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10 Steps To A Team That Excels Without A Leader
00:46:55
What if successful teams could operate without a leader? Spoiler Alert: If you still think leadership is about barking orders from the top, Keith Ferrazzi is here to tell you: you’re doing it wrong.
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- [00:00]
Keith Ferrazzi
Get off the damn podium and stop trying to be a leader with authority. But being a leader that co creates.
- [00:06]
Stephanie Postols
Leadership isn't about having all the answers anymore. It's about unlocking the power of your team. And no one understands that shift better than Keith Ferrazi.
- [00:13]
Keith Ferrazzi
What you have is something that is emerging that's very interesting. Self managed teams where a team doesn't need a leader. It's called Holacracy. Despite all of our extraordinary innovations and a brilliant founder, we failed. And the only thing that I can point to of significance is that we were certainly not a team. We do not work in org charts. We work today and always have worked in a matrix. I'm suggesting that teams once a month show up and say to each other, where is our energy and what's bringing it down? If you're sitting on a team that doesn't even have the strength of courage to speak truth in the room or challenge each other, how in the world are you getting the value out of that team? We're asking the team to step up 30%. If you're a leader today, I want you to expect more of your team.
- [01:01]
Stephanie Postols
Leadership isn't about having all the answers anymore. It's about unlocking the power of your team. And no one understands that shift better than Keith Ferrazi. Hey everybody. Welcome back to Marketing Trends. This is your host, Stephanie Postols. And you probably know Keith from his book Never Eat Alone, the classic on networking and relationships. But in his new book, Never Lead Alone, he's taking it to a whole new level, showing why the best teams don't rely on a single leader, but on what he calls teamship. Today we're going to talk about why the old leadership playbook is broken, how AI is changing collaboration forever, and why something called Holacracy, a concept that Keith is diving into, might just be the future of work. Keith, welcome to Marketing Trends.
- [01:40]
Keith Ferrazzi
Stephanie, great to talk to you and what a thoughtful and lovely introduction. Thank you.
- [01:44]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah, of course. I mean to me, when I saw you were booked on the show, I was like, okay, legend, everyone used your book. I mean it was talked about for a long, long time and, and relevant still to today. So I wanted to hear from you. I mean, that was 20 years ago. What had you get into the space now, like team building and leadership after all this research that you've done? Tell me more about that.
- [02:04]
Keith Ferrazzi
Yeah, well, when I left as chief marketing officer at Starwood Hotels, I was CMO at Deloitte, moved over to Starwood and it was very interesting. To me as I juxtaposed both of those organizations, at Deloitte we were the lowest of the big eight back in the 90s and we aspired someday to be at par with Accenture and McKinsey. At Starwood we were a fledgling brand. We had just started. We actually birthed Starwood out of nothing. And then we had absorbed Sheraton west and we created W St. Regis, et cetera. And we had aspirations of really being the pinnacle of the hotel industry and reinventing travel. You spin ahead and Deloitte made it. It was a band of brothers and sisters taking hills together, really just crushing it. And I can discuss that journey, but it absolutely achieved its objectives. You look at Starwood and despite all of our extraordinary innovations and a brilliant founder, we had to end up selling to Marriott at below industry multiples. We failed. And, and the only thing that I can point to of significance is that we were certainly not a team. There was a lot of competitiveness, the culture was, was weak. There was a lot of back channel conversations. We were not one amazing group of individuals trying to achieve an enterprise lift and enterprise value. It got me thinking. I went and then worked as a CEO of a computer games company and we sold that and I had some money and decided I wanted to, I wanted to do what I always loved, which is thought leadership. Always wanted to be a bit of an academic. At the same time I wrote Never, which talked about how I got from a poor kid in Pittsburgh to all the jobs that I had and all the success that I had. It was really through a series of doors being opened through my network. That opportunity set that happens through great relationships. But I decided to start this research institute on high performing teams at the same time that I started for Isaac greenlight 20 years ago. And that 20 year journey is now documented in this new book. So I've been doing this work for 25 years. It started interestingly when I wanted to look at why sales and marketing didn't find the interdependencies that they should. You know, when I was at Deloitte I ran marketing. When I was at Starwood I ran both. And there was a big difference when you had both sales and marketing Chief revenue officer under one roof, really having a cogent mission, collective mission, but also a team that was, that was designed to hit it out of the ballpark together. Over the last 20 years I've realized so much value in corporations is pent up by ineffective interdependencies and not finding the value between marketing, sales, product technology, et Cetera. And that's the journey that I've been on for 20 some years.
