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- [00:00]
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When you start something new, whether it's a business, a project, or a podcast, there's always that moment of doubt. Is this the right move? Is it actually going to work? Look, I've been there. And while the uncertainty never fully goes away, having the right systems in place makes a big difference. That's where Shopify comes in. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, and it powers 10% of all E commerce in the US from established brands to people just getting started. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com leadership. Go to shopify.com leadership. That's shopify.com leadership.
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You reset your standards. You close the accountability loop. You had the hard conversations, but now everything is coming back to you. You're making the calls, clearing the roadblocks, and you're in every decision. And so, while your team might be performing better, you are still the bottleneck. Does this sound familiar? This is day three of our free Leadership Reset workshop, and it's the final piece of the puzzle. Because here's what most leaders eventually learn the hard way. You don't rise or fall to the level of your motivation. You rise or fall to the level of your leadership system. And if the systems underneath your leadership stay broken, everything reverts. Not because you're weak, but because that's just what humans do. We default to the path of least resistance. So today's episode is about design. It's about resetting the infrastructure of your leadership so the performance doesn't rely on you constantly pushing. If this series has resonated with you, I really want you to look at joining the next cohort of leadership beyond the theory. Head to leadershipbeyondthetheory.com to grab your spot. But for now, enjoy. Day three. This is a long one. It goes for about an hour and 20 minutes. We've got the learning piece. We've got a Q and A with Marty at the end. This is the one that ties it all together. Enjoy. Welcome to the no Bullshit Leadership Podcast. In a world where knowledge has become a commodity, this podcast is designed to give you something more access to the experience of a success, successful CEO who has already walked the path. So join your host, Martin Moore, who will unlock and bring to life your own leadership experiences and accelerate your journey to leadership excellence. Hello and welcome back to the Leadership Recess. So this is our final day. Over the last two days, you've probably had a few. I don't know, Marty, what do you think? Slightly uncomfortable moments, probably. Yeah. Moments where you've realized that you've let standards drift, that you haven't been as diligent with accountability as you could have been, and you've been personally carrying a lot more than you need to. But today is different. Today isn't about courage or conviction. It is about design. Because here's the thing that most leaders eventually learn the hard way. You don't rise or fall to the level of your motivation. You rise or fall to the level of your leadership system, and so do your people. So if the systems underneath your leadership stay the same, it will eventually revert to old, old patterns and old habits. And that's not because you're weak, but it's because, like we're humans, we naturally default to the path of least resistance. So today is about resetting the infrastructure of your leadership so the performance doesn't rely on you constantly pushing. And you guys know what that feels like. A complete leadership reset has three layers. So day one was internal, day two was structural, and day three. Now this is predictable. This is the layout that most leaders skip. And you know what? Like, they try and lead better inside broken systems, but that's just so exhausting. So today we're going to reset the three leadership systems that quietly shape how your team behaves every day. And these are the value system, the worker level system, and the one on one system. These are systems that decide whether your leadership scales or stalls. So, Marty, I'm going to hand over to you. Let's crack into the first system, the value system.
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Sure. Thanks, Em. And one of the things I realized relatively early in my executive career was that value needed to be at the center of everything. And there was so much wasted effort. There's just people spinning their wheels everywhere because they're working on things that really didn't make a difference. And it's a constant struggle to get that focus on value so that your people are doing the things they need to do and you're getting the results out the back end. There's nothing worse than having committed people who are motivated and hard working and they're just wasting effort because they're working on the wrong things. So there's a whole bunch of stuff that looks like it's a good idea at the time. Everything looks important until you actually get down to it and ask the questions, what do we actually get for this? What's the deliverable? How do I know if it's being deliverable? So you know, if you don't have a really clear way to assess and rank value. You end up with, you know, your work piling up, you're all over worked. You can't see the forest for the trees, you can't make sensible trade offs because when something else comes onto the pile, you don't know whether it's a good thing to pick that up or not. And your teams optimize for their activity. So they basically say, okay, well I've got to get this done, then this done, then this done. And they work out what the most efficient way to do the workload they have at hand is. And that's a very, very poor way to prioritize. So the result is that, you know, leaders end up being frustrated. They feel like they're doing a whole lot of things and not being able to get the results. So they can work their asses off and still not produce results and still not be recognized for being a high performing team. Because if you're not delivering value, well, you're not, you haven't got a high performing team if you're not delivering value and producing results. That's the number one criterion. So a leadership reset has to start with value. You've got to get your work program in the right shape before you do anything else. So there's a few phrases that show the value focus is drifting. So you know, well, let's just get it done. You know when something comes down from above and the boss says I want you to do this, you go, okay, boss. Because you don't want to argue and you want to be a can do person. And so you just try to get it done. But that is never going to work because you'll be doing a whole lot of the wrong things. Or you know, when something else comes in where someone asks you to do a favor, someone you've got a relationship with or someone who you want to impress or please, and you'll say, oh well, it's only a small thing, I'll just add that onto my workload. You know, the classic scope creep that happens in projects of all types, which is, well, let's build it for Justin, you know, just in case we need it later. So there's a whole lot of work that gets done for Justin and Justin has to be off your team completely. And you know, one of the other things is you want to keep people busy. Now there's this sort of weird thing that happens, particularly the higher up you get. People protect their empires, they want to protect the number of people they have, they want to sustain the budgets they have, it's counterintuitive for really senior leaders to start culling to get more efficiency out of their teams, just, you know, proactively. So, you know, keeping people busy is really important to keep their empire intact. And there's also that old axiom that, you know, work expands to fill the time allotted for it. And so if you're not 100% busy, you'll find a low value task and you'll stretch it out so that you still look like you're indispensable. None of this has anything to do with value. It's simply not connected in any way, shape or form. And the faster you get your head around that as a leader, the better you're going to be and the better your team's going to be. So when you reset your value system, you've got to start with your language. But you need systems behind this, right? Language isn't enough. It's very easy to go to your team and say, all right, I want you all to produce more value. Go off and find the value for me. And they're just going to look at each other and go, what the fuck is Marty talking about? What's he saying? I got no idea what he's talking about. What does he mean, going like, I am doing valuable stuff? So you need another way to describe this. The language has to be much more precise and much more surgical, and then it's got to be backed up with value systems that enable you to do this. So you'll be saying things like, you know, okay, what problems does this solve? What does it specifically do? And if the problem is solved, what do I see? What do I notice when that problem is no longer a problem? What outcome is this work going to produce? How do I know if it's been successful? Where will I see that outcome? Will I see reduced cost? Will I see an increase in revenue? Will I see an increase in customer satisfaction? Will I see reduced injuries? What am I going to see that tells me this has worked? When and where will the value from this initiative be visible? Where's it going to appear? Where should I look? And here's the killer question. What would happen if we didn't do this? Like, what's the impact of not doing this? And very often, people won't be able to describe what you're going to forego if you don't do it? And so it's these sort of questions to just drill below that highest layer of, you know, where's the value? And how do you create value to get down to something that's much more specific and much more realistic. So value ranking is a leadership discipline. And in leadership, beyond the theory, we've got a value ranking system that has a prescriptive 10 step process for working out what the highest value things are. You know, spreadsheets, PDF documents to describe it, videos for me, the whole thing around how you get to that point, how do you work out where the value is? You want to focus on the biggest bang for buck, but that's, that's the number one thing. And when I say biggest bang for buck, I don't just mean financial outcomes. You know, there's been times when I've invested, not my money, several million dollars of company money in an effort to make the environment for our workforce safer. But it's not just enough to spend the money and say we're going to be safer. I put clear metrics in place. What does it do to our incident rates? What does it do to our serious injury rates, lost time injury and medically treated injury rates? What does it do in terms of our people's ability to prevent these things before they start? What does it do for our risk awareness and risk responsiveness? So when I say biggest bang for buck, I mean you've got to see an outcome that's commensurate with the investment of resources on the front end. Another thing