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- [00:00]
A
Hey, it's Dave here from Coaching for Leaders. I mentioned last week that I'm taking a brief pause here at the end of the year on airing new episodes. Next new episode is coming on January 5th. But before we get there, I'm bringing back to you this week another past conversation because it's one I've been thinking about a lot. I hear a lot about teamwork from leaders and I've been thinking about Scott Keller from McKinsey and his work and his team. One of the reasons I'm thinking about them is he was just on the show a couple months ago talking about starting a big new job and their new book, A CEO for All Seasons, just hit the New York Times bestsellers list. It is a great book. I encourage you to go listen to that conversation as well. But it's this conversation I've been thinking about more recently on teamwork and how top leaders influence great teamwork. When this episode first aired, many people reached out to me, told me how helpful this was and how it changed their thinking a lot on teamwork, especially with a large team, especially in a significant position. So I'm inviting you to come back to this conversation today. This is a rebroadcast of Coaching for Leaders episode 585, produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential. Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders and I'm your host, Dave Stahoviak. Leaders aren't born, they're made, and this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. Of course, one of the key key competencies of leadership is being able to work with teams and not only work with teams, but be able to lead teams effectively. Teamwork and team building is on the mind of most leaders and yet it is something that is very complex. Many of us struggle with it and many of us have not received a lot of training on how to do it well today I'm so glad to welcome a guest expert who has really looked at this in great detail with his colleagues on what some of the top leaders are doing effectively in so many areas, particularly on teamwork and how we can learn from them and be able to apply some of those lessons. I'm so pleased to introduce to you Scott Keller. Scott is a senior partner in McKinsey's Southern California office. He co leads the firm's global CEO excellence service and is the author of six books, including the bestseller Beyond Performance. Scott spent his early consulting years working on business strategy and and operational topics until his life was turned Upside down when his second child was born with profound special needs. After taking time off to attend to his family, Scott returned to McKinsey with the desire to bring the best of psychology, social science, and the study of human potential in the workplace. He is the co founder of Digital Divide Data and one of a few hundred people in history known to have traveled to every country in the world. His most recent book, written with Carolyn Dewar and Vikram Malhotra, is titled CEO Excellence the Six Mindsets that Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest. Scott, what a pleasure to have you on the show.
- [03:14]
B
Well, hey, a joy to be here, Dave. Thanks for having me.
- [03:16]
A
We have to have a conversation someday of you traveling the world. I'd love to know what you learned and maybe there's some insights here as far as teamwork, too. But speaking of going around the world and seeing a lot, the section of the book that was so interesting to me was on teamwork. And you know, we have so many beautiful places in the world and those who have traveled have seen some of the incredible landscapes all over this beautiful planet. And I think many of us are captivated by the beauty of a forest. And I happened to read a book a couple of years ago called the Hidden Life of Trees, and it was a fascinating look at an analogy that you and Carolyn and Vic mention in the book about how a lot of times we look at a forest and we see only what is apparent to us. We see these different trees in the ecosystem and we see them competing for sunlight and resources. And we don't see some of the things that I learned about in the Hidden Life of Trees, which is the way that the trees actually support each other underground and the entire ecosystem that's built around it. And it's really struck me as just an incredible analogy for teamwork. And I think it's a big part of how you think about this book, isn't it?
- [04:33]
B
Absolutely. And this notion of there's the visible, apparent part kind of the mechanics of the team, and then there's the less visible part, which is the dynamics of the team. And that those interrelationships and interdependencies and reinforcements and frictions and what, however they manifest, have so much to do with the effectiveness of the group as a whole, is spot on to how the leaders we looked at think about their teams. And I might use an analogy to set that up, Dave.
- [05:04]
A
Sure.