- [05:06]
Stephanie Postols
Wow. Okay. So when it came to those two examples, I mean, I'm just trying to think about like having one company fail where to me, if you're the CRO, that's like to me how most companies are trying to operate now. It's like putting both under, you know, one leader who has insight into the entire org. And to hear that that one didn't work. And at Deloitte you were mostly in charge of marketing. You said like that. That one did. I mean, I'd love to explore that a bit more because a lot of CMOs that come on now talk about this role of the CRO and that being really like the cohesive, you know, structure.
- [05:38]
Keith Ferrazzi
Now, it's not just the revenue interdependencies. Starwood was not just the fact that sales and marketing didn't get together, but Starwood had a real estate division it, which, it had its various brands and products. It had its regional organization which is operations, etc. And that bigger interdependency didn't, did not come together. So it wasn't just the sales and marketing that wasn't effectively integrated. You know, it's interesting, but at Deloitte not there wasn't an organizational design. And that's I guess one of the points I would make to anybody saying, well, I need to get control of sales as a marketer, be the chief revenue officer. The reality is you don't. You need to partner more effectively. There's massive changes going on right now with AI in, in the world of transformation and those and, and I believe very critically, leadership needs to be much more interdependent to achieve it. So for instance, I look at there's trillions of dollars to be taken out of costs in supply chain. And if a supply chain leader is trying to engineer that transformation, without sales and forecasting and marketing and customer intimacy and finance. Right. And manufacturing, there will be a total ineffectiveness of that, of that supply chain. Now, the Sherpa might be the head of supply chain, but the intern. The team is a broad interdependent team. And when we soon as we start thinking about our roles in silos and we start battling over who has control of things, we've already lost. The reality is that we do not work in org charts. We, we work today and always have worked in, in, in, in a matrix. And if you really look at an organization as a, as a tentacled a network, the question is what GS do you have and who is your team on every goal that you have? The team is whoever you need to get that goal done. And you need to begin to lead across those matrices to be an effective leader today. And it very much frustrates me when people say, well I don't, you know, I need to be, I need, need somebody to give me that control of the organization. But you'll never have enough control by the way. And I'm, I'm constantly talking with CEOs, I coach executive teams. CEOs, some of the biggest companies in the world and their executive teams and even CEOs have a vision that they can't land if they don't know how to get the most out of an interdependent team. So it's about the interdependencies of the team that creates value today and it's not just the adjacency, sales and marketing, etc.
- [08:24]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah. So my first question is like how, how do you get these teams to talk? Because most, I mean, I think I've done probably over a thousand C suite interviews now and most people are still in org structures. It seems like a newer concept that I hear these executives being like, oh, big projects, you should have your CTO on board and your CEO and your seat. Like this is a newer thing I've been hearing over the past six months. But it still means most people are selling org structures. So like how do you get these teams to work like this?
- [08:50]
Keith Ferrazzi
Well, the first thing is you need an enlightened leader who's read my book that recognizes that their job is to lead without authority, is to lead in service of a mission and then to enlist people in a team that is a volunteer army to go take a hill together. So you know, right now the idea that that AI could be reinventing, whether it's our customer interface, right. And our customer exchange, that's going to have a technology component, of course, that's going to have a marketing component. It will probably, depending upon the industry, have a, have a sales component. And, and it will also probably have to do with HR and others. And once somebody recognizes that the team that I'm creating is an interdependent team, then the next step is how do you reach out to those individuals and onboard them. Right. And the most important thing is to onboard them with, with excitement, you know, and onboard them with, with hope and possibility that we could go take a hill together, you know, crush some new idea, break through some, some pre locked up sense of ourselves as a company, et cetera. So there's a motivational piece of invitation, but then there's a humility piece to get off the damn podium and stop trying to be a leader with authority, but being a leader that co creates and that's a big part of the book, which is how do you get a group of individuals to co create with a lot of candor, with a lot of transparency. I call it a social contract. Some people think that as soon as you get that group together, that some people are very delicate, they won't challenge each other in the room. Well, if, if you don't challenge each other in service of pushing the mission higher, higher, then we're going to have again a mediocre solution. So I, I want us, I want us to start to, to shed. I, I actually in the book I talk about 10 shifts from traditional leadership to what I call teamship. And that, you know, that I'm excited about relative to, you know, this first one shifting from conflict avoidance to candor. How do you get your team to agree to that? And then in every chapter I give a set of simple practices that we can use that bring that, that shift to life. I've, for over 20 years, I've observed 3,000 teams in there and collected data about their practices toward trying to achieve high performance and those practices. Once I saw what looks like a good practice on a winning team, I took it out and I applied it to other teams and saw if it moved the needle and if it did, it made it to the book. And the reason the book so small, it's just a teeny book, is because I've been curating these practices for 24 years and you know, they are just exactly as Ben Franklin used to say. This book would, you know, this, this art, this letter would be shorter if I had more time. I've had 24 years to curate the most important practices of a, of a high performing team. So we can even get into some of those if you want.
