Episode 60 – Intentional Teambuilding: Are You Producing Winning Teams?

NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  It’s our chance to meet with you and discuss what really matters in the world of project management, whether you’re new to the field or have been doing it for decades.  We want to encourage you and challenge you, to cheer you on and help you avoid some of the pitfalls that can come along the way.  We talk to the experts, people who have gone before us, so we can benefit from their experiences and their successes. I’m your host, Nick Walker, and with me are the guys who make it all happen here, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates. ANDY CROWE:  Nick, it’s great to be here today, and I’m really excited about this ‘cast. NICK WALKER:  Okay.  Spoiler alert, it’s very possible that we’re going to laugh some today.  Our guest is Sean Glaze, an author, speaker, and teambuilding facilitator who is all about inspiring groups to have fun laughing together so they can have more success working together.  He’s the author of three books:  “The Unexpected Leader,” “Rapid Teamwork,” and “The 10 Commandments of Winning Teammates.” Sean has been a successful basketball coach, an educator for more than 20 years, and in that time has gained some valuable insights into how to develop winning teams.  He’s the founder of Great Results Teambuilding, which he uses to share those lessons all over the country, through entertaining speaking engagements and teambuilding events.  Sean, thanks for joining us here on Manage This. SEAN GLAZE:  Appreciate it, Nick.  Looking forward to being here and sharing some great information with your audience. NICK WALKER:  Sean, I’m always fascinated how skills developed in one area can transfer over into others.  For example, when did you realize that the lessons you’ve learned from years of coaching basketball could translate well to business leaders? SEAN GLAZE:  That is a tremendous question.  And honestly, it was probably about eight years into my coaching career when I realized I wasn’t as good a coach as I thought.  I had spent most of that first decade as a coach, like many project leaders, like many team leaders regardless of industry, focused on strategy.  And for basketball, that’s X’s and O’s, and that’s skill development and strategy.  And you realize after you go through a couple of seasons where you know you’ve not gotten as much out of your talent as you should have that there’s something missing.  And what I had neglected for nearly a decade was culture. And everybody has probably heard culture eats strategy for breakfast, but as a young coach I had never heard that.  But I certainly lived it.  And so the eye-opening mirror moment for me was recognizing, at the end of a really tough losing season, I’m going to have to change if I want my team to change.  And leading teams as a project manager, as a coach, you realize that strategy is what you want to do.  Culture determines how well your people are going to do it.  And so the relationships and connections that I then began to focus on made us far more successful in the future.  And I realized that what I had done with my team could hopefully help other leaders with their teams, regardless of athletics or business or others. ANDY CROWE:  You know, as I listen to this, Sean, I’m thinking, strategy you could change over a long weekend.  But culture is a slow turning ship a lot of times to turn that around.  And especially if you’ve got a toxic culture or a problematic culture, to reframe that in a positive way takes a lot of time and tremendous energy. SEAN GLAZE:  Absolutely.  And that’s something I think first as a leader you need to know what it is you want.  Because if I don’t have clarity about what I want my culture to be and what actually constitutes culture, I can’t deliver that or influence that on my team.  So a lot of my growth as a leader was me educating myself.  And hopefully those are some things that I’ll be able to share today so that your audience can move forward after the podcast to actually do a few things differently so you do impact that culture. BILL YATES:  Sean, when we were talking before, you said there were five dangerous words.  That relates to this area.  What were those words? SEAN GLAZE:  I think the five most dangerous words that any leader and any teammate could utter are “That’s just how I am.”  Because that becomes an excuse for poor behavior.  That becomes an excuse for poor culture.  That becomes an excuse for poor performance, versus me taking ownership of my opportunity to grow.  And that may not be comfortable, but I’ve got to be willing to be bad long enough to get better in that role. ANDY CROWE:  Fortunately, I’ve modified that to say “That’s just how I’m wired.”  So that makes it all okay; right?  That’s different.  We just totally transformed that.  Okay, maybe not.  