July 28, 2025 • 25 mins
It's natural to focus on the things you'll see on your performace appraisal or review. But if every leader on a team is able to adopt the priorities of their peers in their absence, overall team performance will rise.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Hacking Your Leadership.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm Chris and I'm Lorenzo.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
And Lorenzo on this episode, I want to go over
a question that I got from a listener on LinkedIn.
This person has taken over a team and they were
initially part of that team and got promoted to lead
that team, and they were kind of tasked with getting
the performance to be better on that team because their
(00:27):
boss where the overall organization as a whole, We're kind
of looking at the team's performance and saying this needs
to get better. From her standpoint as a member of
the team, she never thought there was a problem. And
when she would talk to the individual people on the
team as a newly promoted leader, she would watch the
people on the team and the work that they were doing,
(00:48):
and it would seem like on the surface, they were
doing everything right, that they were performing, that there was
not much to kind of tweak, but yet the numbers
of the out weren't where they needed to be from
a growth standpoint or an improvement over time standpoint, And
that seemed very confusing to her because she didn't realize,
(01:12):
how can people do things right all the time, but
yet the overall performance isn't great as a whole. And
so she started to dig in and realized that, well,
she was only watching these people perform when they were there. Obviously,
when they weren't there, she wasn't watching them. And she
started to look at what the results were for their
individual priorities when they weren't there, and they weren't good.
(01:37):
They were only good when they were there, and it
started to lead her to believe that, Okay, these people
on the team all do really well at their jobs,
but when they're not there, it goes out the window,
and whoever is there that thing has done really well.
So on a long enough timeline, it looks like, oh,
everybody's doing well, and when you look at one person,
they're doing well, but yet the results aren't great because
(02:00):
they're not being focused on unless that person's there. And
I thought, that's it's a great, great topic because we've
seen this before on leadership teams, where where you focus
on what you know is going to be on your
review and what's important to you and everything else kind
of takes a back seat. And if a person is
not there all the time, and then that takes the
(02:21):
back seat to everybody else that doesn't bode well for
long term outcomes. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
No, it's a great call out, and I think it's
so important. I think the what you're talking through in
the idea of alignment is really to me kind of
a real big pillar of culture and understanding, and like, like,
there is what we do, right, and we get asked
and as a leader you ask of people, and as
(02:45):
somebody who if you work for any organization or somebody else,
like you get asked to do things. So like, there
is what we do, and we can be really clear
about what we do. What Chris and I do is
we record a podcast and we share our thoughts on
the podcast and we talk about subjects at relevant to leadership. Okay, well,
how we do it as far as like how Chris
(03:06):
thinks about it, how I think about it, how we
process it, how I want to highlight certain things, how
he wants to provide maybe analogies or examples that are
helpful in like thinking about the same thing in a
different way. Like there's space to play there. And what
can end up happening is, Hey, the podcast got recorded,
(03:26):
we put it out there, we talked about leadership. We
have people that listen to it and subscribe to it great, Okay, Well,
have we ever taken the time to think about, well,
how long should that be? How should we go back
and forth? Is there a way that we can make
sure that the you know, the analogies or the stories
of the examples are timely and tight. Can we make
(03:49):
sure that we're not you know, we know what we
want to talk about, Well, we don't overscript it because
it needs to be authentic and real And a lot
of what we do in our podcast is talk while
processing because it's real conversation. So, like, there's a lot
of things that you can do when you start to
dig into how we do things, and then are we
(04:10):
both aligned right and how are we aligning these things
over time? So now we're building this culture of how
we do our show. It's the same thing with your
teams as far as like you're trying to create this
alignment to make sure that not only are you getting
the output that you want, but how it's happening. When
you have multiple people that have skin in the game
or have a responsibility, or you've told them what you
(04:32):
want them to do, how they're doing it, how they're
doing it collectively, how they do it together, how they're
learning from one another, how they're adjusting and making pivots
in the strategies, Like those things matter more because you're
then teaching them how to move together as a team
while having individual responsibilities, instead of teaching them to only
(04:53):
worry about their individual responsibilities with the belief that if
they all do that, the team will win. Now, that
could happen, and the team can win, but the team
could be better. And then what happens if you change
somebody from the team. Does that individual who's only really
good at that one thing? You know, when you bring
somebody else in, how are you going to make sure
that you're bringing that person up to speed. So I
think it's important topic, and I think the alignment piece
(05:16):
is critical in the larger picture of building great culture.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Right. Right, we talk all the time about making sure
that you don't give any employee a get ajail free