- [12:05]
Stephanie Postols
But I was actually going to say I'd love to go through just those 10 shifts and you don't have to dive too deep into them because obviously people should be reading this book. But like if you were to just knock out what those 10 shifts are, I'd love to hear them.
- [12:16]
Keith Ferrazzi
Yeah, well, I can, I can.
- [12:17]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah, whip it out, bring it out.
- [12:20]
Keith Ferrazzi
So the first and most important shift is what we've already been talking about, which is shifting from thinking about our team as an org chart to thinking about our team as a matrix. That's probably one of the most Powerful and important shifts. Another shift is the shift from conflict avoidance to candor. And, and I give some real. I know I found some fun teams that have really nailed that. And there are a number of practices. The way each chapter of the book is written is there's a hero story at the beginning of somebody who really does this candor thing well. And then, then I delineate some practices, not only of, of her or him, that are doing those shifts well, but others that we've curated. And let me just give a couple on cander because I have to say this has got to be one of the most important ones across the board aside from redefining the team.
- [13:11]
Stephanie Postols
Do it with me. I'm ready.
- [13:12]
Keith Ferrazzi
Yeah, sure. Well, look, I mean there's a practice that a lot of companies do called report outs. I remember when I was cmo, I would have a report out from the person re engineering our loyalty program and they would show up and there would be my executive team in marketing from many different functions and the person would give a report out and they would show up and they'd say here, here's. Here's what we've achieved. Here's. Here's where we're going. And, and then a couple of people would, would chirp in, particularly if there was some adjacency relevant. But frankly, not many people would engage. I would certainly engage as the leader. It was very hub and spoke to me. There's a new process that I want to institute. It's called stress testing. Every critical player on your team needs to constantly show up among the team and be, be stress tested. There's so much wisdom in the team that stays pent up. But people don't challenge each other. People aren't curious and ask tough questions. People don't necessarily help each other unless asked for help to collaborate. So we create a stress test where somebody now shows up and says, here's what I've achieved, here's where I'm struggling. Very few people currently report where they're struggling and here's where I'm going. And then everybody goes into small breakout sessions and opens up a Google Doc or whatever and says, here's what you're missing. Here's where we want to challenge you. Here's a risk you're not saying here's an innovation or an idea I want to give to you and here's where I could help. Now what we've done is we've taken an average room of 12 people on any given topic, four people are hurt. Now we've squeezed it. So everybody's hurt. Right? That's a big shift. And we're not only that, but we've increased by, by virtue of going into the breakout rooms and giving people an assignment to challenge, we've increased psychological safety by 85% and we hear more truth. So a simple practice called a stress test, moving from a traditional report out is game changing to a culture of a team. Now, if that team isn't just the people that report to me, but it's the head of sales and all these other people. The other benefit to stress testing as you go is that these individuals may have points later that they would bring up that are reasons why your, your collaboration, your project is ineffective. But if they're engaged in the stress testing all along, you're going to hear those much earlier. You're going to get the insights from a diverse and more inclusive set of individuals for the collaboration that that's at hand. So critical because as I was saying earlier, all of the big transformations are multidisciplinary today, you know, you need to make sure you've got all of the points of view involved and you don't have time to just drag everybody into meetings. By the way, that's another shift. Chapter six is shifting from meetings as the primary form of collaboration to collaborative software as the first form of collaboration where we, many more people can be involved in getting their point of view in, in a more thoughtful way, in their own time. And they don't all have to just be shoved in a meeting. And you hear only the same four voices all the time. Right. So that's another critical shift. Now another shift is moving from accidental relationship bonding to purposeful relationship bonding. You know, there's three layers to these shifts. One layer at the bottom is can you create a team that's got each other's back? We did. We had that at Deloitte. We didn't have it at Starwood. You know, that team that, that both is bonded. That's chapter four, Connected as relationships. That team that shares a commitment to lifting each other's energy up resilience. We were also fatigued during the pandemic and we would show up in meetings and we would say, before we start, how is everybody? We don't do that anymore. That sense of collective shared, I've got your back. I care about where you are and I want to help. Right? That is in. Is in. Is in. Chapter 5 After purposeful bonding to shared resilience. And then the next one is celebration. High fiving and making sure that the team is constantly giving each other the energy through celebration. Very few teams are truly celebratory. I think you might find it more in sales and maybe in marketing than you do in the average organization overall. Certainly more than in operations or at the executive team level. But it needs to be a very purposeful shifting from leader led praise to team led praise. And by the way, Stephanie, everything I'm talking about today is there's a macro point which is we're asking the team to share in leadership. We're asking the team to step up 30%. If you're a leader today, I want you to expect more of your team. And, and this book is a formula for telling your team how to be in service of each other. Like, it's one thing for you as a leader to give your team feedback, it's another thing for your team to give each other feedback.
