June 28, 2024 • 16 mins
Do you ever wonder why winning teams tend to keep on winning? In this episode, Dr. De Hicks delves into the dynamics that drive sustained success among high-performing teams.
From the positive impact of happiness on performance to the importance of celebrating small victories, De discusses the habits, mental models, and opportunities that set winning teams apart from losing ones. Whether you're leading a team or striving for personal success, this episode offers practical tips to help you achieve and sustain winning results.
Check out Dr. De's newest book on Amazon: The 1201 Project: Habits of Successful Leaders
Music Credits: Two Step Daisy Duke by Mr. Smith is licensed under a Attribution 4.0 International License from FMA
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Do you ever wonder with me why winning teams tend to keep on winning? Well, I have.
What's going on with those winners? Well, we've studied this question pretty
intensely over the years, as you may imagine, and we've learned a few things.
Music.
(00:41):
Let's do it. Hi, I'm Dee Hicks, and welcome to the School of Leadership,
leveraged lessons from high-impact leaders.
For the past 35 years, I've researched the disciplines, habits,
mental models, and assumptions of the most effective leaders in dozens of vocations.
This podcast takes what I've learned from over 2,000 of these remarkable people
(01:04):
and distills it into practical tools and tips that you can use to.
Music.
(01:26):
Well, I come from a very competitive family. We probably are the only family
in history to report injuries as a result of an intense game of Pictionary.
Well, we love each other, so
the injuries are usually just physical rather than deep emotional scars.
Anyway, winning is fun. I love winning. It's so much fun.
(01:50):
I'm not a fan of losing, but let's be honest. Winning at Pictionary is probably
different than the kind of winning that you need to accomplish,
right? Do you need to win?
Are you engaged in an endeavor that really must succeed?
The outcome is too important for you to lose? Well, that's a different kind of winning altogether.
(02:13):
Do you ever wonder with me why winning teams tend to keep on winning?
Well, I have. What's going on with those winners?
Well, we studied this question pretty intensely over the years, as you may imagine.
And we've learned a few things.
A little bit like that insurance commercial that's out on television right now.
(02:37):
We've learned a few things because we've seen a few things.
So we know that teams that get results, that win in their own way,
usually keep on winning.
And we found 10 reasons for this winner's win dynamic.
(02:58):
So buckle up. Let's find out what they are. There's 10 of them. They're kind of fast.
So lean in, get rid of the distractions, and see which ones relate to you and to your team. First.
When they get results, they are happier. It's just more fun,
and they become more courageous to achieve the next win.
(03:18):
Happy people learn more quickly. Happy people perceive mental and physical pain differently.
Happy people shrink and compartmentalize their errors, and they think of them
as outliers while generalizing their success.
Success happy people sometimes air
(03:41):
quotes scotty air quotes happy people
sometimes make mistakes and air quotes always do a good job that's how they
think about themselves winning teams are just plain happy second winning teams
stay engaged in their work longer they don't want want to go home. They don't want to quit.
(04:04):
The magic that happens right after a win is palpable, and they just don't want it to end.
They love the work. They love the win.
Third, winning teams get curious about what they can change to win again and
win in a more significant way next time.
(04:24):
The winner is more open to criticism than the loser.
A little too close to home there?
The winner's optimistic and wonders if slight changes can make the next move even more effective.
Is that you? Here's the fourth. Winning teams and individuals have a very different set of inner scripts.
(04:51):
Their inner narrator, to borrow
a phrase, is different. Their self-talk is different from those who lose.
Even if a winning team loses, because they do from time to time,
how they talk about it is different.
They're less likely to punish themselves for mistakes made on the way to achievement.
(05:11):
If you were to broadcast their inner thoughts and you would discover that they
are kinder to themselves than those who struggle and lose and lose and lose.
Their outer narrator, is equally helpful and encouraging with team members.
How they speak to their team members, even after they've made mistakes, is more kind.
(05:34):
Think of how you talk to yourself when you succeed compared to when you don't.
This inner narrator of yours, when you get good results as your friend,
when you do not get good results or you don't get the win, is your inner narrator your enemy?
Winning teams have different inner narrators. It's as though they're inner observers
(05:58):
rather than inner critics.