card because they're really good at their job. Right, the
idea is to make sure that everybody is good at
at least at least competent in doing the other jobs
on the team, so that if in the absence of
(05:39):
that one person, that discipline or that structure or whatever
that priority is doesn't go out the window. Right, if
you have to train somebody new and then all of
a sudden, that metric or that part of the scorecard
takes a big dive because the person who left was
the only one who knew how to do it well
(06:00):
is gone, then that's a problem. Right. So if you
if you look at uh, I think a good A
good analogy of this would be like if you take
like a like a clothing store, and you have one
person who is in charge of h jeens and one
person who's in charge of sweaters, right, and if you
if you look at the the revenue over over the
(06:20):
course of the quarter or the year, it looks like
everything's everything's great. But then if you if you dive
into what the revenue or the performances on each individual day,
and you see that, oh, the genes performed really well
on the days that the person in charge of jeans
was there because everything was merchandised well, everything was folded well,
the customers could find things easily. But then when they
(06:41):
weren't there, the place where the jeans were was destroyed
and and you know they weren't in the right place,
so there wasn't great revenue on that day for that
particular item, but the revenue was there in the other places. Uh,
And so you you think, okay, as a whole, it's
it's fine, But but what could it look like if
in the absence of that person on that day the
person in charge of genes, what would what would it
(07:03):
look like if the person in charge of sweaters at
least was was aware of the fact that the genes
still had to look good and be merchandised well. Uh,
and things that could be found by customers even in
that person's absence. Now that it might, it might not
rise to the level of that that person can literally
take over the job of that person in a moment's
notice and do everything that they do. But are are
(07:25):
they at least able to make sure that the results
are there in the times when that when that other
person isn't there, so that you know, so that at
the at the very least, it can maintain in their
absence at the at the at the you know, kind
of like the the actualization level, it actually doesn't change.
It actually stays performing well, uh, every day, not just
(07:49):
when that person is there. And and that is only
possible if there is discussion, not just with individuals about
what their goals are, but discussion with the entire team
about what each individual person's goals are and what the
responsibilities are of everybody in the absence of that person,
even if it's just for a day or a week,
or if they go on vacation, or if they depart
(08:11):
the team altogether and someone else someone else has to
come in. You can't just not do something because someone
is not there. There has to be at least like
a like if they are there and it's at an
A plus level. It can't drop to A to a
D level when they're not there. It has to be
at least at a B plus level all the time
in order to maintain that overtime. And if you can,
(08:32):
if you can teach your people to to take on
the mantle of whatever the team's responsibilities are, or to
look at the broader implications of what it looks like
when when everything is running smoothly, if you can, if
you can kind of convince people on your team that
their results of their individual metrics that they're responsible for
(08:54):
actually get better when everybody else's is in line too,
because of the experience and the and the journey that
it creates for whoever that client, to that customer is
when everything is running smoothly. The stability that that creates,
the feeling that the client of the customer gets when
(09:14):
everything is running smoothly and not just oh, I'm only
coming here for this thing. I shouldn't engage with this
organization and other things because they don't seem to be
doing this well. They only do this one thing well.
That is where the rubber meets the road in terms
of creating an experience for whoever your clients, your customers are.
And again, that's only possible if everybody kind of has
(09:34):
a peripheral vision view of everything else going on and
not just kind of this siloed you know, put the
blinders on, make sure that my thing is going well.
Everybody else, well, that's their responsibility, and I have confidence
that they'll do it. But that's great, but there's only
confidence that they'll do it when they're there. When they're
not there, if you're not doing it for them or
(09:55):
at least you know, ensuring that it's being done well,
then then it will only be good when that person's there.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah, it's a it's a great example, and I think
that it's what I appreciate about it is like it's
not nefarious. People aren't doing things like like out of
necessarily maybe ego or I'm better than or I you know,
I want to only care about what I have. Like
what we're talking about here is you have a team
(10:22):
that's functioning well. You have you have a team that's
that's doing a good job, and you're trying to get
them from maybe good to great or you're trying to
understand how can I how can I have this proactive alignment?
How can I pull people together? What should I be
saying or doing that allows us to continue to refine
what that alignment looks like. And how am I leveraging
(10:44):
the fact that people want to work well together as
a team and and and show them. So I think
that like for me, that educational moment of taking the
time to talk about it, to show the data, to
ask their opinion, to kind of like do you do
they see what you see when I put the data
up to your example, if I show you here's the
sales that we have by category, by day in the
(11:07):
trends that we've seen over the last week or the
last couple of weeks or whatever the case is, like
what do you all seeing this? You know what I mean?