that shows that you've got that, that value ranking discipline in place is that you will kill low value work. And I've got to tell you, the hardest thing I ever tried to do in a large corporation was to stop something that had already started. It's really hard to do. It gets a life of its own. The minute something's got a line item on a budget and a dollar amount and a person's name next to it, then it's all over. Red rover, like people are going to try and do that. And even if you find it and try and kill it, it's so hard to do, it'll just go underground. So it's very, very difficult to stop work once it's already started. Which is why the value ranking process puts a huge amount of urgency on that front end where the work program is being constructed. Once you've got a good value ranked program of work, you've got to say no. And that means saying no to your boss, saying no to your team, saying no to your peers who you're trying to build relationships with and impress. You've got to be able to say no. And one of the good things about Spending as long as I did protecting value for the various companies I worked for, I could say no in 63 languages without any problem at all. And I could say it in a way that didn't make it feel like I was just being obtuse. I could say it in a way that made it feel like I had the person in there with me joined at the hip, evaluating whether or not something was a good idea in the context of everything else that was going on. Because you've got to make conscious trade off decisions. It's the only way to do it. So there's five signs of a working value system. The work program smaller. Now, it doesn't mean that you're doing less things, it means that you're choosing to do the right things. You imagine this, right, if you could rank all of your potential work items from 1 to 50, and you'll see that the graduation of value drops extremely quickly. So your top five might all be, you know, orders of magnitude higher than your bottom five. So if you can reliably deliver 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 on your value ranked list, if you believe you've got that right, then no one's going to care if you get to number 44 or not. They simply won't care because you're doing the things that deliver the most value. Now, second sign is that decisions happen faster because when you understand what the relative value proposition is between anything you could be working on, it's really easy to determine if something else fits or doesn't fit there. So again, don't get stuck in these endless debates with people talking about what they think's, you know, more important than something else. And all this, you know, personal, personal patch protection stuff, that stuff just sorts of, sort of tends to disappear because what you're talking about instead is the relative value that can be delivered from spending time and energy on something. The third thing is accountability becomes a lot sharper. And the reason accountability becomes sharper is that, you know, you'll see that as people start to step up and own the things of the most import, they'll, they'll grab those, right? They'll know how much impact there is in them. And because they're not getting distracted all over the place, the excuses just fade away, they just dissolve because no one can say, well, I had these 20 things to work on, you've already cleared their desk off. So they can focus on the one or two things that are really important and then they get to do those. So accountability is much sharper and it's Easier to hold people accountable. Once you see that the team understands this and they buy into the program, then you can stop playing referee. You know, you're not going to have 10 people in your office a day trying to put their case forward for why you should do something that they want to do. It just stops. And then, you know, all of these things add up to a meaningful change in the team. The team feels this value focus. They feel the impact they're having. They stop that feeling of being a tiny cog in a large wheel, and they start feeling as though they can make a difference. And when your team starts feeling as though they can make a real difference, this is when the high performers get motivated. The low performers realize that there's no place for them unless they can perform better. And you can run the team the way you want to. So you'll be able to know what's going on, and you'll be able to sense this by the feeling of the shift. You're going to stop feeling like you're pushing shit uphill all the time and that everything's urgent and there's just not enough hours in the day. And you're constantly shifting from one thing to another, and you find that you're serving everyone else's priorities, whether it's a demand from beside you or above you. And instead of feeling like that, you'll have stability, and stability and consistency in your work program is incredibly important. So you're going to feel like the right work is rising to the top. The wrong work isn't making the cut. It's not even in the conversation. You've just got to be comfortable with either putting that on the back burner or mercifully putting it out of its misery and shooting it. And then, by the way, sorry, that's a metaphor. I don't want anyone picking up firearms in this process. Okay? And then, you know, it's value, not activity. That's the defining principle. So you're constantly talking about the value, not how busy you are. You stop rewarding busyness. So in Module 1 of Leadership beyond the Theory, we absolutely show you how to trace value from its source to its recovery. Okay, If I'm going to invest here, I need to make sure that I'm getting this out the back end. It shows you how to do that. It shows you how to understand the prioritization process, how to get continuous improvement into your team, and particularly how to value rank, because that is a discipline that very, very few organizations are good at. You've got to get good at value ranking, it's critical. Enough about value. How about you tell us about working at level? By the way, this is Emma's favorite concept in the whole of leadership beyond the theory.
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It is. And that's why I wanted to do this section. Because system reset number two is resetting how work flows to the right level. And if you've ever felt like a bottleneck or overloaded with work, then this one is for you. Now, the fastest way to spot a broken leadership system is to look at your calendar. If your calendar is full of meetings where you're the most senior person, where you're problem solving, reviewing, fixing, reworking, then you're not just busy, you are the actual system. The team can't function without your constant intervention, which is a problem. And look, you're just the bottleneck. Performance relies too much on your personal input. Something that Marty reminded me of when I was doing my reset is that leaders don't drift down and dip down because they're incompet. Which was really nice to hear because I was starting to feel a little bit incompetent. They usually drift down because hey, you're good at execution, you want to help, it feels faster and it reduces short term risk. And honestly, when you're stretched, it's just a lot easier to do the work than it is to lead someone else to do it. But every time you step down, you steal accountability, you stymie capability, and you create dependency. Now a reset doesn't mean disappearing, it means being intentional about where you add the most value. So working at level means letting go of decisions that are better made below you, spending more time on clarity, direction and capability, and accepting short term discomfort for that long term bench strength. If you're serious about resetting this system, I want you to write this one down and practice it. Practice saying this? I don't know. Think about it while you're going to sleep. Practice it while you're brushing your teeth. I'm not stepping in here. I want to see you think through this yourself. Right? I want, I want you to be saying this to your people. All right, Marty, let's have a look at the vacuum effect. And I just love this little diagram here. When leaders stop doing lower level work, something really interesting happens. A vacuum appears. And vacuums don't naturally remain empty. So either your people step up or the gap exposes a capability issue that was already there. Either outcome is critical because it just informs you of what your capability is really like. But if you keep filling the vacuum yourself, which a lot of us do, then you will never find out. So just remember, leader steps back, the vacuum appears, people step up and then the capability gaps are exposed, which you can then work on. So here's your practical reset moment on Monday. I want you to identify what one decision you are still making that someone else should own. One person who you habitual, habitually rescue. And I bet all of you can think of that person right now. One meeting that you attend purely because someone has invited you. And that's where the reset for this system starts. I just want to show you what it looks like when working at level is built in as a leadership system. And obviously this is what we teach in full in Module 4 of Leadership beyond the Theory. In a fully functioning leadership system, leaders aren't just busy, they're operating at the right altitude. They're not the hardest worker in the team. They're not the best problem solver in the room. Instead, their time is spent where it creates the most leverage. And here's what you notice immediately. First, your calendar is going to look different. So less firefighting, fewer meetings really, because people no longer require you to be in everything. The second is that decision making happens closer to the work. So people don't come to you by default. They do the thinking to solve their own problems. Third, capability grows faster. And you saw how this happens in the vacuum slide. Fourth, performance conversations get easier because when people are truly accountable for their work at their level, the conversation changes. So it's no longer, you know, why didn't this get done? It becomes what decisions did you make? What trade offs did you choose? What would you do differently next time? And you know, leadership maturity. And it only happens when work is sitting at the right level. The fifth thing is that the leader's role becomes unmistakably clear. So you're no longer this engine of execution. You're the architect of performance. You protect focus, you set direction, you hold the line on standards. And lastly, you stop feeling indispensable. So you stop being the bottleneck. You stop doing work that someone else should own. Instead, you become the leader who creates self space for others to perform, who builds capability and who gets results. So yeah, that's what we teach in Module 4 of Leadership beyond the Theory. It's not a productivity hack. It's a system for scaling leadership impact, building capability and accelerating your career. All right, Marty, I need a sip of water. Can you take us through the last system reset that we need to focus on? The one on ones.
