Shannon Waller's Team Success

Are you looking for new and better ways to attract great talent to your team? In this episode, Shannon shows you how to take the capabilities you already use with your clientele and apply them to attract phenomenal new team members. This is crucially important now, during the current “Great Resignation,” when employees have a lot of choice about whom to work with. Using the approach Shannon outlines, you’ll create a compelling opportunity for right-fit hires that really distinguishes you from others, who are still communicating in outmoded terms like “jobs” and “roles.”

It’s not that team members don’t want to do hard work—they do. But they want to do meaningful hard work. This is where AI can help—not as a buzzwordy technological magic wand, but simply as a teammate whose specialty is taking on the repetitive, time-consuming tasks that prevent people from making their best contribution and feeling fulfilled in their work. In this episode, Shannon talks to Evan Ryan, who loves “electrifying” companies by using AI to automate boring tasks. Evan explains the mindset that will make AI useful to you, provides real-world examples of companies that have used it to exponentially multiply their results, and shares some helpful AI applications you can get started with right now.

Do you bet on yourself? How can you know what’s the best bet for your capabilities, skills, and mindsets? In this episode, Shannon shares some great tools for getting to know yourself better, and some powerful questions to ask, so you can determine which opportunities offer the biggest payoffs for your unique qualities.

In July of 2021, Jayson Lowe drove away from his businesses and didn’t return for six weeks. As Dan Sullivan says, “You never know how good your team is until you leave.” By giving his team an opportunity to run things themselves, Jayson confirmed how very good they were. Not only did he enjoy irreplaceable time with his wife and children, on re-entry into his business, he was also able to refocus his role and activities in preparation for the next leap forward. In this conversation, Shannon uncovers exactly how Jayson prepared himself and his team for his first—but not his last—sabbatical, and why he feels it was so important to take it.

An entrepreneur’s job is to make things up and then make them real. But sometimes there can be a huge gap between your vision and the implementation of it. So how do you connect those dots? In this episode, Shannon Waller unpacks the difference between strategies and tactics, and shows you how to use two favorite Strategic Coach tools to transform the big ideas in your head into your team members’ daily activities, so everyone gets to succeed together.

How do team members grow in entrepreneurial organizations where there’s no obvious “ladder”? In this episode, Shannon talks to teamwork efficiency expert Nick Sonnenberg about his newest breakthrough, “Dynamic Role Optimization,” which gives entrepreneurs a system for divvying up and swapping activities within their businesses. He explains how you can apply this system, starting with just a simple spreadsheet, and outlines five work levels that show you whom to hire, how to keep them, and how to reward them. Teams using this system report being happier than they were six or 12 months ago because they’re doing more intellectually stimulating work that gives them more joy. Meanwhile, the team is producing better-quality work that’s better suited to their pay grade. Free download: The “Five Work Levels” document that Nick spent thousands of dollars developing for his company.

“I’m great, you’re not.” Sound familiar? Forty-eight percent of American institutions are founded on this principle, which encourages team members to focus on their own strengths (and others’ weaknesses) in order to get ahead. It’s individualistic, it’s hierarchical, and it’s completely counterproductive. But entrepreneurial organizations are different. Based on the idea that “we’re all great,” they give everyone the opportunity to contribute their strengths and talents and support those of others, creating exponential results in the process. In this episode of the Team Success podcast, Shannon Waller explores the difference between these two structures, known as hierarchies and triads, what they look like in practice, and how they’ll benefit you, your company, and your bottom line.

Labor shortages, burnt out employees, unprecedented turnover—we’ve all heard the news. The pandemic has changed a lot about the way people work and what they expect from their employers, and that means companies need to step up their game if they want to attract amazing team members … and keep the ones they’ve got. In this episode of the Team Success podcast, Shannon Waller interviews Charlie Bassett, CEO of luxury grocery chain Bassett’s Market, about his proven best practices for hiring new team members and celebrating current ones. Charlie shares the 10 hiring tips he recommends to every entrepreneur looking to bring in and keep amazing talent, plus how they helped him continue to grow his business through the uncertainty of the pandemic.

Do you often find yourself checking up on your team members to ensure things are on track—or worse, remembering to check up on them at 3 a.m., or in the shower, or while driving to work? It’s a common trap entrepreneurs fall into and a big waste of mental and emotional energy. It’s also completely avoidable. In this episode of the Team Success podcast, Shannon Waller walks us through two of the most draining entrepreneurial pitfalls—black holes and open files—and explains how these two issues undermine your energy (and your confidence in your team). Plus, she shares a simple solution for eliminating them both for good.

Have you ever wondered how to be a great “Who” in the spirit of WhoNotHow™? Many of us find it easier to recognize what we need help with than what we have to contribute, but learning how to best show up for others is a skill everyone can learn. In this episode of the Team Success podcast, Shannon Waller outlines what it looks like to shift your mindset from seeking status to celebrating collaboration, and all the ways this will benefit you, your team, and your company’s overall productivity. She also shares three questions you should be asking yourself before deciding to jump in on a project to ensure you’re not only being useful but having a good time along the way.