And like helping to understand and then saying like, hey,
by the way, Chris, great job, like like you're in
charge of jeans. And then when you're here Mondays and
Wednesdays and Thursdays, like you're killing it right, like that's
exactly what I need you to do. And then hey,
(11:30):
great job, Lorenzo. You know you've got these shirts or whatever.
When you're here Tuesday, you know, Friday, Saturday, like you're
doing a phenomenal job. Like because both of what you
are doing is helping the overall elements of how we
measure things, is why we're doing so well. You're both
doing tremendous work. What do you think we could do?
Speaker 1 (11:48):
What?
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Like, what could be different about how we approach this
If in fact, you're doing so great with jeans, you're
doing so great with shirts, Like, how do we make
this happen where we can have a more total impact
on the customer? How can like, if you're doing that
much more in genes, what does one or two more
shirts in that time that you're there, What does that
get us in our overall goal? If vice versa? If
(12:09):
shirts to genes, but having that dialogue and I think
talking about that, that to me is the real active alignment.
That's the proactive alignment. That's getting people together and then
having them a part of the conversation, discussing it, sharing
with them the data, and helping them to see and
understand how these things play well and together.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
And that's a critical piece, right, And there has to
be a what's in it for me mindset of this, Like,
at the end of the day, you're not gonna convince
people to do things for the good of just others,
Like it'd be great if you could, but there has
to be an element of how this impacts my performance,
if other if somebody else's performance is well, And that's
(12:52):
only possible if you can kind of get people together
and talk about, hey, you know what if if when
I'm not here on these days, if Lorenzo is kind
of taking on the mantle of the things that I'm
supposed to do when I'm when I'm here, when I'm
not here, if he's doing it, then then how much
better is my performance going to be if someone else
is focusing on my things when I'm not there. And
(13:14):
the only way to convince them to do that is
to say, hey, when when you're not here, and I
am I'm gonna do the same thing for you. I'm
I'm gonna jump in and make sure that your things
are done also when you're not here, and you're gonna
do that for me. And if you if we just
focus on what we're supposed to focus on, then it
is only going to give us the outcomes we're looking
(13:34):
for on the days the times that that we're there.
And and to just say to one person, hand, I
need you to when when Lorenzo, when you're not here, Chris,
I need you to, you know, take up you do
all the sweaters when Lorenzo's not here. Well, wait a minute,
I'm in charge of jeans. I how how would you
expect me to make sure all my all the genes
are done. Well, if I'm now focusing on lorenzo sweaters,
(13:54):
it's like, well, just you know, what about the days
when you're not here and Lorenzo is here? What if
you could rely on him to do the same thing
for you when you're not here. Oh wait a minute, Okay,
so you're saying this is actually better for me if
if if I kind of think holistically as a team
and not just on my you know, individual outcomes or
my or you know, whatever the scorecard is that's you know,
(14:15):
on my review. There's there's an example that I've used
on on the podcast several times. I used to, you know,
work at in a retail organization where the first thing
I did when I got there was I looked at
who the leader was that day. Because if the leader
was the operations leader and they were in charge of
making sure that labor was in line, then I knew
(14:36):
that everyone's going to be sent home early because they
were trying to you know, keep labor in check. And
if the person in charge was uh it was uhcore
scorecarded on revenue, then I knew that no one's going
to be sent home early, and we're gonna be finding
other things to do around the store, uh to to
get things done because you want to make sure that
nobody's gone because if that customer comes in, we want
to make sure the revenue has the every chance possible
(14:57):
to to get lifted. And and if if the actions
from the leaders change based on who's there that day
and what the priorities are, you're gonna see a real
world change in how the employees act and interact with
each other, they will adopt the priorities of whatever leader
is there that day. And if you can get it
(15:18):
to a standpoint where where all the employees have the
same focuses and all the employees operate the same way
regardless of who is there, then it doesn't matter who's there. Like,
the priorities are the priorities, and they are all of them.
All the things are equally important. And the only way
to ensure that those things are still happening even the
(15:38):
absence of that one person is to make sure that
everybody believes that these are priorities all the time, not
just when that one person is there.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Absolutely, And with that it brings us to this episodes
one minute Hack. But first a few words from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
All right, this episode one hack has two components to it.
