Lessons - Defining and Finding Impact Players | Liz Wiseman - CEO of The Wiseman Group

In this lessons episode, discover the defining traits of impact players, those stand-out contributors who thrive in ambiguity, take ownership, and amplify team success. Learn how they work differently from ordinary contributors and gain insights on how to embody these behaviors to unlock extraordinary results in your career or organization. I want you to also, so now we've alluded to it, and I think it's very important because you've done the research and you've identified something that I think that everybody who's ever worked in an organization, they can always point to who the impact players are, but it's ultimately very difficult to define them any further than that person is an impact player, that person always seems to be in the right place in the right time in the organization, but what you've done is throughout your research and throughout your career, you define the attributes of that particular person. How do you define an impact player? How can we unpack who that individual is more specifically so we can wrap our minds around it and then through the lens of a business leader or through the lens of an individual that just wants to be that individual because they know the positive results it can have on their career, there's something more tangible to hold on to and to aspire to. How do we actually define or how did you really define impact players? What was the research you did? How did you come to the conclusion? What are the traits the habits that they have? Okay, well, you had me at research and I'll leave nerd out for just nerd as much as you want, nerd as much as you want. And because I think the way that my team and I did this research is important is what we did is, you know, I never in my research got decide like who's a multiplier who's a diminisher or who's an impact player or not. I asked the people who know and then this case are managers. So we went out to nine organizations, all top employers and we interviewed 170 managers inside of those companies and we asked them to identify two types of contributors. One was someone who was smart, capable, hard working and who was doing fine. And we, you know, I call them ordinary contributors. They're not low performers by any stretch. They're not even really average. They're, they're solid, rock solid contributors. And we said, you know, identify one of those and then identify someone who was, you know, equally smart, capable, hard working and perhaps no more smart, capable or hard working who's making a huge impact, delivering work of extraordinary or inordinate kind of value compared to the team. Those are the impact players and then we compared how they think, what they do, the results they have, what they don't do and kind of built this behavior profile and here's what we found. We found, I guess maybe for starters, the impact players, the value that they contribute was quantified by these managers as three and a half times greater than the rock solid contributors. Here's what we learned. And maybe I can express it best by first describing how the managers described the rock solid contributors because they said things like these were people who were, you know, smart, they're capable. They did their job. They did their job well. They, they followed direction. They were focused. They took responsibility. They carried their weight on teams. And as I'm looking at that profile of the 170 ordinary contributors, I'm like, wow, that seems pretty good. That, that seems like desirable. What you would want to hire, maybe the ideal team player. And here's what I began to see as I looked at the contrast to these impact players, is that these ordinary contributors were absolutely stellar employees stellar talent, but they were stellar in ordinary times. And here's the difference when things started to get ambiguous, chaotic, uncertain, messy. The impact players worked in very, very different ways, like where other people would hold back around messy, walk away from messy, leave messy, to the higher ups. This is where the impact players stepped in. It was like their playground and their proving ground in some ways. And there were five of these situations that the impact players handled differently. The first is how they deal with messy problems, where the ordinary contributor does their job, like they do their part. The impact players doing the job that needs to be done. They're like, well, that's not my job. But like, you know, there's like cleanup on aisle 12, like let me go there or who there's this new opportunity, I'm going to go work where there's heat. The second is how they deal with unclear roles, where the ordinary contributors, when roles were unclear, and we find ourselves in these situations all the time, they would wait for direction, like wait for somebody to put them in charge, wait for somebody to clarify roles. Like I hear this all the time, we can't move forward on this because we're waiting for role clarification. Well, while others are waiting for role clarification or waiting for somebody to appoint them, like, okay, no, you're going to leave this. The impact players are just stepping into that space. They step up, they take charge, they offer their leadership, but probably the most important idea is they're not, they're not the kind of leaders who always have to be the leaders. They don't always have to be the boss. They step up and they lead, but when they're done, they fall back and they let other people lead. It works a lot like a block of migrating geese, like they take their turn, leading, but they're willing leaders. The third big differentiators, how they deal with unforeseen obstacles, you know, the kinds of things you can't