There are no Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders
I read a great story in the book, Extreme Ownership, by Jocko Willing and Leif Babin. During a Navy SEALs BUD/S training, SEAL candidates were grouped into boat crews of seven men and assigned to an inflatable boat that weighed more than 200 pounds. The most senior-ranking candidate became the boat-crew leader responsible for receiving, transmitting, and overseeing the execution of the lead instructor’s orders. They went through a grueling string of races that involved running with the boat and then paddling it in the ocean.
After several rounds, one team consistently came in first and another consistently last every time. The instructors decided to switch the leaders of the best and worst teams, and the results were remarkable. Under their new leader, the performance of the team that was originally winning all the events went down and they finished in the middle of the pack. The team that previously was finishing last now started winning every race, with their new leader.
The once-great team had practiced enough with each other to accomplish something even under bad management, but the bad leader was unable to command respect or maintain synchronicity.
Meanwhile, the excellent leader had taken his new team from last to first by getting them to believe that they were just as capable as his former team, and that bickering with each other during the exercise would not be tolerated.
Culture Reflects Leadership
I love and hate that phrase. I love it because it is true, I hate it when it has applied to me during my 30-year business career. At times, I have been guilty of thinking, “If I just had a better team, we would do so much better.”
On a scale of 1 to 10, what would you rank the culture of the team/department you lead? Is it fantastic (9 or 10)? Or does it have a lot of room for improvement (6 or 7)? Whatever score you gave your culture, understand you have just figured out your rating as a leader.
Have you ever heard a song while you were on hold, the song may not be one you would put in your playlist, however, hours later you cannot get that song out of your head? Well, that is how I want the next phrase to impact you. I want it ringing in your head later, haunting you:
Culture Reflects Leadership
Do you like your organization’s/department’s culture? Are you proud of it, or is it lacking? Do you wish you could change many of your employees’ attitudes? If you don’t like your culture, look in the mirror, because every time, in every organization, culture reflects leadership. How good your organization or department’s culture is, is a direct result of how good you are as a leader. Great leaders create great cultures. You don’t even need to take a survey, do any studies, or even see any turnover reports; a culture is something you feel when you walk into a work environment. There is either a strong energy/vibe, where everyone understands the organization’s purpose and their role in achieving that vision or you may feel a “fog,” a thickness in the air, a place where people are trading hours for dollars.
Grading your Teams = Grading your Leaders
This lesson is replicated every day in the business world and sports world. One of the best business practices is to create a scoring system for each department/location in your business that considers several key drivers of your team’s performance. For example, at the first business I started, John Robert’s Spa, for each location, we track the following:
- Sales growth
- Employee Engagement Scores (Morale surveys)
- Employee Turnover
- Client Retention
We then rank each location by their cumulative grade. Our salon coordinators are incentivized by their quarterly & annual “Salon Grade”. This helps them focus on what is most important and are naturally inspired by the competitive nature of where they rank. Like the Navy SEALs example, we will rotate our salon coordinators to different salon locations, and we have found that a correlation of the team’s performance is tied to who their leader is. Think about how unfair it is to your employees on the underperforming team, who have been stuck with the same leader for a long time.
This doesn’t always mean the leader who has underperforming teams, is bad. Many times, it is they were thrown into the position with a lack of leadership training and preparation.