The first is about alignment and education and the second
is around execution. From alignment and educationation standpoint, it starts
with making sure that all of the people that you
that report to you, and all of the people that
you are peers with are are able to take on
the priorities of each other in the absence of each other,
(16:15):
and knowing what to do in order to make sure
that those outcomes are well and that you're not sacrificing
your own outcomes in order to hype up somebody else's
or to put somebody else's up. That that is something
that everybody can count on because they're not the only
ones doing it. Everybody's doing it, not just one person,
(16:35):
So no one ever feels like they are sacrificing their
own outcomes in order to help somebody else's outcomes. That's
that has to be shared amongst everybody, and that starts
with having discussions with people, not just individually but as
a team. And then when it comes to execution, it
matters the words that you say as a leader. And
if you're talking about priorities that have nothing to do
(16:56):
with you, if you're talking about if I'm in charge
of genes and I'm talking about sweaters, then the people
who are listening to me are getting the impression that, oh,
Chris isn't just the jeens guy, he's the store guy.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
The Lorenzo isn't just the sweaters guy, he's the store guy.
They're they're both looking at the overall outcomes, not just
what's important to them, and that has to happen over
a long enough period of time, the words from each
individual person and the way that you talk to your people,
that all needs to align all the time so that
your people get the impression that this isn't just you know,
(17:29):
you're not paying just paying it lip service, that the
expectations of them are the same regardless of who's there,
and over a long enough timeline, you will eliminate this
feeling that, oh, there. Each each person has different priorities,
and each person focuses on their own thing, So me
as a as a as an employee, I just have
to do what's important to that person. Instead now I'm
(17:52):
doing what's important to the store regardless of who's there.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Yeah, I think it's I think that element of alignment
and what we're talking talking through is like truly in
alignment around how we work together and how we understand
how There's always going to be spaces where the responsibilities
will be spread and where people will have different priorities
(18:16):
and where people will have responsibilities that are given to
them that are specific to the work that they have
to do. But I think in most all industries, in
most all places, outside of just things, where you are
just the only person that does this thing. But when
you are in a team based environment for any purpose
at all, we're being able to understand and work through
(18:38):
how you get your priorities done with the help of others,
but also in a space where you're helping them, Like
that's really what we're talking about here, is like the
importance of building that out in a team and making
sure that the team understands that this is about us
working together, and yes, we all have individual things that
(18:59):
we have to accomplish, but knowing that you're a part
of a bigger picture, knowing that your work cannot only
impact the things that you are directly responsible for, but
the things that other people are responsible for, and the
vice versa of working together to make that happen, I
think is a critical component to really building great teamwork culture.
(19:19):
And then as you continue to work in your leadership
or elevate your leadership or get into a leadership role,
you then realize the importance of having teams that function
that way. And then as you you know again, as
you elevate, you tend to have less and less direct
impact on the people doing the actual thing that needs
to happen, and you find yourself in spaces where you're
(19:40):
leading leaders who are leading leaders, and really, now this
is about getting people to really truly work together in
a space where they are even more directed around what
are the things that they are responsible for, but getting
them to work well together and support one another and
do it for the betterment of the larger strategy, for
the organization, or for the customer or the client or
(20:02):
whatever you have. That's just just a major element of
leadership in building of great culture, right for sure.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
And what you will find if you do this correctly is,
on a long enough timeline, your employees will will stop
believing that each individual leader has their own set of priorities,
and instead they will kind of stop even being able
to tell which leader is in charge of what thing.
They'll stop being able to think, oh, this is this
(20:28):
is the person who's in charge of jeans or sweaters,
or this is the person who's in charge of revenue
versus labor. But instead all these people are in alignment,
working together. And now my actions as an employee need
to align with with with those with the words coming
out of the of the leadership team's mouth. And when
when it's done correctly, the the the overall outcomes over
(20:52):
a long enough timeline, you'll start to see that it's
not just, oh, that the numbers are great overall, but
you'll be able to dig into each individual day or
week and see that there isn't these you know, ebbs
and flows of performance based on what person is there
or you know, who was who was kind of taking
up the mantle for that thing that day, because in
that person's absence, somebody else will. You can count on that.
(21:15):
And if you can count on that, then you'll start
to see individual leaders feeling a sense of personal responsibility
in helping their peers because it's being done for them
in their absence.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Absolutely, and with that it brings us to the end
of this episode. This is Hacking your Leadership. I'm Lorenzo
and I'm Chris, and come join us for a special
edition episode on Thursday. Have a great day.
