B (3:01)

Yeah, the title is actually not challenges. Right. Offer support, not challenges. We don't want to say no challenges because hypothetically there would be a time when you would say, hey, I, I've got a concern about that. But we're just trying to make, make a point of offering verbal support rather than just being silent when you're going along with one of your peers.

A (3:20)

Yes, exactly.

B (3:22)

Good. So first on that list is if not you, who And I, I think I said this when we recorded this Manager Tools podcast. Oh, it has to be 15 years ago now. It blew my mind when I heard from a recruiter about that question, if not yoohoo. And in this guidance and we encourage you to listen, you can find a link to it. If you're a licensee, you can you by the way, you can choose to have these show notes emailed to you, which is dead easy if you're a licensee. So if you're not a licensee and you would like to be able to read the cast rather than listen to the show, you can get that when you become a licensee, you go to the website you choose. I want to get these show notes. And you'll get the show note right when the first cast comes out.

A (4:07)

Yeah, absolutely.

B (4:08)

We think this one's going to be a multi parter, so you'd be able to read this one right away rather than waiting another week.

A (4:15)

That's exactly it. You get the entire cast on the first release, not having to wait for the second half of the audio to fall.

B (4:22)

Yeah. And again folks, you probably know this, but in case you don't, if we have a 90 minute cast, we've already written the cast. We can record all 90 minutes and in many cases we do. But, but we have heard from plenty of people that while 15 minute long casts are too short, you know, 30 minutes is probably a good average. 90 minutes is too long. People don't want 90 minutes cast from us. So we break them up into parts and licensees of course can read it all at once right away anyway, the cast called if not you, who is in the related casts on the website and at the bottom of the show notes. And basically what if not you, who comes from is when a CEO transition is anticipated, board members and or search professionals will visit with each member of the CEO's team who might be candidate for the CEO role. There are probably some people who are not, they're getting ready to retire or they're on a different path, whatever. And then there might be some external people too. Okay, so that sets the stage for you.

A (5:31)

And folks, the assumption is that all of those who are talked to would have a desire for the role. So they're not asked if they want to, nor are they expected to make a pitch for the role.

B (5:45)

In fact, if they were asked if they wanted to, they would make a pitch for it. And everybody expects them to want it. So they don't want to hear the pitch.

A (5:53)

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it. So instead what they do is they ask, or the candidates in this case are asked, if not you, who? And folks, the point of this question is that one of those interviewed who are likely not to get the job because let's face it, they can't all get it, someone's gonna not get hired. The interviewers want to, though, assess from everyone whom they're interviewing who among them might be most eager to work for it if it wasn't them.

B (6:28)

Yeah. So basically you're saying, okay, if we didn't pick you, who would be the person you most be willing to work for? And the idea is, inevitably we find this happens all the time. Let's say there are 10 people being interviewed. Eight people will pick the same person, Right? Right, they will. There's the most loved, most respected, most appreciated. There's usually that. And the point of this is, think about that for a second. It may not have been the top performer or the heir apparent who was most respected among their peers. It certainly might be that the top performer is clearly the most respected. Okay? But if you're going to have to work for them, you're going to want to know that they're trustworthy and that they've shown trust to you and so on. Whoever was chosen had to be able to create a team from those people who are remaining. And that would take immediate trust among these top executives. So what this teaches us is a fundamental lesson, which is every team, even the one at the top, functions best when there is high trust.

A (7:32)

Exactly. And folks, is it any different for the team that you're on today? I mean, you're maybe not interviewing currently for the CEO, but the same thing exists of all successful, effective, well run teams. And we're not suggesting that your boss is going to choose their successor by asking this question, though maybe they should think about it. Not a terrible idea. Now what we're suggesting here is it begs the question, what can you do both as a manager and a member of your boss's team to be that most respected, most trusted member of, of that team?

