How to Build a Strong Team Culture That Drives Success (Sean Glaze)

Welcome to the Creative Genius Podcast, Shawn. I just wanted to thank you again. came and spent a really wonderful session with our boardroom clients in September, and it was phenomenal. We really loved it. Everybody loved your session and walked away with lots of ah-hahs. So thank you for being here and being a part of it.

am absolutely thrilled to be back and to share with your audience and listeners. And hopefully I do make this a valuable experience for those who are joining us, whether it’s watching or listening.

Well, I have no doubt about that. So let’s just dive right in. And I want to talk about culture because this is a topic that I have lots of conversations with my clients about all the time. How important is that today to all businesses?

You know, and, as you know, and the people that were there at the amazing boardroom retreat that you guys put together, my background is as a basketball coach. so a lot of what I do now in working with organizations, whether it’s in, the industry where it’s, you know, kind of you design or whether it’s with medical or whether it’s with finance, ultimately teams or teams and people or people in the same issues we had in our locker room, people having with their teams.

And whether that’s hybrid, remote leadership and teams are still kind of based upon the same principles. And so culture is, what I completely neglected the first year that I had the opportunity to really be a leader. And I’d focused so much Gale on strategy. And obviously you need good people. You need to have talent. Talent’s essential, but it’s never sufficient. You got to have a good scheme. You got to have strategy. That’s what your people want to do. And what I learned that first year was that, you know, without culture,

to support your talent and your scheme. Ultimately, that talent and scheme gets sabotaged when you’re neglecting things that would have actually helped to support them. so culture, I’ll share, and obviously you’ve heard this once or twice before, culture is nothing more than the behaviors that are allowed and repeated in your organization, on your team. And it’s your job as a leader to realize there’s really five major areas of culture that you need to give attention to.

in order to make sure that you create an environment where those people and that strategy can really thrive and give yourself an opportunity to not just have success, but hopefully sustain success and the ability to scale as well.

Mm hmm. So the the five areas of culture, do you want to dive into that a little bit?

Yeah, I’ll go ahead and share that and that’ll maybe be the foundation of some of the rest of our conversation. I use the unbelievably simple and silly and cheesy acronym of great. If you want a great team, you need to focus upon the five vital areas of culture. The first is goals. You need to make sure that people understand why they’re there. You need to have that mission statement very, very clear of what it is you’re seeking to accomplish each day and where you’re going and who you’re serving.

The next is, you build relationships within your organization on your team? So you appreciate not just the people and the backgrounds and the personalities and the challenges and the desires of the people you’re working with, but do they feel that you actually have their best interest in mind that again, you’re always going to as a leader, you’re going to work harder than anybody else in your organization, but do they feel that you care about them and their path as well? so building relationships, what do you need to know about your people to get the best out of?

because not everybody’s gonna be the same, you’re not gonna treat everybody the same. The next is expectations. And I think that’s where, for the leaders that almost always do a pretty good job of identifying goals, and this is why we’re here, these are our metrics, this is what success is gonna look like. And then they will oftentimes, you know, at least give some attention or intentional time and resources to try and to build some connection and do some team building of some kind.

But oftentimes I see where a lot of leaders sometimes drop the ball is in that area of expectations. And do you really take time to clarify your values and the standards and the commitments that your team is going to operate under? And then after you establish those expectations, the A portion of that kind of great acronym is accountability, because it’s not a question of if, but when something happens that you need to address. And how do you do that effectively so that it’s not the defensiveness

or the kind of reactionary revolt that you don’t want that conversation to have when you are hopefully helping somebody to stay coachable. And then finally, do you take the time to really be intentional about thanking your people and making sure that they feel recognized for the effort that they’ve given. So those are kind of the five areas. And many leaders do a really good job with at least one or two or three.

But I found in the coaching conversations I’ve had and working even in conference settings that people come up, hey, I’m really good at X, Y, and Z, but I really needed to be reminded of blank because that’s an area that I’ve neglected. And I think that that sometimes is a key catalyst to seeing your team improve is realizing which of those five areas maybe hasn’t gotten the attention that it needs.

Well, there’s a good one here that I’d like to dive into a little bit deeper, which is accountability. And accountability is something that I hear a lot in the coaching that I do with clients, that they’re finding it hard to hold their people accountable and have them not just accountable for deadlines, but for accuracy and maybe their ability to provide great client service. So how do you get people to be accountable and how do you address the issue when they’re not?