- [05:04]
B
I couldn't help but think about a documentary that I had recently seen that was about the dream team in 1992 men's Olympic dream team, it was the US basketball team and it was the first time they had professional players able to play in the Olympics. So you had Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Patrick Ewan, all these amazing players. And what you find out when you watch the documentary, and some people knew this already, and I actually had heard this before. The Dream Team, the greatest players, lost their first game. Their first game was a scrimmage against some college players in San Diego, California. What I didn't know and where the insight is, is and you hear the assistant coaches talking about this and you see Chuck Daly smile when they're talking about it. Could Chuck Daly, the coach, as he started to see that the college players might actually beat the Dream Team, saw an opportunity to shape the psychology of the team. So he didn't make any of the natural adjustments that he would have otherwise made to help them win. He kept Jordan on the bench for far longer. He just, he didn't, you know, he let people get tired, all that sort of thing. Because at one point he decided, oh my gosh, if we lose this, what a gift that would be. Because this team will go from complacency and arrogance, we're the best in the world, we're going to dominate, to hunger and determination and never again. And he chose to shape the psychology of the team by throwing the game, so to speak. And it worked. It worked really well. And the leaders we saw when they approach their teams and they think about mobilizing leaders, they think less about, okay, what are we going to meet on when who's in the room, that kind of thing. And they think much more around what does this psychology of the team that I'm trying to create here? And so we'll, we'll talk more about how that manifests. What are the practical ways they shape the psychology of the team in terms of the composition of the team, in terms of how they run the team, you know, those kind of things. But that's the big idea, is that the best leaders in the world think less about the mechanics of the team and more about the dynamics of the team. The hidden stuff, the things you can't see, the way people are relating and they do a bunch of things that represent them, tending to that very, very thoughtfully. Does that make sense, Dave?
- [07:22]
A
It does, yeah. And it really is, it's such a profound example of a leader setting aside a short term result in order to really set the team up in the organization for long term success. And of course, the Dream Team is an example of that. Right. And that really strikes Me as that insight as one of the key practices, not only from the standpoint of the top leader, but also like how they find leaders for their teams. And you write in the book one aptitude virtually all of the best CEOs look for is the ability to balance the short and the long term when looking for team members. And that's a, that's one of the key invitations you make is staffing for aptitude and attitude. Tell me about what that looks like.
- [08:13]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And I thought Herb Painter from Adidas said it quite well when he said, look, you can't. Well, he was talking about European football called soccer over here. But he said you can't play with 11 strikers or 11 goalkeepers. And so as you think about your team, you need to think about having the right diversity of skills. And for some CEOs, that also meant people who came up internally in the organization versus externally. Masahiko oh Itani from Shiseido really emphasized that K.V. kamath at ICICI bank in India really emphasized the mix of young and old. Diversity was on the minds of everyone. And I think that that for us was okay. Most leaders think about that. They need the right composition of the team. They need complementary skills. As you said, where it got interesting is okay, what does that mean? And so they did talk about aptitude and they talked about attitude. And when it came to aptitude, what we talk about in the book is that to a T, everyone talked about looking for leaders who could balance the short and long term. The way Mary Barra from GM put it was she said, at first I thought I could have people who are more sell, sell, sell and get the short term numbers done. And she said something along the lines of. But I realized in more senior positions you have to have people who look over their eyes. And when I interpreted this, this came up over and over and over the short term, long term, and this isn't necessarily in the book what I'm about to say, but my interpretation is that is a window into whether a leader can manage the paradoxes of what leadership is. And what I mean by that is if you can kind of balance your near term delivery of results with being able to invest in the long term, you're taking two competing things and you're able to balance them or integrate them and you probably therefore have the skill to do the same thing. On how much do I be fact based in my decision making versus going with my gut moving fast and not missing the opportunity? How much do I respect the past of my organization versus push to disrupt the future? How much do I consider stakeholders and what all stakeholders want versus what shareholders want? How do I show confidence in making calls versus being kind of humble and asking for help? All of these kind of paradoxes. I think it's the fact that aptitude kept showing up is. It's one that almost gives you a read on can a leader manage paradox. So that's one level beneath probably what we report out in the book. But that's where my interpretation was of why that was so important. So that was on the aptitude side of things, on the attitude side of things. This was something where everyone said, equal, if not more important, is attitude. And we'll talk a little bit more about what leaders do with A players, B players, and C players. That gets to why aptitude. You might not need the perfect skilled person, but you do want the right attitude. And what they talked about, this is one where everyone had a little bit of a different take on what they looked for. Sundar Pichai from Google talked about how he. He's really realized how important empathy is in terms of an attitude people have or a disposition. Transparency. A lot of people talked about humility, but there was one that everyone talked about. So if the one that everyone talked about on the aptitude was short versus long term, on attitude, it was all about putting the organization before one's own area. So not hugely surprising, but the fierceness with which these leaders talked about, you know, we need leaders who are able to represent the corporation and get the right, right people lined up to serve the customer. That was kind of how Lockheed Martin's Marilyn Houston put it. These are company first leaders, themselves second, able to represent the team, willing to think as team leaders. And, you know, there were all sorts of things which you kind of hear and you wonder whether they're taglines. One Lockheed Martin, one Sony, one Diageo. Team Caterpillar, Aeon United. These are all sorts of things that leaders talked about as their teams, but they were real and they were powerful and they each had different ways of manifesting it. One that I'll just share because I think it's great in terms of being memorable. Lilac Asher Topilsky, who ran the Discount bank of Israel, she had this thing, she told us, she said, my team, what we decided is we're the fist. And she held up a fist into the screen.