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Yeah, the, the thing about how you execute this in the run of play is this happens eyeball to eyeball. You can't just do this in an ad hoc fashion. You can't lead by email. As much as we'd like to, particularly with, you know, hybrid work the way it is, you've got to do this eyeball to eyeball. People have got to be really, really clear about the conversation and you've got to be able to connect with them. You can't do this unless you're having human connection with an individual. Now, of course, you know, zoom is fine. It's not as good as a real thing. So if you can get face to face with people, it's a lot better. But as a substitute, you know, doing this virtually is going to be, going to be a good substitute. The thing about resetting your one on ones is that you've got to get a cadence in place that gives you predictability around setting the standards, setting the expectations, assessing what's going on and giving people the support they need to get through it. And we spoke yesterday about accountability and empowerment, two sides of the same coin. You'll find both accountability and, and empowerment happen in the one on one room. So there's five signs that your one on ones have drifted away a bit. These are the typical things that happen when you've had some sort of discipline with one on one meetings. And by the way, these are predominantly with your direct reports. When I was, you know, in large senior executive roles, what I would do is meet either weekly or fortnightly with my direct reports, depending on where they were in their journey. But I'd also meet, you know, every six months or so with the people who were one level removed from me. So I'd also have meetings with them, so they had a relationship with me, so that I understood a little bit more about that talent at the next level. But when we talk about these one on ones, I'm talking predominantly about one on ones with your direct reports. So you'll know that you're slipping if you're constantly rescheduling or canceling those one on ones. You know, it feels like I just had one last week, I probably don't need another one now. There hasn't been enough time to report any change. Change, I'll just postpone this one. And they're the first things that drop when it gets busy because you, you think to yourself, well, they'll be fine, they can go for another week. And then if you do that more than twice, more than three times, people start to feel as though you don't care about them anymore. Not about them as people, but about the process of one on ones. So I found that these were probably the most important things in my calendar as an executive to make sure that I was checking in with and understanding exactly where my people were at any point in time. And for this reason, you know, if your one on ones are just turning into status updates, you'll devalue them. You won't feel as though they're as useful if they turn into therapy sessions where you just, you know, having these emotional chats about all the things that are wrong with the world. Well, that's not going to help anyone if they're just, you know, friendly chats. I mean, there's a place for connecting beyond the work environment and there's a place for connecting about things that have absolutely nothing to do with the work at hand. This is how you build relationships. You can't build a caring, trust relationship with someone if you don't know anything about their lives and their aspirations and where they want to go. So that's got to be part of it, but it can't be the only thing. And then of course, you know, sometimes if the organization isn't being run well, you spend a lot of time in reactive firefighting in those one on ones. And some of you will have heard me say before, companies that are really good in a crisis are normally pretty poorly run. And this is perhaps counterintuitive, but some companies get into this routine and rhythm where they wait for something to go wrong and it happens all the time. When it does, people get together and they start to frantically solve the problem. They all work overtime, they all band together, they get the job done and they sit back and relax. And then management swoops in and praises them and heaps them with lavish praise and kudos because they've all worked so hard to avert the problem. And then they go to sleep again until the next problem arises. Organizations that are really well run, they anticipate problems and risks and they mitigate them. And so they're sort of a bit boring. They still have their problems, they still have unexpected events, of course, but they don't have that same troubleshoot and emergency fix mentality that a lot of companies have. The best companies are much more stable than that. So to research a one on one system, you've got to make sure that the one on ones have certain components to them every time you sit down and have a conversation. And the number one thing that I was always really, really firm on was that a One on one had to increase clarity. If I wasn't doing that, then there wasn't any point in having that meeting. So I had to think about clarifying my expectations and making sure that people were crystal clear on what I expected from them, what they needed to deliver. Absolutely critical. It also gave me an opportunity to inspect progress. And we spoke about, on yesterday, we spoke about in the accountability frame how you have to do the. No, no, no, no, don't tell me your story. I want to see your progress. Show me. Don't tell me. Because I got blindsided a few times by people who are quite good people who simply weren't prepared to tell me the truth. And so I became very, very fond of the show me, don't tell me routine. As you work with people on helping them solve their problems, you also get this uplift in decision making capability. So they spend time with you learning how to solve problems. You don't solve them for them, but you ask them the questions that are going to make a difference as to how they see the problem, how they approach it. And so if you're really skilled as a leader in that one on one frame where you're coaching people, you'll be able to get them to uplift their performance in the decision making space by showing them how to exercise better judgment. This is a key formulation for lifting capability and bench strength on your team. And you know, you want to make sure that if you're doing this one on one and you're connecting with people and you're there with them in the room, they'll feel more like you're joined at the hip with them solving the problem than standing back in judgment waiting to whack them over the nose with a wet newspaper when they do something wrong.
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So yesterday you were, you were whacking them over the back of the head with a wet newspaper and today you're whacking them over the nose with a wet newspaper. Anything else we can pull out there?
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A
We've progressed in the last 24 hours. Him.
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B
Nice. Fast. Good.