Welcome to Hacking Your Leadership.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm Chris and I'm Lorenzo.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
And Lorenzo on this episode, I want to go over
a question that I got from a listener on LinkedIn.
This person has taken over a team and they were
initially part of that team and got promoted to lead
that team, and they were kind of tasked with getting
the performance to be better on that team because their
(00:27):
boss where the overall organization as a whole, We're kind
of looking at the team's performance and saying this needs
to get better. From her standpoint as a member of
the team, she never thought there was a problem. And
when she would talk to the individual people on the
team as a newly promoted leader, she would watch the
people on the team and the work that they were doing,
(00:48):
and it would seem like on the surface, they were
doing everything right, that they were performing, that there was
not much to kind of tweak, but yet the numbers
of the out weren't where they needed to be from
a growth standpoint or an improvement over time standpoint, And
that seemed very confusing to her because she didn't realize,
(01:12):
how can people do things right all the time, but
yet the overall performance isn't great as a whole. And
so she started to dig in and realized that, well,
she was only watching these people perform when they were there. Obviously,
when they weren't there, she wasn't watching them. And she
started to look at what the results were for their
individual priorities when they weren't there, and they weren't good.
(01:37):
They were only good when they were there, and it
started to lead her to believe that, Okay, these people
on the team all do really well at their jobs,
but when they're not there, it goes out the window,
and whoever is there that thing has done really well.
So on a long enough timeline, it looks like, oh,
everybody's doing well, and when you look at one person,
they're doing well, but yet the results aren't great because
(02:00):
they're not being focused on unless that person's there. And
I thought, that's it's a great, great topic because we've
seen this before on leadership teams, where where you focus
on what you know is going to be on your
review and what's important to you and everything else kind
of takes a back seat. And if a person is
not there all the time, and then that takes the
(02:21):
back seat to everybody else that doesn't bode well for
long term outcomes. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
No, it's a great call out, and I think it's
so important. I think the what you're talking through in
the idea of alignment is really to me kind of
a real big pillar of culture and understanding, and like, like,
there is what we do, right, and we get asked
and as a leader you ask of people, and as
(02:45):
somebody who if you work for any organization or somebody else,
like you get asked to do things. So like, there
is what we do, and we can be really clear
about what we do. What Chris and I do is
we record a podcast and we share our thoughts on
the podcast and we talk about subjects at relevant to leadership. Okay, well,
how we do it as far as like how Chris
(03:06):
thinks about it, how I think about it, how we
process it, how I want to highlight certain things, how
he wants to provide maybe analogies or examples that are
helpful in like thinking about the same thing in a
different way. Like there's space to play there. And what
can end up happening is, Hey, the podcast got recorded,
(03:26):
we put it out there, we talked about leadership. We
have people that listen to it and subscribe to it great, Okay, Well,
have we ever taken the time to think about, well,
how long should that be? How should we go back
and forth? Is there a way that we can make
sure that the you know, the analogies or the stories
of the examples are timely and tight. Can we make
(03:49):
sure that we're not you know, we know what we
want to talk about, Well, we don't overscript it because
it needs to be authentic and real And a lot
of what we do in our podcast is talk while
processing because it's real conversation. So, like, there's a lot
of things that you can do when you start to
dig into how we do things, and then are we
(04:10):
both aligned right and how are we aligning these things
over time? So now we're building this culture of how
we do our show. It's the same thing with your
teams as far as like you're trying to create this
alignment to make sure that not only are you getting
the output that you want, but how it's happening. When
you have multiple people that have skin in the game
or have a responsibility, or you've told them what you
(04:32):
want them to do, how they're doing it, how they're
doing it collectively, how they do it together, how they're
learning from one another, how they're adjusting and making pivots
in the strategies, Like those things matter more because you're
then teaching them how to move together as a team
while having individual responsibilities, instead of teaching them to only
(04:53):
worry about their individual responsibilities with the belief that if
they all do that, the team will win. Now, that
could happen, and the team can win, but the team
could be better. And then what happens if you change
somebody from the team. Does that individual who's only really
good at that one thing? You know, when you bring
somebody else in, how are you going to make sure
that you're bringing that person up to speed. So I
think it's important topic, and I think the alignment piece
(05:16):
is critical in the larger picture of building great culture.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Right. Right, we talk all the time about making sure
that you don't give any employee a get ajail free
card because they're really good at their job. Right, the
idea is to make sure that everybody is good at
at least at least competent in doing the other jobs
