much time and effort it was going to take to make the number of cuts they were going to need to make and the amount of finish work it was going to take, they decided to go for a simpler solution. Which brings me to the point of this segment. What are you working on right now that could benefit from a prototype?

[00:29:49] I remember I used to send my developers to client meetings and I would tell them to stop by the printer and pull some blank paper out of the printer and take a pencil to draw out the screens rather than do an HTML wireframe. In that process, we learned a ton about business process and actual customer needs as we drew it out together. We walked through the problem together. So let me ask you, what could you draw out as a team? What lessons might you be able to learn more quickly, and how might that affect your design? And that’s today’s family segment.

Episode Hack.

Tom: [00:30:48] In today’s episode, we’ve covered three big ideas. One, how do you create a team culture that might be different from your company’s culture? Two, what do you do when you have a team member who has low self-awareness? And three, how could prototyping or whiteboarding help you learn faster and speed up your delivery? For today’s episode hack, I wanna jump back and focus on the one idea about building trust on your team.

[00:31:19] Is there somebody on your team who would benefit from increasing trust with you? What would it take to make a difference with that person? Is it follow-up? Maybe following through and doing exactly what you said you were going to do. Is it speaking up to address an issue? Or maybe is it shutting up and stopping complaining? Is it taking initiative, or is it giving room for other people to take initiative?

[00:31:49] What specific step can you take to adapt your style to meet the need that they have? That is going to help you build some trust. For more ideas about building trust, I want you to go to the website and check out the sample trust contract on the resource page and ask yourself if you’re doing the things that are needed for you to be trustworthy. If you find a gap, I wanna encourage you to close that gap. And that’s today’s episode hack.

Closeout

[00:32:19] Is the podcast helping you? Make sure you don’t miss out on the latest info. Head over right now to brighthillgroup.com/join to be sure that you stay in the loop. When you do, you get my PDF, become a geek leader in two easy steps, and you’ll be notified as soon as new podcast episodes are available. Plus, you’ll get updates and ideas that I don’t share on the podcast. Head over to brighthillgroup/join right now.

[00:32:52] This is Tom Cooper. Thanks for listening. Be sure to join me next time for another episode of Becoming a Geek Leader. Join me in my mission of discovering better ways to lead others at work and at home.

Listen now!

In this episode:

1. Individual
2. Team Performer
3. Team Leader
4. Team Builder

Resource Download:

4 Levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader – This easy-to-read graphic clearly illustrates the 4 Levels of Thinking, individually breaking down each level.

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Transcript:

Recording: [00:00:00] Become the Geek Leader, Season One, Episode 10.

Sponsored by Geek to Great

[00:00:11] We all want to grow our skills and improve the work we do. But who has time for that? In this online blended learning program, you and your team will gain practical skills in topics like time management, dealing with difficult people, improving communication, and so much more.

[00:00:31] Train your whole team for less than $500. Each lesson is 30 minutes or less, so it fits right into your current team meeting schedule. Find more information and get immediate access to your first free lesson at brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks. That’s brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks, so that you can get access to the Geek to Great 101 course.

[00:01:02] Welcome to the Becoming a Geek Leader podcast. My name is Tom Cooper. As a geek, I’m on a mission to figure out better ways to lead others at work and at home. Through the Becoming a Geek Leader podcast, I’m sharing what I’m learning, so I can help make you more effective at leading people too. Ready?

Introduction

[00:01:25] As I get started today, I want to offer a hearty and heartfelt thanks to my son Joel for stepping in for me for the last episode. Wow, was I out of it. And I appreciate him for helping me out and for making sure that you had a new episode, too.

[00:01:41] I cannot believe how quickly we got here. This is episode 10! It’s the end of season one. When I started planning this podcast back in the summer of 2015, I wanted season one to focus on how to help you as a highly technical expert get even better at influencing the people around you.