- [18:23]
Stephanie Postols
Yep.
- [18:24]
Keith Ferrazzi
You know, it's one thing for you to hold your team members accountable, it's another thing for them to hold each other accountable, lifting each other's energy up, etc. What we're doing in the book is we're giving your team a methodology for the team to own success with the leader.
- [18:39]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah.
- [18:40]
Keith Ferrazzi
And it frees up the leader in a significant way.
- [18:43]
Stephanie Postols
I love this and kind of the thread that I'm hearing with all of this is really teaching emotional intelligence. And like, I mean to me these are human principles of like how to support each other's energy and check in on each other and have each other's back and learning to celebrate each other. And I think if I were to look at the job market for a while, that wasn't as maybe necessary for a while because skills really outweighed many of those things. Like if you were a high performer in a skills mindset that you didn't really need to do some of these things. I think that's my story around this. But now it seems like this is like we're having to teach people this again. Like how to be human, how to love on each other, how to support each other, how to check in on people's energy and seeing where they're at and caring. Like these are all just human things that I think, yeah, maybe we're lost for a little while.
- [19:29]
Keith Ferrazzi
Yeah, I would as again, there's three layers. The bottom layer is everything you're talking about. How do you get a team to, to be that relational, connected, bonded, caring, supportive, energy laden team? That's the bottom layer. The next layer is now how do you turn that on? How do you turn the heat up and make sure that we have butt kicking accountability, we have real challenge culture. We have, you know, a sense of getting coaching from our peer group. That, that second, that second layer, the third layer is practicing the tools and process and techniques of what I call 21st century collaboration. We need to be collaborating much faster, quicker cycles of change. We need to be adopting Agile as a general operating system for the company matter where you are, not just in software development, but in how we project manage. We need to be working in short sprints and getting lots of new information, doing pivots as needed, working in another short sprint. So it's all three layers that bottom. It's interesting your, your perspective on that bottom layer. I actually do think that as we as, as AI begins to take on more and more of the core competencies and skills of marketing and other things, it's going to elevate the human component to us and making sure that we have that. You know, if you think about it, AI is the amalgamation of all great thinking into a point of view. That doesn't mean that there isn't a role for an individual to challenge that, to level up. The insight of finding that pristinely right thing to do has been, has been squashed in this AI mush of a single voice that then can be challenged by human to pull out a particular vision or point of view of that and go higher. And that requires, you know, that, that humanity in that process.
- [21:29]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah, yeah. So when, when also thinking about this, do any of these concepts change based off the job market? We're in like, I think about, we were in like the silent resignation and people quitting. Silent quitting now. Pretty sure. I read a couple like job reports the other day and it's like we're the opposite. People are holding onto their jobs, people are losing jobs, people can't find jobs coming out of college. Like do any of these mindset shifts and how you're thinking about this change based off the environment? Because like when I think about leading my company, it feels like it'd be harder to invest from a, like, you know, everybody standpoint when it's shifting like this. At one point people are silent quitting and you're like, man, if I'm like giving a lot of responsibilities to the entire workforce, that fear feels like risky because they're silent quitting and then now shifting into this space where it's like now they're holding on, but maybe holding on out of like being scared. It's like, how do you balance.
- [22:21]
Keith Ferrazzi
Interesting. Yeah, well, Maybe I'll just give a thought on those two markets. And in the silent quitting. What I found when we were practicing these practices to companies that had that the abundant job market at the time was we found a lift in engagement. You know, we're, we're asking a team to, like I said back in Deloitte days, go take a hill together. We're asking a team to have a strong esprit de core. Caring about, you know, a mission, but caring about each other and pushing each other higher. That's exciting. It's engaging. Right? So I know, I found that even times when we heard about this quiet quitting, we didn't see it on the teams we were coaching because this team ship really levels everybody up. Now the flip side is when you have the clinging to the job and maybe a little bit more tepid insecurity, a little less risk taking, this team ship also pushes each other to take those risks, you know, swing for the fences together. The psychological safety breeds more risk taking. It breeds the ability to, to be bolder and, and also the process of work that we bring into place this 21st century collaboration, it inherently pushes us to be bold and bigger in our, in our collaborations, which of course we need in times when people may be more risk averse. But I also think we're moving into a different phase, which is, I think we're going through, we're going to go through a very strange time. You think about Uber, and Uber right now, they've signaled to the market that they're investing in self driving cars, but yet their primary workforce is a, is a driver. And as a result, drivers are sitting back saying, well, who are you that you're trying to engineer me out of a job? You obviously don't care about me. That's the conversation that I've heard had. Right. Every company's gonna be faced with that. I mean, imagine if you run a call center. I used to run the call centers when I was CMO at Starwood. Imagine if you run a call center. Pretty sure within five years there won't be call centers.