- [12:40]
A
Huh?
- [12:41]
B
And she said, it might be a little Israeli, but the fist for us was so powerful and we're kind of thinking, well, what do you mean? And she essentially was shaping the psychology of her team, to be a one team team by using this metaphor, this representation of the fist. And she described it to us and she said the fist means nothing gets between the lines and the fingers. Not the unions, not the board, not anyone. We are one team solidified. And that was just an example of like, wow, she's really made that a manifesto, if you will. And all the leaders did. I thought Jamie Dimon did a nice job tempering it though. He said, look, being one team is not code for everyone gets along. Being one team means that people have the guts and the courage to stand alone if they don't think what we're doing is right for the client and the company. So it really is about client and company first and people manifesting that attitude long before anything internal about themselves in particular. So that was the key attitude. So again, just if aptitude and attitude were the things 11 strikers, 11 goalkeepers, that's not going to cut it. They really honed in on short term versus long term being the aptitude they looked for. And then the attitude being this one team or enterprise leader attitude, that really.
- [13:59]
A
Struck me as so profound as well, of how many of the top leaders in these incredibly successful organizations really looked at what I think you call first team, you know, looking at this team first versus individual area or department. And I think a lot of us have grown up in organizations and we've tended to focus on our team, our department, our part of the business. And it absolutely. So many of these top leaders have really created a culture where it's team first. And I'm curious as you looked at what folks did on that, like, like you mentioned, there's so many of the taglines and a clear messages on that. How did they shift the mindset of the top leaders on the executive team and inside the organization to move from maybe a bit of that traditional, like, you know, I'm going to think about just my own department first to really looking at and thinking about it like the first team.
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B
Yeah, look, they all had different ways of describing it, but they were all incredibly structured in their thinking. And I'm going to share with you kind of the structure that was that came through. Not that anyone would have used exactly these words, but it was all there and really thoughtful and potent when they described it. And I'm actually going to describe it in a way that I think just for listeners will be more memorable because when I work with teams and when I work with leaders, sometimes, especially with a team in a room, sometimes I'll say to the Team, hey, we'll be in the middle of a workshop, and I'll say, hey, can. Can we get someone to stand up now? And there's a little bit of room up here in the front of the room. Can I get you to do a cartwheel? And, like, people are looking like, what did he just say? What's going on? I was like, yeah, no, I need you guys. I need you to do a cartwheel. And, like, no one's getting up to do a cartwheel for. Just because Scott stood up in front of the room and asked them to do it. And so it's fair to say that their mindset is it's not a good idea to do a cartwheel in front of my peers in the room today. And their behavior is keeping their butt in their seat, so to speak. And then I asked the question, what could I do if I genuinely needed to influence you to do a cartwheel here in this room today? And then people throw out their ideas. And it's really interesting because people can give me a reason why. Okay, it's cool Cartwheels for Cancer Day. And every cartwheel we do is going to be $10,000 for cancer. It could be, you know, someone will say, well, what's in it for me? It's like, okay, well, and we're going to give you $10,000 if you'll receive it into your account as well. It's a matching thing. And someone would ask, what if I don't do it? And it's sort of, well, you know, we've got your family held hostage, so that's going to be a problem if you don't do it. Someone else will say, well, can you put a mat down so I won't get hurt? And we'll say, yeah. And someone else, you know, and I'll say, like, I actually don't need to do it. Don't know how to do a cartwheel.
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A
So I'll need someone to train me that. That's me.