I think that everything follows first the goal and then the relationship. And again, I used to make fun of the Tony the Tiger because you really need to focus on the grr before you get to the eight. Because if you haven’t really nailed home and really spent time and been intentional about clarifying goals and mission and roles and really being intentional about building those relationships where you establish trust and psychological safety across your team.

that those expectations and accountability conversations fall on deaf ears because you’ve not really taken the time to make people feel a part of something larger and more significant than themselves that they really feel valued as a contributor to. And so the idea of expectations, I think, is the next thing, obviously, in that kind of acronym where, yeah, you need to understand why this is important, how it serves our clients and our organization. But then.

If I as a leader, and again, a lot of times I go back to those basketball stories where I first picked up the idea of some of the leadership stuff. And if I’m holding a player accountable for doing something that, I wasn’t clear about the importance of it, or I wasn’t clear about how it needed to be done, and I didn’t do a great job teaching, then I was actually a really bad leader.

if I hadn’t done the job on the front end of clarifying the expectation and the urgency. And so a lot of times those conversations where I would, a really bad leader, I’d go in and I would, again, you start with the command and control, which is again, not a very good start to begin with. But I went from that to consequencing and complaining and criticizing, which just further exacerbated the bad relationship where those players wanted to kind of rebel.

And they really didn’t appreciate me as leader because I wasn’t leading in a very positive, productive way. And when I started to myself be more coachable, hey, how can I be a better leader to get those results that I want? My retention went up and my results went up when I went from the command to control and criticize and coerce to am I asking questions to really get a better sense of where they’re at? Because sometimes I would make assumptions. And I think that accountability really begins with empathy.

I think any accountability that your team shows is going to be because they care about someone or something that they want to make sure they live up to a standard and don’t let that person down, whether it’s a coworker or a client, it’s the empathy that they feel that drives that personal accountability. And so you want to build those relationships so that people don’t want to let each other down as team members. But you also want to make sure you build that expectation in terms of this is who we are. This is our reputation as a high end firm.

that we don’t ever want to let our clients down. We always want to over deliver and make sure that we’re delighting them because they’re getting more than they expected. And a lot of that comes back to clarifying those expectations and what needs to be done and how it needs to be done hopefully. And then the back end of that is them understanding when you do have that difficult conversation of, that’s not to our standard. That’s not going to be what we want to make sure that we allow.

because that becomes your culture, which you ultimately allow. Here’s how it needs to be done to make sure that we maintain this standard that we together set for ourselves in terms of those commitments that we’re gonna make about how we’re gonna go through. So Rin, I think that all accountability conversations start with the goals and relationships, but really it rests upon the idea of have you been clear with the expectations of the how and the why that makes it more meaningful?

Well, you brought up something I think is so important and I’ve learned that in my later years, is that you have to be the first one to take responsibility for the current results. And if the results are not what you want, then what is your part of that? What are you doing or not doing that is contributing to that lack of the result? And you have to look there because if you’re looking to blame your employees,

as a statement goes, fix the problem, not the blame. So if you want to get things done, then try to figure out what is it that is keeping this from happening? And is it me? Am I just not communicating well? Did I not hold people accountable? Like you said, did I not set expectations? Did I not say a set due dates and maybe what the outcome, what does good look like and what does finish look like? That some of those things, if you don’t.

talk about this with your team, then how in the world can you ever hold them to a standard?

And I think it’s not just as a team, but specifically on projects or when you’re delegating things to somebody to help them to grow. As you’re scaling, you want to make sure you take 10 members and turn them into leaders. And you do that by giving them responsibility, once they’ve shown that they desire and can live up to that responsibility. And I think that that goes back to, again, if I’m ever delegating, I need to be really clear about, like you said, what is the difference between good and great in terms of a finished product? And where am I going to in the future check in?

micromanaging, I want to trust you, but here are the places where I want to check in and make sure I’m providing the support you need and giving you some feedback to make sure that we end up with the same image at the end that we’re anticipating. And that was absolutely the key for me. My career as a speaker and trainer and coach began.