- [24:33]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah, for sure.
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Keith Ferrazzi
And so how are you getting your call centers engaged and enlivened when the reality is our technologies are gonna disaggregate them?
- [24:45]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah. Yeah. What do you think then? Like, how do you envision that? Because, I mean, it seems to me that like people will have to be, their jobs will be lost for sure, but as a leader, many jobs will.
- [24:54]
Keith Ferrazzi
Be lost, no question.
- [24:55]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah, like how do you also, I mean, if we have a Five year timeline, maybe let's just say, cause you right now, agents maybe aren't fully ready to take over customer support and success, maybe fully yet. Like you still need some money. Yeah.
- [25:06]
Keith Ferrazzi
Piloting it within a year and within three years it'll be up and running, et cetera. So yeah, three to five years, a hundred percent.
- [25:12]
Stephanie Postols
So now we're in this like, weird in between stage. Like what would you do as a leader knowing that, like that's clear.
- [25:17]
Keith Ferrazzi
Well, that, that by the way, is a conversation. I'm hosting the dialogue of, of a group of leaders at the TED conference, you know, in a few weeks. Okay. Both CIOs, CHROs and leaders bring them together to ask that, answer that question. But let me, let me look at that in a couple of different vantage points. First of all, I would challenge the folks in the call center today for those who would like to step up and be at the forefront of the AI transformation, to volunteer to do so. So I think with energy, there's a subset of people, maybe it's 5%, that we're asking to be at the forefront of figuring out how AI will be transformative. Those individuals more than likely will still find a role. You know, the, the innovators, the, the ones who are willing to collaborate, the curious, those individuals, it'll be a small subset. So, so I do think we can speak with positivity, growth and energy. And I understand that if somebody chooses not to be a part of that movement, that they will suffer from it. But it doesn't mean that I as a leader need to just walk into a call center and say in five years you'll all be gone. Right. So we can focus on the journey between now and then with those who want to be innovators. The next point I would say is, you know, I think that while I'm not going to get into the societal question of what happens when all the Uber drivers are laid off because of self driving cars, long term truckers are laid off because of AI and self driving trucks, call centers are dismissed. You know, I easily. We could go to the social disruption that might occur when we have that number of people that are, that are not employed and the inequity that you see and some of the disruption that you might find will, will occur. Right. People with pitchforks standing in your doorsteps.
- [27:12]
Stephanie Postols
We've, yeah, I've, I've talked quite a bit about this if anyone wants to hear about it. I talked to this guy, Zach Kass, who He worked at OpenAI and now he's like a futurist in this. We had a whole talk on this type of thing and where people are going to go when a lot of jobs just are gone.
- [27:26]
Keith Ferrazzi
And yeah, I'd be interested in hearing your point of view. I view that we have to have a societal option for that that looks somewhere close to universal basic income, married to some form of public works so that people can be productive, because the reality is we just won't have enough of those menial jobs. Now, my father suffered from that disassociation of the crash of the steel industry. My dad was an unemployed steel worker in Pittsburgh. And while Pittsburgh rejuvenated, my dad's population didn't. His friends stayed unemployed for the rest of their lives with no pensions, no unemployment insurance, no safety net. And it's that group of individuals that really have been the disruptive force in the last five years in the elections, etc. It's. It's people like the, you know, the retired people like my. My old man. Right. And the people that didn't see the Democratic Party supporting them through that transition in her. I think, frankly, they're grasping for straws because I also don't see the Republican Party coming up with a good solution either for this disassociation. So I don't think it's a. I don't think it's a party situation. I think it's a disenfranchised situation. Now, let's pause for a second. I would like to hear your point of view. Where do you think society's going? Well, in terms of that?
- [28:49]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah. I mean, I think tons of jobs will for sure get lost and anything that can be. I mean, we already see it automated now. Like, it's a lot of work that will be gone, and then I think a lot of people will be struggling with meaning. Like, it'll become a whole spiritual revolution where people are trying to figure out who they are. Especially people who've not stayed up to date with skills. Probably more C suite folks, I would say, who have been like, I have a whole team who knows how to do these things and stayed on top of it. A lot of people I talked to still don't know how to use ChatGPT and their teams do, but they're just like, I don't even like, whoa, I talked to it and knew my name. Like, they're excited about that. And I'm like, ooh, that's not really using ChatGPT. That's just like, yeah, that's not using it. So I think that There'll be a loss of meaning, people trying to find purpose again. I like the idea, I don't like the idea of just universal basic income, but I like tying it, like you said, to public works because I think they did a UBI study in like some country and it like did not work, but they didn't tie it to meaning and purpose and like having some kind of efficiency coming out of it.