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A
So the reset frame, like after you've been drifting, you've got to reset the expectations. We spoke yesterday about how to reset with the team first and then the individuals so they know exactly where they stand in relation to that team expectation. And I saw a question on the no bullshit leadership hub about whether you can do that in the other order. Yes, you can. You can have the individual conversations first and then the team. It's probably a situation where if you've been leading reasonably well, your individuals will already have some sense of where they are and then you can impose the team dynamic over the top of that. But I think the team meeting that talks about how you're doing the reset is going to be at a point in time in between a whole range of one on ones. So it gives you that context that you can then leverage. But when we talk about resetting the one on ones, we have to talk about saying, okay, these meetings matter and here's why they matter. So I'm going to reset how we use them. They're not going to be just for updates. This is where we do the work of leadership, right? This is where we understand performance. And in my world, what I would do is have a toggling agenda. So on one meeting I'd have their agenda. Whatever you want to talk about, bring me anything you can bring me anything you want. It's your agenda. I'm here to serve you and to help you solve your problems and deal with the issues you've got on the alternate meeting. It would be my agenda and that would be based on performance. Here's the performance standard. Here are your KPIs, here are my expectations. Let's just make sure we're really, really clear about these. And so that your agenda. My agenda? Your agenda. My agenda worked particularly well and it gave people the opportunity to use me as a resource and it gave me the opportunity to make sure they were extremely clear on my expectations and if there was any gap between what they were delivering and what I expected from them. So that worked particularly well. But you know, with all these things, performance doesn't fail overnight. Generally it just drifts away, which is why we're doing this. Leadership drift reset. So leaders need a regular predictable forum to course correct early and that's what the one on ones produce. So here's a few things that are going to help you. What are you putting your one on ones value and priorities. Okay. They need to know where are the most important places for me to focus my attention, which of those is driving value and what's distracting me. And I used to say all the time, because this is so counterintuitive, if you can work this out and how to do it in your context, it's going to pay you back in spades. Right? People are used to having their boss coming to them and saying, I need you to do this bit that's extra. I need you to do this thing you weren't doing yesterday. Someone on the board has asked for this, so I need you to take it on they're constantly trying to push more work in without giving you extra resources and irrationally expecting nothing else to slip. And I worked out that I was going to get the best results by doing the exact opposite of that. So what I used to say was, are you really clear on the things you need to be doing to create the most value? Yes, I am, Marty. Okay, well, if that's the case, what's distracting you? What can I take away from you? What can I get off your desk? What can I free up from your current agenda so that you have a better focus on those things that are the most important? And this is absolutely counterintuitive, but if you've gone back through the value ranking process and you're comfortable that it's been a high value robust process that's giving you a good feel for the highest value things your teams could be doing, then that's the best thing you could possibly do for them, is to give them clarity and focus and line of sight to the most important things they could be achieving. So value and priorities is a key part of the one on one performance against expectations which we've spoken about. Here's what I'm expecting, here's what I'm seeing in you. Let's see if there's any gaps there. Here's where you're over performing. This is fantastic. This is a really important skill. You've got it, you've got to leverage that because that's going to be something that underpins your next promotion to the next level. So you've got to give them both the, you know, here's where you're going really, really well. Here's areas where you're going to struggle and give them some level of relativity between those so they understand whether something's a really big deal, whether it's a showstopper, whether it's just something they could improve and it will help them out, it'll make them more effective if they improve it. And in Module 2 of Leadership beyond the theory, we've got a really clear structure having these one on ones that says here are the things you want to get out in a one on one, here's how you present them and here's the way you deliver them in terms of language. So if these one on ones are happening fortnightly, they don't need to be emotional, nothing's bottled up, you're on an ongoing dialogue conversation. And these are just the formal meetings too. Don't forget you're going to be having corridor conversations, a lot of stuff going on that's going to inform these things as you go through decision making and judgment. We spoke about this a little bit, but here's specifically how you do it, right? Instead of saying, well, you know, tell me how you're going or tell me what you did, something generic and useless, ask really specific questions, Tell me what you're thinking, what options did you explore? What risks could you see? What assumptions did you make? And have you tested the limits of those assumptions in terms of scenarios? And if something happens, whether it's good, bad or indifferent, on the basis of a decision, just say, okay, that worked pretty well. Is there anything you change next time? Is there anything you didn't anticipate that you saw turn up? What are the things that really ended up being a thorn in your side that shouldn't have been and could have been prevented? So all of these things help to hone your decision making capability. You talk to people about their development career trajectory. Remember the three things people want to know. What are your expectations of me? How am I performing against those expectations? What does my future hold? So the one on one is a perfect place to talk to them about what their future holds. This is matching personal ambition to company expectation. You think you want to be here at this level? Here's the things that we know are going to hold you back, okay, because we can observe you and your performance and the way you behave. Here are the things that you might need to improve to get to the level you want to get to, and I'm going to help you do that. So this career trajectory stuff is super, super important because this is how people understand both where they are in the world now and where they're likely to be able to go based on what they have. And when you give them opportunities for improvement and say, this is something that would really help you if you were to improve this, let them go. And they'll either do it or they won't. And I've seen many, many times where I've said very clearly, here's the stuff that's really going to help you in your quest to get to the next level. And I know you're ambitious and I know you say you want to do this, I'm going to support you. So I'd recommend reading this book, doing this course, listening to this podcast, taking on this assignment, whatever it is, and many people won't do it. They want the outcome, they don't want to do the work. The good news is, if you're leading them well, they will clearly have that choice. And they'll be able to decide whether they're prepared to do it or not. And that's on them. But you've done your job as a leader and you try to develop them as much as you can, but you can't want the result for them more than they want it. And that's really important. All right, so the one on one thing isn't just about having better conversations. It's about a leadership system that makes it easier for you to lead people. This, this system of one on ones, it will do the heavy lifting for you. This is going to do the heavy lifting for you if you do it the right way. All right, Practical reset moment. With the one on ones, you want to reset expectations about what the one on one meeting is for and why you're having them. If you've been at all sporadic with your meetings, you need to reset the rhythm and then you need to reset the conversation by being really deliberate about the questions you ask, the things you look at and the way you convey your expectations to the people on the other side of the table from you. So the one on one asset test, you're translating everything into value, right? That's what you talk about. You don't talk about effort, you don't talk about, you know, overwork, you don't talk about that sort of stuff. You talk about value. You look at progress to make sure you know what's going on so you don't get blindsided. And every single conversation builds the capability of the person you're talking to. This is how you get a high performing team. I didn't run businesses and business units the way I did and get outstanding results because I was good. I got it because I was able to enhance and build the capability of the great people I had working for me. That was it. So once these systems were in place, leadership stops feeling random and chaotic and unpredictable and it starts to feel deliberate. So today we've looked at the three leadership systems that you can improve now. The value system, the work at level system and the one on one system. You don't need to fix it all, but you need to work out where the holes are in your context and go after the biggest bang for buck. Now, of those three things, what would be the one thing that would really move the needle for your team today? Pregnant pause while you ponder that. All right, Em?
- [38:00]
B
Yeah, Marty, we have been through a lot over the last couple of days. We're going to go into a Q and A shortly. We've got Tasha's put together A whole bunch of questions that have come up over the last couple of days, and we'll take questions from the floor, but let's tie a nice neat bow around all of this. So over the last three days, you have reset your standards, your accountability and your systems. What we've given you is awareness, direction and starting points. What we haven't given you is the full operating system. Leadership beyond the theory exists because insight just isn't enough. Leaders don't fail because they don't care. They fail because they don't have a repeatable practical system to lead within. And if this reset has resonated, the next step isn't more effort. It's installing a leadership operating system that sustains performance without burning out. So let's talk about what happens next, because this is the moment where most workshops end and most leaders go back to doing exactly what they were doing before. And I don't want that for you. Over the last three days, you've done something that most leaders never do. You've stopped, looked honestly at where you've drifted. You've committed to lifting the standard, closing the accountability loop, and resetting the systems underneath your leadership. And that takes real self awareness. So I've, I want to acknowledge that. But here's what I know from seven years of working with thousands of awareness fades, urgency fades, and good intentions fade. And that's not because you're weak. It's not because you don't care, but because you go back to work on Monday, your inbox explodes, someone needs a decision fast, there's a fire to fight and the reset slips. Now, it's not a character flaw. That's just what happens when insight doesn't have a system behind it. And that's the exact problem that Leadership beyond the Theory was designed to solve. Because what we've given you over these three days is awareness and direction that matters. It's the essential first step. But awareness of the problem, it's not the same as having a repeatable system to solve it. So think about what we've covered. You need to reset your tone, pace and standard. You need to build real capability before it gets tested. You need the systems underneath your leadership to do the heavy lifting. All of that's true. But knowing what to do and actually doing it in your context, with your team, inside your organization, those are two completely different things. How do you actually define and rank value when everything feels urgent? How do you have that first accountability conversation without blowing up trust? How do you actually stop dipping down when rescuing feels faster and you're under the pump now. That's where most leaders get stuck and that's exactly where leadership beyond the theory picks up. Liz, you should be on the theory or we like to call it lbt. I'm gonna, I'm gonna shorten it Marty, because it's a mouthful.
