Are You Accidentally Training Your Team The Wrong Stuff? | Ep. 340

What's up guys welcome back to build and today I want to talk about accidentally training your team on the wrong stuff. So I just dropped down yesterday with an expectation setting meeting with my executive team. We have hired Trash six new executives on the team in the last quarter and pretty much everybody joined last month and it is crazy. Like it's crazy in a good way because I actually love every single one of them and I feel really great about every person that has come on. But it is a lot to adjust to there are so much communication that we're adjusting. There's miscommunication all over the place. People are trying to understand where to route things to now that we have new people in place and so there's just a lot of adjustment that has to happen. When that being said one of the things that I realized is oh my god I have a brand new executive team and so in realizing I had a new executive team I said okay I need to reset expectations like this is a great chance to set them and so I put together a document with essentially like my top 1112 things I expect from anybody who's an executive acquisition and I shared them with them and one piece that I was sharing with them was talking about visibility and when I talk about visibility it's showing up for your team speaking up being verbose speaking in front of your team and not just your team but the whole team right and as I was going through this I was telling them a story of a leader that I had back in gym launch and I had this leader I'm going to call her Lucy and she was a VP of customer success and she was so good at what she did like she crushed it she was like one of the best VP's of customers success I ever had she was insanely good at her job she cared so much about her team she was constantly praising them talking about how great they were like everything was amazing and her debarment was doing really well like all of her numbers were great retention was great churn was really low like nobody was complaining but I did notice something that started to kind of happen over time issue started to kind of show up late in the team like stuff that should have been flagged like in one week was probably surfacing up like two months later and so for example like client problems that could have been fixed very quickly turned into like these giant buyers because nobody raised it when it was small and so because of that problem started rising and I kind of didn't understand because I was like I don't get it like she worked so hard she cares about her team like those are like two of the main ingredients for success with leaders and so now I'm looking at what's going on and I was like I don't really understand and so I went and I talked to one of the team leads and I was like listen I don't understand like you know she tells people all the time that they can come to her with stuff I tell people all the time that they can come to me with stuff like what's going on and they were like I don't know like I tell the team they can come to me too she's super open and I bleeder you know she's a good leader she was super smart she was capable and she obviously cared about everybody but I said you know I have to like investigate this doesn't really going on and not close enough and so I sat in on all of their meetings I got added to all their slacks and I said okay I'm gonna watch what's happening so I can coach her because there's clearly something that she's doing that's not working and so when I started paying close attention that's when I saw the very obvious glaring hole in the department she was never visible now it's not because she wasn't slacking it was actually the opposite she was in back to back meetings all day with people she was head-down trying to build strategy with her peers she was also buried in execution because she was understaffed and then when she did actually interact with her team it was almost always because there's something going wrong and she's trying to fix the problem so what does that tell your team what does it show them she showed up for problems she disappeared when progress is being made in fact her team had zero presence from her when they were doing something good they only had her there they only had her support with something was going wrong and so she showed up for problems she disappears during progress so what did her team learn they learned don't bring things up early because there's no way there to hear it wait until it's a real fire because that's when she can show up now did she teach them that on purpose absolutely fucking not she taught them that with her behavior every single day you can say whatever you want but you show your team by how you behave that is what this episode is about before I get into why this is the case and I want to say like the science behind it because for me I went years not understanding science and just understanding this works this doesn't high utility but like really hard to explain to people I want to tell you guys a story because I think it will land better if you actually see before I explain it okay back in 2016 since 10 years ago I'm getting old we were full of your mo and I started noticing that our team on zoom calls felt just like that like everyone was getting on their cameras would be off they were super low energy people would show up either multitasking like doing fucking wandering the backgrounds like they would have unmade beds having them look like they had just rolled out of bed and it was super frustrating because I was like what the fuck like I want people to show up be engaged be professional be present like I do not understand and so I told them that I said listen meetings matter we don't have a shit ton of them and so when we show up for them we've got to show up with our full selves as I talked to them about like how do you show up prepared how you show you know your presence all that stuff and you know we goes by and nothing taked and I was really frustrated I was like what the hell like how is nothing tamed in the middle of my frustration one