S2 E80: Why there’s now two I’s in Team

It’s easy for businesses to get caught up in the day-to-day and not look at the current trends and how things are shifting and changing. 

But when that happens, big names like Blockbuster and Kodak go the way of dinosaurs and buffalo. 

To stay current, you have to be aware of fundamental shifts in how businesses operate. And one of the most significant is the move away from traditional leadership and management with employees and staff to integrated teams - whether you’re working with W2s or 1099s.

And while the common phrase is “there’s no ‘i’ in team” there’s a lot more to consider when building For Love Of Team. 

In this episode, you’ll get:

• The 2 “i” words that are critical for a team to succeed
• A surprising glue that keeps a team together
• How your language about leadership may be stopping you from building a team you love
• Why focusing your intention on this one thing is the key to your business growth
• 2 unique tools to build For Love of Team

And, you’ll hear how the tools we’ve developed help founders craft a vision for success and identify the team that helps them get there.

If you’re ready to get started on The Team Map™ Journey, send me an email at  WIN@Winsightz.com with the Subject Line: FLOT Tracker. Or text me with the words FLOT Tracker to my personal number: 1-754-800-9461. 

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Transcript

Winston Faircloth: 0:00

I'm so looking forward to baring these words in our leadership dictionary and replacing it with mutual reliance, which is interdependency, respect and contribution by both interdependent and independent collaborators. Either multipliers it's Winston Faircloth, and this is for love of team, the podcast where leaders simplify teamwork helping you surround yourself with teammates doing the work. They love simplifying your business processes so that you can serve more focused on the work that you love and learning. This is the secret to growth and standing out in a crowded marketplace. Your journey to building a business and team you love begins with unlearning much of what we believe we have been taught about teamwork in business. There are so many concepts from the past century of management created during the industrial age that are not as relevant today. And for many first time founders, we may subconsciously bring those beliefs into our 21st century businesses. And for the past few podcasts we've tackled concepts like delegation and management, it's so easy to fall back to those concepts by default. And last time on the podcast, we tackle the concept of cultural fit in building a team that you love. Now to just recap for a moment Do you really want cultural fit, meaning someone who thinks acts agrees or has similar experiences to you and your existing team? Let's consider for a moment two icons from the past century. These are massive businesses that were on the New York Times Stock Exchange first Kodak for several generation the maker of Kodak moments was known as the company that preserves family's most cherished memories captured in pictures. And did you know that Kodak invented the first self contained digital camera yet Kodak failed to capitalize on that trend by staying too attached to their core business of producing physical photographs that you could hold in your hand about blockbuster? Here's another one. Did you know at its peak in 2004, blockbuster had over 9000 stores yet from that peak, from that moment on leadership made one bad bet after another, even rejecting a merger opportunity with the nascent beginning startup Netflix. And six years later, they were delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. And today, I think there's like one blockbuster in the US. But we all know about Netflix. So I think these are two examples of teams that were filled with people who were a quote, cultural fit, dominated by groupthink, similar perspectives and ways of seeing the world. And our suggestion last time was instead to see cultural ads. This is a different perspective where we're looking for gifting perspective, life experience, points of view, a different from you and the rest of your team. This place of addition is the ultimate payoff of teams that are diverse, inclusive and equitable. It's a richness of perspective, helping the team and you grow in ways today that feels unimaginable. So today, let's unpack Another commonly held belief in business. Perhaps you've heard this phrase before, there's no I in team. Usually, this term is used to discourage selfishness or to fall in line with the thinking of other people. And Michael Jordan is famously quoted as saying, well, there are no eyes and team but there is in win. Well, today I'm going to suggest there are two eyes to winning eyes in team. I believe that these two eyes work together to create an unstoppable virtuous circle, or maybe even better virtuous culture of gifting. The first one is interdependence. This is a mutual reliance between collaborators, the interplay between roles that are focused on your vision and mission, and then identity. This is the understood gifting and contribution of all team members modeled by the leader and emphasized for all the roles and responsibilities within the team. So let's break this down. The first is independence. Independence means to be mutually reliant upon one another on a team and a business you love. We engage independent collaborators on our team, you may remember that term from our episodes 76 and 77. When I suggested that this is a core distinction of teams that you love, independent collaborators, or fully gifted people fulfilling a unique role in responsibility, all pointing towards our special assignment or vision for our business, a business structure is optimized with these independent collaborators staying in their gifting on a higher and higher percentage of their time, so that you as the founder can do the work that you love and are uniquely gifted to bring to the marketplace. Now the glue between these independent collaborators is your compelling why