TRANSCRIPT
Leaders Journal EP03: How You Can Lead Differently By Knowing Your Team
INTRODUCTION:
Hello everyone! I am Coach Jason Ho and we begin the month of March with a new episode of the Leaders Journal.
For those tuning in for the first time, the Leaders Journal is designed to be a source for MNC leaders, directors and SME business owners to discover practical leadership stories and coaching insights.
If you are a leader currently wondering just what bringing out the best in your team looks like, then this episode is for you!
(00:52) RECAP:
Before going any further, let me refresh your memory of what we’ve covered in our past episodes.
Going back to the beginning, in our first episode, I shared the story of how Perfect Performance came to be and how leaders can utilise the 4Ds — dominance, deployment, development and directness — to bring out the greatness in their team.
I promised to cover each of the 4Ds in-depth in the following episodes.
In episode 2, I unpacked the whole idea of development with the analogy of a garden that consists of 3 stakeholders: the garden, that is the culture and the environment of your team; the plants, that is your people; and finally, the gardener, that represents the leader.
The key tenet that we talked about in that episode was that EVERYTHING STARTS WITH ME. Yes, it starts with you.
(01:52) KNOW YOUR TEAM'S DOMINANCE:
The reason why I took the time to bring up the key points from the previous episodes, was so that I could set the stage for this episode, where we zoom in on another of the 4Ds — Dominance.
Dominance is all about knowing your team.
You know the kind of people they are, aka the kind of talents that you have.
You know the kind of work that energises and excites them.
You know how they work best and how to leverage those qualities to get the best out of your team.
If we believe the principle — everything starts with me — then we, as leaders, must have the awareness that the development of our people rises and falls with us.
In other words, in order to invest in the development of your people, you need to have the awareness of their dominance.
In theory, this sounds 10 out of 10.
But the truth is, many leaders struggle to identify these areas of strength in their people.
This is where I come in.
We cannot settle for this simply being a nice analogy.
Because what we want is to help leaders convert that analogy into a reality and see real and tangible results.
(03:11) WHAT IS PRIMAL GREATNESS:
So through my years of doing coaching sessions — now zoom calls because of the pandemic — with MNC Directors and business leaders, I have designed this tool which I use with them.
It’s called... Primal Greatness.
What Primal Greatness is, is that it gives people the opportunity to do the things that they do best at work.
As a leader, understanding the dominance of your team boils down to recognising the talent of your people.
That is, essentially, knowing their innate strengths.
The higher order skill for leaders to master is, identifying the specific tasks that will excite or drain your people.
You see, sometimes as leaders, we make this hasty assumption that just because someone is strong in a particular thing, that means they must like it and that must mean they are enjoying it.
But that might not be the case at all.
Take me for example.
Am I excellent in writing proposals? Yes!
That is something I can do and I do impeccably well.
But do I enjoy writing proposals?
Does it spark joy for me? Not at all!
If I can avoid it, I will avoid it at all costs.
What I always tell the leaders I coach is to encourage their team to use their emotions or their feelings as a compass to how they feel about their different job tasks.
So what Primal Greatness does is that it helps people identify and break down job-specific tasks that either excite them or drain them.
(04:55) FOUR QUADRANTS OF PRIMAL GREATNESS:
I help leaders to break down this into 4 quadrants.
The horizontal axis measures how excited or drained one gets when performing their tasks. The vertical axis measures the competence of your people when they deliver the tasks.
Let's take Microsoft Excel for example.
In the scenario where they have a low level of competence in Excel and they also feel drained by it, that is their Tragic Grind.
Imagine if someone were confined to such a role where the job tasks that they perform revolve around their Tragic Grind, that would be very tragic for them indeed.
I can almost guarantee you that no one in that situation will tell you that they enjoy their work.
In fact, they probably gain no satisfaction from it whatsoever.
Now, let’s look at the reverse.
Let’s say there’s someone on your team who enjoys Excel.
That sounds bizarre to me but I’ve encountered many people who say they truly enjoy it.
But the catch is that this person still has a very low level of competence in it.
This is their area of Misguided Output.
So what could happen in this instance is that, you might have someone who is incompetent at Excel but expresses great enthusiasm to take up any to all Excel-related data analytical tasks.
Chances are, if you did not know the Dominance of your team member beforehand, you would have had no qualms in handing those tasks over to them without assigning anybody to provide support for them.
However, when crunch time hits, this lack of support could leave your team member feeling sorely inadequate and lost.
On the other side of the coin, if you had another person who is naturally competent at Excel but is thoroughly drained from it, then that is their area of Hollow Endeavour.
If you were not aware of this, the natural tendency for any leader when they see someone who performs well in a particular task, is to give them more.
But as time progresses, the real danger is that this “high performing” person on your team is inching their way towards burnout.
By the time it reaches that stage, in all likelihood, it would result in the person walking away altogether.
And that very real implication is that a leader’s oblivion to this could potentially jeopardise employee retention.
Now we come to the final quadrant. If you have someone on your team who is naturally competent at Excel and truly derives excitement and energy from it, that is their area of Primal Greatness.
That is where they are in the zone and it’s where they come alive.
Now, if you can identify those areas for your people, that is where you want them to be placed so that they can do what they do best at work, day in day out.
When we break it down in this manner, it gives leaders a very clear visual of how they can develop their people based on their areas of Dominance.
(08:32) CLOSING:
Having said all that, let me wrap up with a question for us to ponder.
What differentiates a mediocre leader from a leader of influence?
This is one question that is constantly on my mind.
Because it is a question that challenges me.
It is one that warns me never to get too comfortable in where I am as a leader, because I never want to reach a point where my growth stagnates.
So my personal take on that question is that a mediocre leader is someone who is satisfied with where they are and does not wish for anything to disrupt that comfort zone.
A leader of influence, is someone who is invested in their people.
They are committed to their development and they do this by identifying the Dominance in each individual.
Their commitment to that can be enough to rally their people to productive action and propel their team to higher levels of performance.
Everything that I’ve just shared is a little snippet of how I help and equip leaders during our workshops and coaching sessions.
If you find this beneficial for you and your team, do not hesitate to contact me.
Meanwhile, if you want a free e-book as a resource to refer to in the future, download our Primal Greatness FREE e-book at perfectperformance.org/primalgreatness!
We will be releasing our Leaders Journal, on the first week of every month from now on.
So stay tuned for the next episode, where I address the next D, Deployment where we will be talking about how we can position people well within your team.
Till then, this is Coach Jason Ho. Let’s bring out the best in our teams.
(key words: leadership, leadershiptips, strengths, development)