day mid call I literally looked at myself in the zoom grid and then it was like the funniest moment because I was like oh I look like a mess I am multitasking on these calls I am slouched I have low energy I am half checked out thinking about the other things going on and so I was doing the exact thing that I was frustrated with I just had more justification toward it and so what was I doing there I was asking for a standard that I wouldn't even meet myself and so at the time you know I just thought okay I need to leave by example and that's true but later later many years later I learned why this actually works and it goes so much deeper than leading by example so what did I do I did I changed my behavior I showed up early I looked put together a stop wearing fucking sweatpants on all my calls I had my camera on and I stopped slacking people the whole time on a fucking meeting so I treated them like they mattered rather than acting and thinking that they mattered and two weeks later this was the most mind blowing thing that ever happened to me I did not make an announcement I did not put a policy in place and I didn't write a fucking memo suddenly people's cameras are back home the energy was better people were present I didn't see them texting or typing the whole time and they looked like they hadn't just read a lot about they actually looked like they were like going into work even though they were from home now why is that what actually happened okay I want to explain this as simply as possible to you every human being learns the same way through consequences okay so if I do something and something good happens after I will want to do it more on the other side if I do something and something bad happens after I want to do it less if I do something and nothing happens I will eventually stop that is it that is just how behavior works now when we give you the simplest example possible is I want this to take your head and I don't want you to take this as a derogatory example it is just an example that is very you have generalized for all humans hey think about a dog if a dog sits and you give it a treat probably we'll sit again because I want to treat if a dog sits and you ignore it what will it do eventually probably stop sitting because it doesn't get any sort of stimulus now if a dog only gets your attention when it barks congratulations you just changed your dog to bark a lot that is what most leaders do what do they do they ignore the quiet steady consistent high performers and instead they sprint towards who's ever making the most fucking noise bark it right essentially and then they wonder why is their culture so loud so reactive why are things going wrong is because you trained it not on purpose but you did in fact train it so let's go back to the Zimus for you okay when I was showing a half present to those meetings looking like a dump truck what was I actually doing I was reinforcing low effort behavior because my team saw me I was half checked out and nothing bad happened I looked like I just rolled out of bed nothing bad happened and so what did their brains learn half present looking like a dump truck find here that's a standard now did I tell them that with my words absolutely not but I told them that was my behavior and if you think about how human behavior works that is so much more powerful because people do not learn from you announcing things they learn from observing pattern there's a fascinating book I read about learning tennis and it talks about how if you want a kid to learn tennis you can just put them in a room with a bunch of people very good at learning tennis and they will just pick it up and learn it if you try to instruct them tell them how to do it it actually takes some longer to learn tennis okay we duplicate what we observe not what we are told so when I changed my behavior on those zimpals I started showing up like a human being with my hair brushed in my teeth brushed and engaged and on time and not slacking what did I do I changed the reinforcement pattern I started modeling what good looked like and the team followed now that's not because I told them to follow but it's because the environment changed now here's where this really important for you you the leader are the single biggest source of reinforcement for your team it's not HR it's not your fucking handbook it's not posters on the wall it's not the compensation plan it is not a fucking promise you it is you and so what you pay attention to gets repeated and what you ignore is going to disappear if you only respond during your crisis that's probably what people are going to come to you with so what you tolerate you teach what you ignore you approve and what you show up for you get more of so you are essentially running your team on this conditioning program every single day the question is did you do it on purpose are you running it on purpose are on accident and a lot of people accidentally train the wrong thing so I want to make this really real for you guys because a lot of leaders mess up without knowing why the first place is understanding extinction was extinction that's one of behavior gets no response and so it just dies off so think about what happens on your team like brings up a commit idea right it's not like polished and it's not that great but they're just you know like thinking out loud and so they throw out an idea on a meeting if you stop what you're doing you look at them and you're like thank you for sharing that idea that is really fucking interesting can you tell me more about that you just reinforced early communication and ideas you made it safe to think out loud around you and now that person is much more likely to bring things up early next time now what if they bring up the same I idea and you were distracted. You're looking at your phone and you kind of just like, "Oh yeah, love that. You can put that in a memo and you move on." And you don't like yell at them or punish them, but you also don't reinforce them. Now, if you were to do that over time, what would happen? The behavior would fade and they would stop bringing things too