- [29:52]
Keith Ferrazzi
We generally agree.
- [29:53]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah, yeah.
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Keith Ferrazzi
Look, I want to add one thing though. I don't think many corporations in the short term are going to step up to take care of the disenfranchise.
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Stephanie Postols
No. And you wouldn't expect them to. That's not their job to step up.
- [30:05]
Keith Ferrazzi
And expect them to. But, but, but, but I do think, because I'm working on a study right now with this group of CIOs and CHROs about the, the future of employee development and elevation of employees. I don't know if you've done this, but some of my friends actually use their ChatGPT as a daily coach.
- [30:26]
Stephanie Postols
I use it a lot for brainstorming, for sure. And I will also use it for personality tests where I will take my enneagram, my human design, like all these different things that are impacting me and I will cross reference it with what I'm doing and then also what my team's doing as well. So, so I kind of.
- [30:44]
Keith Ferrazzi
Yeah. Great. So you're, you're using it already as a coach.
- [30:47]
Stephanie Postols
Yep.
- [30:48]
Keith Ferrazzi
And I believe we're all going to have one of the most informed and wise coaches working with us all the time. You know, it'll be right there in our ear. And I think you can also think about ways, you know, the mapping system, the roadmap system. Ways.
- [31:03]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah.
- [31:04]
Keith Ferrazzi
Think about that for your career and your life. Think about like what a ways that when you say you want to have a thriving relationship, reminds you to bake cookies for your spouse. Right. Which my, my fiance loves when I do that. Right.
- [31:19]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah.
- [31:19]
Keith Ferrazzi
So, and that, that also reminds you what you need to go learn because you've said you want to go here in your job, but you need to learn and build these skills or it will also tell you who you need to go learn from. This person has had the same path that you want to have. Why don't you go build a relationship there? Right. Informal learning. It's going to be my networking coach. Right. So I, I, I believe that what companies could invest in is for anybody that is off boarding to the company, why not give them a system that would help them Find their way and navigate in that offboarding process. But you know, that offboarding process, if you close down a call center in the olden days, you know, they used to throw one emotional coaching session with everybody who's lost their job because that was the cost associated with what you could afford. But I do think we might be able to do better for people now. I'm not sure what's going to happen when you know, if you lay off 10,000 workers and we know for sure that 5,000 of them are currently unemployable anywhere else. I'm not sure societally what we decide to do with that and whether an AI coach is going to help. But I do think there's an opportunity to, to ease that path through AI.
- [32:43]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah.
- [32:44]
Keith Ferrazzi
If you're, if you're purposefully focused on it as one of the things that you want to do as a leader, make sure that that offboarding path is being managed.
- [32:52]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah. Well then I would say just do it with onboarding, onboard them in a certain way. Collect data and inputs from them to know where they're head, career and other things they're excited about. So then when you're offboarding them, you don't just invest in the off boarding, you also have gotten support for them while they've been at the company.
- [33:07]
Keith Ferrazzi
I totally agree. When I wrote this book, what I started to come awakened to was the realization that empowered teams have a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum you have what we all agree is not a good idea. Autocratic command and control hub and spoke top down leadership. Right. We all kind of know that's not the right answer. On the other end of the extreme, what you have is something that is emerging that's very interesting. Self managed teams where a team doesn't need a leader. It's called Holacracy. And you know, right behind me is this shoe a buddy of mine.
- [33:48]
Stephanie Postols
That's a nice shoe. For anyone who can't see it. It's like a gold. Looks like straight gold. Is that a Nike shoe?
- [33:54]
Keith Ferrazzi
It's an actual molded shoe. I think it's an Asics okay. That my friend Tony Hsieh used to wear. And Tony passed away during the pandemic rather tragically. But one of the things that Tony brought to the world was real breakthrough innovation not only around human capital and ways of working, but he also really was focused on very much this holocracy, self managed teams. He believed that if you created an empowered workforce, why do you need to micromanage them? Why can't they manage each other. It's a very bold idea. And that's on this far. Right. And what we're finding, we do. That shoe, by the way, is an award I give out, the Tony Shea Award.
- [34:33]
Stephanie Postols
Oh, that's cool.