on the team, so that if in the absence of
(05:39):
that one person, that discipline or that structure or whatever
that priority is doesn't go out the window. Right, if
you have to train somebody new and then all of
a sudden, that metric or that part of the scorecard
takes a big dive because the person who left was
the only one who knew how to do it well
(06:00):
is gone, then that's a problem. Right. So if you
if you look at uh, I think a good A
good analogy of this would be like if you take
like a like a clothing store, and you have one
person who is in charge of h jeens and one
person who's in charge of sweaters, right, and if you
if you look at the the revenue over over the
(06:20):
course of the quarter or the year, it looks like
everything's everything's great. But then if you if you dive
into what the revenue or the performances on each individual day,
and you see that, oh, the genes performed really well
on the days that the person in charge of jeans
was there because everything was merchandised well, everything was folded well,
the customers could find things easily. But then when they
(06:41):
weren't there, the place where the jeans were was destroyed
and and you know they weren't in the right place,
so there wasn't great revenue on that day for that
particular item, but the revenue was there in the other places. Uh,
And so you you think, okay, as a whole, it's
it's fine, But but what could it look like if
in the absence of that person on that day the
person in charge of genes, what would what would it
(07:03):
look like if the person in charge of sweaters at
least was was aware of the fact that the genes
still had to look good and be merchandised well. Uh,
and things that could be found by customers even in
that person's absence. Now that it might, it might not
rise to the level of that that person can literally
take over the job of that person in a moment's
notice and do everything that they do. But are are
(07:25):
they at least able to make sure that the results
are there in the times when that when that other
person isn't there, so that you know, so that at
the at the very least, it can maintain in their
absence at the at the at the you know, kind
of like the the actualization level, it actually doesn't change.
It actually stays performing well, uh, every day, not just
(07:49):
when that person is there. And and that is only
possible if there is discussion, not just with individuals about
what their goals are, but discussion with the entire team
about what each individual person's goals are and what the
responsibilities are of everybody in the absence of that person,
even if it's just for a day or a week,
or if they go on vacation, or if they depart
(08:11):
the team altogether and someone else someone else has to
come in. You can't just not do something because someone
is not there. There has to be at least like
a like if they are there and it's at an
A plus level. It can't drop to A to a
D level when they're not there. It has to be
at least at a B plus level all the time
in order to maintain that overtime. And if you can,
(08:32):
if you can teach your people to to take on
the mantle of whatever the team's responsibilities are, or to
look at the broader implications of what it looks like
when when everything is running smoothly, if you can, if
you can kind of convince people on your team that
their results of their individual metrics that they're responsible for
(08:54):
actually get better when everybody else's is in line too,
because of the experience and the and the journey that
it creates for whoever that client, to that customer is
when everything is running smoothly. The stability that that creates,
the feeling that the client of the customer gets when
(09:14):
everything is running smoothly and not just oh, I'm only
coming here for this thing. I shouldn't engage with this
organization and other things because they don't seem to be
doing this well. They only do this one thing well.
That is where the rubber meets the road in terms
of creating an experience for whoever your clients, your customers are.
And again, that's only possible if everybody kind of has
(09:34):
a peripheral vision view of everything else going on and
not just kind of this siloed you know, put the
blinders on, make sure that my thing is going well.
Everybody else, well, that's their responsibility, and I have confidence
that they'll do it. But that's great, but there's only
confidence that they'll do it when they're there. When they're
not there, if you're not doing it for them or
(09:55):
at least you know, ensuring that it's being done well,
then then it will only be good when that person's there.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah, it's a it's a great example, and I think
that it's what I appreciate about it is like it's
not nefarious. People aren't doing things like like out of
necessarily maybe ego or I'm better than or I you know,
I want to only care about what I have. Like
what we're talking about here is you have a team
(10:22):
that's functioning well. You have you have a team that's
that's doing a good job, and you're trying to get
them from maybe good to great or you're trying to
understand how can I how can I have this proactive alignment?
How can I pull people together? What should I be
saying or doing that allows us to continue to refine
what that alignment looks like. And how am I leveraging
(10:44):
the fact that people want to work well together as
a team and and and show them. So I think
that like for me, that educational moment of taking the
time to talk about it, to show the data, to
ask their opinion, to kind of like do you do
they see what you see when I put the data
up to your example, if I show you here's the
sales that we have by category, by day in the
(11:07):
trends that we've seen over the last week or the
last couple of weeks or whatever the case is, like
what do you all seeing this? You know what I mean?