They don't have a condemning tone with themselves. Because you know,
if you have that with yourself all the time, if you're constantly beating yourself
up, it doesn't take long for that to leak out onto other people.
First strangers, and then eventually to those who are close to you.
Fifth, winning teams create networks of other winning teams.
(06:20):
Doors are thrown open to them that are not thrown open to losing teams.
Winning teams receive the invitations.
Losing teams don't. So make no mistake, winning teams create a cascade of small wins.
They deliberately work at getting results.
They talk about results. They keep score of results. They celebrate them no matter how small.
(06:43):
And by contrast, losing teams focus on the one big significant result that they're after.
And they rarely keep score of anything but the one final lagging measure.
They see themselves as losing more than winning.
(07:03):
Facetiously, it's almost as though they see themselves losing on the way to winning.
It's a long wait. Okay, here's the sixth one.
Winning teams are asked, how'd you do that? A lot.
They find themselves surrounded by people who want to know how they did it.
So they're forced to practice keen observation and evaluation of what worked.
(07:28):
And so they can explain it to themselves and then to others when asked.
Asked losing teams are rarely asked
how did you do that can you
imagine someone with the tone how did you lose so badly what happened tell us
about it so we can do it too it's not gonna happen that way if they are ever
(07:52):
asked how did they do that or even if they ask themselves some version of that,
like what the hell went wrong,
their natural focus is on, just as I said, what went wrong, on mistakes and on misses.
Enter good old target fixation. That is what we focus on, we hit.
Focus on mistakes, make more of them. Focus on the pothole you want to avoid
(08:16):
in the corner while riding your motorcycle,
inwardly saying, don't hit the pothole, don't hit the pothole,
don't hit the pothole, and bam, you hit the pothole. That's target fixation.
Winning teams immediately after the win, and for quite some time afterwards,
focus their attention on what went right.
(08:39):
This might be one of the most fundamental and basic differences between winning
groups, winning individuals, winning teams, and those who lose. What do you focus on?
Okay, your seventh. Winning teams realize
we won and they see themselves increasingly as a unit, a true team.
We replaces me in their thoughts and words.
(09:03):
Losing teams tend to focus on individual performance
or the individual's lack of performance
that kind of focus results in blame and
that separates people and cuts them out of the herd so to
speak number eight winning teams celebrate
the win by celebrating the
(09:24):
team not the individual individual plays so
to speak are never about the individual they're always
about the team such a focus is humbling
and it's liberating winning teams actually
become more humble with each win humility in my view is an amalgam of confidence
(09:44):
and curiosity humility is it's like epoxy glue and as you know epoxy is made
up of resin and a curing or a hardening agent separated Separated,
those two compounds are not very useful.
But combined, they form, in effect, a third compound.
That's the epoxy. So we've used epoxies for 75 years.
(10:06):
We've learned that the best combination of the two elements is a one-to-one ratio.
It's the most durable. So in my view, humility is like that.
It's a one-to-one ratio of confidence and deep curiosity about what I'm missing.
Confidence in my abilities and in our abilities and in our disciplines and grit as a team.
(10:31):
Confidence in the wisdom of others who've gone before us and who were at my shoulder.
Confidence expressed in trust and reliance on the other team members on a really deep level.
And then curiosity about discovering what's next, about what's possible,
about how to improve and how far we can go.
So genuine, respectful curiosity is about discovering how things really are.
(10:58):
It's curiosity about what got us the win and about what's different now that we've won.
So here's number nine. Winning is contagious. People want to join winning teams.
Winning teams have an easier time attracting top talent who crave teamwork and winning.
Winning no one's got to be persuaded to join a winning team all right here's
(11:22):
our last one number 10 what's the difference between those who win and keep
on winning and those who don't,
winning teams have got winning leaders the challenge of leading a winning team
is vastly different than the challenge of leading a losing team you know i've
long felt that the one who is transformed the most when a team wins especially
(11:42):
with a second third or fourth win is the leader of the team.
Such a leader is the most confident and the most humble member of the team.
Many such leaders of winning teams that I've known and live in a near perpetual state of contact with.
Anyway, they live in, I don't know, it's like a constant weather system of joy
(12:06):
and awe at what their team has accomplished and of wonder at what is possible.