or your vision and with roles, responsibility, and yes, authority clearly defined and understood by all this creates tremendous trust and yes, autonomy. Yeah even more valuable, he creates mutual reliance upon all the collaborators, aka interdependence. This is leadership. Let me say this part again, the glue between these independent collaborators is your compelling wine vision. And with roles, responsibility and authority clearly defined and understood by all this can create tremendous trust and autonomy and mutual reliance between all collaborators. And this is the interdependence that we're looking for. This is not power, not control, not authority, not command and control language is critical here and think back over your career for a moment think back of your leadership career, please reconsider some commonly spoken words about your team and your business, especially during times of cultural formation in your business, or perhaps reformation. Now I have a couple pet peeve words when I think about teams, and a poor is kind of a hard, harsh word, but I'm really doing these next two words, the word staff and employees pause for a moment, think about the word staff or the word employees and consider the power dynamics present in these words, staff, employees, and also consider the responsibility the extra responsibility it places upon you as the leader to manage delegate, hire fire staff, and employees. Oh my goodness, I'm so looking forward to baring these words in our leadership dictionary and replacing it with mutual reliance, which is interdependency, respect and contribution by both interdependent and independent collaborators. Okay, well, let's move on to the second I, which I think is even more critical, which is the word identity. Now, we will not reach this state of mutual reliance, respect in contribution without intention and a tension to the second eye, which is identity. This is why I stress how important it is for you as the founder and leader to really dial up your unique gifting and business. Because the more you model, increasing the percentage of your work time in your flow in your gifting, two things are going to happen, you're going to be more protective of it for yourself, and you're going to be more protective of it for your team. And the process to get there begins with step one and what we're calling the team map. And that step is called count the cost. Now these are a couple new terms here on the podcast. Let me go back and kind of unpack those terms for us. So it makes sense with this concept of identity. Now the team map is our foundation for the for love of team method. For Business founders. This whole process is to help you build a business and a team you love with intentionality. Think of the team map as your personal roadmap, taking you on both an inner and outer journey of clarifying your purpose, your gifting your alignment and values. It's your team map to help you identify a big enough business and both the aspects of it that you love and independent collaborators you will need to surround yourself with to help you meet your vision and mission. The overall for love of team journey is laid out in what we call the team map Mile Marker one on that journey we call count the cost. And this is process covered back in Episode 76 and 77, which begins with you taking an inventory of your business day actions, you just capture the kinds of things that you're doing in your business and the amount of time that you spend on it per week. And that's just the first step of a process. We'll then we'll hop on a quick call together to evaluate your inventory and to take you through a process to understand the true and significant cost to you when you are mired in tasks that are not in your flow and gifting. This is just the very first step in setting your attention for spending an ever increasing percentage of your time and your gifting your true identity comes from understanding your gifting your purpose, your values, and as the leader helping others to do the same in your business so that together the interdependence is created from a position of individual strength and gifting coming together towards a common goal. And again, I'm suggesting that these two eyes and team work together to create an unstoppable and virtuous culture of gifting within your company. To recap, identity is the understood gifting and contribution of team members modeled by the leader and emphasized are all the roles and responsibility within the team and interdependence is the mutual reliance upon the collaborators and the interplay between the roles focused on your mission and vision. So who said there's no I in team, I think winning teams have two eyes in their team identity and interdependence. And all of this leads to helping you build a business that you love, supported by a team that you love. So what could be better than that? If you'd like to get started on the team map journey yourself, we'll give you a couple of different options to reach out to me this week. You can reach out to me via email, send an email to this address and I have this in the show notes as well when at wind sites.com that's wi n si gh t z comm with the subject line if l ot tracker f l ot tracker, that's the love of team tracker. Or like I say on every podcast, you can text me with the numbers at the number 1-754-800-9461 put in the words FL o t tracker into that text and then we'll make sure our team gets you the get you started on the team map journey. That's my personal text number. No bots. No other people read that text. I'll send my team a note. Once you've replied, that's the 1-754-800-9461 or email win wi n at wind sites wi n si gh Tz comm with the subject line FL ot tracker goodness, that's a mouthful. I'd love to support you on this journey, creating more identity within all of your team members and greater interdependence between all the collaborators on your team. And finally, remember, leaders simplify teamwork multiplying your impact your income margin and freedom of business. Be bless friends I'll catch you on next episode.