when I started to realize that that failure of my team was my failure as a leader. And it would have been very easy for me to have gone along and said, well, they’re not doing because they don’t care and they’re lazy and they’re this and they’re not. And ultimately, if it’s more than one or two people that aren’t doing something or they’re doing something that’s unproductive, it’s probably going to be the person who is their response before the culture. And again,

even when there is something, it may not necessarily always be your fault, but it’s absolutely as a leader, gonna always be your responsibility to address it. And one of the most powerful questions, and I know I shared this in the retreat as well, is if you’re a great leader, you’re gonna ask yourself questions. You’re gonna be introspective and reflect on. And one of the most powerful questions to ask you, what part of my leadership led to that?

what part of my leadership led to that response or that behavior by the person that I really believe is capable and smart and good and cares. So what is it that I can actually do so I’m better? And a lot of times that means I need to be more coachable and find a way that I can be better in my role. So I lift them up as well.

Well, those are really great tips and I love that question because again, as we just talked about how important it is for you as a leader to take responsibility for everything that comes out of your company, whether you like it or not, you’re responsible. starting there is a good idea. What are some of the biggest challenges that businesses are facing with building a strong culture today? And in this case, I’m probably referencing a little bit of the change in the mindset.

especially in the last few years after COVID, because things have changed quite a bit. And I think the structure and maybe the mindset of our employees has changed.

You know, it’s so interesting that you share it because I do, hear that a lot, Gail, and I’m not disagreeing because I do believe that a number of things have changed, the environment, the expectations sometimes, but I really believe in this. Again, I’m going to, you kind of look back at the basketball background for an analogy, but I think that ultimately winning in basketball comes down to who’s going to get the best shots, who’s going to do a better job of these very simple, fundamental things. And yeah, you can change.

the scheme and you’re going to play different ways. But ultimately, the same things that won games in the 70s or 80s or winning the games in the 2020s, because while talent has certainly increased and athleticism has increased, the idea of defending and I think that similarly, know, the the

taking care of the ball and getting the better shot, making sure that loudest the team that’s communicating the best is normally going to perform the best. I think those same things really translate over to team members and leaders. As much as things do change, I really believe that culture.

And that that desire that each of us have, each of the people that work with us have to want to be a small part of something larger than themselves, to want to feel like they’re doing meaningful work, to want to feel like they’re making progress and they’re making connections with people that they care about and care about them. I think those are things that have remained consistent. think sometimes it’s easy to get caught up by that shiny new object of what is new. And certainly there’s always going to be new technology and new shiny objects and distractions for us to, to,

kind of some, but I think that ultimately the things that made your business successful that you then share with people who now can use your coaching to make their businesses successful, I think those are going to remain consistent. There are things that are sometimes timeless in terms of leadership and teamwork. and regardless of some of the things that do change around us, I think that ultimately that idea of culture, you know,

The problem I think is sometimes we get distracted by what culture is. Culture isn’t foosball tables or snacks or time off. Culture is what are those behaviors that we allow and how does that make people feel because of those behaviors? And the more we can clean up those expectations and make sure we clarify the goals and we make people feel connected and we establish those expectations for values and standards and commitments. And we have those conversations where people feel like,

We’re actually on their side and helping them to be better so we as an organization can gather that much more respect. I think that’s what drives the results and retention that ultimately culture is responsible for.

Mm-hmm. What are some of the biggest mistakes that founders make in hiring and building a team?

Wow, I think that it is easy as a coach and as easy as a leader or as an owner to fall in love with technical skills and to neglect interpersonal skills. And I think when you’re having those interviews, giving your people a chance to spend some time with somebody as a team member and to get their perspective of how does this person fit in terms of their

character and their willingness to talk. There are so many other things that I think sometimes people are hired for technical skill and their specific talent or insight or expertise and they end up either being admired or fired because of the interpersonal skill that really

helps them to be successful with that technical skill. So as a leader, think oftentimes the onboarding process is something that maybe should sometimes take a little bit longer to make sure that that person’s a great fit in terms of the culture that you want. And I think that oftentimes, know, leave most often, you see this in all the research, people don’t leave an organization, they leave a bad leader. And I think that

Back to our question of what part of my leadership led to that, if we’re bringing somebody onto our team who’s not a great fit interpersonally, or who we’ve not done a great job of setting an expectation of, this is the culture here, this is how we go about things, this is what we find important, this is what we’re really gonna emphasize, and this is how we’re gonna work together. If we actually are really clear on the front end about what that’s gonna look like, oftentimes people will self-select and say, you know what, that’s not me.