[00:02:03] During today’s episode, I want to take a quick look back at the season as a whole and give you some insights into what I have planned for season two as well. Now, during season one, I planned a set of topics that I know that folks like you are facing every day. You also have my promise that I’m gonna be sharing with you the things that I’m learning as I work with clients.

[00:02:29] In this finale episode, I want to introduce you to one of those learnings that I’ve come across. I’ve discovered that there are four levels of thinking that all geeks develop as they grow in their leadership. Now, I’m gonna share with you those four levels today, and I’m gonna show how what I’ve already covered in season one links directly to those levels of thinking.

[00:02:53] In our episode hack today, I’m gonna help you figure out where you are and what your next step is in the process. Let’s get started.

Thought Leader Segment.

[00:03:05] In the Thought Leader Segment, Tom brings in ideas from today’s best thought leaders.

Tom: [00:03:24] Let’s talk about the four levels of thinking for geek leaders. Level one is individual; I’m an individual contributor and my work matters. Level two, team performer; I’m more than just a technical expert, I’m a part of a team making things happen. Level three, team leader; now I’m responsible for actually leading a team of others. And level four, team builder; I need to help develop other team leaders who will grow more teams.

[00:04:02] Now, I’ve got a download for you on the webpage for this episode that is just a one pager on the four levels of thinking for geek leadership. And I want to encourage you to take a moment to go ahead and download that.

[00:04:16] Most of us only get as far as level one or level two, and frankly nobody ever talks to us about levels beyond that. Whether we’re an individual contributor or a member of a team, we might get some guidance about what to do with that. But people don’t talk to us about what does it mean to become the boss or to think about growing other bosses.

[00:04:39] In future episodes, I’m gonna go into deeper detail about how do you move from your current level to a higher level. And in this episode, as I mentioned, I’m gonna go back and talk about how I’ve already covered critical ideas that can help you on your journey.

[00:04:56] As I look back over season one, one thing I realize is I didn’t spend much time at all talking about level one. Now, I think that’s because I’m assuming that when you’re listening to a podcast called Becoming a Geek Leader, you’ve already realized that you have to go beyond your technical skills if you want to deliver higher-level work.

[00:05:18] The idea in level one, just at its core, is that when we start in our career, we get geekier and we get paid more. The deeper our technical skills go, the stronger our technical skills go, the more we get paid. The challenge is that there’s a limit to that, because that stops working after about four years, maybe five years into our career. We get stuck. We don’t get the promotions and raises we expect. We’re frustrated about it. Or, even worse, maybe we get promoted to a job where we’re supposed to lead others, but we don’t know anything about how to do that and we get really frustrated.

[00:05:55] In level one, with that level of awareness, with that level of thinking, we become aware that technical skills are necessary but not sufficient. It takes more than geek skills to help us move ahead in our career. I touched on this in episode three when I was asking what is your plan for career development?

[00:06:18] Fundamentally, it comes down to this question. What is your plan for career growth? Understanding what your plan is, then you think, “What skills do I need to get that next job?” And then, “What am I doing to get those skills?” But, again, let’s go back to this question. “What if my employer’s not gonna pay for me to get the training or growth that I want? What do I do?”

[00:06:44] Well, Dan Hardy asked me this question. He said, “What’s your E2E ratio?” E2E, your education to entertainment ratio. How much do you spend on your personal development versus how much do you spend on your entertainment? If you’re like me, ouch; it didn’t feel good.

[00:07:06] What if you spent half as much on your personal development as you do on the sum total you spend on movies, eating out, hobbies, and cable? Do you even know how much you spend on those things? All right. So maybe you look at that and you go, “Man, I couldn’t spend that much.” And I think, actually, if you add it up, you’ll be stunned at how much you do spend on just those categories.

[00:07:30] But let me ask you this. What if you invested 10% of your income in yourself? What if you bet on you just 10% of the income that you make? Just think about this for a second. What conferences would you be able to attend? What courses would you be able to take? What would happen in your career if you had a coach helping you get to that next level? I want you to think about your E2E ratio. What’s your education to entertainment ratio?

