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Lesson Info

Building Relationships & Trust

Lesson four is around building relationships and trust. And so what I'm gonna give you right now, is I want everyone, actually you already have it. See this? Okay. It's your relationship transition questionnaire. So I want everyone to take that out. And if you think about this idea of building relationships and trust. And what's so interesting to me, is I've worked with a lot of executive teams and what's crazy to me is some of these teams, these teams that have worked together a long time, they don't even know their kids' names. So we're so busy being human doings, we forget about the human being part. And we have lives, feelings, emotions, and what's so important and part of why you gotta take the time to invest in these relationships and expand this pie. Right, expand a little bit more that's hidden, is to when you think about, if you've got stronger relationships on your team, right, relationships and trust are the foundation of business, kay? And so when you've got strong relation...

ships and you've got strong trust, what does that enable? When you've got great relationships on the team, and you've been part of some probably great teams. When there's high trust- Higher productivity. Higher productivity. Yeah what else? [Another Audience Member] Achieving results. Yeah, you achieve more results, right. [Another Audience Member] Taking more chances. You take more chances, absolutely. Yeah. You could probably work a lot faster, right? [Another Audience Member] People are happier, they're more engaged. People are happier. So there's so many benefits from doing this, but we need to be much more intentional about how we build these relationships. And so what I'm about to do with you is we're gonna go through this kind of structured process, and it was inspired by my work with the CEO Murli Thirumale, he's the CEO of Portworx, and he designed something similar and I've just expanded on it and I just love the process and I'm gonna be sharing it with you here in a moment. But first I want to share a quote with you about what Stephen Covey said is, "The first job of any leader is to inspire trust." "The first job of every leader is to first inspire trust." "And the second job is then to extend it." Right. So we have to get to know each other, our strengths, capabilities, build relationships with each other, for us to be successful. And so what I want to do now is we're gonna go through this relationship tool and there are two components to it. If you go ahead and open it up now. There's a manager worksheet and there's an employee worksheet, okay. You'll also notice there about 30 questions for each. What I'm not suggesting to you is you look through this, that you go through all 30 questions. Maybe you can do that over time. What I am suggesting is, again, whether you are new to managing or you're a senior leader in a company, what I want you to do is schedule a meeting for an hour, kay, hand this worksheet out to your employee. And again there's the manager section, there's the employee section. And what you wanna do is you wanna circle six to eight questions that you want the other person to answer. And so I'm providing some examples right here for our online audience. So some of the questions that are on the worksheet are: What are the top two or three strategic issues facing the organization in the next six to 12 months? Yeah. That's an important question. So many leaders don't communicate that. Another one is: What pushes your buttons, what makes you upset, and how would you know? So what's so important is, if someone's new to the organization, do you wanna find out in 12 or 16 months what gets someone upset? Right, don't we kinda want to find that out early on? So part of what we're trying to do is how do we accelerate trust; how do we accelerate our relationships, so we can find these things early on and get to the work. (chuckles) Right? We don't wanna discover this 12 or 16 months later. So that's an example of the manager worksheet. Here's some other questions: where do you need the most support from our team, and, what would you say is your "super power" and what is your "kryptonite"? Right, so strengths, weaknesses, right. So those are some example of these questions, right. On the employee worksheet, right. This is what the manager wants to know about maybe the employee. So maybe the manager selects these questions, right, which is: what can get in the way of you doing your best work; what counts that we are not counting and should be (to measure our success); what is one thing I can do to better support you (to help you to be as successful as possible)? This is one of my favorite questions: what do you do that gives you the most energy, and what about the least? Right, we don't want to be throwing work at someone where it's totally draining every singe day. You wanna understand what energizes them, right? So what I want you to do now in pairs, is here are your Creative Live Questions, we're just gonna take two minutes right now. What I want you to do is pair up here, pick one or two questions, and go ahead and answer them now for each other. Okay? Go! [Audience Members] Hi. Hi there. (general murmuring) Getting everybody to be on the same page. Making sure that everybody feels that they're valued, they all have an important role, and not leaving anyone anyone behind. Okay. I think of myself as an open book and super approachable and all these things. Right. Right. And I don't know if people see me that way. So- How exciting though, to almost kind of reinvent yourself though? Okay! Can I have everyone's attention. Yeah what did you guys get out of this exercise? Is it something you feel like you could easily do at work for the folks that work with you? [Audience Members] Oh yeah. Absolutely. For sure. And when you look at these questions, are you looking at this and saying, "wow I really have no idea about much of this, about anybody that works for me." Right, would you say that you feel that way? Yeah. Okay. And just real quick, what did you learn about some things about the other person? What question did you guys ask? Who wants to volunteer? Yeah? I