But I think that it’s a hard conversation to have six months later of, you’re not a good fit because blank, if you’ve not been clear on the front end about what those expectations are going to be.

Mm-hmm. Well, yes, and absolutely we talk about that. It’s one of the very first things we do with people when they come to work with us is help them develop a culture statement for their company and identify the values of their culture.

and how they are going to evaluate people, whether they fit or don’t fit their culture. So it’s crucial in my opinion that we’ve got to have that top of mind every single day and your employees at some point must learn those words and not just learn those, but embody those words because embodiment of words is much more meaningful than just saying something.

I’m sure when you talk about values, and this is something I know I mentioned to you, that you are responsible for who you let into your locker room.

And you can sometimes fall in love with talent, but if it’s toxic talent, you’re sabotaging those that you’ve already helped to establish and tried to build trust with about what those standards are going to be. And if you allow somebody come in with what you think is going to be extraordinary talent that is not necessarily a great fit with the people around them, then you’re setting yourself back. And I think that that idea of value, values are basically worthless unless you attach them to specific behaviors. They’re going to be examples people can understand. And then hopefully emulate.

and be celebrated for. So yeah, I think that that idea of.

realizing the importance of, obviously a speaker in terms of leadership stuff, but I do a lot of team building. As a team building facilitator, a whole lot of the value of team building is not what you do with the talent, what’s in your locker room, but the first part of team building is who am I letting in, who is getting on our bus, who deserves to be here. And I think that being very selective on the front end is a really key part of making sure that your locker room stays a positive and productive place.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and when you don’t have everybody really with that same attitude about the culture and wanting to uphold it and make sure that it is being executed well by themselves and other people around them, I think it can cause…

really big risks in the company and unfortunately, where does the leader spend their time or the founder? I won’t say leader because if they’re letting it happen, maybe they’re not as good at leading. But if that founder allows that to happen and they end up spending all their time trying to fix the problems with the problem children, then what does that do to the relationship with the people that are really all about that culture and are producing at the highest level?

Yeah, I think so much of it again, talk about I’m sure this is something that you do as well in your coaching is, you know, before that person gets admitted.

to your locker room becomes part of your team is part of that onboarding, not just talking with you, but having a chance to spend some time with others that they’re going to be responsible for interacting with and others depending on. So you then ask those people that you really believe in and feel that you exhibit those values. Hey, is this somebody that fits with us? Is this somebody that you would enjoy working with? Is this you? Does this person align with what we actually believe? And I think that that’s a huge part of hopefully getting some

clarity and the other perspective because we don’t always see the same things or notice the same things and the more willing you are as a leader to get the input from others and for them to feel that they actually are trusted with some of that perspective is valuable as well.

Well, here’s another one. We have a lot of females in our group and as you know, you saw the makeup of our audience is probably 85 % female. And they do have a tendency to try to please people. And what I have seen happen many, many times is that it backfires because they’re over giving to the team because they feel like if I give them extra days off, if I give them special perks, if I give them gifts, if I give them…

bonuses and raises and do all these things, they’re going to love me and they’re going to stay here forever and they’re going to do a great job. And unfortunately, sometimes I see the opposite thing happen. What do you see?

As a young coach and again, as a guy, I’m being very presumptive and speaking to the unbelievably successful women that you work with. But somebody shared something with me that I think is a pretty well-known adage, but it certainly was meaningful to me is if you’re going to be a head coach, if you’re going to be a leader, if you’re going to be a business owner.

you need to get past the idea of being liked and really focus on being respected. And I think sometimes we fight so hard to make sure that we get the approval or the like that sometimes we end up sabotaging the things that would have earned us the long-term respect and admiration for sometimes making the difficult decision based upon those values. And I think that if your decisions and your behaviors and your conversations are rooted in, here’s our mission.

and here’s our values and everything we do has got to come back to those. So I don’t get distracted by the emotion of a moment. So I don’t get distracted by what would be easy to not have the conversation. If I’m really true to that mission and values that we’ve identified and emphasized is important in terms of the backbone of our organization, then a lot of the conversations we have are easier to have because it’s not me. It’s me looking at, hey, this is not a fit. This is not working. This is you an issue because

of it’s not serving the values or it’s not serving the mission that is larger than any one person. And I think that to your point, absolutely there was a little bit of a difference between coaching guys and coaching, coaching gals. And it wasn’t emotions versus ego. Cause I can guarantee you, and you’ve certainly seen this, know, guys have emotions and women absolutely have egos. The issue that I saw is, is when I was in the locker room at halftime,

