Lessons - Why Your Company Culture Is Toxic | Roger Connors - Chairman of Oz & Bestselling Author

But how do you how do you fix the culture in an organization just so the obvious answer is leadership but say leadership is willing to learn because that's the first step so leadership is open mind. So what does leadership have to do to start changing the culture is it just leading by example is it the way they hire the people they hire they have to do a revamp you know fire everyone and start for like how do you how do you change that leadership culture so the coaching is poor. Yeah, so let's start with the team because the team culture actually is a great microcosm of an organization and it's actually more important than the enterprise culture because you have a culture on the team it all happens there i've been involved in large scale culture change on my career. And the bottom line is you can't affect team leaders you can affect anything so we'll take a team for example so what a team leader would need to do is say a couple things and mean it like number one. We want people to raise their hand when they hit one of these five coaching conditions like that's the way things work around here we we want you to do that and we tell them we we tell them share coaching callouts and a coaching call out is at the beginning of a team meeting you use examples you you say hey. Lori raster handy of the day she's in some of the first time she's doing an Amazon AWS and you know needed help and she got connected with Frank and that was a great thing and that's what we want around here so the coaching callouts as a focus on you know these are important to us. The second thing is that you have to begin to create a coaching culture by having people know who to reach out to now one way we do it in our business we have software so we come in like if we went into IBM. We can I be in coaching culture we teach in these principles that we're talking about then we have software that matches people together so you know you go in and in Scott you say hey I want to learn about podcasts or whatever and. And you hit submit and then the algorithm returns all the people in the company who have experienced that you can reach out to offer coaching so some form of. You know facilitating that is important in a team in an organization but but no question if the leaders not reaching out and getting coaching to that modeling is absolutely critical and our research is shown. By far leaders are highly ineffective at modeling that coaching process to their teams that's a great place to start in terms of letting their teams know they're reaching out and getting coaching. What what CEO most of the CEOs i've worked with in my career have professional coaches many have multiple last when I just work with had three different coaches they work with these are paid you know executive coaches but the concept is everyone ought to have several coaches on these topics like you were mentioning there's several things you can get coaches on that you're working on and having leaders demonstrate that is really key. Now there's there's one concept in here. But I saw the connector the connector manager leader and I saw that it mentions four roles of a connector manager leader it says ignite coach connect and lead what is that what is that is that in. Ignite ignite what what's that kick off point and what is this. Framework really mean I want to understand this a little bit more because I know there's something to it, I just I just don't understand it. i'm glad you asked that because that this is really key so like we were talking about team leaders are key and making this happen. So the basic premises look the old model was it's your job to solve problems if you're a leader of a team. The new model is it's not your job to solve problems it's your job to make sure problems get solved that's a different orientation in the old model I everyone brings me their problems they can't solve I'm trying to fix them i'm coaching them in the new model with spans of control organizations are flat being people are being furloughed whatever it might be. You know there's no way for me to reach everyone with the coaching in need so I need to connect them as a connector manager leader to the resources that could coach them to help them solve the problems that they're facing. So ignite is a whole idea of having a leader introduce this concept to their team and start building this coaching approach where we're self directed so remember flipping the model learners and charge. So in the old model I come if you were my boss that come to you and say hey Scott your team leader you know I'm stuck I can't I'm stuck on this problem what would you do how would you fix it you're going your scratch you had going well let's see let me remember how I did that you know what else I do in the new model I should be coming to you saying Scott here's the problem i'm working on. Here's the three people I reached out to for coaching and here's what i'm hearing what else would you give me to say. And you're like well this is a great Roger on the right trackers consider reaching out to so and so and and then if you have some input you give it as well so that's your neighbor that's real flip in the model yeah that's what ignites and then and then coach so then obviously coaching is is enabling you can give feedback but you're letting people come to like their own conclusions about what works and what doesn't. yeah and and you're right you're directing a self directed process so that but there are times when you need as a leader to just give your coaching that you give. But there's some watchouts with that in terms of making sure you're not taking the accountability in the situation to solve the problem you leave without the team member is working to solve. No, the only other thing that I wanted to that I wanted to understand as I i'm going through all the concepts because so we hit the coaching model coaching triggers um engagement types that's one thing that I didn't bring up before so the three types of engagement the 50 minute 50 to 60 minute and then the ongoing sort of like mentor. And then we got then we got the the way to enable and and basically lead your team as an effective leader there was one thing that that we didn't touch on that I really want to focus on because it's something that I think would apply to everyone and that's the skill index and leveling up. um oh no we did speak on that sorry that's when you say you just go to like one level ahead of where you're at that's when you go to one level ahead of where you're at oh okay I understand I understand it would stagger wood's coach you may be be someone really basic and then okay so then my question would be for that so how do you find somebody who is the right level for for coaching you how do you find that mentor. You know that's it that that actually is a good question because it's hard to do that without some kind of technology to help meaning like when we use our software with the client they input their skills you would you would input your 10 coach ready skills and you would put a level on it from zero to 10 you'd say I'm a seven or six or five or whatever. And so when I'm looking for a coach I can actually see you know where do you say you are and if you're a 10 and I'm a four I probably I probably wouldn't reach out to you I'd reach out look for someone who's a 5 or 6 so without that it's more of a concept where you're thinking okay I could go to Joe everybody knows Joe's the pro or maybe I'll go to Mary instead because she's maybe not not as far as vast as Joe but she's you know she's closer to where I'm at that's more the thinking that you'd have without some kind of software facilitating that. And I also I also um one thing that I've noticed is of an indication of a good coach is that it's when somebody can describe something without confusing you so somebody can describe something in very layman terms even if they are much farther ahead um not