predict, the kinds of things that are out of your control, and they're bigger than you, and when these obstacles drop in our way, the ordinary contributors you see, they take responsibility, but when things get sort of above their pay grade, they escalate up, they hand off to higher ups, which is what so many large organizations kind of teach people to do, and even small organizations, like, oh yeah, yeah, when it gets really bad, like, that's what the senior leaders are for. In these same cases, the impact players, they just hold on to responsibility all the way to the end, and it's not like they go it alone. It's that they stay responsible for something. And so instead of like handing to the senior VP or to the founder, they're like, hey, founder or senior VP, like, I need your help clearing this obstacle, but they don't let go of the ownership of that. They finish, and they're going to push that person to finish it or take care of it, and they're going to follow up when they haven't heard back from that person in a couple of days, right? I know exactly what you're talking about, because I've dealt with people that are not dealt with. That's the wrong word. Work with people, at the luxury of working with people that are like this, and something gets passed up to me, and if I don't action it, right? They're on my ass, like, they're like, they're like, hey, boss, you know what? And it's, and here's the thing that I've learned. So I want to interject in this. We've got two more of these practices. I want to inject one of the things I've learned, studying these impact players, and then also asking managers, like, what is it that people do that you love? And what is it people that, too, on your team that you kind of hate, that you resent, that makes your job hard? And you know, here's the thing I've learned. Bosses don't want to be bossy if like managers hate managing people. And when they find someone who is self-managing, even to the point of slightly annoying, as you said, kind of like, they're on my tail, like, but you know, you know that, you know that you actually value it. And the moment you're like, oh my god, I have a thousand other things to do. But realistically, it's like, thank you for making me, for making me aware of all the things that I really do have to do, and for not letting me sleep on stuff that's so, that's so important. They can need to value those people, because if not, then as a manager, you get overwhelmed with tasks. And you need somebody to hold everybody and somebody to hold them accountable always. Yeah. So these people, like the management job, you know, in its nag version of the management job, like, okay, let me give people work. Let me follow up. Make sure it gets done. You know, check things off. Like, that's a terrible job. Most people don't want that job of professional high paid nag. Like managers want to lead. And here's the thing is like, nobody really wants to be managed anymore. People want a self-direct. And that's essentially what impact players are doing. They're self-managing and self-directing. But it's like, they're working independently of their boss, but they're not working on an independent agenda. So like magic happens when A you understand the agenda of the organization. Hey, what's important? What's hot here? Well, you know, what's valued? And I work on that agenda, but I do it independently. Well, these are dreams. Like, these are people like, yeah, how do I get a whole team of people who can self-direct and self-manage and do it in a way that doesn't like leave broken glass in their way? Well, where's some of the items on that list you mentioned? You just mentioned a list of things that managers like to see. And I think that there was a few items on that list. And I want to actually just put those on the record. Okay, I'm opening up the book. It's in a cult in the index of the book. And there's there's 15 on each. I won't share all 15, but do you want to start with what managers hate or with what managers love? Let's do what they hate first and then we'll finish off on a positive. Sure. So these are, I consider these like credibility killers. Like these are a surefire way to infuriate your leaders and to reduce your credibility and reduce your influence. These are influence killers. Number one, give your boss problems without solutions. And of course, you know, sometimes you have to go to your boss and say, okay, I have a big problem here and I don't know how to fix it. But if that's every conversation, it's a credibility killer. Number two, wait for your boss to tell you what to do. Number three, make your boss chase you down and remind you what to do. Number four, don't worry about the big picture. Just do your piece. Number five, ask your boss about long. Oh, ask your boss about the next promotion or raise number six and long meandering emails and the list continues. But those are kind of, those are relatively annoying. I mean, like sometimes like some of those things, do you have a place in the workplace, but I could see I like non-stop about asking about what to do next and not taking initiative and always asking you about the next raise. Like those are, those are very stressful things to deal with as a boss. And you have again, the thousand other things you're trying to deal with on a day to day. It's a time and place for those conversations. But they're all two standard workplace behavior. And, you know, so much of what organization bureaucracy and culture gets created to incent people, encourage people to work this way or to normal. I guess what I'm seeing is I think a lot of organizations have normalized this behavior either through bureaucracy or through diminishing leaders who are like, oh no, no, no, you know what, you just stay in your box.