They work to be, as a leader, worthy of their team.
Wins create the weight of responsibility to accomplish it again and to accomplish
more, and that weight transforms the leader.
So in addition to those 10 characteristics of winning teams,
(12:28):
and perhaps most poignantly, winning teams celebrate.
They celebrate a lot. They celebrate with stories. They tell themselves great
stories about how profoundly things have changed and how they've been able to
shape and serve and build.
They tell stories about history and culture of their team.
(12:49):
And, you know, we've long known that we are formed by three powerful forces.
The stories we believe, that includes the stories we tell ourselves,
whether they're right or wrong.
And the habits and disciplines we practice.
And thirdly, the people with whom we deeply engage. In short,
(13:09):
the people we choose to trust.
Winning teams are deliberate about curating the stories that explain their success
and the habits and disciplines they employ and the people they rely on.
With these three powerful forces carefully and intentionally curated,
it's almost as though they can't help but win.
(13:34):
Do you have such a team? Do you want such a team? Well, you can have one.
You can lead one. Begin by putting yourself in a position where you have to win.
Your mission, your work, your project, your enterprise.
Is it worthy enough and important enough that you have to win?
Join forces with a small number of people who are compelled by winning and as
(13:57):
terrified by losing as you are.
Get to work. Sifting through your habits and disciplines and ruthlessly changing
the ones that impede and building up the ones that empower. power.
Hold one another to shockingly high standards of performance around those disciplines.
Enter the arena. Get to work. Focus on the win.
(14:18):
Celebrate everything that works and brush off what doesn't.
Run that race with endurance. You'll win. You'll win again and again and again.
Well, thanks for hanging with me. Hope you're having a great day.
Look forward to seeing you in the next one.
Music.
(14:44):
Thanks for joining me in today's School of Leadership.
I know your time is valuable and I appreciate the opportunity to spend a little bit of it with you.
If this podcast has been helpful, perhaps you could consider sharing it with a friend.
And maybe you want to check out the dozens of videos that we've created for
you on our YouTube channel. Just look for HILT Academy, H-I-L-T Academy.
(15:09):
And HILT stands for High Impact Leadership Training.
And if you want to check out our in-depth leadership management and supervisory
courses, head on over to HILTacademy at thinkific.com and see what we have to offer there.
Once again, thanks for taking a little bit of time and spending it with me.
(15:32):
Music.
Do you ever wonder with me why winning teams tend to keep on winning? Well, I have.
What's going on with those winners? Well, we've studied this question pretty
intensely over the years, as you may imagine, and we've learned a few things.
Music.
(00:41):
Let's do it. Hi, I'm Dee Hicks, and welcome to the School of Leadership,
leveraged lessons from high-impact leaders.
For the past 35 years, I've researched the disciplines, habits,
mental models, and assumptions of the most effective leaders in dozens of vocations.
This podcast takes what I've learned from over 2,000 of these remarkable people
(01:04):
and distills it into practical tools and tips that you can use to.
Music.
(01:26):
Well, I come from a very competitive family. We probably are the only family
in history to report injuries as a result of an intense game of Pictionary.
Well, we love each other, so
the injuries are usually just physical rather than deep emotional scars.
Anyway, winning is fun. I love winning. It's so much fun.
(01:50):
I'm not a fan of losing, but let's be honest. Winning at Pictionary is probably
different than the kind of winning that you need to accomplish,
right? Do you need to win?
Are you engaged in an endeavor that really must succeed?
The outcome is too important for you to lose? Well, that's a different kind of winning altogether.
(02:13):
Do you ever wonder with me why winning teams tend to keep on winning?
Well, I have. What's going on with those winners?
Well, we studied this question pretty intensely over the years, as you may imagine.
And we've learned a few things.
A little bit like that insurance commercial that's out on television right now.
(02:37):
We've learned a few things because we've seen a few things.
So we know that teams that get results, that win in their own way,
usually keep on winning.
And we found 10 reasons for this winner's win dynamic.
(02:58):
So buckle up. Let's find out what they are. There's 10 of them. They're kind of fast.
So lean in, get rid of the distractions, and see which ones relate to you and to your team. First.