- [40:40]
A
Thanks.
- [40:40]
B
Is our 9 week live cohort program that takes everything that Marty and I just walked you through and gives you the practical step by step system to actually implement it in your context with your team. This is in theory, we have over two and a half thousand leaders who have been through this and the results are consistent. Not because the program is magic, but because it gives you a structured system to change your behavior week by week in a way that actually sticks. So Marty, can you just take us through a quick run through top line view of the content?
- [41:11]
A
Sure, Em, no worries. Nine week program. There are eight modules but the first module is dense. Right. We redeveloped all this content in 2022 and deliver value is huge. And it's the thing that says, okay, for two weeks you're going to focus only on how to get your work program in the right shape. It's a hard thing to do and you won't solve the problem in two weeks, but it'll give you the foundation to work on this for the rest of your career because this is going to be a make or break issue for your career advancement. So Deliver value is really core to what we do. It's right at the center of everything. And then we do four modules that focus on you as the leader. You've got to be able to handle conflict. Conflict is everywhere you look as a leader. Every time you walk into your job on a given day, you're going to have conflict and your need to be liked has to be overcome. You've got to overcome that. It's a DNA program need in humans. But you've got to learn how to put respect before popularity. So the module 2 stuff, which has a lot of content about how to do this, also has a whole lot of stuff about how to get your head around it. The psychology of being able to handle conflict. Then we talk about resilience. A lot of leaders know how to put their game face on. Very few have genuine calmness when the pressure's on. Very few have grace under pressure. And that's what we're trying to get. Then we have work at level and em spoken about this in depth today. So I won't go into this too much but unless you can stay in your lane and show that you can do your job at your level and that your team can do the jobs they're being paid to do. You can't be promoted. No one's going to promote you if you're essential to the running of your team. And then finally, master ambiguity. That's the fourth of the modules that is critical for how you conduct yourself as a leader. Key leadership capability. Ambiguity is only going to get greater as we go into the next three to five years. And so your ability to handle this comfortably, to sit in an ambiguous situation comfortably, and to convert that into direct, clear instructions for your people is a skill that every leader needs. And it's going to become more and more important. The next two modules are about execution, make great decisions and drive accountability. And we've spoken at length about how critical single point accountability is for execution. We also pair that up with making great decisions. Companies that succeed do so because they make better decisions faster than their competitors. Right. I'm a simple man. Things like that are really important that you understand if you can make better decisions faster, you're probably going to be okay. And then finally, a module we added over the last couple of years is Connect the Dots. How do you actually bring all of this together in the field of play so that you can run a day to day system that employs and links and connects all of these different principles that you're trying to put in place? So Connect the Dots is all about, you know, how do I set the standard, how do I reset a change in my team, how do I make sure that I've got the tone, pace and standard right? All of the things, you know, how do I get my leadership meeting cadence to work? All of the things that in a day to day sense are going to form your leadership system? So when you join, of course you get the core content, hours of videos. In those eight modules, there's about, I don't know, five, 10 to 15 minute videos. You've probably only got an hour of videos to watch. There's a bunch of downloadable content, PDF guides and so forth. And then of course, we back that up with weekly live Q&As. So all the content is delivered flexibly. You actually absorb that and consume it when you need it. And then we bring it all together with our weekly webinars, go for one and a half hours and we answer a bunch of questions. This is where you get context and this is why it's different for most leadership programs. We guarantee that I will personally answer every single question that gets answered during the cohort. So if we don't have time to put it into our weekly Q and A, which a lot of times we don't, I will film your one on one video to answer your question specifically.
- [45:30]
B
Seven years. Never missed a question, Marty. Very impressive.
- [45:35]
A
Not going to start now. M. No, no. And we've got a private school community where all of our resources delivered and you can interact with all your peers in the cohort. And so much learning goes on here. When you see the sorts of questions that are asked and the responses that come through, this just magnifies and accelerates the amount of, of resource and wisdom and experience that you can tap into throughout the program. And you know, EM and I had a very long discussion when we started this business about, you know, whether there would be a time limit on access to materials. And we made a very firm decision then that you get access for life. Any updates we do, any changes we make, any improvements that come through. Like a lot of the AI tools that EM's added over the last couple of years, they will be accessible to you as well. So Em, back to you.
- [46:27]
B
Yeah. And obviously, you know, I love a bonus, Marty, because when you log into lbt, you're not just getting the nine week system, you're getting the entire implementation ecosystem around it. So I'm going to walk you through it. So the first bonus is Our Implementation Playbook. 127 pages. It's not just a workbook, it's your leadership operating manual. You get a full digital version that walks like alongside the program. You take notes in it, reflect on it, build your frameworks in it, and you can come back to it again and again as your role grows. Every promotion, every new team, every new challenge, it becomes your personal leadership archive. Most leaders finish a program and forget 80% of it. This makes that absolutely impossible. The next Bonus is our 44 week next level leadership email series. So here's what I know. Motivation fades. We've already spoken about urgency fading and standards slipping. So for 44 weeks after the program, you'll receive short practical leadership challenges straight to your inbox. No fluff, no theory, just reminders, prompts and pressure so that this doesn't become oh yeah, that program that I did once. It stays front of mind, it embeds behavior and it keeps the sense standard high. Bonus number three, motivating your team short course. So a lot of leaders know how to drive performance, but very few know how to create energy. This short course gives you the practical tools to move your team from disengaged to dynamic it shows you how to lift standards without crushing morale, how to increase ownership without micromanaging, and how to shift the emotional temperature of a room. Because strategy doesn't execute itself, people do. Bonus number four, landing your dream job. Short course. I love this one. Now let's be my best work, if.
- [48:08]
A
I might say it is.
- [48:09]
B
It's not, it's really just not about doing well where you are. Leadership is about, you know, working today for where you're going tomorrow. So this short course gives you a clear six step framework to position yourself for the next move. Promotions, internal mobility, new roles. Externally, you will know how to present your value, articulate your leadership philosophy and stand out without self promoting. Feeling awkward. Bonus number five is AI Orchestrator Live workshop with James Killick. So this one's really powerful. We are very deep in AI, Marty and I, and the whole team leaders who learn to direct AI systems will reclaim hours every single week, full stop. I know that to be true. This workshop shows you how to use AI as leverage, not as a gimmick. So how to think better, how to decide faster, how to build systems that run without you. Because the leaders who thrive in the next decade, they're not just going to be managing people, they will orchestrate systems. And bonus number six, Marty, you haven't even seen this yet. Leadership identity.
- [49:09]
A
I'm looking at this going, I know.
- [49:12]
B
This is the one that I'm particularly excited about. It's brand new, I haven't even finished the QA testing yet, so I'm still just going through the final rounds now. You'll receive it during orientation week from 9th March. This is a tool that I've created that will help define how you lead. So it builds your personal, personal leadership user manual. Identifies your blind spots, clarifies your ethos, sharpens your decision style. There's even a section that helps you refine your LinkedIn positioning and personal brand, giving you ideas for bio updates and LinkedIn posts that you can do that are completely aligned with who you are and what you do. So it's essentially creating an identity pack for you as a leader. Honestly, if you went to a personal branding specialist or someone on LinkedIn that's trying to, you know, tell you to redo your profile for something that's this comprehensive, you'd easily spend, you know, three grand, five grand to get something like this done and you are going to get it included in this cohort. And obviously because you're the first to use it, you'll also shape its evolution. So I am incredibly Excited about that. So when you join lbt, you're not just getting the nine weeks, you're getting a system, a library, a community, ongoing reinforcement, AI leverage, and a defined leadership identity. This really isn't just a course, it's installing a complete leadership operating system. All right, Marty, tell us who the program's for.