- [34:34]
Keith Ferrazzi
And our foundation, if anybody is it, believes that you're doing really cool, clever things to elevate humans in the workplace and elevate business and transformation of business outcomes. Go to the TonyShay Award.com and apply for the award. But what I'm seeing is all of these people applying and saying, we're experimenting with holocratic teams. Bayer, Pharmaceuticals, all state. It's not just little companies anymore that are. That are considering this. And, you know, I just find that really interesting because, you know, even in the olden days, we talked about empowered teams. I'm taking empowered teams to the next level and saying, level up your team. Expect more from your team. Demand more from each other as a team. So I'm moving from, you know, autocracy to you've got Holacracy way over there, empowered team in the middle. And teamship, I think, is one step beyond what we've been talking about in the past in terms just an empowered team. We're expecting a lot more from each other, which then segues into the high return practices. Right. How do you get a team there? So we talked about having a team that has each other's backs, that cares about each other, that lifts each other's energy up. Well, we noticed during the pandemic, people would show up at the beginning of meetings and saying, how is everybody? And so I took that as a practice. Now I'm suggesting the teams once a month show up and say to each other, where is our energy and what's bringing it down? It's called an energy check, simple practice. We have data that shows that the average team has a sense of shared commitment to each other. That's in the mid twos, on a scale of 0 to 5, by the way. But that's still not great. When teams start to do this energy check, when teams start to say, we own each other's energy, we care about each other, we want to lift each other up. What's your energy? So I can help. When that's the social contract, the energy in the room goes up in the high threes in literally less than six months if you do this. So that's one of the high return practices called an energy check. That's a really powerful one that I recommend you do with your teams. Now, the book has 32 practices and high return practices that have been statistically validated and energy check is one, stress testing is one. You know, I feel that we need, you know, by the way, just doing a gratitude circle is another one. I talked about celebration, having everybody go around and say what their most. Well, actually there's an interesting twist to it. Everybody go around and share who on the team are they most grateful for and why.
- [37:15]
Stephanie Postols
I love that.
- [37:16]
Keith Ferrazzi
And that's the great thing about that is it's peer to peer. It doesn't rely on the leader all the time. Because it's also important to see from a peer perspective who's not just managing up, but who's managing that team. And it's fun because the, the other value of this peer celebration piece is what happens in three months if you, you're the one that's never been celebrated by anybody. What does that say to you? Right? So you know, these are the high return practices on the various shifts that, you know, that's the promise. When you read the book, you read the book, you get an inspiring story. You get these practices and I want you and just to eat them like popcorn with your team. Let's try this, let's try a stress test, let's try an energy check. And chapter by chapter you can start to adopt new practices and just level up in a beautiful new way. And you know, and also I hope that because I've given you the book, it's the inspirational stories you already need to tell your people why this is important. I've already documented those, written those now.
- [38:19]
Stephanie Postols
Yep. I love it for you. List out three of those. What are two more? Your favorite of that list of the high return practices. Yeah.
- [38:27]
Keith Ferrazzi
You know, there's, there's a wonderful company called Elf Beauty. And Elf has been crushing it in the cosmetics industry. They've been, you know, the Estee Lauders had been around forever. Elf Beauty just eaten market share all the time. The biggies, they have a social contract as a team that they will constantly give each other coaching. And on a periodic basis, they pause and they do an exercise that's called an open 360. You know, let's say you and I were on the same team. Not necessarily in the same org chart, just on the same team working together on something. We're working on this project once every once in a while at the right cadence, maybe a quarter or something, we'd pause and say, okay, let's do a quick open 360. And we'd maybe start with me and everybody would go around and first say, Keith, what we most appreciate about you in the last quarter has been X. And then everybody go around, we'll say, Keith, because we care about your success over this next quarter, I might suggest. Then we go to Stephanie. Stephanie, in the last quarter, what I most respected about you was X. And in the next quarter, because I care about you, I might suggest. And everybody goes around and gives that, that peer to peer feedback to each other. That really has changed the dynamic at elf. People go there just because they know that they'll grow further faster. They'll go further than they ever could at any other company and that and they're getting their feedback from their peers. That is not a normal social contract.
- [40:03]
Stephanie Postols
I feel like that takes training. I mean, I was in a leadership training here in Austin and we went around and we gave people feedback first. Gratitude, easy. Everyone could just be like, the greatness I see in you is this. But then the feedback part, like the more of like, here's something that I think you should know for your future. People struggled with giving feedback. So I'm like, I feel like that might have to be taught. Yeah, not at all.
- [40:26]
Keith Ferrazzi
It has to be experienced. Right. And I think that it's actually better. I know what you're saying, but I use a distinction. I don't really believe that it's trained. I believe that it's coached. You know, coached means you do it in a real context. Training means you learn about how to do it. Right. And so I believe very much that. I was just talking this morning, one of our clients is, is a country. We were working with the country of Bhutan.
- [40:54]
Stephanie Postols
That's cool.
