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Resources
- The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
- Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
- Smarter, Faster, Better by Charles Duhigg
- Turn the Ship Around by Captain Marquet
- It’s Your Ship by Captain D. Michael Abrashoff
Transcript
Hey friend, as a leader, sometimes we have a team that doesn’t perform. They don’t get the results we want.
Some leaders, when that happens, they think to themselves, if I just had a better team, then I would be getting better results. It’s not me, it’s just that I’m with a bad team.
So they end up blaming the team, and even maybe even blaming other things and making excuses, when in reality, it’s not the team, it’s the leader
As the leader, you were ultimately responsible for your team. And the thing is, example after example has shown that you can have the same team, one underperforming a lot, and you change the leader, and suddenly they become highly performing. The only difference is the leader.
No bad teams, only bad leaders
So it’s not the team, it’s the leader. Let me give you some examples. Jocko Willink and Leaf Babin in their book Extreme Ownership have a chapter entitled “No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders.”
And in that they tell the story about Navy SEAL training and their drill or practices they have with boats. They have different teams, each boat with a leader, and they do different drills on the boats.
One team kept getting first place. They kept winning over and over. And another team kept getting last place or close to last place. They weren’t doing well.
The instructors decided to do something. They switched the leaders in the top boat and the lowest boats. When they started doing more drills, the team that had been doing the worst started winning. The team that had been doing well, they actually kept doing well because they had been working as a team well with the other good leader.
It wasn’t the team that made the difference. It was the leader.
Jack Colley and the Castle Rock Police Department
Simon Sinek in his book, The Infinite Game talks about when Jack Colley became the police chief of the Castle Rock Police Department. Before he came, it had, well, what was it, kind of a typical culture in many police departments and in many businesses, people felt undervalued, ignored, unheard, and there’s a pressure to make the numbers above all else.
But he turned that around. He built a culture of trust. He listened to people. He actually had listening sessions. He changed the culture of the mentality of numbers first to serving one another and taking care of one another and serving the community. That became the priority.
And through his leadership, he turned that department around.
Toyota’s first US factory
Charles Duhigg in his book Smarter Faster Better discusses the GM auto plant that was in Fremont, California. It had closed down in the early 80s.
It was considered the worst auto factory in the world. People were doing drugs while at work they were drinking and all sorts of things. People would mess with the car so that after someone bought them, they would kind of rattle over time or whatever it may be.
And the thing is GM then what they cared about was the line not stopping. The line had to continue, had to keep moving. And the workers felt as long as it kept moving, it really kind of didn’t matter what they did. And like many places, as we mentioned, they also felt undervalued and ignored.
After they closed, Toyota wanted to start building cars in the United States. They worked out with GM to use the Fremont, California plant. But they had a stipulation: They had to hire 80% of the workers that were there from when it was the worst auto factory in the world.
But Toyota had a different leadership mentality, different leadership period. It wasn’t about the line moving no matter what.
They gave power to the employees to pull that cord to stop the line to make sure problems were fixed then. They gave the employees to make changes and rearrange their work area to make it the most efficient it could be. They told them that they would implement every complaint and suggestion made, and, if not, then they would publicly give a written response why they wouldn’t or couldn’t implement that suggestion or complaint.
Different leadership, mostly the same people, and they got completely different results.
They opened it in 1984, and by 1986, its productivity was higher than any other GM facility and was twice of that of what it was before, all because of leadership.
Navy examples
Then you have the books by Captain Marquet and Captain Abershoff, who were captains, one on the sub and one on the ship in the United States Navy.
And when they inherited those ships, they were the worst ship, the worst sub. But they did a different kind of leadership. They changed their leadership. They changed the way they ran the ship. And they went from the worst to the best, even beating different records and beating examples and ways to others.
It wasn’t the people. It wasn’t the team. It was the leadership.
Ask yourself…
Now these were just a few examples that showed how same team different results because of leadership. So my question for you is as a leader, are you blaming? Are you taking responsibility?
When your team doesn’t perform, are you trying to cast blame and make yourself look good and them look bad to hold yourself separate from them? Are you taking responsibility and looking at, hey, what can we do differently? Hey, how can we improve? How can I help my team? How can I serve my team?
What’s your mentality?
The benefits of taking ownership
You see the great thing about ownership is that when you take ownership, you can then act and do something about it. When all you do is blame, you’re saying it’s something else’s fault and then you can’t or you more likely don’t do anything about it.
So how do you create a higher performing team? We’ll talk about that the next episode or episodes maybe with some stuff interspersed in different episodes, but well talk about some steps you can take to help you create better performing teams if your teams do not perform as well as you think so. This is how you improve as a leader and things you can implement to help your team do better.
If you have any questions or thoughts, go to No More Bad Leaders and just message me from there. I’ll see you next time.