- [50:32]
A
Yeah, thanks Em. We're really serious, in case you haven't worked it out. We're really serious about moving the needle for leaders. We designed it for a mid career leader. Right. So basically a mid career leader is someone who's been leading for long enough to know that it's a lot harder than it looks to see the difficulties in leading a team and having these infinite permutations and combinations of human behavior that they have to deal with. And they realize that it's hard, but they also realize that there's something that they can do to change it. Because sometimes you get promoted to a point where you go, I'm good enough. And because I've been promoted to the top of an organization, I feel as though I'm a good leader, even though I've really got there on my strategic ability or my intellect. And so that can happen. And you've all seen those leaders and probably worked for them when they're not good leaders, but they think they are. And so this is for people who are still self aware enough but understand the difficulties. And this is about getting the most out of your people. The most underutilized asset that you have in your company, no matter what, I don't care what else you've got, is going to be your people. It's trying to work out how to get the best performance you possibly can out of them. And the only way you can do that is by leading them better. And from what we've seen, first of all in my career where I was able to apply these principles and refine them and, and produce results that are quite extraordinary in the context I was in. We've also worked this with thousands of leaders since I've come out of corporate. We've made sure that we can apply this into every single context. There's not an industry, there's not a level, there's not a person that can't improve their leadership skills through this. So the only thing you need to be doing this is ambition to be better. That's it. If you've got ambition to be better as a leader, you're going to need this and you're going to enjoy it.
- [52:19]
B
Okay, before we go into the Q and A, Marty let's just talk logistics. So the investment is 2, 500 Australian with three or six month payment plans available if that helps with cash flow. And here's how I want you to think about that number if you stall as a leader. So I'm talking about missed promotions, lost credibility, a career that plateaus, that's easily a six figure cost. One promotion, one bonus, one step up pays for this many times over. And I also want every single person to ask their boss to pay for this because they are going to be the one that get the benefit of your increased leadership capability. This is also the final cohort that we're doing at two and a half thousand dollars. We haven't risen, risen. We haven't done a price rise in seven years. And I think with the addition of the AI tools, the expanded resources, the life support structure, the next intake will move to $3,500. So if you've been considering it for years, as I know many of you have, this is the smartest time to step in. And of course we make it completely risk free. So if at any point you don't feel as though you've got the value from what we promised, we'll refund you. No questions asked, no weird loopholes or clauses like nothing. We've had over two and a half thousand leaders through this program. We've had zero refund requests in the last four years. And that's not a statistic I throw around lightly. It means that the program does what it promises and we are incredibly proud of that. We also have an 89% completion rate, which is basically unheard of with online programs. So here's the truth that I want to leave you with. Over these past three days, you've done the hard part. You've seen what needs to change and mostly does. Never get this far. They stay comfortable. They keep telling themselves they'll address the drift when things slow down and they'll keep tolerating what they shouldn't. You didn't do that. You showed up for three days, you sat with the uncomfortable moments, you did the reflection work, and now the question is, what do you do with it? Because insight without action guarantees disappointment. So here's your choice. You can take the awareness from these three days and try and implement on your own. And maybe you will for a week or two or three, until the inbox catches up and the urgency fades. Or you can plug into a system that's already worked for thousands of leaders globally, one that holds you accountable week by week, that gives you the frameworks the community, the direct access to me and Marty to put it all into practice. So click the link in the chat, join Leadership beyond the Theory and lock in your spot before doors close. The next 90 days will determine your next three years and we would love to support you inside the program. Okay, Marty, we've got a lot of questions we're going to go over, but we're going to stay here and answer a whole bunch of questions. So if you can stay, definitely stay for what's coming up because I've got Tasha's spreadsheet and there is a lot in here. So I want to dig in. Marty, to I want to dig into a question that Priscilla asked yesterday. What if your organization doesn't resource properly but still wants the same output after cutting heads? This causes a lot of problems where managers then feel like they have to give a million hall passes when people don't deliver. How do we stop this culture?
- [55:27]
A
Yeah, great question, Priscilla. This is really about the fact that you've got to bring a sense of rationality. And one of the things we talk about in leadership is you've got to provide air cover for your people. Now, I'll tell you a little story because this is a bit of fun. I once remember a boss saying to me, you know, when's this project going to be ready? I say, well, it's going to be ready, you know, 8th of September. And he said, that's not good enough. You know, we need it before the new financial year. It's got to be delivered by June 30th. And I said, mate, what can I tell you? It's 8th of September. And he said, what if I give you more resources? I said, it's probably going to slow me down at this stage, probably October, if you give me more resources, like it's not going to help. And he said, we need it on the 8th of September. I said, okay, Rob, I'll get it for you on 8th of September. And he looked at me and said, you just told me you couldn't do it. I said, well, I can't, but if you want me to tell you I can. I'll tell you whatever you want. But the reality is the date's the date and you wanting it earlier isn't going to make that happen. If it's impossible, you've got to be able to push back. You've got to be able to push back rationally and confidently in a way that says, well, hang on a minute, I know what you want and I understand what you're trying to achieve. But I'm here to tell you that that's not going to happen. It's not possible. It's not physically possible. And the minute you start telling me I've got to do all this other stuff, well, all the other things that we're doing that we think might be of high value, they're just going to go by the wayside. People are going to be distracted, they're not going to be delivered. Then everyone's going to get all up in arms about why things haven't been delivered.
- [56:56]
B
And.
- [56:56]
A
And it was never going to work. It was never going to work. So. So the point at which that conversation has to happen is the point where you're being assigned the work, not at the point where the work hasn't been delivered. You've got to do that heavy lifting up front. It's the only way to do it so that. And you become better and better at this as time goes on. And sometimes, you know, your boss will say, I don't care. I need it by this date, or, I need you to do this thing. And then you just write back with an email that's which we call rear end armor. Rear end armor that says, thanks very much for our conversation. Great to hear. You know, you've directed me to go and do this, which is fine, by the way. My advice is that this is what's likely to happen. Just wanted to let you know, but we're going to do our best. And then you at least have a very clear record of the fact that when you had the conversation, you were very clear on the fact that it wasn't going to be possible. And that's where it's going to land. Now, a lot of bosses are going to hate that. They're going to hate the fact that you've sort of cornered them on something. But it's a really important part of being able to manage your boss's expectations, because it's likely that your boss is just too weak to say no to her boss. And so you've got, you know, weak bosses, strong bosses. If you're a strong boss, everyone else will show their colors pretty quickly.
- [58:16]
B
Yeah. Nice. And James had a question from day two around. Okay, what's your advice? Advice on pushing accountability lower to where the information is if the who is accountable for this ends up being the same person all the time?