Maybe that’s not so good. BILL YATES:  Sean, one of the things that I was looking forward to asking you:  Who had the greatest impact on you?  Maybe it was a coach or a mentor.  Who influenced you as a leader? SEAN GLAZE:  You know, that’s something that I’ve been asked before, Bill.  And I don’t know that there’s been one specific coach that was that guy for me, or that was that female coach that kind of was the example I wanted to emulate.  I think what a lot of leaders do, if they’re lucky, is they do have somebody that pours into them, becomes somebody that is an active mentor.  I would guess that, from my conversations with others, that most people, like me, are really a combination of what they’ve taken in terms of a buffet, meaning that I like what this person does, and I like what that person does in different areas. So there have been a number of really high-quality mentors where I’ve taken, not just X’s and O’s stuff, which is important, but a lot of the culture stuff, and how do they build relationships, and what are they focusing on that’s not going to just be important on the court, but off the court.  And that’s the same thing with leaders in whatever industry is my interactions with my people are going to be far more important than just on this project.  I want to make sure I’m building relationships.  And those are some of the mentoring, I guess, influences that have really impacted me and hopefully made my teams that much more successful. BILL YATES:  Yeah, that’s good, that’s good.  You know, you talked about chemistry and culture.  And one of the things, when you and I were talking before, one of the things that you said that I thought was very quotable and right on point was, and I’m quoting you, Sean:  “People are hired for their technical skill and fired for their attitudes and behaviors.” ANDY CROWE:  I love that. SEAN GLAZE:  Yeah. ANDY CROWE:  So how can we – I agree with that.  I think you have, you know, there is complete agreement in the room.  How can we as leaders influence that? SEAN GLAZE:  Well, as leaders, you became a leader because of your technical skill, because you actually had mastered one role and were elevated to a new role.  And so as leaders, part of your job is to learn a whole new set of skills as a leader.  So how do I lead people instead of just leading myself? ANDY CROWE:  Well, and you know, the Peter principle is famous for that.  It says you keep getting promoted until you reach your level of incompetence.  And so you get promoted to the point where you can no longer do the job.  But the advantage to that, and there is an advantage to that model, is that my boss can probably do my job better than I can, at least as well as I can.  He or she has mastered that level of technical proficiency.  And so there are some advantages to it. SEAN GLAZE:  You would hope.  And I think we’ve all experienced that leader who maybe couldn’t do our jobs. ANDY CROWE:  The pointy-haired boss in Dilbert, right, yeah. BILL YATES:  Yeah, yeah. SEAN GLAZE:  But you mentioned the Peter principle, and I really would take issue with some of that ideology because I think that certainly we are elevated to new roles because of our proficiency in previous roles.  But we become better if we choose to stay coachable. ANDY CROWE:  Right. SEAN GLAZE:  And I think that, as leaders, part of hopefully this podcast and part of your continuing growth as a team leader is your willingness to stay coachable and to continue to accrue new skills and new information so you can develop yourself and then be able to develop others. ANDY CROWE:  I’m more cynical than you are, Sean, but that’s okay.  That’s just how I am. BILL YATES:  How he’s wired. SEAN GLAZE:  That sounds familiar. ANDY CROWE:  But as I think through that, I bet everybody listening to this can, if they’re been in the workforce for any period of time, five years or so, you can close your eyes, you can picture one person who’s been promoted, they’ve done great, they’ve been promoted, they’ve done great, and then at some point... SEAN GLAZE:  Until. ANDY CROWE:  ...they give up, or they’re in over their head, or they don’t care anymore.  It’s hard to know what happens.  But they run out of gas at some level.  And the scary thing is sometimes that level is at a point where they can really do some danger; you know?  So you never know. SEAN GLAZE:  So, yeah.  And back to what Bill had mentioned, the quote “People are hired for technical skill and fired for interpersonal skills,” I think that absolutely plays into what you’re talking about, Andy, in that as leaders or as teammates, in any role in the organization, it’s not just what I’m good at in terms of technically, but what I’m good at in terms of relationships that develop our team success. ANDY CROWE:  It is an old saying that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.  It is absolutely true.  And somebody told me that early in my career,