And we had given up seven or eight offensive rebounds and given away, you know, eight or 10 points because we hadn’t done a good job blocking out. If I’m talking with a team of young ladies or female athletes and I said, we got to start blocking out better. Each one of them has beat themselves up and they’re taking it personally because they’re that much more kind of self-critical. Whereas the guys almost to a man, you could kind of say that you could see them almost think to themselves, will that

blank or beside me better start blocking out even if they were the one who was the culprit. And I think that oftentimes, you that idea of what makes for the circumstance that you describe kind of a challenge is also a strength. think oftentimes what we sometimes see as a weakness can absolutely be a strength. think women are exceptional leaders because they are cooperative, because they

want to make sure they’re emphasizing creativity because they are compassionate, because they do consider others and their perspectives. Whereas the stereotypical male leader is going to maybe be confident without as much reason to be confident. think that idea of confidence and being a little bit more focused upon consequences is something that guys are quicker to lean on.

you know, to speak to that stereotype, at least, I think that the idea of women, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be compassionate and caring and cooperative as long as you establish, as you said, those boundaries that don’t end up sabotaging the team’s mandate. And my job as a leader is to make sure I’m protecting our values and protecting our mission. And again, if you,

The only way you’re gonna lose your best people is if you don’t address the worst behaviors in your people. And I think that it’s our job to make sure that again, we’re staying true to those promises we make in terms of values and mission and taking care of our people rather than allowing one person to end up being somebody that makes others question our.

Mm-hmm. Well, and it’s so easy to get tied up with how we feel about things and we are feeling people and the guys are feeling people as well. And as one of the builder I used to work with said, you know, guys have feelers too, you know. And I had to chuckle about it because I was also direct in my communication because

I felt like direct was honest or fair and it was at least there was clarity about what needed to be done. But there’s also a way to soft pedal it without being harsh. here’s another question for you. How do we maintain a friendly workplace and maintain boundaries at the same time? instead of getting too friendly with our team members, this can lead to having a hard time doing those tough conversations.

What do do about that?

I think it’s great for your team to have friends on your staff. think people want to have friends and have those connections and have that appreciation and understanding and caring for each other. But I absolutely believe that especially as a leader or an owner, transparency is going to create trust, transparency about communicating here’s the platform or the process or the change or the purpose. think that that transparency is important, but your team doesn’t need to know about the relationship.

issues that you’re having because that again begins to blur that professional line in terms of the boundaries that you want to maintain. And so yeah, I think that absolutely in terms of a leader.

your jobs to be as friendly as you can and as caring as you can and to make sure that you are inquiring about and being considerate of others challenges and circumstances and let them know that you care enough to inquire or stay curious about. But there are also things that as a leader probably need to be not part of those conversations in a professional atmosphere.

If someone is scaling their business, how do they find the best hires that fit the culture?

That’s the million dollar question, right? Is how do we actually bring in great people that fit our culture? And obviously that’s going to start with skills because there are going to be times that you need to bring somebody on that has a specific skill set. But I don’t think that skills are the end of or even nearly half of that consideration. I think that skills are important, but that’s just the, it’s kind of like the ante at the poker table. That’s the, the, the, the

price you pay to get into the door to have that interview is, do they have the necessary skills? I think the other areas are what are those values alignments in terms of their values and our values as an organization? And I think sometimes, and this is something that I had to learn as a young leader that was something that I was very much unconsciously doing is I think we sometimes have a tendency to want to hire people who are like us in some way.

And I think one of the best things that you can do as a leader is to sometimes be intentional about if their values match and their skills are going to be complementary and the resources that we need, how can I actually be intentional about hiring somebody who is going to bring a different perspective or some type of diversity that’s going to allow us to scale because we can then understand and deal with different clients a little bit more effectively.

Well, let’s get into the area of engagement because I think that engaging our employees once they’re on board is important. And how do we do that and build that great workplace?

What?