- [58:31]
A
Well, yeah. The problem with accountability is one of the problems, the nature of accountabilities, is that they cascade and you deconstruct them as you go further down the chain. So for example, as chief executive, I'm accountable for the financial outcomes of the company. It's just me, right? So you know, ebitda, net profit, revenue, all the, all the ratio metrics get looked at on the balance sheet, liquidity, solvency, all that sort of stuff that's in the CEO's office. You can't delegate that out. However, each of my direct reports would play their part in the company achieving those. So business units heads will have their own revenue and profitability targets, functional areas will have costs they have to stay within and so forth. So you're deconstructing these things as you go down the line. And when you think about what happens at the lower levels, if I've got an accountability for something and a component of that lives in a certain area, well, that leader is accountable for that particular component. So I hope that's, hope that's making sense. What you don't want to have is the accountability is rolling up to such a high point that the only person who has coverage of everything is the CEO. So in lbt, we've got a very important lesson in module seven when we're talking about accountability, about how you implement accountabilities in complex structures. So we've got matrix organizations or organizations that geographically disperse, that don't have a natural accountability point and how you impose those and maintain a single point accountability without killing collaboration or multiple matrix reporting lines.
- [60:11]
B
And James, you have access to that. You can go back to that lesson. I want to go back to day one, if we can remember that far back. Marty, Erica had a question. I'm about to take over a new team. The team leader who reports to me is currently under performance management. How do I reset and improve performance across the whole team, including potentially doing effective skip level one on ones without undermining or bypassing the team leader that I'm managing.
- [60:37]
A
So hang on, you've got a team leader between you and the rest of the people and you're wondering what to do with the rest of the people, is that right?
- [60:43]
B
Yeah, sounds about right.
- [60:45]
A
Okay. Okay. Well, here's the sad truth. When you've got a poor leader in place or a leader who's not doing their job, it's really hard to make an assessment of what the capability of the team is because they haven't been led well. And you know, pretty much every problem, as I said on, you know, either day one or day two, pretty much every problem traces its way back to poor leadership. So if you've got a bad leader in place, then that Leader's got to go before you're going to find out what the team's capable of. So I'd be talking about doing a reset. Now, clearly, for reasons of privacy and confidentiality, you can't go down to the team and say, I know your lead is a muppet, but just bear with me and I'll see if I can sort something out. You can't do that. So all I'd say is accelerate the pace of the performance improvement plan. Be really, really strict about it. So don't set a low bar, don't completely over function for the individual and make sure that they have to stand on their own two feet. So they've got to be able to do their job to the minimum standard, independent of your constant intervention. That's the objective. So if you can do that and you can give that person a very quick up or out treatment, which is what you need to do, only then can you deal with the rest of the team. So in the meantime, if you need to go down below their team leader, I'd just be talking in very general terms. Right, don't talk about the team leader. I'd be talking in general terms and reinforcing the concepts of value, performance, conflict, robust, challenge, all the things that we know are going to contribute to a good team. But as long as you've got a bad leader in place, you're sort of snookered.
- [62:26]
B
Yes. Nuked. All right, hopefully that helped. Erica, Maria, any tips for how to set a bar in a company that doesn't have a way to track KPIs right now?
- [62:36]
A
Ah, well, if I've got a way to track KPIs, how do you know what's important, I guess, is probably the question. It goes right back to strategy, corporate strategy. So what is it that we're here to do and how do we do it? How do we compete? What's important to us and what are the drivers of value? So every company has an implicit operating model. What are the things we do day to day? Who do we sell our products to? How do we compete with others in the market and what outcomes are we getting from that? So I think probably from the perspective of someone who's not the CEO, it's a process of asking questions upwards. So I'm trying to work out what to do with my team. I'm trying to work out how to best allocate the resources that I've been gifted by the company. So what I really need to do is understand what those value drivers are and if I can Find those levers and pull them with the resources I've got, then I'm going to actually get something out the back end. Keep asking the questions about value and performance until you get an answer. If you don't get an answer from your boss, then you'll have to assume that your boss doesn't understand what value is either. And then you're going to have to make it up yourself. So if your boss can't give you the answers, after conversations and conversations and conversations, go back yourself and say, okay, with what I know and with what I know about the business and my team, here's probably the best way we can do things. Formulate the plan and then take it back to your boss and say, look, in the absence of anything more compelling from you, here's what I think the best things are that the team can do. And so here's what I'm going to put us towards. Tell me if you want me to change or stop.
- [64:13]
B
Question from Mark that just came through. Some organizations love committees and shared responsibility. How do I implement one head to pat without alienating my peers?
- [64:27]
A
Well, I think we spoke about Islands of Excellence yesterday. You need to create this in your own team first. If you're relying on your peers to provide inputs that are important in your success, then you just have to have a conversation. You don't talk about accountability, but you talk about agreements. So for example, you go to a peer and say, hey, look, you know, I can't get this done without, you know, this product from your team. I'm relying on you. Can you deliver it to me? Most of the time, this is where mismatches occur because planning happens top down. So you get these strategy sessions where we say, okay, here's the strategy. Now the executives, you go away and you work out what your division is going to do and that rolls down the line until you get people who get assigned KPIs for deliverables for that year. And very often there'll be a mismatch between what executive A tells his people is important and what executive B tells her people are important. And so you'll have. When you go down to the P level a couple of layers below and say, I need you to deliver this, otherwise I can't be successful. They're likely to say, well, Marty, that's fun and interesting, but I don't work for you. I don't really care what your priorities are because my KPIs tell me I need to do this. So breaking through that is really hard. What you've got to do is get commitment from the individuals who are your peers to deliver the things that you need. And if they can't, it has to be escalated to the next level up their boss, your boss, whatever. Now we've got techniques for how to do this in lbt. It's really, really important though that you understand that you've got to get a resolution to that because you can't just go along hoping that someone's going to meet your agenda. If they don't. Em, did I answer that question? I feel like, I feel like I'm wildly off track.
- [66:13]
B
No, you're good. You're good. That was good. You just give us a lot to work with. Marty.
- [66:18]
A
Good.
- [66:18]
B
It's nice question from Kristen and this is about number three in those three questions. Like what does my future hold? What about being in a smaller business with little chance of career projection or, or career progression or trajectory?
- [66:34]
A
Yeah, that's excellent, excellent question. The way I looked at this as a leader was that my job was to develop people's capability to get them to the next level, whether it was in the company I was in or another company. Developing people's capability and potential is a no regrets move. They will appreciate, will drive loyalty and it will drive their best performance that you're going to be able to get at the time when they're ready to be promoted. If you don't have a slot, even the large companies, sometimes there's no opportunity there at the time, then they'll go and find it somewhere else. And that's okay because you don't want to keep people forever. You want to keep this constant pipeline of high quality talent coming through. And if you're doing that all the way down the line, you'll get a lot of that talent will stay. Probably 80% of that talent will stay. The odd one will go. Used to happen to me. The odd one will go where they've just outgrown it. Marty, I know you're going to be here for another two years. You've just re signed your contract. So you know, I'm not going to wait for two years. I want to get a CEO job now. And when that happens, I celebrate it. When I see people who've worked for me going out and finding opportunities where they grow and develop and go on to bigger and better things. I love it. And yes, yes, it's downside losing a really good person, but that's just the way it goes. So in smaller companies that's even harder. And you've just got to have the expectation that your job is to build people the highest level you possibly can. And when they've outgrown it, they've outgrown it. If they can't find a place with you, they'll find it elsewhere. And that's okay. If you're talking about yourself and you feel as though you've reached that plateau and you can't grow where you are, then you've got to make a choice that satisfies what you want to do, ambition wise.
- [68:17]
B
No. All right. Glenn has asked anything on bonus structures for staff members in certain roles, outlining the difference between doing your job salary and going above and beyond KPI as bonus. I actually love this question because people get so confused with this.
