Re-energizing your team

[Transcript]

00:04

Welcome to the Finding Gravitas podcast brought to you by Gravitas Detroit. Looking to become a more authentic leader. Finding Gravitas is the podcast for you. gravitas is the ultimate leadership quality that draws people in. It's an irresistible force encompassing all the traits of authentic leadership. Join your podcast host Jan Griffiths that passionate rebellious farmer's daughter from Wales, entrepreneur, leadership coach, keynote speaker, one of the top 100 leading women in the automotive industry as she interviews some of the finest leadership minds in the quest for Gravitas.

Jan Griffiths: 00:50

As we head into the Thanksgiving holiday, I wanted to record this short bonus episode to share with you some of the questions that I've been getting from most of the team leaders and business leaders out there and share with you some things that we've been doing here at Gravitas Detroit to help with the questions. And the questions have been coming at me as simply this. What can we do to inspire our teams?

Jan Griffiths: 01:18

We've been through an awful lot this year, most of us are now in a second lockdown, or certainly more severe restrictions. And the teams are, are tired, they've been working hard, they need some time to regenerate, and get away from the day to day activity, they need to be inspired, they need to get their heads up and looking onward into the future, and get ready to not only finish our 2020, but be inspired to take on whatever challenges we see in the business for 2021. So in response to this, for several of my clients, I designed a leadership day. And really it ranges anything from six to eight hours and typically don't like to go more than that. And it's an agenda that I craft specifically for each client. But I wanted to share with you some of the key building blocks for that leadership day. And if you want to use these go right ahead and do it. Most of my clients like to have a third party to come in and run this for them. There is quite a bit of work to it, it's far more than just basic facilitation, because you've really got to be able to coach the group on the fly as well. And that, of course, as most of you know, that's what I love to do.

Jan Griffiths: 02:51

So here it is. First of all, I start out with really connecting the team members together on a personal level. Teams have changed, new people might have come into the business, you might be a new leader in a business for the first time with a team that's been in place for a while, there's been changes. And particularly if you're new to a team or you brought in new team members in this virtual environment, it's a bit more difficult to get to know each other because you're not in the office face to face. So I built a very simple exercise to begin with. And this this pre work involved and I asked people to put together one, PowerPoint, one image, and it will have two images on it. The first one is something that you enjoy doing as a child. This really helps us understand a little bit more about the person and connects us more deeply with the team members. The second one, the second image that I want to see on the slide is something that you've enjoyed doing during the pandemic, maybe some maybe you surprised yourself. So for me, I put an image of it's a photo of me riding my little pony around the farm in Wales when I was about seven, because that's what I really enjoy doing as a child. And then I have an image of me making pancakes in the pandemic. I found my mother's old mixing bowl from Wales. It brought me a lot of comfort to do that. And my daughter will tell you that I'm absolutely horrible at making pancakes. I've never really made them properly if I'm totally honest. So I decided that I was going to figure out how to make pancakes and now i i do i can make pancakes. So that's something you know, it's personal but it's it's it's something that I did that I've enjoyed doing during the pandemic.

Jan Griffiths: 04:53

So when you have team members that start to share this, you know, there are laughs, there are surprises, but it starts to connect people at a deep level at a personal level one on one. So then we're not just you know, whatever your title might be, or the function that you're responsible for, you're connecting as people. Then after that, then so that's that, you could say that that's one big icebreaker, then I think it's important for people to talk about what's been driving them crazy, what's been bugging them, maybe things that they really don't like that's been happening in the business, whether it's pandemic related or, or something else.

Jan Griffiths: 05:38

And I call this workshop, "get it off your chest", because that's what it is. And it's important to get that out, as a group, have some discussion, as a group, get it down on either a flip chart or a virtual whiteboard. These meetings, I have done some of them in person respecting social distancing with masks on the entire time and also virtual. And I like to divide the team into subgroups. So then they would go off, and they would work on this workshop. And they would simply list all the things that been bugging him over the last, really the years over 2020. And they write them down on a flip chart or a virtual whiteboard. And then they come back to the main group, and they report out, of course, there are similarities within the teams. And then it's up to the team leader, to either take those things that are ongoing, maybe there's a particular system or procedure that's driving people crazy, and you can wrap an action item or an action plan around that, or, and this is really the most important part of this exercise. They are able to use this exercise to mock the end of that frustration. So if there's something that's been happening, that they could not resolve, and it's but it's over, now, it's done something in the pandemic, that annoyed them. But it's but it's done. It marks an end to perhaps the pain and suffering that they've been experiencing, it's so important to get that milestone out to say, hey, you know what, there's nothing we can do about that. It's happened, you know, some of my clients have been through major systems launches. It, yeah, it was painful. But hey, it's done. Marking that particular source of aggravation as being done and moving on from it, allows people to focus on the positive. So it's important to get rid of that negative angst and feeling which, you know, when we're in that situation, people waste a lot of time and energy. And you can generate a toxic kind of culture, when people are talking about things that have been bothering them. So it's important to bring an end to it. And this workshop does exactly that.