early or they would just wait until their ideas like perfect and polished, which it probably doesn't even matter by them because the problem has probably been solved in a different way. See, they're not thinking to themselves, "Oh, my boss is busy." They think, "Oh, that wasn't worth their time. It wasn't worth bringing up." And then you don't really know what happened because it's not like they announced the fact that they're going to go quiet on you. That's the first place. The second is accidental punishment. Okay, this is a huge one. It just happens all the time. When you only interact with your team, when something is going wrong, like when there's a fire, like a misdead line, there's someone pissed the fuck off, there's a problem with the team, you have just conditioned your team to associate your attention with bad news. So now what does that do? You become a threat signal. What does that mean? Now people see us a threat. They associate you with bad things. If you're there, something must be something bad. If you're there, it must be something really bad happened. And so they avoid you and they hide things and they handle issues and pray that you don't find out, not because they're not trying to be awesome, but because you literally condition them to think, bringing things to this person leads to bad stuff. That's it. And just like the team I told you about in the beginning, she was not a bad leader. She was just invisible. And the funny thing is that invisible leadership is punishment-based leadership. Even if you never yell at people, even if you're never mean to people, because the only time people experience you is when something's wrong. They just associate your presence with stuff being wrong. That's it. Whether that's intended or not intended, you get the same out. Now the third one is reinforcing the wrong behavior. Okay. This is the barking dog. So if the loudest, most underperforming person your team gets the most airtime and meetings, the most time and attention from you, then what you do is you teach everybody that to get your attention, they must act out. Now you don't mean to build that into the culture, but every time you respond to the low performers who are loud and whine and go against the culture. You condition more of that. This is super upsetting to a lot of people because they're like, is that a fucking joke? How am I supposed to handle these people? I tell people quite often when somebody is underperforming, I just don't give them attention. I just pay more attention to the people who are performing no matter how quiet they may be because I understand this and I've realized that in the past, I used to give a lot of attention to underperformers. Oh, let me help you. Let me, and I was like, oh my God, I'm just feeding the loop. They're underperforming, helping that I will pay attention. Good Lord. Works the same with kids. Now what does good visibility actually look like? Okay, I think a lot of leaders now you're listening to me. So I don't even know where this comes in here because I think a lot of us here, you know, you have to be more visible and you think, what does that mean? I need to be more responsive. Like I use a response on every slack message in five seconds. Like we available 24/7. Like what the fuck does it actually mean? No, that is not visibility. That's just reaction. And it's still the same pattern because you're only showing up when someone's pulling something from you. Real visibility is a proactive practice. It's showing up for your team. Speaking to your team, reinforcing your team before you're needed and before anything's wrong. Now I want to give you an example to make this real for you guys. I had a director all call her Mark. That's a terrible name. It is what it is. She was like a super strong exegator. She ran a really tight team. Her numbers were always fucking good. She was a sales leader. But her team was very quiet. Like I didn't hear from them. At first I was like, I think this is a good thing. And then after some time went on, I was like, I don't know if this is a good thing. And so I did the same thing that I had done with my other leader. I kind of dug in, shouts some calls, etc. And I saw the same pattern. Mark was in meetings all day. Her team only heard from her during the weekly standup they had or when there was a problem or when somebody was underperforming. And she was super responsive. Like if you ping her, she was going to get back to you, but she never actually initiated me. So in seeing what happened prior with her colleague, I was like, all right, I'm going to make one change to this. I said, Mark, every week, twice a week, I want you to walk 30 minutes on Tuesday and Thursday morning. And what I want you to do is because we're a team, the K-A工 office, but I want you to hop into slack channels. I want you to send voice notes. I want you to ask people to jump on calls. I want you to ask people, hey, what are you working on? How's it going? Anything on your mind? That's it. Just 30 minutes, twice a week. That's all I want you to do. And she was like, what? Why? And I was like, I promise you. Just fucking do it. Just trust me. I shit you not. Within a month, her entire team was behaving completely fucking differently. Like they were raising things in slack. They were speaking up. They were bringing things to other departments. And they were actually raising problems early rather than like just not even area of other problems at all. Now, that is not a coincidence. Okay. What actually happens is she changed the pattern. Right? She started showing up for people during normal moments, not just when things are going wrong. And her team learned something new. They learned that speaking up early is welcome. That speaking in general is safe. It's valued. And that is the power of being visible and proactively visible. And it does not take some kind of fucking policy. It takes like 30 minutes, twice a week to just ask people how the fucking day is going. So going with that, there's another piece of visibility that I think a lot of people overlooked. And it is probably one of the