[00:08:05] I came back to thinking about that idea a little bit more in episode seven when I asked the question, “Are you working on the strategically important stuff?” And I have to say, when I was working for the hotel company and I was using software deployment to solve problems on computers with viruses as well as get the reservation system up and running, I loved that project. I loved that work. I could see exactly how it was helping our customers and how it was helping with our sales. And it was fantastic.

[00:08:38] The problem was that I was part of a hospitality brand. I wasn’t part of a technology firm. And the company saw value in the software distribution stuff, but really it was fairly limited in terms of the value that it brought. I invested a lot of energy in that, thinking that it was a strategic help to the company. Don’t get me wrong. It helped the company. But it didn’t help the company enough to continue to get the support that we needed to do it organizationally, or to help me from a career standpoint.

[00:09:10] What if you’re looking at your projects and you’re looking at the strategic problems the company is working on and you just don’t see any way that your project is tied into a strategic problem? Well, I have to tell you, it was painful for me to recognize that when I was working on software deployment and there’s only so much value to those solutions. No matter how elegant they are, no matter how cool they were, no matter what great things they did, they only did so much.

[00:09:37] If that’s the case, maybe what you’re working on just isn’t that important to the organization. If you want to have your career continue to move forward, you probably are going to need to look for opportunities that you can work on projects that really do tackle the big-rock problems that your organizations have.

[00:09:56] I spent too long working on projects like software deployment that just didn’t have enough value to the organization and I missed out on career opportunities because of it. In the time that I worked there, I was there for 10 years, for heaven’s sakes, I could have changed jobs. I could have changed departments. I could have even changed major divisions, and I could have continued to help the company solve big problems.

[00:10:16] I stuck around because I loved what I was doing and it limited me. I think I could have found a job that I loved in another part of the company that I would have been happy with, too. I just wasn’t looking because I thought, “Oh, this is really important.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t important enough.

[00:10:32] So those were a couple of areas in season one when I talked about that level one, that individual level. Now let’s turn the corner and talk a little bit about level two, team member. Performing as a team. In this thinking, I’m part of a team, and I need to work with others. Now, a good part of season one was exactly that; was working with others. In fact, in episode four, I talked about dealing with difficult people.

[00:11:06] Now, there is another topic that I want to touch on here. And it’s a danger. It’s actually something that we do mentally that can be a big problem for us. And the concept that I want to share with you is the idea of the bozo bit. And we know that bits are either one or zero; they’re either on or they’re off. And if a bit is on, then it’s 100% on, and if it’s off, it’s 100% off.

[00:11:34] Sometimes what we do is we decide that somebody is a bozo. Here’s what that looks like. You’re in a meeting, and they say something that is completely off topic. They refer to the language that you write in as the wrong language. They misunderstand something that you think is foundational to the technical work that you do. And you think, “This person, I mean, how could they possibly be in this position and think or believe or act like that? That person is a bozo.”

[00:12:11] When you have set the bozo bit in the on position, now all of a sudden it doesn’t matter what they say. If they say anything, as far as you’re concerned, you have a filter. And your filter says, “A stupid person said this.” And when you believe that a stupid person said this, all of a sudden you don’t hear them anymore. It doesn’t matter.

[00:12:40] They might come up with something that is insightful. Something that is useful. Something that is helpful. But you won’t be able to hear it because your filter is gonna say, “A stupid person said this.” Now, as I said, in some cases it’s true that whoever’s talking has no idea what they’re talking about. But let me challenge that. Because, statistically speaking, it’s a very small percentage of people who are hopeless idiots. It is more likely that they are doing something that works for them. They’re optimizing for something different than what you’re optimizing for. They’re being recognized and rewarded for different things than you’re being recognized or rewarded for.