You see this today in college basketball, right? It’s the idea of the NIL and people will transfer from one year to the next and you don’t want your people to leave. And I think the most important recruiting that you do as a leader is to make sure that you keep the people in your locker room that you don’t want to lose. know, and I’m sure you, your coaching conversation, you, who are the people on your team that you absolutely would be, you know, horrified to lose. How do you have those stay conversations? Hey, why is it that you’re here? What is it that you want to get out of?

How do you make sure that they feel appreciated and that they see? Because I do think that there are, and one of my blog articles from a few months ago is, what are those loyalty anchors that keep good people on your team? And pay is one thing that obviously, I think that pay is a motivator up to a point. Once you reach a certain point, pay isn’t that determining factor of why people stay. So once you meet a baseline of what’s necessary, what they feel is fair,

I think that pay is off the table. It’s the other five that really equate to those five areas of culture. What is that purpose that they’re serving where they feel like they’re doing something that’s meaningful and has an impact that they care about? Who are the people that they care about where they have a connection with and feel cared for on the team? They build those new bonds and connections and relationships at the workplace with team members. The idea of what is the progress they feel they’re making. I think oftentimes even younger employees and team members, what can you

do to help them to gain new skills or to experience new things or to delegate opportunities so they feel that they’re making progress and building their own resume in some capacity? they feel like they’re feeling getting praised for the effort that they’re giving or are they kind of being ignored and neglected in terms of, know, I’ve really poured myself into this. I’m really proud of it, but nobody mentioned anything. So maybe they’re not really appreciating me. Maybe somebody else is going to appreciate me more. I think those ideas are important.

kind of area of opportunity is in parameters. And I think that’s one of the things that you mentioned, kind of the changing landscape. Where those parameters of how your people work, is it, I’ve got to be at the office nine hours a day, five days a week, or is it something where you can create a hybrid schedule where we’re going to be synchronous and we’re all going to show up on Tuesday and Wednesday, but then there are projects that you can take care of where we’re going to trust you to do these things and we’re just going to meet and, you

What is that going to look like so that you do give people maybe a little bit more of that work-life balance that I know number of people are seeking in some capacity?

Right, and I think it’s so interesting because some of the people I’ve talked to have said, well, I really want them all in the office. And what they’re really saying is I don’t trust them to work from home and to be productive. And that’s true of some people. Some people are just not geared for working from home and they might just get distracted and do laundry and take care of the kids and play with the kids in the backyard. a lot of people, you can tell pretty quickly whether they’re performing or not.

And so it’s really important to trust your employees and trust that they will do the work that you are requiring of them because you’re setting the expectations, the deadlines, and the quality of work standards. And if they understand that, then having that flexibility is a huge benefit to the team members. So just remember that just having them in the office isn’t the solution to making sure the job gets done.

And there are certainly people who can be in the office and put their feet up and be surfing the internet, right? So I think that idea of proximity isn’t always something that is productive, but can you as a leader be that much more intentional about clarifying those expectations of what those metrics are that people need to meet in order to be meeting a certain level of performance or productivity for that role that they’ve actually been filling?

What kind of communication and training would you recommend for teams that are feeling challenged with employees that aren’t fitting the culture?

Wow,

That is a terrific question. What type of training? I think that first is for ourselves as leaders or owners, and then ultimately for our team members, they don’t get better because they’re there longer. It’s not experience that gives people a greater capacity to lead or to be better teammates. It’s awareness. And so when you’re bringing somebody in to do a training of some kind or to grow your people, ultimately the outcome is you want to make sure that

you first and that’s your team member second, have an increased awareness of how what their attitude and their actions have an impact on the quality of client work or the interactions that you’re having within. And maybe some of that awareness is with personality styles and how to appreciate and understand some of those differences and what those tendencies might be. I think the idea of understanding how to have productive conversations, because there’s going to be disagreement and conflict. think disagreement is something that

you can absolutely endure. I may believe the Falcons are better than the Broncos. We can disagree and have some fun with that. But when they’re coming.

I about that, I disagree.

But when we get to that point in our conversation where you want to actually purchase X platform and I want to continue with what we were doing because I think it’s good enough and we have that conflict where there really needs to be a determination made. How do you have those conversations productively where people feel comfortable in disagreeing in a healthy way and sharing their perspective instead of biting their tongue and then presenting the fact that they weren’t actually you talked to or gotten you.

their perspective. so, yeah, I think that ultimately that idea of growing an awareness.

is the purpose of training so that you have different behaviors and different beliefs moving forward afterwards or different understanding and appreciation. And some of those can be the interpersonal skills, obviously, that sometimes become barriers. And all of that is also going to be training on specific things that are going to help them do their job better. They’re going to be a little bit more focused upon those specific skills or platforms that you’re going to work with.

