2. Trusting Teams | THE 5 PRACTICES

Trusting the

teams

, I went on a business trip to Las Vegas and stayed at the Four Seasons, which is a beautiful hotel and one of the reasons it is a wonderful hotel is not because of the fancy beds, in any hotel you will you can buy a fancy bed. The reason the Four Seasons is a fantastic hotel is because the people who work there, when you walk down the halls and someone says hello, you get the distinct feeling that they wanted to say hello, not that they were told to say hello. We are highly attuned social animals we can tell the difference it's like we can always tell when someone is working on the Commission right?

You can feel it well, we can tell the difference when someone is being genuinely friendly or not. Turns out they have a coffee shop in the lobby. We're at the Four Seasons in Las Vegas and one afternoon I went and got myself a cup of coffee and there was a barista working that day named Noah, no, he was fun and engaging, charming, I spent way too much time standing there getting my cup of coffee. because I really enjoyed talking to Noah, so as is my nature, I asked Noah a question. I told him: do you like your job? and without missing a beat, Noah said: I love my job now in my line of business, that's important because I like it is rational.

I like the people I work with I like the work I like the challenge I get paid well I like my job Love is emotional It's a higher order connection Do you love your wife? I like her a lot, true, there is a difference, Noah said, I love my job, my ears alert, she has an emotional connection with this company. This is interesting, so I immediately followed up and told her to tell me specifically what the Four Seasons is doing so he could tell me he loves her work without missing a beat. Noah said that all day long.

Day managers walk by him and ask him how he is, ask him if there's anything he needs to do his job better, not just his manager, any manager, and then he also says, I work at Caesar's too. Palace and they are the managers who walk past us. and catch us when we're doing things wrong and make sure we're doing the numbers and performing and there I like to just keep my head off the radar and get through the day and collect my paycheck, he said alone in the four seasons. Do I feel like I can be myself?

This is the exact same human being and yet the customer service experience we would have at one hotel or another will be profoundly different not because of the person but because of the leaders and the leadership environment. that you were asked to work on, I get this question all the time, Simon, how can we get the most out of our people? They are not a towel, we do not wring them out to see how much we can get out of our people. a wrong question, which means we will get wrong answers. The right question is how do we create an environment where our people can work at their natural best, and the answers will be profoundly different if you don't have trusted

teams

like you do.

It is a group of people who show up to work every day lying, hiding and pretending, remember that a team of trust is when people feel safe, it is a team of trust, because when people feel that they can be vulnerable between Yes, you can raise your hand and say "I did it." a mistake or you promoted me to a position where I don't really know what to do I think I need more training or I'm having problems at home and it's affecting my work or I'm afraid or I need help without any fear of humiliation without fear of retaliation, in fact, They say these things with the confidence that their leader, their boss, their colleagues rushed to them to support them.

If you don't have trusted teams, what you have is a group of people who show up to work every day. One day they will hide their mistakes for fear of getting in trouble they won't admit that you promoted them to a position and they actually have no idea what they are doing they will keep pretending they will never tell you that they are suffering from excessive stress because of something that is going on at home. home and that it is affecting their work they are not going to tell you that they are afraid and they are definitely not going to ask for help for fear of finding themselves on the short list for the next round of layoffs and eventually cracks will appear and eventually the organization will break down not because of the people but by the leaders who lead those people.

We know what this looks like in the extreme. I'm sure you all remember a couple of years ago, United Airlines had an incident where they dragged a paying customer off their plane with a broken nose, broken teeth, and a concussion. I feel sorry for every member of that crew because 100% of them knew that wasn't the right thing to do. they did, but none of them spoke none of them intervened because they feared getting in trouble more than doing the right thing they did not work in trusted teams this was not an anomaly this is a constant build over the years that eventually culminated in an In It was an event like that that I witnessed a scene that unfolded years earlier with United Airlines that gave a sign that something was wrong.

A scene unfolded in front of me as I was preparing to board a plane where one of the passengers attempted to board the plane before their group number was called, which as everyone knows is a serious crime and that is exactly how the gate agent treated this passenger. Please step aside sir, I have not called your group yet, please step aside and wait until I call your group. She spoke to a paying customer and then I spoke. I told him: why do you have to talk to us that way? Why can't she talk to us as if we were human beings? and she looked me in the eyes and said sir, if I don't follow the rules I could get in trouble or lose my job, what she revealed to me is that she doesn't feel safe in our own organization, her leaders don't trust her. to do the job she has been trained to do and guess who. the company's customer suffers and she, the reason we love flying with Virgin Atlantic, for example, is not because they have a magic formula to hire the best people, but because the people who work there feel safe in their jobs. own jobs, they feel confident in doing the job they have been trained to do and guess who benefits the client company and the people who work there.

It is the leader's responsibility to establish an environment. Leadership is not about being in charge. Leadership is about taking care of those in your charge. Leaders are not responsible for results they are responsible for people who are responsible for results and if you get the environment right you will get people like Noah, if you squeeze the environment you will get people like Noah, it's not the people, it's the leaders, almost always when there are. Performance problems are almost always the case when there are customer service problems, rarely are they people. Yes, we have anomalies, of course, but if there is imbalance, you find that there are problems, it is almost always the leadership in the leadership environment and it is usually the lack of trust in the teams, the work of leadership.

It is creating trustworthy teams and if you want to play in the infinite game you must have trustworthy teams. One of the worst things about relying on teams is how you build them because they're not traditional in the sense that we set a goal. we're going to build our trust teams and we set out to build them it's more of a practice like getting fit it's like going to the gym yes you want to get fit unfortunately you can't go to the gym for nine hours and get in It won't work but if you commit to going to the gym every day for 20 minutes you will 100% get fit Simon how long will it take me to get fit?

I don't know and that's the problem someone some will respond quickly and others will respond slowly and there is no formula but we all know 100% that the process works we know 100% that if you exercise every day for 20 minutes and eat healthy , 100% of us will make it. get in shape, it's the same in leadership, there are no five magic things I can tell you to do, there is no one day course you can take or an external one you can have with your team or suddenly they become teams of trust, yes. those things are important but they are part of a process, a process that we trust, that process is called leadership, leadership is a lifestyle and even when you achieve your goal, even when you get in shape, even when you form teams trustworthy, unfortunately you have Continuing to go to the gym for the rest of your life is a lifestyle.

Leadership is a lifestyle and the purpose of that lifestyle is to produce teams that support each other, love each other, and feel valued and valuable in the organization where they work. it's your job