- [40:55]
Keith Ferrazzi
Yeah. And I've been, I was talking this morning with the person who runs most of the private sector of the country of Bhutan and really just talking about how we, you know, he said, I, you know, I've been working with the government, now I'm going to be working with the private sector piece. And he said, well, we need some training for leaders. And I said, I don't think we need training. I want to, I want to create an engaged transformation among your leaders and I want them to own it and I want it to be all about the work. I don't want to take people offline and teach them about a bunch of teamship concepts. By the way, when we coach teams, we don't, we don't teach teamship. We apply team ship to your business. I don't think executives would have the patience, not the ones we work with. They wouldn't have the patience to have us come in and teach them. I'm just like, listen, you know, I. When I work with an executive team, I'll come in and I'll ask everybody in the executive team, you know, what conversation should we be having that we're not having? And I'll get that in my ear, and then I'll create an agenda with the executive that I'm the team whose team I'm coaching. And I'm like, I think these topics are the most important topics your team says they need to be talking about, but we don't have the psychological safety to talk about right now. Let me coach us using new practices into going there where we've not gone there before. And so to me, the difference is coaching, not training.
- [42:20]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah, I love that. I think I saw on your LinkedIn too, where you were like, you don't need a consultant to do some of these things. You can do it yourself. Like, which I. That's a very refreshing viewpoint of like, yes, I can come in and help coach and you can do it yourself. If you get in there and put some of these things into practice and try.
- [42:35]
Keith Ferrazzi
Well, the reason I wrote the book is so anybody can coach their own teams.
- [42:38]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah, right.
- [42:39]
Keith Ferrazzi
You don't need an outsider to come in and do it. Of course, if you want an outsider to come and do it, it's maybe more expeditious. I can, you know, do it with a little more facility in the short term. But the whole point is it's about the practices. Just do the practices. Now, the second thing that I was meaning about that consulting piece, I think the wisdom of all great consultants is in your team got to activate it, and they have to activate it with each other. And the reality is, if you're sitting on a team that doesn't even have the strength of courage to speak truth in the room or challenge each other, how in the world are you getting the value out of that team? So if I give them the practices and we renegotiate the social contract, I think a lot of what consultants do for you can be done by your own team.
- [43:25]
Stephanie Postols
Yep. I love it. Okay, with this last five minutes, I want to ask you. So the first 20 years, you went from how to build relationships and networking to now team structures, leadership, what do you think the next 20 years will hold for you? What are you researching?
- [43:40]
Keith Ferrazzi
Well, look, I mean, the last eight years, I've been majorly focused on technology enablement in the workplace. I was spending a lot of time at that third layer that I talk about. How do we do 21st century collaboration. You know, we, we, we have Microsoft Teams, we have Google Work, Stack, we have all these things. We don't use those tools. We still drag people into meetings. We've got project management software, knowledge management software. We barely scratch the surface of the functionality. So I do believe that tools are a really important enabler. But now we're about to be given and by the way, and we barely scratched the surface of that. Fewer than 15% of teams are 21st century collaborators. They're usually the young hot teams coming out of Stanford University, Austin, etc. The next phase for me is to look at how AI partners with our teams. And I'm spending all my time there with. Look, it doesn't mean that the core work of high performing teams isn't important. I think it's more important than ever, right. Defining a team, working more effectively together through all this disruption. But now I want to figure out how, what happens when AI is our teammate? Like what does that look like? And that's what I'm working on for the next 20 years. But I'm not waiting. You know, I'm bringing a group of CIOs and CHROs to the TED conference. We're spending two days together before TED starts, just talking about how that partnership, just like I did in my start when I started Frozy Greenlight, I started with sales and marketing. The interdependency now that I'm most focused on is human capital and technology. How did the human component of technology, how does that work?
- [45:21]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah, I love that. Well, I feel like it's an exciting future to be a part of. I love thinking about the future of collaboration and executives coming together. So thank you for the work that you're doing. Thank you for coming on marketing trends. Where can our listeners and our viewers find out more about you and your work and your books? Where do you want to send them?
- [45:38]
Keith Ferrazzi
Keithferazi.com and LinkedIn are probably my biggest opportunities. You know, one thing I didn't talk about, you mentioned Never Eat Alone. One of the things that I wanted to make sure in the last 20 years I've been curating high performing teams, focusing on the future of the workforce. But I still have a great audience that cares so much about making sure that their relationships are as powerful as ever, their network is as powerful as ever. So I started something that your audience could take a look at@connected success.com and it's a community of people who are still influenced by Never Eat Alone, still want to level up and use their network to be their greatest net worth and I love that. It's amazing community and it's a great learning experience, but it's also a great accountability experience. People come together online, they come together in person. So just take a look@connected success.com amazing.
- [46:35]
Stephanie Postols
I will check that out. All right. Anything else you want to add in?
- [46:39]
Keith Ferrazzi
No, this is great. I really appreciated our conversation and bring me back to my old CMO days. Thank you.
- [46:44]
Stephanie Postols
I know this is super fun. Thanks for coming on. We'll have to have you back for a round two in the future and dive into all the areas that I didn't get a chance to, but for now, thanks for coming on.