much farther like you said you don't want to align with somebody too far but if somebody can be a good coach if somebody is right for you they don't have to over complicate the process and they can do that. They can effectively break it down because they've done it so many times um that's I think another really good thing to look for so you have an understanding of where people are at what they've accomplished you obviously you're having a conversation with them you don't have something software system to figure it out for you uh but then also just somebody who you know who can actually teach it over properly somebody who can break it down and put it into a concept or layman's terms you can understand somebody who you vibe with and somebody who's relatable and somebody who you enjoy working with like I think that's something that people don't know. They can account you can have the best coach in the world but if personalities don't match like that's going to be a inhibitor towards your learning so there's a whole bunch of things you have to look for but I think the the overall arching high high level messages just to just start looking for these people and start incorporating them into your life I think that's right but you know what we've also found is that most world class experts are not world class explainers so uh you know they may be really good at what they do but trying to transfer that to you it's difficult as you're describing. Yeah so what we do in the flipping the model Scott we actually have teach the learner how to it doesn't matter how good the coaches are explaining we teach them some techniques to get whatever they need from any coach whether they're good at it or not and we start with the just real quickly we start with the ABCs we when we when we were developing our content we had I don't know maybe 15 focus groups over about a year we were watching people explain what coaching they need and we were just we we was dismal I mean after about 10 minutes like you are not clear what you're asking your coach so we came up with the ABCs of coaching it's really simple it might be like Scott I'm learning how to manage a matrix team I think I'm a two on a scale from zero to 10 I'd like to be a five by July I've read one book called managing matrix teams in 30 seconds you know okay I'm the wrong guy for you or I'm the right guy or really suggest this person or here's what I would do next and then and then we teach them to use one of the high five coaching strategies and just use one so those are top three questions so I come be and say Scott I have three questions I want to ask you in the next 15 minutes here's what they are so I've set the agenda or I'm saying Scott I'd like for you to model this you know show me how to do it or I might say Scott I want to show you how I do it and get your input we call that practice perfect or we look at game film together you know look on a on a on a iPhone or a recording you know we're watching that together but those strategies combined with the ABCs helps people get what they need from a coach even if the coach is bad at explaining things that's really interesting and I like that framework a lot because that's I've never I've never I've never heard of like a but it's so succinctly I've always found that even for myself like when I'm trying to get something out of someone it's it like it's exactly like those focus groups that you mentioned it's just an absolute chit-chat like no one knows what's going on and you're trying to verbalize but you don't know what you don't know and it's very hard to ask if you don't know what you don't know from the code do you find that some of the lessons that you learned you know I'm just I'm curious because you you work in coaching and you work in organizational management do you find that some like sports teams have better practices in place either thoughtfully or by accident than organizations in terms of coaching and and and I guess like culture that would enable coaching because I've seen a lot of I've seen a lot of you know football analogies for coaching and and a lot of prolific football or basketball or hockey or whatever coaches write books on leadership and coaching and I'm just wondering if if there's some if there's some I don't know camaraderie that enables like a higher level of communication or something along those lines yet it's interesting because if you took that that sports analogy and you change the name from coach to boss it just doesn't seem to work does it I mean like okay the boss of the basketball team is here what do you want us to do boss but but because we say coach we we know that they're in charge right the coaches in charge but they're in charge in a way that's different and in organizations I've seen that work where instead of thinking boss we were thinking coach and and it had a profound impact on the organization but that's a major mind shift that needs to happen in organizations today bosses need to become coaches bottom line that's what needs to happen yeah and that's part of that culture piece too I like that a lot and that does make a lot of sense when you when you think about when you think about the best leaders or servant leaders right they're not people that are are stock ranking against their employees they're people that are on that same level that are enabling like he said serving coaching very good so just before I want to ask you a few more questions just about insights that you've sort of garnered over your career but before we move off the topic of of coaching and some of the some of the practices that we're mentioned in this book was there anything else that you wanted to to bring up this sort of relevant to to coaching culture for an individual or for like a leader of some sort I just don't I just think there's no time better than now to get started at reaching out you're going to be amazed that the response you get you know when I do my MBA class I have the students you know text immediately like in the class okay text five people that you could reach out to on this problem see what happens and before the class is over they've got responses from at least three and they're like yeah I'm totally willing to help you know that's the idea that look people are willing to help you and they're going to help you become more effective more successful in that MBA class I was talking about I had 13 professional MBAs six of them received promotions within the first two months of the class simply by practicing the principles of getting coaches so I would just encourage your listeners to don't wait get started it's something can be right away yeah no definitely now just pivoting back to to your career and things that you've learned because you've had a very long career so I always like asking sort of these these wrap up questions what would be one life lesson that you've learned over your career in particular that you could give over that could be agnostic of industry that would help someone sort of improve themselves professionally organizations are designed for people to not tell the truth there's too many too many political issues going on and other conflicting motivations that cause that to happen so when you're in an organization if you want to know the truth you're going to have to really work hard to get it don't expect that what you're hearing is what's really going on at any level of the organization so I kind of kid with my MBA class I start by saying just one of the principles you should know is that in organizations all people are liars and it's true because they're it's designed into the system like I can't really tell my boss what I really think I can't really tell at HR what I really think there's too many ramifications that can come from it I've learned in my career that if you really want to hear what's going on in the organization how people really feel you have to go on a campaign to convince some of that's the case it's not going to come easily so that'd be one insight that I've had