Okay. Well, and we do, all of us have experienced running a business that occasionally we have a toxic person and sometimes we have underperforming team members. What happens when we keep those people on the team?

Not many good things. again, I think that goes back to your earlier conversation, Gail. And you know, think the worst thing we can do as leaders is to ignore or tolerate poor behavior because ultimately the best people in our team are always noticing what we address and what we don’t. As a coach and as a leader, the absolute best thing you can create in your organization is a player led team instead of a coach led team.

because I, and to go a little bit further with culture, leadership is what happens when I’m in the room. Culture is what happens when I’m gone. And that’s the behaviors that people display when I’m not there to call them out on. So if you can build a team of people who are living up to those standards and commitments and values without you having to be there to be the reminder or to kind of be the policeman or guardrails for that, that’s absolutely exceptional. That ultimately is the ideal is how do you build people in the organization that take your place?

I think the best leaders and the best coaches and the best parents are the ones that make themselves unnecessary but desired.

Well, and I think it’s so important for us to understand that we can all get better. We can be better leaders. We can be better.

owners, can be better friends, and we can do everything better. We also want to teach our team members to be better, and we want them to become leaders in the business. But a lot of us got into the role of running a business, and it was maybe unintentional that we ended up having a big team or a modestly small team, whatever the team is, other people reporting to us. But we were not necessarily trained to be leaders. So how do we learn that?

Well, that’s the beauty of what you do with the coaching that you provide, obviously. But I think that, you know, there is such a huge difference between being a designer and being a leader, between being an engineer and being a leader, between being a dentist and being a leader. And I think that ultimately that idea of moving from a technical skill to the leadership skills that are required, it’s a completely different kind of college curriculum you’re going through in order to learn what is

mean for me to grow a team and to establish a culture where they can thrive because ultimately my success once I begin to lead is not, you know, I don’t when I was coaching, I don’t score any points. I don’t get any rebounds. I don’t defend anybody and they wouldn’t have wanted me to.

But as a coach, my success came as a result of how well could I get my people to appreciate and do those things consistently with the discipline that we had agreed upon. And I think it’s the same way in any industry that the quality of your team’s results is based upon how well you can get them to understand the importance of doing those things that are going to lead to the success that you understand that you want to kind of grow them into.

And when it comes to where you kind of opened up that idea of having those conversations with people who maybe are doing things that aren’t productive or aren’t doing the things that would be productive, I think the willingness to have those conversations and to make it a conversation where people feel that you’re on their side.

I was very combative as a young coach because I did not trust that they wanted to be as good as I wanted them to be. And so again, it went back to that command and control and then your coerce and your consequence. And that was nowhere near as effective as what eventually you’ll learn to help people be more coachable. You’ve got to be more curious and compassionate. And it’s by asking questions and helping them to understand before or because you then understand if I was more coachable.

If I was more curious, if I was a little bit more willing to try and understand their perspective and then to ask them questions that help them to see the impact of some of the things that maybe their beliefs weren’t serving, I think that’s where you saw the change. And for people to be more coachable, you need to identify where they want to be and what they want to accomplish. You need to identify what is that kind of current number or level of performance. And it’s the gap in between that creates that

where you can begin to say, okay, well, what’s missing and how can we fill that with a skill or an understanding so that you can actually get to that place that you want to be. And my job is to support and encourage you through that because ultimately you that idea of your performance is going to be based upon how well I do in providing you the motivation and support to equip you to do what I’ll need you to do without me being there.

That’s great. Well, I have to ask you a few personal questions too. So tell me about maybe something that you haven’t accomplished yet that you would like to accomplish.

What I haven’t accomplished yet, that is, I think that to your point,

I very much want to stay coachable and I want to make sure that I am committed to growing and learning instead of being complacent. And so whether it was in my teaching career or my coaching career, now as a speaker and facilitator and coaching leaders, what is that kind of next mountain that I’d like to climb? And that again goes along with staying coachable, the last book. that leads, guess, to the next thing is I want to be better for the leaders that I serve.

in helping to simplify and clarify and helping them to implement those things, much like you’re doing honestly, is how can I be that much more helpful and how do I end up finding those things that are a useful and meaningful framework that people can apply so that they don’t step in the same potholes that I did when I was a young leader.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned so far?