learned that Nicole is very open to having workers come to her about like personal problems or anything. Just as long as timing is the right key, and she says she wants to work on empathy more. Okay. Got it. So you want to be more empathetic and it's really important for you to have an open-door policy so folks know how they're doing. Okay, great. How bout others? What did you learn? Yeah, please. We learned that we both had to work on a work/life balance, like the philosophy of ending the work day at the right time and leading by example. Yeah, absolutely. And there's a question by the way in here, on getting your manager's perspective. Really important question by the way: what is your perspective on work/life balance? And so that way you're not leaving the office feeling guilty or maybe your kid has a soccer game that you want to get to. Alright, let's get these things out front so we have a common understanding. What else? What else did you learn about your new friends here within the studio? Yeah. I learned that she feels energized when she's stretched thin. So really when she's under that radar, and she's challenged, and really expensing all of her thoughts and intelligence, is when she's really feeling the most energy. Great. Back there? I was just gonna say, we had a conversation earlier but this structure allowed us to dig a little deeper and really get to, you know, know each other a little better. Yeah. And again, this doesn't take a lot of time. Everything I'm going to be talking to you about today doesn't take a lot of time, okay, it's high impact and just really simple too, just pragmatic as possible. So what are some, you know at the end of the day, what are some great questions that you can ask to really help get to know the people that work with you? So yes this is structured and there are a lot of questions in there, so maybe this is something that you do quarterly potentially with the folks that work for you, so you could pick six to eight of these questions. And again, really great tool. Really simple. Barriers go down, transparency goes up, right. And you're much more comfortable probably about sharing information. Even maybe some challenging information, cause you're building that higher level of trust with the folk's that you're with. Okay. So we've talked about trust one on one. How do you scale trust on a team? And I wanna give you a really simple technique around how you can scale trust. So we just talked about it kind of on a one on one context, how do you get everyone on the team to get to know each other so you're scaling trust and relationship development? And so what you can do is in your weekly team meeting, and this can be a lot of fun by the way, which is you change each week in terms of who can ask the question on the team. And so each week, someone is responsible for asking a team question, that they all have to answer. And, again, maybe you just allocate five minutes, it could be at the beginning of the meeting, so maybe you want to set the tone, or you can do this at the very end of the meeting, it's up to you. Or you can mix it up. Maybe you're crazy, so some weeks you want to do five minutes at the beginning and the next week you do five minutes at the end. Okay. And so what you want to do is have everyone select a question. And so what's an example of a question? It could be: what was the first car you ever had? Kay, and I can tell you over the course of a year, you're really going to get to know the team, right? It's something that you, that again, it's kind of the drip-method of relationship development. And so let's brainstorm in real time here at the Creative Live Studio, what are some questions if you were on a team, that'd you want to ask? And you can't, by the way, cheat and use these questions in front of you , that I gave you. (audience laughs) What are some questions, I gave you one example already, kay, which is: what was your first car? What's another question you could ask? What do you like to do in your spare time? "What do you like to do in your spare time?" Yeah. What would be your last meal on Earth? "What would be your last meal on Earth?" Yeah. What would be your last meal? Zuni Cafe roasted chicken and bread salad. (audience laughs) That's a good one. (laughing) Okay! Well you know instantly. Okay great! What's something on your bucket list? "What's something on your bucket list?" These are great questions. What else? [Another Audience Member] Where's the best place you ever traveled to? "Where's the best place you ever traveled to?" Yeah? Where's your favorite place to eat in the city? "Where's your favorite place to eat in the city?" Okay, yeah. Whatever city that you reside in, sure. Anything else? Any other questions come to mind? What's on your vacation bucket list? "What's on your vacation bucket list?" Like any place you want to go to. Yeah. What was your first concert? "What was your first concert?" Great question. Great question. [Another Audience Member] (answers question) (audience laughs) Anyone want to share what one of their first concerts they went to was? Yeah. Christina Aguilera when I was 10. Christina Aguilera when you were 10? Okay. What other concerts have you guys been to? Your first concert. [Audience Members] Cascade. Bon Jovi. Bon Jovi, nice! Okay, alright. So again, was this fun? Right. So leadership can be fun right? It's just about being very intentional around how you want to think about scaling, building trust on your team, and, as I mentioned, this idea this Johari Window right. What we've just done is, again, you have to think about in terms of what's comfortable for you. And part of what I wanna do is challenge you a little bit to be a little bit more open. And a great question around kind of uncovering this hidden part, which is this: what's a major part of who you are, that most people don't see? What's a major part of who you are, that most people don't see? It's a really tough question to answer and if you reflect on it, that can help think about things that maybe you can start sharing, again, in the context of what's comfortable for you. I don't want to push you too far, however I want you to really think about how you expand from here, okay. How you expand from here.