B (8:15)

Yeah. And most people just don't think about it. They think overwhelmingly about results. And folks, results do come first. There's no question. If you're the most liked person and you don't get good results, they're not going to pick you. Okay? There's a balance there. But if you don't work on your relationships and they don't work on their relationship with you, you're not going to have a high functioning team. When your boss is gone for a couple of weeks. You're going to squabble and fight and delay things until the boss gets back and everybody's going to look bad. So the lesson here is that, folks, you have a responsibility to build trusting relationships with your peers. You have to make the time to evaluate what your relation status is with each of your peers. And that doesn't take more than five minutes, even with 10 people. Just grade yourself on a scale of one to 10. Then you have to put in the regular work. It's not hard, it's not complex. It just takes a drumbeat of regular interactions and so on to build and sustain the trust. Trust helps you succeed. It also helps your peers succeed. And if your boss only has one person succeeding and that's you and maybe her, your team is not going to be getting, it's not going to be highly respected. You might get some credit, but your team won't be highly respected, okay? And that's in part because you didn't build trusting relationships with everybody else. And if you have high trust, that helps your career because you'll be seen as somebody who doesn't just think vertically, that doesn't just think about their boss and their directs, who they're, who they're responsible for and who they report to. And if you get the impression that if you give people the impression you care about your boss and you care about your people and the rest of you be damned, you know what? You might be able to get another promotion, but you probably won't be able to get more than two and people will see you coming. And by the way, when you look across the organization, try to get good people to fill roles in your team. Nobody will want to. They'll all tell you they're working on a big important project or the timing is just not right. Jerry, I would love to say yes, but it just doesn't work or unfortunately, I've just given a conditional okay to move to a different area. And you'd be saying, wait, these are good people. They know I'm good. They should want to come to work for you. Nobody wants to come to work for me. And nobody's gonna have the heart to tell you, yeah, nobody wants to come to work for you. All you care about is your boss and yourself.

A (10:39)

That's exactly it. So we've established we need to have this trusting relationship. We need to, to mark's point a moment earlier, assess our relationship status with each of our peers. But now we need to take that a step further and do peer one on ones. The way that you as an individual can formally build trust with your peers is doing what we call regular peer one on ones. If the work you and your team does are closely related and intertwined with your peers team's work, and let's face it, they probably are, you want to see if you can do those one on ones on a weekly basis. That's, that's the goal. That's the, the, the gold standard, if you will. Now, if your boss's organization is more of a portfolio where each of the subordinates do completely different things and don't deliver interrelated outcomes whatsoever, then bi weekly might be fine for you. Bi weekly. One on ones. Peer one on ones, I should say.

B (11:38)

Yeah. I'll give you an example of how I would make a distinction between intertwined work and more of a portfolio. I use the example of a marketing department as opposed to a regional Walmart director. Two very different jobs. If you're a regional Walmart director, you have a bunch of store managers reporting to you. Okay. Each store functions on its own stores. While they may hypothetically compete with each other, stores do not aggregate their work product to create a different work product. Where value is created, the stores at Walmart is where all value is created. So you probably, if Sarah and I are fellow Walmart store managers, we don't need to have a peer one on one every week. Every other week is probably fine, right? She goes first one week, I go first the next week and the next, you know, bi weekly timing. But now let's talk about if I'm managing a marketing team. I've got a graphic designer, I've got a video designer, I've got a digital designer, I've got an artist, I've got a writer, I've got a copy editor and maybe one or two more people. I can't produce anything unless all of those people are working together. And by the way, we think we've said this probably 50 times over the last 20 years. If you're trying to decide on span of control, if everybody does the same thing and they produce the same output and those outputs stand alone like a Walmart store, they bring in revenue. Okay, you can handle a broader span of control. You can handle 15 in some cases with Walmart stores. There may be a geographical problem associated with that. I don't know. Whereas a marketing team having 20 people working for you, where they all intertwine and they produce a singular product with working together, that's much, much harder. So we would recommend a shorter span, a narrower span of control, smaller span of control, maybe six or eight. So again, that's just a couple of examples to try to give you to think about how your people work and whether or not you want to do the other people, your peers and you, whether or not relative to your boss's output. Is your boss a portfolio manager or, or actually you guys are all a team even if you have directs. So whether or not you do weekly or biweekly one on ones. Now, we don't want to drop another half hour or 45 minute cast into the middle of this by going over. Yeah. So we're not going to go through the detailed guidance, but we can give you some high level guidance. Okay. Peer one on ones are slightly different than manager direct one on ones. First of all, it doesn't matter who goes first. And I hope everybody's listening. Even if you're not doing one on ones. I hope you know, whatever else you do, don't let the manager go first. And a manager to direct one on one. Okay. In a peer one on one, it doesn't matter who go first. And the agenda is just 15, 15. It's not 10, 10, 10. It's 15, 15, 15 minutes for one peer, then 15 minutes for the other. And by the way, it doesn't have to be 15, 15 every week. You don't have to be an agenda Nazi. And at 15 minutes, cut your peer off. If they have 20 minutes, fine, cut something out of your agenda. That's great. Okay. The listening part of the, of the peer one on one is really what's valuable, not the talking part. And you share what you're working on, what your problems are, what your wins are, lessons you have, hindsights, political insights, anything like that. And they do the same thing. You talk about coordination, you talk about issues, you talk about problems.