When they get results, they are happier. It's just more fun,
and they become more courageous to achieve the next win.
(03:18):
Happy people learn more quickly. Happy people perceive mental and physical pain differently.
Happy people shrink and compartmentalize their errors, and they think of them
as outliers while generalizing their success.
Success happy people sometimes air
(03:41):
quotes scotty air quotes happy people
sometimes make mistakes and air quotes always do a good job that's how they
think about themselves winning teams are just plain happy second winning teams
stay engaged in their work longer they don't want want to go home. They don't want to quit.
(04:04):
The magic that happens right after a win is palpable, and they just don't want it to end.
They love the work. They love the win.
Third, winning teams get curious about what they can change to win again and
win in a more significant way next time.
(04:24):
The winner is more open to criticism than the loser.
A little too close to home there?
The winner's optimistic and wonders if slight changes can make the next move even more effective.
Is that you? Here's the fourth. Winning teams and individuals have a very different set of inner scripts.
(04:51):
Their inner narrator, to borrow
a phrase, is different. Their self-talk is different from those who lose.
Even if a winning team loses, because they do from time to time,
how they talk about it is different.
They're less likely to punish themselves for mistakes made on the way to achievement.
(05:11):
If you were to broadcast their inner thoughts and you would discover that they
are kinder to themselves than those who struggle and lose and lose and lose.
Their outer narrator, is equally helpful and encouraging with team members.
How they speak to their team members, even after they've made mistakes, is more kind.
(05:34):
Think of how you talk to yourself when you succeed compared to when you don't.
This inner narrator of yours, when you get good results as your friend,
when you do not get good results or you don't get the win, is your inner narrator your enemy?
Winning teams have different inner narrators. It's as though they're inner observers
(05:58):
rather than inner critics.
They don't have a condemning tone with themselves. Because you know,
if you have that with yourself all the time, if you're constantly beating yourself
up, it doesn't take long for that to leak out onto other people.
First strangers, and then eventually to those who are close to you.
Fifth, winning teams create networks of other winning teams.
(06:20):
Doors are thrown open to them that are not thrown open to losing teams.
Winning teams receive the invitations.
Losing teams don't. So make no mistake, winning teams create a cascade of small wins.
They deliberately work at getting results.
They talk about results. They keep score of results. They celebrate them no matter how small.
(06:43):
And by contrast, losing teams focus on the one big significant result that they're after.
And they rarely keep score of anything but the one final lagging measure.
They see themselves as losing more than winning.
(07:03):
Facetiously, it's almost as though they see themselves losing on the way to winning.
It's a long wait. Okay, here's the sixth one.
Winning teams are asked, how'd you do that? A lot.
They find themselves surrounded by people who want to know how they did it.
So they're forced to practice keen observation and evaluation of what worked.
(07:28):
And so they can explain it to themselves and then to others when asked.
Asked losing teams are rarely asked
how did you do that can you
imagine someone with the tone how did you lose so badly what happened tell us
about it so we can do it too it's not gonna happen that way if they are ever
(07:52):
asked how did they do that or even if they ask themselves some version of that,
like what the hell went wrong,
their natural focus is on, just as I said, what went wrong, on mistakes and on misses.
Enter good old target fixation. That is what we focus on, we hit.
Focus on mistakes, make more of them. Focus on the pothole you want to avoid
(08:16):
in the corner while riding your motorcycle,
inwardly saying, don't hit the pothole, don't hit the pothole,
don't hit the pothole, and bam, you hit the pothole. That's target fixation.
Winning teams immediately after the win, and for quite some time afterwards,
focus their attention on what went right.
(08:39):
This might be one of the most fundamental and basic differences between winning
groups, winning individuals, winning teams, and those who lose. What do you focus on?
Okay, your seventh. Winning teams realize
we won and they see themselves increasingly as a unit, a true team.
We replaces me in their thoughts and words.
(09:03):
Losing teams tend to focus on individual performance
or the individual's lack of performance
that kind of focus results in blame and
that separates people and cuts them out of the herd so to
speak number eight winning teams celebrate
the win by celebrating the
(09:24):
team not the individual individual plays so
to speak are never about the individual they're always
about the team such a focus is humbling
and it's liberating winning teams actually
become more humble with each win humility in my view is an amalgam of confidence
(09:44):
and curiosity humility is it's like epoxy glue and as you know epoxy is made
up of resin and a curing or a hardening agent separated Separated,
those two compounds are not very useful.