[00:13:30] And it’s your job to figure out, are they a hopeless idiot and you were correct to set the bozo bit? Or maybe, just maybe, you’ve made a mistake. Maybe you shouldn’t have set the bozo bit for this particular person. So if you’re analyzing whether you’ve incorrectly set the bozo bit to the on position, here’s some things to think about.

[00:13:54] One key tool for influencing others is making sure that they feel heard, listening well. In episode two, I gave you some specific tips to help you listen more effectively. Mark Goulston, who is the author of a book called Just Listen. One of the key points that he made is that people are craving to be understood. We’re so busy, nobody has time to think. And we’re just dying to have a safe place where we can be heard.

[00:14:27] The key point that he brought up is the idea about being a first-class noticer. Now, a noticer goes beyond just listening to the facts. It’s not looking or watching or seeing what’s happening. Those things are kind of passive. What he is thinking about and encouraging us to think about is, as you’re talking, look at the engagement level of the other person. And that our job is to be present and to be attentive and to be intensely curious about the other person. And that’s hard. It takes a lot of energy.

[00:15:10] And the key thing about being intensely curious about the other person, it starts with noticing their body language. Are they making eye contact with you? What’s their hand movement? Is it really subdued or is it really intense? Are they moving closer to you or farther away from you? Do they seem kind of open with their arms and their legs open? Or are they kind of closed off, folded arms and crossed legs and that sort of thing?

[00:15:36] What you want to be doing is being intentional about noticing what’s going on. Another part of working well with others is resolving conflict. And we know this is a constant challenge. In episode nine, I shared with you a simple way to resolve conflict with other people. So think x, y, z. In situation x, when you did y, had z impact. So, what was the situation? It was during the team meeting. Not, “you always,” or, “you have a tendency to,” or “people say you,” no.

[00:16:16] In this specific situation, it was during the team meeting when the boss asked for my ideas about the project, so that’s situation x. You did y. You rolled your eyes. You folded your arms. You sighed. You looked away. You had z impact. It felt like her boss rejected my idea because of your reaction, at least in part. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the way it felt.

[00:16:43] Now let’s put all that stuff together. When you go see your coworker, let’s call him Joe, you can say, “Joe, I want to have a great working relationship with you and something happened recently that upset me. Can we talk about it? The other day when we were in the team meeting and the boss asked for my input, while I was talking, I noticed that you rolled your eyes, you folded your arms and you sighed. And, man, it just seemed to me like the boss was watching your reaction and he shot my idea down. Now, I’m really confused and frustrated about it, because I thought you liked my idea when we talked about it before. I didn’t like the way that worked out and it felt like you were kind of shooting my ideas down, too. Can you help me understand what happened?”

[00:17:28] Now, you’re not attacking him. You’re not criticizing him. You’re saying, “Hey, you did this thing and it had this impact. What was going on?” So listening and resolving conflict. And in episode one, I talked about how you can get more work done as you cooperate with other people. The other day I was working in my office and I heard this.

Stephanie: [00:17:52] Why doesn’t anybody play with me?

Tom: [00:17:59] That was my daughter reenacting a scenario that happens on a pretty regular basis around here. How do we get other people to want to get involved? She was so frustrated that she couldn’t get people to help her with her goal of playing a game that she got more and more frustrated until she finally could not stand it. So how could she get them to want to play with her? It’s an important question and it ties in exactly to what we’ve been talking about on today’s episode. How do we get people to want to go along with the stuff we want to do?

[00:18:32] People’s favorite radio station is WIIFM: What’s In It For Me? Now, in my daughter’s case, she was crystal clear on what was important to her, what’s in it for Stephanie, but not so clear on why others needed to stop what they were doing to play along with her, to go along with the game that she had in mind.

