119: No Bad Teams (Part 1)
How To Develop Leaders for Today's Performance and Tomorrow's Growth
In this week’s podcast episode, we are starting a 3 part conversation on what it means to have no bad teams.
We realize that the statement no bad teams sounds a little polarizing, so Devin and Shannon start the conversation by jumping headfirst into the question of what does no bad teams mean?
The first thing that came to Devin’s mind when thinking about this question surrounding bad teams, do bad teams exist or do they not exist, was that we tend to notice in our clients that they approach problems as they arise in two ways. Either by looking at the individuals surrounding that problem or the individual at the center of that problem. What we really want to get across in our work is that yes, there are “bad eggs”, but we want to approach your team from the perspective of Extreme Ownership (a book by Jocko Willink) and say okay - I am ridiculously responsible for everything as the leader… I am responsible for everything that happens in my organization… And when I acknowledge this, I am empowered to see myself as the one who has all the ability to change things for the better.
After talking about extreme ownership, we then pivoted to talk about some well-known bad teams that most households have heard stories about. Much of the time when we think of a bad team, we think of a toxic workforce as a whole, and then in order to get to the good team (take for example Tesla and Elon Musk), it took an entire workforce of turnover to get to the point of a good team.
Finally, we discuss the costs to the business + business owner. One of the costs to the business is a toxic work environment, and turnover could be the symptom of a toxic workplace.
Interruptions, and putting out fires, might be another cost - the owner is unable to step out and is also working 60, 70 or even more hours per week to keep things running.
Ultimately, the biggest cost to the business is the inability to scale or grow - which if you have any desire to be a business owner at all, you know that the goal of running a business is to actually grow it!
For the business owner, the costs are stress, lack of freedom, being pulled in 100 different directions, and the inability to scale back.
At the end of the day, at Axiom, we want to be able to come in and empower you as the business owner to learn how to cultivate and lead your team well, so that you don’t have a bad team, or so that you don’t have to continue with a bad team. We also want to empower you as the business owner to take the jump into extreme ownership, look in the mirror and remember you can only change yourself, not others - but you can lead by example.
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