And like helping to understand and then saying like, hey,
by the way, Chris, great job, like like you're in
charge of jeans. And then when you're here Mondays and
Wednesdays and Thursdays, like you're killing it right, like that's
exactly what I need you to do. And then hey,
(11:30):
great job, Lorenzo. You know you've got these shirts or whatever.
When you're here Tuesday, you know, Friday, Saturday, like you're
doing a phenomenal job. Like because both of what you
are doing is helping the overall elements of how we
measure things, is why we're doing so well. You're both
doing tremendous work. What do you think we could do?
Speaker 1 (11:48):
What?
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Like, what could be different about how we approach this
If in fact, you're doing so great with jeans, you're
doing so great with shirts, Like, how do we make
this happen where we can have a more total impact
on the customer? How can like, if you're doing that
much more in genes, what does one or two more
shirts in that time that you're there, What does that
get us in our overall goal? If vice versa? If
(12:09):
shirts to genes, but having that dialogue and I think
talking about that, that to me is the real active alignment.
That's the proactive alignment. That's getting people together and then
having them a part of the conversation, discussing it, sharing
with them the data, and helping them to see and
understand how these things play well and together.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
And that's a critical piece, right, And there has to
be a what's in it for me mindset of this, Like,
at the end of the day, you're not gonna convince
people to do things for the good of just others,
Like it'd be great if you could, but there has
to be an element of how this impacts my performance,
if other if somebody else's performance is well, And that's
(12:52):
only possible if you can kind of get people together
and talk about, hey, you know what if if when
I'm not here on these days, if Lorenzo is kind
of taking on the mantle of the things that I'm
supposed to do when I'm when I'm here, when I'm
not here, if he's doing it, then then how much
better is my performance going to be if someone else
is focusing on my things when I'm not there. And
(13:14):
the only way to convince them to do that is
to say, hey, when when you're not here, and I
am I'm gonna do the same thing for you. I'm
I'm gonna jump in and make sure that your things
are done also when you're not here, and you're gonna
do that for me. And if you if we just
focus on what we're supposed to focus on, then it
is only going to give us the outcomes we're looking
(13:34):
for on the days the times that that we're there.
And and to just say to one person, hand, I
need you to when when Lorenzo, when you're not here, Chris,
I need you to, you know, take up you do
all the sweaters when Lorenzo's not here. Well, wait a minute,
I'm in charge of jeans. I how how would you
expect me to make sure all my all the genes
are done. Well, if I'm now focusing on lorenzo sweaters,
(13:54):
it's like, well, just you know, what about the days
when you're not here and Lorenzo is here? What if
you could rely on him to do the same thing
for you when you're not here. Oh wait a minute, Okay,
so you're saying this is actually better for me if
if if I kind of think holistically as a team
and not just on my you know, individual outcomes or
my or you know, whatever the scorecard is that's you know,
(14:15):
on my review. There's there's an example that I've used
on on the podcast several times. I used to, you know,
work at in a retail organization where the first thing
I did when I got there was I looked at
who the leader was that day. Because if the leader
was the operations leader and they were in charge of
making sure that labor was in line, then I knew
(14:36):
that everyone's going to be sent home early because they
were trying to you know, keep labor in check. And
if the person in charge was uh it was uhcore
scorecarded on revenue, then I knew that no one's going
to be sent home early, and we're gonna be finding
other things to do around the store, uh to to
get things done because you want to make sure that
nobody's gone because if that customer comes in, we want
to make sure the revenue has the every chance possible
(14:57):
to to get lifted. And and if if the actions
from the leaders change based on who's there that day
and what the priorities are, you're gonna see a real
world change in how the employees act and interact with
each other, they will adopt the priorities of whatever leader
is there that day. And if you can get it
(15:18):
to a standpoint where where all the employees have the
same focuses and all the employees operate the same way
regardless of who is there, then it doesn't matter who's there. Like,
the priorities are the priorities, and they are all of them.
All the things are equally important. And the only way
to ensure that those things are still happening even the
(15:38):
absence of that one person is to make sure that
everybody believes that these are priorities all the time, not
just when that one person is there.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Absolutely, And with that it brings us to this episodes
one minute Hack. But first a few words from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
All right, this episode one hack has two components to it.