[00:18:53] I’ve got to tell you, that’s how it is at work, too. If other people on your team cannot figure out why they should stop what they’re doing and play with you, they’re not going to play with you. Whether it’s delivering the work that you need or whether it’s attending your meeting, or whatever. And so you need to think about how you can get people to want to play along. And it really comes down to what’s in it for them. If you can focus your communication around what’s in it for them as opposed to what’s in it for you, you’re much more likely to get the equipment, or the software, or the people, or the time, or the cooperation that you need.

[00:19:37] I came back to some of these ideas in episode eight when I talked about how it requires more than just great engineering skills. It’s really about relationships. What are you doing to build relationships? Today I want to be a little bit like my dad. I’m not telling you what I think. I’m telling you what I know. One of the things that I absolutely did wrong when it came to my time in corporate America was that I focused on being the best whatever I happened to be at the time. I worked hard to understand my job and do that as well as I possibly could.

[00:20:15] So, you might be asking, well, “How could that be wrong?” Well, it’s not wrong to be good at your job. But one critical mistake that I made was I didn’t make enough connections with other people along the way. Let me suggest that when it comes to career opportunities, it’s not just about how competent you are at your work. In fact, I’d argue it’s at least equally important who you know and who knows you.

[00:20:46] Now when you think about who knows you, how do people know you? I recently went on a brief trip with a group of folks from my church. And we spent a few days working on projects together where we helped an organization that provides disaster relief. While we were working shoulder to shoulder, one of the other participants said to me, “Tom, I’ve learned more about you in the last two days working beside you than I have in the last six months seeing you every week”. He was right. We did learn about each other when we were working together.

[00:21:20] So let’s get back to my professional work. I spent a decade at Marriott. I have many good memories about being a part of that company. I had good opportunities, I learned a lot. And during those 10 years, I essentially held 2 positions. Two. Looking back, I am sure that I would have found more opportunities if I had been willing to branch out and do different things. But I liked being good at what I did, and I liked being in my safe space. It was risky and unsafe to try different things, so I didn’t do it.

[00:21:55] And finally, when it comes to working with teams, in episode five, I talked a little bit about how you can work more effectively with remote team members. What do you do when your team members are not with you on your job? The first thing I want to say about this is that working with remote team members is essentially the same as working with local team members. But here’s the key difference. The key difference is that when you work with somebody who’s in the same building you’re in, you’re likely to bump into them in the hallway or on the way to lunch or taking a coffee break by the coffee machine or the snack machine. Or you’re gonna run into them on the way to the same meeting. Or right after a meeting, you’ll probably chat with them a little bit. That’s the difference.

[00:22:51] That with a remote team member, you don’t have that informal communication opportunity. Typically, if you had something that was going on that was a little bit of an annoyance, or it was a challenge that you were facing, typically what you could do is just what I would call poke your head into their office. Stop by. Just have an informal communication. But with these folks who are remote, it is much more difficult to do that. Because it just seems like a barrier that you have to overcome to make that connection. And I will tell you that it’s more than it seems like it’s a barrier; it’s an actual barrier to communication. So, working with remote teams is the same as working with local teams, but you have to be intentional about making a connection with them.

[00:23:48] So now we’ve talked about how, level one, that individual perspective; level two, the team member perspective. Let’s move on to level three and talk about what it means to be a team leader. Because I know some of you are actually in that role now. In episode six, I introduced the concept of having a new mindset. How do you need to think differently when you start to become the leader of a team?

[00:24:18] Your personal contribution as that individual contributor has been that story of your success, and now your story has got to develop a little further. Everything you’ve done still applies, but you have to apply them a little bit differently. Rather than seeing yourself as a brick layer, you need to see yourself differently. And Marshall Goldsmith says, “What got you here won’t get you there.” In this story, you’re thinking about what made you successful. If you’re gonna get to the next level, you’re gonna have to change your thinking. You’re no longer that individual contributor, just the bricklayer.

