Hello! I am very excited to give you guys exposure to Roderic Yapp today. He's a former Royal Marines officer, an accredited coach and specialist in developing resilience and leadership skills. We touch on his TEDx talk that he gave a few years back on adaptive leadership techniques but we also just focus a lot on the tactical skills to individually and collectively move towards high performance. We also talk about maintaining your team in that zone of hyper performance because it's easy for humans to get distracted, for ego to take over, for other things to happen. Sometimes high performing teams are no longer an asset to the organization and can instead be a hindrance. So please enjoy this episode, connect with Roderic Yapp, and take notes!

"I think the key principle of leadership is creating absolute clarity. Most of the time in organizations people assume that clarity exists, but more often than not, it doesn't. So one of the things that I get leaders to focus on is vision. What is the team vision? What is it we are working towards here? You know, what's the mission statement or the vision of the organization? Or what's the aim? What are we ultimately trying to achieve as a group of people, because if you don't have that clarity, people will be working on things that they want to be doing, rather than things that they need to be doing." At minute 5:42, Roderic emphasizes the importance of a leader bringing clarity to the team in order to eliminate uncertainty and get your team back on track towards the organization's vision and goals.

"I think a lot of teams call themselves teams, but in actual fact they kind of work in groups, they don't sort of lean in to support each other when one of the individuals is kind of struggling. And that's one of the things that I really look for: how do people interact with each other when a member of their team isn't doing potentially as well as they could be?" At 29:56, Roderic encourages teams to pull together during tough times. Even when one team member is having a bad day or going through a stressful season, how your team handles difficult times will determine the strength and longevity of your team's high performance.

"In the military, if you receive an order that you believe to be unlawful, you have a duty to turn around and say, "No, I'm not going to do that." Because the classic line of, "I was told to do it" doesn't actually devolve you of any responsibility. And I think it's worth reminding yourself of that if you find yourself under any pressure from a leader or an organization and you think there's an integrity issue at play there. Then you have an actually bigger responsibility to the organization to do something about it." At minute 37:26, Roderic shares insight with us from his time in the Royal military about having integrity in your work and taking responsibility for the organization.

Roderic shared a lot of valuable information about how to live with clarity and integrity when moving towards high performance. He also gave a lot of helpful tips for all of us, so make sure you stay tuned!

Don't forget to connect and follow Roderic through his company Leadership Forces and on LinkedIn. You can also check out his TEDx Talk on Double-loop learning: a case study from the front-line. Go follow him now!

I hope you liked today's episode. Please don't forget to subscribe on all podcast platforms and while you're there, please don't forget to rate and review! I truly appreciate and love you, and can't wait to see you in the next episode!

Check out Anxiety at Work: A Guide for COVID-19 and Beyond

Download Virtual Teams During COVID-19: Mindsets + Values for High Performance Freebie

Watch my TEDx Talk on Leveraging Your Now to Get Your Best Next

P.S. Please don't forget to tag me on Instagram @theannaoakes and connect on LinkedIn to share your big takeaways and for more Build High Performing Teams updates. I'll see you there!

Peace & Progress,

Anna