Jan Griffiths: 08:02

So I'm finding that the output from the workshop falls into two categories, either it's something that there's an action plan that you wrap around it, or you're simply marking an end to something that's happened. Now you're creating space and room for positive thinking.

Jan Griffiths: 08:18

The next workshop, I like to get people engaged in is simply this, "what do you love?" Same type of exercise, go back into the sub teams, and talk about what have you loved about what's been going on over really the last nine months. And it could be pandemic related, you know, it could be that it could be more behavioral. So it could be that you've been able to form deeper relationships with clients. And I know that that sounds crazy, right? You're probably thinking, what's that all about? How can you form deeper relationships when we're all virtual? If you listen to the podcast I just released from Fred Lowery, President of Thermo Fisher Scientific, he talks about how, in the past, a meeting with a client might have taken weeks or months to get on the calendar, and then there will be travel involved. And then you may have a few people in a conference room environment with you, you have a much different level of engagement. When you're talking to somebody in their home, you can schedule a meeting almost within certainly hours or possibly minutes. And then it's a one on one much more personal, informal type of connection. So he talks about building deeper client relationships during the pandemic, and that is a definite advantage. So that's something that you want to keep in your culture. Another example could be issuing a purchase order. Did you find that you were able to issue a purchase order in five steps instead of 15?

Jan Griffiths: 09:58

How do you keep that In your culture, did you love the way the team came together around a certain crisis, maybe two or three functions the way that they just stepped up and took care of it. So there are actual, you know, what I would call hard, tangible improvements and things that people loved about working in the pandemic. And then there's the behavioral side, capturing those on the flip charts. And again, then taking action plans and wrapping action items around it, to make sure that you retain those things in your culture. So now people are starting to feel good, this done to feel good about some things that have happened in the pandemic.

Jan Griffiths: 10:42

Then we move to the next workshop. This is the Strengths workshop, this, I absolutely love doing. You know, we spend a lot of time talking about our colleagues about either, you know, there's a lot of judgment, maybe we judge people for what they did or didn't do, or we talk about the way they didn't do it the way we think they should be doing things. You know, all this, this negative talk that can really derail a team is toxic, and it wastes time and energy. But what if we truly understood and focused on each other's strengths? What would that do? What if we move titles and responsibility aside? And what if we built each other up? By telling somebody? What we thought of them? What we believe to be their strengths? What would that look like? More importantly, what would that feel like? Well, this workshop is incredibly powerful. And same thing, I divided the group into sub teams, they go off, and they talk about every single individual in that sub team, specifically talking about their strengths, making a list of strengths, then they come back to the room. And as a room, the entire group together, we go through each person. And we talk about maybe examples to reinforce those strengths, maybe the group will add to the strengths, then I ask the group to condense all of that into two words, give me two words to describe that person. And they can come up with things like inclusive stabilizer knowledge connector, the mirrorless innovator.

Jan Griffiths: 12:44

And it's it's such a powerful exercise, because I also ask people to acknowledge, do they agree that the strengths that their peers have put on this piece of paper? Do they agree? Is that truly a reflection of who they are? And in some cases, yes, people will say, Yes, it is. And in others, they'll say, Wow, I didn't, I didn't realize that I came across that way. But remember, this is all strengths based, and self. So it improves and increases self awareness. And it you can see the magic start to happen. As people acknowledge each other's strengths. And the conversation focuses on that, it lifts the entire group, the atmosphere changes. And now we start to focus not only on individual strengths, but strengths as a team moving forward. And I like to produce at the end of this workshop, a document that shows their photo, the headshot, and then just the two words, so nothing about title or org charts or lines, just simply the headshot and the two words. So now you really start to come up with a team brand. And in with some clients, I like to work another workshop where we really go deeper into the team brand, and then what behaviors support the brand, or take away from the brand. And how will you handle those discussions? When you see a behavior that supports the brand? How will you recognize it to reinforce it? And when it's something that definitely is not in line with the brand of how you want to behave? How do you handle that discussion? Because typically, when we see a behavioral issue, we tend to ignore it. Yes, we do. You know you do.

Jan Griffiths: 14:39

So this gives people a framework to have the discussion. I love running these leadership days. And I also rap in between the workshops, some inspirational keynote type of activity, where I speak about why I believe If this is such a great time for work transformation, why people need to be inspired. They're in this in this room on this call together. And this is the perfect time to accelerate the transformation in their culture that they want to see. They have the ability to make the change and make that change now, and I love being a part of that. So feel free to take some of this and use it yourself. If you want some help or support, I love doing this work. Give me a call or pop me an email jan@gravitasdetroit.com I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. And we'll be back to our normally scheduled interview type episodes next week. Take care.

15:51

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