Morning Coffee Thought: High Performing Teams
I'm going to start using this space to expound a bit on what I don't have room for in my regular Brain Snacks posts, today thinking about high performing teams.
It has dawned on me that the best coaches, mentors, and managers we admire are those who let other make mistakes, often at their expense. Of course, they guard against fatal (to the business) mistakes, but otherwise, they seem to allow their reports, players, or teammates make a mistake or two along the way.
My son just learned to crawl, and he kind of sucks at it. He drags on leg behind, uses the other to push off on, and he doesn't always go in a straight line or very fast. Of course, for a nine-month-old, this is completely normal. So, I let him crawl on. He's better than he was last week and I'm sure that very soon he'll be making a bee line for even more electrical outlets and houseplants than he already is.
Crawl on, young grasshopper.
His crawling and its "grade" doesn't effect me as his parent. I'm still going to lead, teach, and guide him through life as best I can as challenges present themselves. In fact, the more mistakes he makes (and if he's anything like his old man, he'll make a lot), the better I'll get at teaching, guiding, and parenting.
High performing leaders allow their teams to fail in order to make everyone better.
There are four stages of using failure to teach:
- Do something wrong.
- Understand the mistake.
- Correct it.
- Try again.
Low performing teams and managers call it quits after step 1. They chastise, yell, blame, and fire. The abdicate their chief responsibility and use low performance as an excuse to do so. This just ensures that low performance remains the norm.
At Batch, I'll let my salespeople miss a deal. Our operations team gets an order wrong every once in a while. Sometimes a marketing idea won't pan out. And I'll let it all happen.
Because when it does, and a bet doesn't pay off or a hunch doesn't come to fruition, we use it as a teaching moment. If we don't, then our team of salespeople, operations folks, and marketing mavens won't get better. And I desperately need them to get better if we're going to keep growing, pandemic or not.
Questions to take with you today:
- Are you letting the people you lead fail?
- If so, when they do, what is your process to turn that into a teaching moment?
- How will you become a better leader and teacher of your team today and this week?
Thanks for reading; drink up. It's a short week and there's a lot to do, and a lot of mistakes to make.