But combined, they form, in effect, a third compound.
That's the epoxy. So we've used epoxies for 75 years.
(10:06):
We've learned that the best combination of the two elements is a one-to-one ratio.
It's the most durable. So in my view, humility is like that.
It's a one-to-one ratio of confidence and deep curiosity about what I'm missing.
Confidence in my abilities and in our abilities and in our disciplines and grit as a team.
(10:31):
Confidence in the wisdom of others who've gone before us and who were at my shoulder.
Confidence expressed in trust and reliance on the other team members on a really deep level.
And then curiosity about discovering what's next, about what's possible,
about how to improve and how far we can go.
So genuine, respectful curiosity is about discovering how things really are.
(10:58):
It's curiosity about what got us the win and about what's different now that we've won.
So here's number nine. Winning is contagious. People want to join winning teams.
Winning teams have an easier time attracting top talent who crave teamwork and winning.
Winning no one's got to be persuaded to join a winning team all right here's
(11:22):
our last one number 10 what's the difference between those who win and keep
on winning and those who don't,
winning teams have got winning leaders the challenge of leading a winning team
is vastly different than the challenge of leading a losing team you know i've
long felt that the one who is transformed the most when a team wins especially
(11:42):
with a second third or fourth win is the leader of the team.
Such a leader is the most confident and the most humble member of the team.
Many such leaders of winning teams that I've known and live in a near perpetual state of contact with.
Anyway, they live in, I don't know, it's like a constant weather system of joy
(12:06):
and awe at what their team has accomplished and of wonder at what is possible.
They work to be, as a leader, worthy of their team.
Wins create the weight of responsibility to accomplish it again and to accomplish
more, and that weight transforms the leader.
So in addition to those 10 characteristics of winning teams,
(12:28):
and perhaps most poignantly, winning teams celebrate.
They celebrate a lot. They celebrate with stories. They tell themselves great
stories about how profoundly things have changed and how they've been able to
shape and serve and build.
They tell stories about history and culture of their team.
(12:49):
And, you know, we've long known that we are formed by three powerful forces.
The stories we believe, that includes the stories we tell ourselves,
whether they're right or wrong.
And the habits and disciplines we practice.
And thirdly, the people with whom we deeply engage. In short,
(13:09):
the people we choose to trust.
Winning teams are deliberate about curating the stories that explain their success
and the habits and disciplines they employ and the people they rely on.
With these three powerful forces carefully and intentionally curated,
it's almost as though they can't help but win.
(13:34):
Do you have such a team? Do you want such a team? Well, you can have one.
You can lead one. Begin by putting yourself in a position where you have to win.
Your mission, your work, your project, your enterprise.
Is it worthy enough and important enough that you have to win?
Join forces with a small number of people who are compelled by winning and as
(13:57):
terrified by losing as you are.
Get to work. Sifting through your habits and disciplines and ruthlessly changing
the ones that impede and building up the ones that empower. power.
Hold one another to shockingly high standards of performance around those disciplines.
Enter the arena. Get to work. Focus on the win.
(14:18):
Celebrate everything that works and brush off what doesn't.
Run that race with endurance. You'll win. You'll win again and again and again.
Well, thanks for hanging with me. Hope you're having a great day.
Look forward to seeing you in the next one.
Music.
(14:44):
Thanks for joining me in today's School of Leadership.
I know your time is valuable and I appreciate the opportunity to spend a little bit of it with you.
If this podcast has been helpful, perhaps you could consider sharing it with a friend.
And maybe you want to check out the dozens of videos that we've created for
you on our YouTube channel. Just look for HILT Academy, H-I-L-T Academy.
(15:09):
And HILT stands for High Impact Leadership Training.
And if you want to check out our in-depth leadership management and supervisory
courses, head on over to HILTacademy at thinkific.com and see what we have to offer there.
Once again, thanks for taking a little bit of time and spending it with me.
(15:32):
Music.
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