The first is about alignment and education and the second
is around execution. From alignment and educationation standpoint, it starts
with making sure that all of the people that you
that report to you, and all of the people that
you are peers with are are able to take on
the priorities of each other in the absence of each other,
(16:15):
and knowing what to do in order to make sure
that those outcomes are well and that you're not sacrificing
your own outcomes in order to hype up somebody else's
or to put somebody else's up. That that is something
that everybody can count on because they're not the only
ones doing it. Everybody's doing it, not just one person,
(16:35):
So no one ever feels like they are sacrificing their
own outcomes in order to help somebody else's outcomes. That's
that has to be shared amongst everybody, and that starts
with having discussions with people, not just individually but as
a team. And then when it comes to execution, it
matters the words that you say as a leader. And
if you're talking about priorities that have nothing to do
(16:56):
with you, if you're talking about if I'm in charge
of genes and I'm talking about sweaters, then the people
who are listening to me are getting the impression that, oh,
Chris isn't just the jeens guy, he's the store guy.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
The Lorenzo isn't just the sweaters guy, he's the store guy.
They're they're both looking at the overall outcomes, not just
what's important to them, and that has to happen over
a long enough period of time, the words from each
individual person and the way that you talk to your people,
that all needs to align all the time so that
your people get the impression that this isn't just you know,
(17:29):
you're not paying just paying it lip service, that the
expectations of them are the same regardless of who's there,
and over a long enough timeline, you will eliminate this
feeling that, oh, there. Each each person has different priorities,
and each person focuses on their own thing, So me
as a as a as an employee, I just have
to do what's important to that person. Instead now I'm
(17:52):
doing what's important to the store regardless of who's there.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Yeah, I think it's I think that element of alignment
and what we're talking talking through is like truly in
alignment around how we work together and how we understand
how There's always going to be spaces where the responsibilities
will be spread and where people will have different priorities
(18:16):
and where people will have responsibilities that are given to
them that are specific to the work that they have
to do. But I think in most all industries, in
most all places, outside of just things, where you are
just the only person that does this thing. But when
you are in a team based environment for any purpose
at all, we're being able to understand and work through
(18:38):
how you get your priorities done with the help of others,
but also in a space where you're helping them, Like
that's really what we're talking about here, is like the
importance of building that out in a team and making
sure that the team understands that this is about us
working together, and yes, we all have individual things that
(18:59):
we have to accomplish, but knowing that you're a part
of a bigger picture, knowing that your work cannot only
impact the things that you are directly responsible for, but
the things that other people are responsible for, and the
vice versa of working together to make that happen, I
think is a critical component to really building great teamwork culture.
(19:19):
And then as you continue to work in your leadership
or elevate your leadership or get into a leadership role,
you then realize the importance of having teams that function
that way. And then as you you know again, as
you elevate, you tend to have less and less direct
impact on the people doing the actual thing that needs
to happen, and you find yourself in spaces where you're
(19:40):
leading leaders who are leading leaders, and really, now this
is about getting people to really truly work together in
a space where they are even more directed around what
are the things that they are responsible for, but getting
them to work well together and support one another and
do it for the betterment of the larger strategy, for
the organization, or for the customer or the client or
(20:02):
whatever you have. That's just just a major element of
leadership in building of great culture, right for sure.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
And what you will find if you do this correctly is,
on a long enough timeline, your employees will will stop
believing that each individual leader has their own set of priorities,
and instead they will kind of stop even being able
to tell which leader is in charge of what thing.
They'll stop being able to think, oh, this is this
(20:28):
is the person who's in charge of jeans or sweaters,
or this is the person who's in charge of revenue
versus labor. But instead all these people are in alignment,
working together. And now my actions as an employee need
to align with with with those with the words coming
out of the of the leadership team's mouth. And when
when it's done correctly, the the the overall outcomes over
(20:52):
a long enough timeline, you'll start to see that it's
not just, oh, that the numbers are great overall, but
you'll be able to dig into each individual day or
week and see that there isn't these you know, ebbs
and flows of performance based on what person is there
or you know, who was who was kind of taking
up the mantle for that thing that day, because in
that person's absence, somebody else will. You can count on that.
(21:15):
And if you can count on that, then you'll start
to see individual leaders feeling a sense of personal responsibility
in helping their peers because it's being done for them
in their absence.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Absolutely, and with that it brings us to the end
of this episode. This is Hacking your Leadership. I'm Lorenzo
and I'm Chris, and come join us for a special
edition episode on Thursday. Have a great day.
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