S2 E64: Leaders Simplify Teamwork

Have you ever picked up an old business book from the shelves of a library or a used book store and tried to read it? In the words of a famous ad, “You’ve come a long way, baby.” What we think of as effective management has changed over the years. From the psychology of motivation to new technology and, especially today, with our remote workplaces, what worked “back then” isn’t effective today. 

Today’s leaders need to shift their mindset and their practices to build a sustainable, thriving, business. 

Level 3 leaders make those shifts. There are 3 words that describe the journey of a Level 3 Leader: Leaders, Simplify, and Teamwork. Regardless of where you are on your own leadership journey, this episode will give you food for thought about changes to make in your business.

Listen in to hear:

• Why self-awareness is the key to business success
• What your most precious resource is and how to spend it wisely
• The 2 extremes that kill our business processes 
• What you need to unify your team
• The best tool to maximize your team’s efforts

And I share the secret to business success that I found after 40 years of leading teams.

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Connect with Winston

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#TeamLOVE Book. Join the bold book writing journey as we write and share our first draft chapters from our upcoming book - Team Love: 28 Ways to Demonstrate Caring at Work here in season 3 of the For Love of Team podcast.

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Transcript

Winston Faircloth: 0:00

Three word themes in a world of business complexity, and love the idea of taking an important concept and pruning the extra words away until you capture the essence of your offer your service in just three words. So, what three words would you use to describe your business or your next offer? Well coming up the three words that best describe the results you gain in joining an upcoming four love of team of that. I'm your host Winston Faircloth. And this is Episode 64. of the for love of team podcast. We're here to help you serve more while doing more of the work you love to simplify your business by eliminating automating and delegating, and surround yourself with others doing the work that they love. In our last episode, we talked about three important levels of leadership in growing your mission based business level one, love a product, face it most of us founders are idea people, we'd love to solve problems, seize opportunities and create solutions. Yet we often have more ideas than bandwidth. And there's something about seeing a solution that others cannot see. And bringing that to the marketplace to helps us love our product level to love of clients, you finally get traction, money starting to flow. And now your idea serving others, the focus begins the shift to creating a client experience that is as good as your original product, idea or service. And we all know what a remarkable client experience feels like. And we're committed to delivering for our clients. We just love this opportunity to create that experience. And then level three, love of team. Consider this, your client experience will only rise to the level of your team satisfaction in your business. And when you surround yourself with people working in their gifting, focused on a common mission, you can spend more of your time working on where you're most gifted. Love of team is the multiplier that can help you expand your impact your income, your margin and your freedom. So let's begin to flesh out what it means to be a level three leader by digging deeper into the three pillars for love of team. Now for love of team is our 25 year moonshot helping founders build lasting legacy and impact by crafting, attracting and keeping a team that you absolutely love. And if I had to summarize the journey of a level three leader within the for love of team mission, here's my three word response, leaders simplify teamwork. Let's repeat that. Leaders simplified teamwork. Well, this is our motto, which stands alone as a core truth. Yet each word represents a pillar of our vision for for thinking intentional teams built with love. And while there's truth to this statement that leaders simplify teamwork. It is far from the daily experience of many team members working across the vast majority of businesses today. And in this era of increasing remote work, the fundamental ways we effectively lead and engage our teams have changed, possibly forever. Well, my first true business mentor was our CEO. When I was working in my first organization in my mid to late 20s. He followed a very popular management adage of the day, called managing by wandering around. He was a big believer in icontact. And for his direct reports to be present in the office before and after the traditional business day. Now, he wasn't a stickler for the number of hours we worked as much as he wanted us to be present and set a physical example for going beyond what was required. So we often showed up in our part of the office before 8am or after 530. Just checking in to his credit, physical proximity was the way we all manage back then, if we could see you, we could trust you to get your work done. And he led by his example of presence, and expected his leaders to do likewise. And with many online and now offline businesses, managing by wandering around is now a dusty relic of a past season of leadership. And as we discussed last time, today's founder needs to be as passionate about loving their team as they are with their passions about their solution or their client experience. So the first pillar of for love of team focuses on you, the leader. Now there are leadership challenges at every stage. of business, whether you're a