- [68:33]
A
Yeah, look, there's podcast episodes on this maybe Tash, if you could find podcast episodes I've done on REM and drop it in the chat because there's a whole, this whole thing like I've, I've pulled apart REM structures and done, you know, here's what your base wages for and base wages for doing your day job. And it's market based. It's not based on how well you perform, it's based on your comparative role in the market you're in. So, you know, senior accountants in Sydney are getting paid in this range at the moment. So that's, that's what you're sort of dealing with. KPIs are for incentivizing people to do things over and above so that they are extending themselves to deliver things that are either extraordinary or high value. Or if you want to emphasize something that's in their current day job but is actually going to be highly, highly beneficial that you want to focus them on. So you'll have KPIs for that that are often linked to short term incentives. There are long term incentive structures if the company performs around, you know, total shareholder return, you know, capital returns and equity growth. There's a whole range of things in there. But number one in terms of rewarding people is recognizing them, paying attention to what they do and giving them credit for their good performance. And that's always your go to like money's only so effective, right? And a lot of companies have really good REM structures where they put the golden handcuffs on you so you're not going anywhere. But ultimately you want to make sure that people are really happy, that their exchange of effort for reward and that's also recognition is, you know, fair and valuable to them. So you're talking about the psychological contract in that case between the Company and the employee.
- [70:15]
B
Nice question from Jared. How do you overcome a one on one where feedback on performance always results in a strong emotional response without the feedback being taken on board?
- [70:25]
A
Well, you know, you let it happen a couple of times and you give people the benefit of the doubt. Right. So. So I've actually had one on ones where I thought it was going to be an extremely routine one on one, just chatting about someone's next role. And I've had a complete breakdown, lots of tears, quite distressed and I hadn't expected it because there was a tension and a fear that this person had been carrying around that I wasn't aware of. And when I spoke about the things I was talking about, it came to a head and they sort of collapsed. So you never know what you're going to get in a one on one. If that happened all the time though, that would be a real concern because make no mistake, some people use that as an avoidance tactic. No doubt about it. So some people turn on the waterworks like that. It's like Brooke Logan on the Bold and the Beautiful. Cry on a dime. Unbelievable.
- [71:24]
B
So you'll see your favorite show, you see.
- [71:27]
A
Oh, totally. You'll see this thing where people can pull an emotional response to deflect and push you back. Because when someone's crying you don't want to push them. But what you do need to do is see the pattern and step back from it and say, okay, we're having these conversations every time we do. You react very emotionally and I don't see any change. And to do your job properly, you need to be doing A, B, C and D. And if you can't do A, B, C and D and there's no way for me to get through to you, then perhaps this job might be too demanding for you. Now I'd be really happy to help you find something that's less demanding so that you can be more fulfilled and more relaxed at work. Because with you as highly strung as you are or as wound up as you are, that's not good for anyone and certainly out of care for you. I would want you to be in a situation and an environment where you can function without this sort of stress. Thousand ways to do it. That's just one of them.
- [72:29]
B
Yeah, nice. Scott said, how should a senior leader approach one, approach one on one engagement with once removed reports in a way that adds value without undermining the authority and accountability of the direct manager? So I know there was a question about this, but that was someone who wasn't performing, you know, the direct manager was, the direct report was not. So like, how can we do that in a way that is, you know, maybe Management by Walking around is a good one.
- [72:55]
A
Yeah, the Management by Walking around podcast episode I did recently is, is answers a lot of these questions. But just in brief, I think those, those Manager 1 remove conversations are important so that you feel like you've got a little bit of a relationship with those people. Sometimes a direct report can be very protective of what they allow their boss to see in their. And they can be quite, I don't know, insular about their team. So it's really important that you've got some visibility of what's going on. So how do you do that without undermining? So the very first thing is don't take anything they say on face value and if anything comes up that's a concern, just say, have you spoken to Mark about that? And if they say yes, well then what was Mark's response? Well, Mark said this. Okay, well I'll have a chat to Mark and sort of there's two sides to every story and just understand what the rationale was and one of us will get back to you. Certainly don't do the old, oh, I didn't realize Mark was doing that. Oh, that's terrible. You know, just make sure that you really measured about that. Second thing is don't give any direction ever when you're talking to someone below your direct reports because that only has the potential to conflict with what your chain of management is saying. So to stay on the level, don't ever give a direction below your direct report unless it's something that you're observing, like a safety interaction where you're seeing someone who's just about to step into the line of fire and injure themselves badly, like stop that. Right. But don't give any directions about work or anything else. And also just be very general and very open ended about the questions you ask. You know, how's it going? What are you finding is difficult in your environment at the moment? What problems are you having if you had a magic wand? What, what? You know, if I gave you a magic wand, what's the one thing that you would change? Like things like that, that just get them talking generally about how their role is going and what they're finding interesting. And you'll pick up a lot from that.
- [74:54]
B
Beautiful. I'm going to end with Reza's question. And I love this question, Reza, because you're an LBT alumni. I have a very high performing team, but it doesn't look like their effort is very visible in the organization. How can I increase the team's performance visibility across the organization?
- [75:12]
A
Okay, so I'm assuming, Reza, that performance equals results if they're a high performing team. So you should have results that are undeniably exceptional. And when the results are undeniably exceptional, it's just a matter of making sure that people are aware of how you've managed to produce certain things that either are way in above what any other team is producing or that have a direct link to value. If you can quantify that, even better. So anything you can quantify that says my team has actually done this, here's what it's delivered, here's the value the organization now has because of my team, then that's really important. Make sure your boss knows about it and your boss is actually out there promoting your team. And make sure that you've got some cross line relationships where you're able to have a coffee occasionally with a mentor across line from your direct line of management and just talk to them about what you're doing and the organization, things that you're finding difficult and the things that you're really nailing and just make sure that you've got a bit more visibility. You don't have to crow about it. You don't have to put out a, you know, an all points bulletin to the rest of the organization to tell them what's going on. But you do need to be very clear on the value being delivered. If you can't point to a high value outcome that seems exceptional, then, Reza, go back and have a look at what your targets are and make sure the targets are sufficiently impressive that when you achieve them, you can tell that story.
- [76:40]
B
Beautiful. Hopefully that was helpful. Marty, thank you so much, not just for answering, you know, all those questions, but like the time, energy and effort you put into this whole, you know, three days. We always want to be making sure. Even if people aren't joining us for leadership beyond the theory, that's okay. We know that only, you know, 1% of our audience is ever going to do that. You know, we've got 30, 40, 000 people who listen to the podcast every week and it is truly our, our life's mission, our life's work to be putting amaz. That's really helpful, really practical, not just theoretical out there into your hands. So, yeah, thank you so much for putting the effort to pull this together and thank you for everyone who's come along this journey with us. It's been an absolute ball. Just hearing the, the light bulbs that have been going on in people's heads, every single session has been fantastic. So big thank you again. We would love to see you in Leadership beyond the Theory. We start in three weeks. There'll be a bunch of emails that are, you know, you want to book a call, you want to chat to someone, you want to WhatsApp with someone, ask any questions, Feel free to do that because our, our sole goal over the next, you know, three months is just to get an incredible cohort through this program and just leading so much better out the other end. So thank you all for coming. Marty, thank you for putting this together soon. Yeah, big thank you.
- [78:05]
A
Thanks, everyone.
- [78:06]
B
Later.
- [78:06]
A
See you.