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B
Yeah, yeah. And then others will jump in and say, well, well, you know, you do it first, Scott. That's usually how it comes up, that I don't know how to do it. Or then I'll often say, you know, well, what if we had your CEO and the top team in here doing it, or the board or your biggest customers? And then people run out of stuff to say. And I usually capture all that on a flip chart. And I just put a title above all the like groupings. And the like groupings is there's a set of things around role modeling. That's the board, the CEO, the big customers coming and doing it, me doing it in front of the room. There's a set of things around storytelling, which is all the cartwheels for cancer day. And boy, if you have someone in your family or have gone through anything related to cancer, you're just very predisposed to do something like that. So if you speak to something meaningful in the storytelling to your audience, there's a whole set of things around just enabling mechanisms so that everything from the safety mat on the floor to the carrots and sticks type rewards, that kind of thing. And then there's the last thing around giving skills and confidence, which is just the training side of things. So four things. Role modeling, storytelling, enabling mechanisms and building skills and confidence. And we talk about, you know, you boil down the last hundred years of cognitive and behavioral psychology and it's kind of all there. So it's in some ways liberating for leaders that there's a pretty short list of things you can do as a leader to influence behavior change. So back to your question. These leaders, essentially, they look at their team and they look at their team members and they're really crisp on, does every individual know what's expected of them and why? Do they have the story? Have they been told the story? Do they get the story? Have they even had a hand in writing the story? And we could talk more about that later because that's a powerful angle too. The second is, do they have people around them role modeling what we're expecting, including myself? And again, there's some advanced thinking on how they role model as well. But just even asking that question, do they have the role modeling, do they have the resources and tools and any upskilling needed to do what you're asking them to do to be a one team team member? And then lastly, are there consequences, upside or downside if they don't get on board with being an enterprise leader? Essentially, those four levers are pulled by these CEOs in relation to their team members and the team as a whole. And that's how they get this shift and they gut check themselves as leaders to say, have I put the conditions in place? Have I done the things that I can do in each of those four areas to influence this team to be a one team team, that this is their first team. And if I have the second, I think really important nuance to this is did I put a timeframe on it? Because it's easy to kind of like do that and then you know, wake up three years later and you've still got team members who are problems and not, not operating as a one team team. So they put a timeline on it and say I'm going to be fair but I'm going to move fast. And they'll give it a six month timeframe, call it that. And if people aren't on board, then they'll move because it's sort of, you know, this person is, is, you know, I want them to dunk a basketball, but they're five foot six, they're never going to dunk because I've, you know, it's just, they're not going to get there. I've done everything I can to put the conditions in place for them to succeed. People see that, people know that. And the surprise is many, many leaders make the shift and it surprises the organization and it provides role modeling for the organization. So that influence model of those four levers, you're already working one of those for the rest of the organization. Especially as people see leaders moving from previously being more silo driven or competitive with one another back to the forest analogy to actually an ecosystem that's working together. So that can be very powerful. So that's how they do it. Dave, is they very thoughtful and structured about how they think about putting the conditions in place which really are those four levers?
- [20:43]
A
Yeah, I'm so glad you mentioned this because that really struck me as pretty profound in that a lot of times we hear the stories and we see it in the news of a CEO comes in and then all of a sudden they've cleaned house and there's a whole new executive and we see the fast part externally often. What I think we don't often see is the fair part. And one of the things that's really interesting is when you look at some of these really effective leaders that they are also it's an and here really mindful about the fair part of asking those four questions and trying to assess like do people have the tools and resources? Are there consequences? Is the role modeling modeling going on? Do they know what's expected of them? And interestingly, when that's not the case and those things haven't been put in place and you cite a bunch of examples in the book where in some cases that top leader is slowing down the pressure from other stakeholders, the board, the stock market, whoever, to maybe not exit people and to say, hey, we actually need to give this person a chance because we haven't set them up for success yet. That's really interesting. That they. It is very much an an there.