A (15:26)

And folks, really the list of things that you could talk about is relatively endless. I mean, perhaps the most important thing about peer one on ones whose purpose is to build trust is that you want to try very hard to give more than you get. Don't use a peer one on one as a way to bend your peer to your will. You want to try as much as you can to figure out how you can help them within reason, because that's how people build trust.

B (15:58)

Yeah, I'm not trying to be your subordinate, exactly. But too many people go in and say, this is a vehicle for me to get more of what I want. Dude, people see you coming when you're like that. Hey, I just thought I'd let you know, here's what's going on. And by the way, if you make a mistake, peer one on ones are a good place to apologize. Okay, hey, I'm sorry about that. And I'll talk to my guys and I'll have my guy come apologize to your guy. And I said this before, but I'm gonna say it again. Do remember, if you're a licensee, there's a link to the peer one on one guidance, just like there is to the if not yoohoo guidance at the bottom of this show. At the bottom of these show notes. And if you're not a licensee, you can go to the page the webpage for this podcast@manager-tools.com and look at the related guidance cast links on the right side of the webpage and click on them and you can listen there. And this is yet another plug for becoming a licensee. Help us share this with people who can't afford anything and yet still are able to listen to our cast for free. Become a licensee and you'll be able to get show notes which speed up your knowledge gaining and as well makes it much easier to go back and find what you need without having to listen to the podcast all over again. And whoever would want to listen to me, let alone Alden Schaefer listening to me while he's running? I don't know, I think I've never listened to me and I have no desire to. So.

A (17:19)

Okay, so the first thing you've got to do, obviously, folks, we've gone over it. Peer one on ones building a high trust relationship.

B (17:26)

And you know, I don't. I don't remember us saying, just real quick, it's possible you can't make the peers do it the way you can. Drax.

A (17:32)

Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah. You're suggesting a format. Really?

B (17:36)

Yeah. And if my peer came to me and said, hey, can we do one on one? I'd be like, sure, yeah, definitely, definitely. Unless he was a complete, you know what and was just using it to try to get me and, you know, get stuff from me. Then it'd be like, and he wouldn't ever give to me. That. That might be different. But you're going to ask and it's okay if somebody says no. Yeah, it's not great, but maybe they just don't understand it.

A (17:59)

Yeah, that's the thing. Or understand the value of them or the power of them. I mean, I think the same is true of sometimes managers and the manager direct situation. The definition of the words one on one strung together in that order really just tend to mean we are two people speaking in a room and really no one else is here. So the definition given, it's one that's so generic and we all have a different way of thinking about it tends to become more of like a let's get together and talk about the project work that we need to deal with together this week. So when it becomes that and going back to the portfolio kind of peer relationship situation, Mark, I can see how your peer. If you said, could you want to do one on ones? They would be like, I really don't think that's necessary. I don't have much to talk to you about because they're not really thinking about it as a relationship building interaction.