highest leverage things that I can share with you today. Okay. Not just being proactively visible, but proactively context sharing. Okay. What does that mean? When a leader has a lot to do, this is what usually happen. They disappear in a strategy, or maybe execution, just depending on where they are. And they stop communicating what's on their mind. Here's the thing. Your team is not calmly waiting and knowing what you're doing. They can't see your calendar. They don't know what calls you're on. They have no fucking clue what's happening. And so if you don't say what you're focused on, people are just guessing. And if you don't say what's unclear, people start making their own assumptions. And if you don't say what matters and must see you right now, people will default to whatever they think might matter to you. And that's probably not the right thing because they're going off of their observable behavior, not off what you're actually doing. Now, what does all this guessing do for your team? How do you think they feel anxious? They are wasting energy wondering what's on the leader's mind. Silence from the leader does not create a calm culture. It creates so much chaos, so much anxiety, so much angst on your team. Now, to the opposite, if you share proactively and you say, here's what we're prioritizing. Here's what's being decided. Here's what I'm actually thinking about. Here's what's top of mind for me. Here's what's keeping you up a night. What do you do? You stop all the fucking guessing. You stop all the rumors. You stop all the chatter and you eliminate these entire blocks of wasted energy and time. So what you're doing in terms of human behavior is your reinforcing clarity. You are teaching your team that they don't need to guess and try and like decode all the silence that you have, right? Because they're giving you're giving the information to them before they're actually asking for it. And then when they don't have to guess and spend all that time being all a little anxious mess, they're going to make better decisions. They're going to move faster and they're going to take more ownership because they are feeling safe. The easiest thing you can do here is tell your fucking team what you're doing and what is on your mind. It can be a Monday slack post. It can be a two-minute loom. It could just be a, this is what's top of mind for me in the meeting. It does not fucking matter. Just doing it is what matters. And so I understand what some of you are thinking. I'm sure you're like, "Layla, I don't have time to do this and do casual check-ins. I actually have work to do and I hear you. And I also want to push back really fucking hard and say that you're wrong." How much time did you spend last month cleaning up a problem that could have been caught in a two-minute fucking conversation if you actually knew it was going on with somebody? How many hours of your last month went into managing some kind of fire that someone or your team already knew about but didn't tell you about? How much energy did you exert in just the last two weeks on a miscommunication that would not have happened if people knew what you were thinking? That is the real waste. People put way too much validity on problem solving and not enough on problem preventing. This is problem prevention. And one of the highest things you can do as a leader is not making more decisions. It's creating an environment where everyone around you makes better decisions before they become problems. So what can you do to start implementing this tomorrow? One, show up before you're needed. Block 30 minutes twice a week. Head is at this is not micro-ranging. This is a proactive reinforcement that you're doing for your team. You're teaching them that communication is normal and good. Two, reinforce early. What does that mean? When someone brings you something early and it's not good? Tell them, thank you. Treat it like it's amazing because the fact that people bring things to you half-baked is a good thing, not a bad thing. Three, share context with your team before they have to ask, what's top of mind for you? Just like schedule a slack? Write it on Friday that sends out Monday morning. Just telling your team what you're focused on for the week. That's it. Super freaking easy and they will so appreciate it. And then lastly, ask yourself, what are you actually reinforcing? Like, when does my team usually hear from me? Is it when things are going well? Is it when things are broken? Like, hey, by the way, I've had to ask myself this because sometimes I'm so quote busy that I'm like, oh, I only hear about things when they're broken and now I'm only showing up for when the bad stuff's happening. And then when I walk in the office, they're like, oh, something bad must have happened. That's not the case. It's just that I was doing the wrong kind of reinforcement schedule. So I know that these moments feel small, but they are not. These are the behaviors that build the culture of your team. Your team is literally learning from you right now. Whether in the room, whether you're not in the room, whether you need to actually keep something or not, they are learning. And the question isn't whether you're training them because you are every day. The question is whether you're doing a purpose. Here's the thing. The best leaders don't build cultures where people perform out of fear. They build cultures where performing is the natural thing to do because every piece of the environment reinforces it. And that is not micromanagement. That is designing a smart organization. And it starts with you showing up, you reinforcing them and you being visible. I appreciate you guys. I know that's not your usual, but I think it applies to everything, whether you're a leader, a parent, you lead a team organization. a group of friends this can apply. I think that as leaders we have a duty to understand how much influence we have over people, how much how we act or adult act can make them break their day and I hope you take it as seriously as I do with that. I hope we have a great day, week walk and I will catch you on the next one.