solopreneur, or you're managing dozens and dozens of others, everything comes back to you as the founder. What you focus on gets done, what you believe in infuses every aspect of the business. Your limits are the business's limits. And so whether you're a leader of many or just a few, it all comes down to how you lead one person, yourself. your self awareness, your vision, your follow through, or lack thereof, gets multiplied throughout the business, especially as you add team members to the mix. So we work with founders to expand their self awareness about their strengths, how do they best show up in the myriad aspects of their business, we take regular inventory on how they spend their most precious resource, which is their time. And we help sharpen their focus on doing what they love most. And help them map out strategies to free themselves from the rest of the work in their business. So pillar one, you the leader. pillar two is the word simplify. This to represents a second challenge for every stage of business. Complexity has a way of creeping into every project, every product launch, and many client experiences. And in an effort to be complete in our planning, we often plan for the worst, prescribing each step in the process down to the very last detail. And sometimes there's something even worse, we have no apparent process. Every client encounter, or sales objection, is treated as a special unicorn, completely unique from the one before. Often we're making it up on the fly. We have a process, all right. It's just not one that anyone else could pick up and run with. Because we're overwhelmed with all the details and possible passed the resolution. We've never documented it, we've never captured it, we've never really shared it. Well let's let's bring this down to a tangible example. Let's think about your email inbox. How many unread or unresolved emails are in your inbox at the moment, go ahead and take a peek. I'll wait for a second. You got that notification with all the numbers sitting there all unread? And if you open that file, you're going to see a bunch of emails that are unresolved. Well, there's an infinite number of ways to organize to store and react inbound emails. My question for you is how much time does this robbed from your productivity each business day. Now, imagine for a moment that you have an automated inbox, where only the most important emails from your clients and team members are reside there for a single next right step. Now, this is possible when you reimagine a simplified, automated inbox with forethought and intention. And there are dozens of simplification efforts just like this available to both the solo founder and the leader of hundreds alike. pillar two support you as strategies and practical solutions to simplify your business in order to foster efficiency, and teamwork. Now, this brings us to pillar number three, teamwork. The best teams uniquely blend diverse talents and perspectives behind a common vision. Where roles are clearly defined and matched with people who bring their unique gifting needed to multiply the organization's results. By becoming ever more clear and focused on what you are passionate about in your business, and surrounding yourself with other who's which are just as passionate about the rest. You create a multiplier effect beyond the sum of your parts. Now my 40 years of leading teams, the biggest takeaway I've learned in team building, is that the Why is so much more important than the how Now assuming you have the right who's the right people, they're going to bring a much better how to the project or the initiative than anything you could deliver. And by focusing on answering the why the best and worst outcomes when you take action, and defining what success looks like you in turn free up tremendous creativity to solve problems, optimize processes, and serve your clients at much higher levels. Well, building a team you love is is much more art than science, in my opinion, a journey more than the destination. But yet it's one that gets richer and more rewarding when you commit to in practice. Love within your organization so in umbrage to Tina Turner, what's love got to do with teamwork? Well, that's a topic for next time. So the three pillars in our moonshot called for love team again. The leaders simplify teamwork, leaders simplify teamwork. Each of those words represent an aspect of your business that requires attention, intention, and yes, love. And when you're ready to multiply your impact, your income, your margin and your freedom in business, for the love of team is for you. Now for love of team is not a course nor program. It's not yet another informational product. We lock arms with you, the mind business leader, helping you build a culture and a team absolutely love working with. You will wake up each workday energized to connect, create and conquer. With your hand selected on mission teammates to make a difference in the world. It's an ongoing journey of growth and discovery. And when you look back 25 years from now, the teamwork you experienced, that you helped to craft and build will be the essence that you remember most. Our intimate, immersive and interactive for love of team journey helps you serve more while doing more. More of the work you love. Simplify your business by eliminating automating and delegating and surrounding yourself with others doing the work that they love. And when you're ready to experience this type of business, text me at my personal number 1-754-800-9461 share your name and your story because I want to hear from you in the US that is 1-754-800-9461 that's my personal text number. And remember, like we say at the end of each of our episodes, loving your team multiplies your results. I'll catch you on the next love of team episode.