B (18:59)

Yeah, exactly.

A (19:01)

Australia. This is not a drill. Manager Tools is coming to Melbourne on April 14th and 15th and the seats are going fast. For years you've been listening to the podcast, implementing the tools and getting results, and now you've got the chance to go deeper in person right in your own backyard. No international flights, no time zone confusion, just two days of the practical, proven, no nonsense guidance Manager Tools is known for, delivered live. Don't let this opportunity pass you by. Visit manager-tools.com Register and secure your seat today. Okay, which takes us then to no dropping dimes, folks, where we're doing all, all this work, all this effort associated with peer 1 on ones to build trust. If you want to destroy the trust that you have been carefully trying to build with your peers, there's no easier way than to drop a dime on them in a meeting. Especially in a meeting where your boss is in attendance.

B (20:05)

Even though this happens all the time and people don't understand, they're protecting themselves and they feel like they drop a dime, which Sarah's going to explain in a second, and they're shocked that it doesn't get them as much because they protected themselves, right? Hey, it wasn't me, it was him, whatever. And they don't realize it's, it's a fool's errand. It's a net negative, big time.

A (20:25)

Net negative, big time, big time. So yeah, folks, dropping a dime means, in old school vernacular, informing on someone, essentially. So in an organization, it's telling on somebody or throwing them under the bus whether you're at risk or not. So say something you're responsible for is not going well and you then deflect by saying, well, the reason my stuff is late is because I still haven't got the inputs from Roberta, my peer in this case.

B (20:56)

Yeah. And folks, you might think, not knowing our guidance on owning the inputs, that if Roberta owes me something and I don't have enough of a relationship with Roberta to motivate her to give me the things she owes me, and so that causes my team or me or my people to miss a deadline. It's not Roberta's fault. In fact, fault is what everybody talks about. Corporations, organizations don't talk about fault. They talk about responsibility. Okay? If you're responsible, it doesn't matter if somebody else is to blame or whose fault it is. You're responsible since you own the inputs. Roberta's team not giving stuff to you is just an indicator that you don't have good trusting relationships and you can't get your work done. So it's, it's two strikes against you. It's almost never a good idea to drop a dime. And by the way, if you don't know this dropping a dime comes from, long time ago, you would put a dime in a phone, in a pay phone in order to call the police and say something bad is going to, is happening in my area, whatever. So when you drop the dime into the phone, you were calling the police to inform on someone that you knew was doing something illegal. So if you do this, if you deflect to someone else or you point out that, yeah, I'd really love to go further on this, but Jack's team is 23% behind and it makes no sense for me to continue forging forward without some of his input. And Jack, and no offense, I just, I want to be a truth teller here. I want to be honest and candid. That's everybody. Yeah, right. Yeah, but, but really we got a problem here. And of course, if I were your boss, I would have looked at you and said, so why haven't you offered Jack resources to help Jack get up to speed? Now that's not actually what I'm thinking. What I'm thinking is I'm ticked off at Jack. But if you're going to be the guy that throws Jack under the bus by dropping a dime on him, I'm going to call you out for the dropping of the dime, that you shouldn't be doing it. You're just doing that as a theater effort to get things deflected from you, to deflect blame onto Jack. It makes you look weak when you do that. Like, I don't want to be in trouble. So I'm, he did it, I didn't do it, okay? And believe me, you will destroy virtually all of the trust you have built, or at least whatever trust you have with whomever almost immediately. And you'll have to start over. You may, in fact have done this recently. You may want to go and say, look, I apologize and I'd like us to start doing regular one on ones, maybe over the week. By the way, going back to frequency. Don't do a monthly. Whatever. Whatever you do, don't do monthly one on ones. Very bad idea.