- [21:54]
B
Absolutely. And there was going into this work, I would say that we as consultants, Vic, Carolyn, myself and the people we work with, we always talked about the biggest regret of CEOs is not moving fast enough on people. And that's still, I think largely holds. But when you talk to the best CEOs, that didn't really come up. We had to prompt that and ask them, well, hey, is that something that you regretted? And some would say yes. Some would say no. More often than not, they would focus on when I inherited my team, my focus. Yes, you need to move on C players. And if there's a bad apple from an attitude standpoint or someone who just doesn't have the aptitude, they were promoted beyond what their capability is or they're just the wrong fit for the role. Yes, you have to move on them, but that's a smaller group of people than you would imagine. What these CEOs focused on is how do I take B players and make them A players. And they put tons of time and energy into that. Again, time bound. At some point, if a B player is not going to make it to become an A player, that's a problem and you're going to want to move. But that was totally true that they would bias themselves towards. Maybe Brad Smith's quote is a perfect one here where Brad Smith's like, you're not really a great coach if you have to replace all the players. And so this notion of we're going to help this team be the best team possible as one team as well as as individuals. And we're going to take some time to do that, to put the conditions in place and then we'll act accordingly from there. Maybe last thing to share on this one, Dave, is it really struck me that's related to this. When we were doing research five years ago for another piece of work on organizational behavior, we talked to a bunch of social scientists and I'll never forget this one talking about a thing called ultimatum games. Ultimatum games would be. The social scientists would pair you and I up. Dave say, they say, okay, you two are a pair. And they would give me $10. They also do with $100. They also do with $1,000. Let's do with 100. For the purpose of this, give me $100. And they say, okay, Scott, you can split this any way you want. With Dave, you can split it 50, 50. So you each get $50. You can keep more and give Dave less. You can give Dave more and here's the catch, Dave. You get to decide if you take the money. If you take the money, you get the money that you get, and that's a deal and you're done. Good job. Or you can say, no, I reject the offer. And if you do that, neither of you get anything. So how many people would take $25 in the. Scott gets 100, offers 25 to Dave, and is going to keep 75. It turns out less than 5% of people will actually take that deal.
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A
Yeah, that strikes me as likely that it would be a pretty small number, you know.
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B
Yeah. And it's, it's because it's like, well, you jerk, Scott, like, why should you keep 75? That's totally unfair.
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A
But when you think about it, I mean, ironically, you're going from 0 to 25 in that scenario. Like, it's not so much about the what you're receiving or not, it's what you're receiving or not in comparison to the other person. Right.
- [24:58]
B
It's about the fairness of it. So you will self sabotage your own $25 to make the point that, like, that was unfair and I'm not going to let you get away with that. And this is the thing that can happen with new CEOs, where they come in and they just kind of clean house and there's sort of this bias towards, well, if you're already here, you're part of the problem and we're going to get a whole new team in here and fix the problem, so to speak. People see that and people, even if it sort of benefits them in some ways, they will often take actions to sabotage the overall thing if they feel like it's just this leader's being unfair, unfair to past, unfair to the what we've been through. Unfair to that leader by moving on them so quickly. And so, you know, I thought Greg Case from Aon talked about it really nicely when he talked about when you're exiting a leader, do it with grace. People will be watching how you exit that leader. People will take their cues from that, you know, respect what they've contributed to the organization, even if they aren't going to be contributing going forward. And that whole notion of how do I make this whole process of refreshing my top team and getting the most out of them as fair as possible. Not just feeling as fair as possible, but actually as fair as possible. It avoids that potential downside, which I think people underestimate, which is the ultimatum games factor. Does that make sense?
- [26:12]
A
Yeah, it does. And as someone who early on in my career exited someone in a very inappropriate way that I regret I didn't appreciate the power of the fallout later with the team members that I wanted to retain. And it's just one more example of how people are watching everything you do when you're a leader and they're utilizing the what happens, how you do things as then decision points. For how much do I invest in this organization and in the mission and in the team? And even when you make a difficult decision, if you do it with kindness and with clarity and with respect, that says so much for what happens going forward.
- [26:57]
B
Absolutely. Absolutely.
- [27:00]
A
There's another heading in this section of the book that I want to ask you about. And the heading is titled stay connected while keeping distance. And I want to ask you about both of those pieces. First of all, the stay connected part that top leaders tend to do. There's been an interesting discussion in our community recently among some of our members on the value of skip level meetings. For those who aren't familiar with that terminology, it's, you know, going a step below, you know, in an organizational hierarchy. You know, I'm. I'm not just talking to my direct reports, I'm talking to my direct reports. Direct reports and having regular conversations. And I know for some leaders there's hesitancy on having any kind of regular interaction because like, I don't want to circumvent my management team. I don't want to disturb the chain of command, that kind of thing. My sense, reading the book and looking at like some of the things you've talked with about some of the top leaders is they don't worry about that at all. Or if they do, they have worked past that and they have gotten their team to work past that. There's a ton of skip level conversations going on amongst the top leaders, isn't there?