[00:24:58] The first step in being successful is thinking differently. You’ve got to change your mindset. So you don’t measure yourself anymore by the number of bricks that you lay, or the quality of the work, the strength or height or straightness of the wall, or how timely you’re able to put the bricks down. No. Now you have to see yourself differently. Now you have to think about being the general contractor who’s building the cathedral. Of course you know how to lay bricks. Of course you do. And you’re still in the business of getting walls built but they are the means to the end. They’re not the end themselves. The grand cathedral is the end. And it’s made up of the walls and the other pieces that are created and assembled by various craftsmen all over the organization.

[00:25:50] So as we reflect on season one, we’ve talked about level one, individual thinking. We talked about level two, working as a team member. We talked about level three, working as a team leader. And as we move forward with season two, we’re gonna focus a lot more on the idea of being a team leader. Some topics that I’ve already got prepared for season two include more about that leader’s mindset; how do you need to think differently if you’re gonna be the leader. What does it take to influence leaders more effectively and developing influence on the basis of permission, not position?

[00:26:31] We’re also gonna talk about how to set goals for your team members and how to hold them accountable to deliver those things that you’ve set out for them. What does it take for you to do real, meaningful career development planning, professional development planning and career development planning for your team? And another topic that I want to spend some time on in season two is managing up. How do you get buy-in from leaders when you don’t personally have the power to make the decision that you need to make?

[00:26:56] Now, as I’ve told you, as we’ve been doing this together, I’m gonna continue to share what I’m learning from you and in my work with clients. And if there are topics that you want me to cover, please reach out to me; coach@brighthillgroup.com. I’d love to hear from you.

Episode Hack.

Tom: [00:27:36] So here we are at the end of season one of the podcast Becoming a Geek Leader. I hope that you’re learning with me and we’re growing together. For today’s Episode Hack, I want to ask you where are you on your four levels of thinking? Are you at level one as an individual? Are you thinking about how you need to perform better as an individual contributor? Maybe you’re at level two, maybe you’re thinking about, “What does it mean to be a great team member? How do I get to respond to team members? How do I initiate work on the team and get other people to want to help?”

[00:28:10] Maybe you’re at level three, or the team leader level, and you’re starting to think about how you could begin to influence the people who do report to you and your peers and the people that report to your peers. Or maybe you’ve approached that team builder level, level four, where you’re thinking about, “What does it take to grow people into leadership roles?” Whatever your level, I want you to think about what could you do, what’s the smallest possible step you could take to move forward? Maybe it’s just going back and listening to one of the episodes I referenced here in the podcast and maybe it’s thinking about a person you need to influence or a step you need to take to do something like that.

[00:28:53] Whatever your level, I want you to think about what you could do to make a difference. And don’t forget you could check out the episode page for a download that lists out the four levels of thinking and gives you some specifics about those four levels of thinking. And that’s today’s Episode Hack.

[00:29:11] One final note in this last episode of season one. I just want to say thanks. Thanks for taking me with you. I know you’re investing in you and I know listening to this podcast is one of the steps you’re taking to help you grow. And I just want to say thanks for including me on your journey. And don’t forget, if there’s any question you have or some topic you’d like me to tackle, feel free to reach out to me. It’s coach@brighthillgroup.com. I’d love to hear from you. Thanks.

Closeout

[00:29:39] Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming a Geek Leader. You could play a part in helping the podcast to grow. If you enjoyed it, please do me a favor. The way to get the podcast to grow is for you to go to iTunes and give it a rating. If enough of you give me a good rating in iTunes, this podcast will show up in their New and Noteworthy section. Being a New and Noteworthy is a great way to attract more listeners, and having more listeners helps me have the support to keep the podcast going.

[00:30:02] There are three simple steps to giving me a rating. One, go to the iTunes store in the podcast section; two, search for Becoming a Geek Leader; and three, give the podcast a great rating. And while you’re there, why not write a quick review as well? Thanks.

[00:30:21] This is Tom Cooper. Thanks for listening. Be sure to join me next time for another episode of Becoming a Geek Leader. Join me in my mission of discovering better ways to lead others at work and at home.