I know these are hard questions.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is probably what got me on the path to working with culture and to be a better leader specifically is that time when I realized my team was failing because I was failing them as a leader. And the biggest lesson I learned was it was my ego that was the huge brick wall in my way and that pride of not wanting to acknowledge that maybe I wasn’t as good as I needed to be, that I wasn’t paying attention to the things that were X’s and O’s and

basketball are nice and important, but it’s going to be talent and culture that are far more important than the strategy that you’re trying to implement. And I think it’s that way in a lot of industries where, you if you’ve got good people and you build an organizational environment where they can thrive, you can sometimes be less successful or less specific with that strategy. They’re still going to find a way to succeed. And I think that ideally,

I would have earlier understood the negative impact of ego and I kind of share that as an acronym itself now is ego is something that

eliminates growth opportunities. so once I was willing to kind of put aside my ego and be humble enough to ask for help, that’s when my team started doing better. And I think that that’s why people come to you and to me as coaches is they realize that if I keep doing what I’ve done, I’m going to be limited by my knowledge and understanding and experience and how I can actually grow beyond that. I need to reach out to somebody who’s walked that path before.

Okay, and then the last personal question and then we’ll do a little wrap-up. So what is your favorite treat?

Well, it just came off of Halloween and my kids would tell you they’re of course out of the house now, but we still at Publix grocery store bought a bag of my sneaky treat as dad used to have the Halloween dad tax. And I would steal all the little mini baby Ruth’s out of my kids candy because that’s my favorite candy. So if you were to come over and offer a candy bar, it would certainly be the little kind of fun size baby Ruth and probably you a little bit of chocolate would never

be a bad thing.

Well, I would be the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup girl, so that was always my favorite. Okay, well now I’m going to ask you to wrap up with three takeaways that you’d like to share with our listeners today. You’ve shared a lot of incredible things today.

three takeaways, if you’re looking back at some of what we’ve shared. Again, I’m so grateful for you to have me on. know that I’ve rambled on a little bit and hopefully some of it has been hiding a nugget or two that people can implement and apply to their teams. I think that ultimately culture is always a symptom of leadership.

And culture will either support or sabotage the strategy that right now you think is important. And again, everybody has a strategy. Culture is going to determine how well your people implement that. And it’s those five areas of culture that are going to determine how healthy your team is and how willing they are to collaborate and share information based upon your intention as a leader to focus upon those five areas of culture. So I think the first is that leadership is responsible for culture.

There’s five areas of culture that you can be intentional about focusing on. And that ultimately, you’re going to grow as a leader when you continue to invest in coaching and training, which is going to grow you so that you can grow your team. And that’s why you do such a fantastic job, Gail.

Oh, you’re sweet. Well, it’s been so much fun having you on. And again, it was such a delight having you at our retreat. It was so much fun. We could have had you for all three days, but it is always so helpful, especially in times like this, it would have been a little bit on the challenging side to have some strategies to break through whatever those issues are that are roadblocking you. So I thank you so much for your wisdom today.

Well, thank you for having the podcast and for having the retreats and the community that you’ve built. think that oftentimes as leaders, it’s just having the support and the reminders and the encouragements to do what we kind of know is going to be right, but isn’t always easy to do. And to have somebody that’s kind of giving you permission to make the decision and to have the conversation that you know is important is one of the key kind of values that you probably provide the people that absolutely benefit from your guidance.

So thank you so much for having me and if I can ever be a resource for you or certainly for your listeners I would be absolutely thrilled to have that opportunity to serve them as well.

Well, and in the show notes, we’ll put the titles of your book. And why don’t you share the one that you would like to share today?

Yeah, well, rapid teamwork is the one that goes over the five areas of culture. I have Staying Coachable, which is my most recent book about helping people to thrive in change. And you kind of focus on relentless improvement. And they can find all those on my website at Great Results Team Building. And I’m at Sean Glaze on LinkedIn.

Awesome. Thank you so much.

Absolutely my pleasure, really enjoyed the time with you, Gale.