- [28:01]
B
Yeah, look, definitely. Even in ways you wouldn't expect. And so the ways you would expect takes someone like U.S. banks, Richard Davis, for example, and he talked to us about the, you know, I thought about in terms of 12, 72, 220. And what that meant was I have 12 direct reports, they have 72, and then there's 220. And he said, I actually wanted to know the 220 by name and I wanted to meet with them at least once a year. That was kind of an extreme version at Diageo, Ivan Menezes, he takes 80 people and meets with them twice a year. But all of them had a way to do this. The kind of different flavors were at Majid Al Futam, Alim Bejani and also Brad Smith at Intuit. They had this, this approach where they would actually broadcast their staff meetings or open them up to 400 leaders if they want to listen in. The idea was if people want to listen in, they'll learn the underlying principles that are used to make decisions and that that will ultimately accelerate the velocity of the company. And so there was even that level of transparency. But to your point, I think there was definitely no hesitation. And it wasn't that they were doing it as gotcha type things. It was they would let the leader know, this is how we're going to do it. I'm going to be a better leader. Your leaders are going to feel better if they're connecting to the CEO directly as well. And they wouldn't hesitate to go skip level, so to speak. The last thing maybe to mention on this, because you mentioned the stay connected while keeping distance. Yeah. With one's own team, definitely a theme came through. I thought Caspar Rorstead from Adidas said it really well. He said, I'm friendly, but I don't really want to make friends with my team members because I have to be able to make unbiased decisions. And when people talk about the CEO role being lonely, this is a little bit part of it, that all of these CEOs were very conscious that, yes, they want to have good relationships with their team members and that the team members really want to. It means something to have time with your boss and for your boss to ask you about your family and to know about your personal life as well as help you in your professional life, that that's kind of a good thing to do. But they were super conscious of keeping enough distance to make sure that they stayed objective. Because ultimately, Piyush Gupta put it is if you get too close, you compromise on mediocrity and you can't let yourself do that. So that was also in there as people talked about relating to their team.
- [30:22]
A
This was a lesson for me. A number of years ago, we had a guest who made the point that some of the terminology we use in organizations of saying things like, we're all a family here, well intended, but sometimes can be troublesome because in your family, like if something doesn't go well for a quarter, you don't exit someone out of your family. Right. And there's the tendency to that language, that kind of mantra, to set up a dynamic that doesn't really recognize the power differential and the reality of employee, employer relationship, that it isn't it isn't a family, you know, I mean, unless it literally is and your organization's family run and everyone works in the business. But, you know, being really mindful of that distinction of, you know, this, you know, I want to really. There's a ton of conversation happening. There's a ton of dialogue happening at every level. And one of the things that's really interesting, like my sense was, like reading through the research you've done, is that many of the managers, if not all the managers in the organization were really on board with that. Like, the top leader had set up an expectations of, I'm going to be talking with people all throughout the organization. And people really liked and welcomed that, by and large. But also to be really conscious of, no, I'm not, like, I'm not doing this to make friends and it's, it's not a family. I'm doing this because I really want to understand what's happening and help to surface communication inside the organization. And that that distinction was really profound.
- [31:49]
B
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And maybe one last thing I'll add on this is many of the leaders were also really thoughtful about what are the highest value creating roles in my organization. And they found in answering that question that if they said, what are the top 50 value creating or value protecting roles and put some analytics, they would often ask their HR person, or whoever it might be to put some analytics around it. And they would find that, wow. Of my direct reports, certainly 20% of the value creating roles are my direct reports, but 60% are at a level below that and 10% are at a level below that. And they even find sometimes that 10% are roles I need to create because I should have them and I don't, whether it's a chief Digital officer, a chief Sustainability officer, whatever it might be. And so they're also often very thoughtful about spending a disproportionate amount of time with the roles that matter Most, because a CEO's time definitely has tons of pulls on it. So you have to be very thoughtful about where you put the time. So that's another kind of screen that people put on where to invest kind of the magnitude of time.