A (23:40)

Yeah. Now folks, what Mark and I are saying here is not that you simply ignore the fact that you're waiting on inputs or from your, from your peer. But the thing I guess we need to talk about now is how can you avoid dropping a dime if someone else has indeed let you down or not done what they've committed to do, et cetera. Essentially, you've got to talk to them in advance of the meeting and let them know the situation. So say to your peer before you go into the meeting, hey, I just want to let you know, unfortunately it's going to come up in this meeting that my team and I haven't delivered on Project X the way we should have by now. And it's going to come out when I'm asked, that the reason for it is we are waiting on inputs from your team in these areas. And doing that, letting them know in advance gives your peer the chance to correct their error and avoid embarrassment in front of other people. Now, I would go so far as to say this oughtn't be the first time you should be having this conversation with your peer. They shouldn't be learning about it just before you go into the meeting either, folks. They should have heard about it before, but this, this. So this would be really, in my mind, a reminder like, hey, I just wanted to make sure you know this is going to come up, which again allows for them to avoid that embarrassment. And you may still have to take the blame. But that too is going to build trust with your peer who almost let you down.

B (25:16)

Yeah. Now let's flip this around for a second. Let's talk about trust building for a second. One of your peers attempting to build trust with you. You are working on something and you know your people are behind, but they're doing their best. Or at least they say they're doing their best. And one of your peers drops a dime on you in a meeting and says, yeah, Sarah says, Mark's team hasn't done right now she just hurt trust. There's just no question about that. But what if she hadn't come to me before, but she lets me know in advance that, hey, your guys haven't gotten done what they should have gotten done. You guys are behind you. You're red. And that makes me yellow. And the boss is going to ask me about my yellow and I'm going to say, yeah, you're right and I'm sorry. I'll check in with my team and I'll give you an update right before the meeting about where we are and how that might affect your. Your status. But then the other thing I'm going to do. Can anybody tell me what I'm going to do? Bueller. Bueller. Bueller. No, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. In the meeting, when my boss says, hey, Sarah, you're behind on this. You're red on it. I'm going to say, actually, Mike, let's say Mike's the boss. Mike, that's my fault, okay? She has actually asked me several times. My guys are behind. She can't do it with our input. Without our input. Sorry. And we haven't given her the input. So burdens on me, okay? That's how I can build trust with Sarah, even when I'm the one that's behind. And the literal opposite of that is her throwing me under the bus without telling me, dropping a dime on me in a meeting. She'll destroy trust with me. I won't trust her. And by the way, because I'm behind, she won't trust me. And the work product that we're doing.

A (27:03)

Absolutely.

B (27:05)

We said almost never, right? We didn't say always. It's almost never because it's possible you have an unscrupulous peer, someone you don't trust, and you've been burned enough times, they're out for themselves. Whatever. They lie repeatedly. There are people like that in the professional world, okay? And despite efforts of you trying to build trust like we recommend here they have spurned your efforts. They play their own stupid games. You know, you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. I think that's a Taylor Swift lyric, is it not? It is. Yes. Of course she invented the phrase. I'm pretty sure in some of those cases dropping a dime might be appropriate, but that's actually much more a negative political play as opposed to a trust building situation with a peer whom you could not build trust with. And frankly, one of the reasons I got really good at my job once at a particular time in the army was so that I had credibility to tell my boss, you know what, you always seem to really like this guy, the guy who worked for him. His name James. Boss, no offense. You really seem to like James, and great, that's good for you. But, you know, everybody else who works with him hates him. He's a, you know what? I, I said a very bad word. Because in the army, very bad words are not very bad. He does this, he does this, he does this, he this. And if you give me a direct verbal order, sir, to work with him, I will work with him, but I'll never trust him, ever. And I would think twice about going into combat with him. And feel free to ask my peers about what they think of me and feel free to ask them what they think about him. And my boss came back to me about a week later and said, you're right, I was wrong, we'll take care of it. And a week later, James got a transfer, actually to a supply unit from our combat arms, which was very, very bad for his career. And the boss didn't know.

A (28:55)

Thanks so much for joining us, folks. Join us again next week as we continue this topic. Now help us help others and tomorrow your friends and of course, follow rate and review our podcast and remember, five stars only. Please.