- [32:51]
A
The thing I appreciate about this book is all the examples. The subtitle, of course, is the six Mindsets that Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest. We've scratched the surface on one of the mindsets in this conversation. I really appreciate you illuminating how to mobilize a team and think about teamwork effectively. Scott, before I let you go, I'm curious as you think about your work over the last couple of years in writing this book and researching this. What's something that you have changed your mind on in the last couple of years?
- [33:23]
B
Yeah, well, I mentioned one of them, by the way, which was that whole move quickly on your C players and instead make the mantra think seriously about how to make your B players A players. The other one that came out of this research, I've written books in the past on on leading change and also culture change, which are. Culture change is a subset of leading change. And it's always been find the critical few underlying mindsets that, if shifted, will make the biggest difference to the behavior change you need to deliver your strategy. That's kind of the nutshell answer key. And what these CEOs to a T showed me is that, you know what? That's not wrong. But as a CEO, you should take one more step and you should distill down those critical few mindsets into one idea. One idea that you drive relentlessly, that you use those four levers that we talked about before in the cartwheel example, and you drive home. I think of the movie City Slickers, where guys having midlife crisis go to a dude ranch in Wyoming or wherever it was, out west and trying to figure out all their complexity in life and what it all means. And there's a scene in that where Curly, who's the old cowboy, he's looking at Mitch, who's one of the city slickers. And Curly says, he's kind of laughing. And Mitch says, what are you laughing at? And he says, you know, you city boys, you. You just make things so hard. You seem so confused. And Mitch says, well, what do you mean? And he says, well, you know, Mitch, what it all comes down to is one thing, focus on that, and everything else doesn't mean squat. He actually uses a swear word, the other S word. And Mitch says, well, what's the one thing? And Curly says, well, that's for you to find out. And anyway, Mitch ends up the rest of the story is Mitch realizes it's about his family and his relationships and all the other things kind of melt away and come into focus. But that whole what's the one thing? Every CEO we talked to seemed to have the one thing that they talked about on culture. So most people have heard Satya Nadella talk about growth mindset. And really, growth mindset is three or four things. And it's around innovation, it's around customer focus, it's around collaboration. But like, he distilled it down this one idea of growth mindset. You take someone like ajay Banga at MasterCard. The decency quotient was huge there. Kassarayat Sony it was the thing called kondo, which means wow and you wow people. That's in the Japanese word for wow. Great case, had a UN United, but everyone had this one thing. And for me that was a big shift. It was like, no, don't talk about three things. Talk about one thing. Make it mean a lot. Make it mean. And it was so powerful because I left every conversation them having described the one thing feeling excited and motivated about that one thing in a way that I realized they listed three generic attributes of culture I never would have. So that was a big shift in my own thinking.
- [36:18]
A
Scott Keller is the co author of CEO Excellence, the six Mindsets that Distinguish the Best Leaders from the rest. Scott, thank you so much for your time and for your work.
- [36:26]
B
Thank you Dave. Really appreciate being here today.
- [36:35]
A
Two questions I've been getting here at the end of the year. One of them is in relation to Coaching for Leaders Plus. One of our members reached out recently and said, can I give it as a gift? Turns out she has a few members of her team that already follow the podcast. If that's you, thank you so much for doing so and wanted to know if Coaching for Leaders plus can be gifted. And the answer is absolutely. If you go over to coachingforleaders.com/ and you'd like to give the gift of my weekly journal entries and our expert chats monthly and all the other benefits inside of Coaching for Leaders plus, just go over there and when you check out there's a little button that says is this a gift? If you check it, it'll take you through that whole process. Thank you so much if you decide to do that and thanks for passing along our work as well. The second question that I've been getting is about the Academy. A number of people have reached out and asked, when does the next Academy application period open? That is going to be in March 2026. And if the new year is bringing a inflection point for you, perhaps you are going into a new organization or or taking on a new role or received a promotion recently. Congrats if that's you. Or maybe taking on a new team or any other inflection point you're navigating right now. The Academy is designed to help leaders thrive at key inflection points. It's an opportunity to work with me personally and a small group of peer leaders supporting each other to really thrive through those inflection points. For details, go over to coach coaching4leaders.com academy and there is a place there on the page where you can join our early invitation list. If you would like to know first when our applications open up in March, just go over to coaching4leaders.com academy. We will make sure that you get an invitation when they are available. Thank you so much as always for listening to the podcast. What a joy it has been to support you this year and going into next year. And I will be back with the next episode on January 5th.