The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 691: Dr. Ron Friedman - The Science of High-Performing Teams, Chevy Chase, Toxic Teammates, The Succession Writers' Room, Deleting Recurring Meetings, Why Side Hustles Are Good, and Why Only 8% of Teams Make the Cut

Starting point is 00:00:00 As I've told you before, I am super pumped about my next book, The Price of Becoming. It will be out in a few months. In the meantime, I have sent it to some leaders that I really admire. One of them is four-star General Stanley McChrystal. I asked him what he thought, and he sent me back this email. Quote, having led in environments where preparation, discipline, and trust, determine outcomes, I found the price of becoming. deeply authentic.

Starting point is 00:00:33 Ryan Hawk captures a truth familiar to those in uniform. Excellence is earned through consistent effort, accountability, and the willingness to stay uncomfortable long after others stop. Man, so cool. I hope you will choose to pre-order my book, The Price of Becoming. You can do it at learningleader.com and see all types of pre-order bonuses. or if you want, just go straight to Amazon and pre-order the price of becoming. Thank you so much.

Starting point is 00:01:08 Welcome to The Learning Leader Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawth. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now, on to the night's featured leader. Dr. Ron Friedman is a psychologist, researcher, and the author of Superteams, the science and secrets of high-performing teams. Ron and his team spent years studying what the best teams in the world actually do differently,

Starting point is 00:01:48 surveying thousands of professionals analyzing more than 100,000 data points, and publishing research that became the second most read article in Harvard Business. review history. During our conversation, we discussed why the most popular productivity tips show zero correlation with better team performance and what super teams did instead. And then what Chevy Chase and Tina Faye reveal about the difference between a toxic teammate and a great one, with the succession writers room teaches us about the kind of feedback that actually makes teams better, and then the research on recurring meetings that led Shopify to ban them entirely in what happened when they did.

Starting point is 00:02:40 Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Ron Friedman. So I loved reading about briefly your dad. You said he threw himself into impossible challenges and taught us, I love this, the dignity of hard work. Can you tell me more about your dad? My dad was a physician. I grew up in Israel, and my dad did not want me to go to the army. Felt like he wanted his family to be safe, and he came to the U.S. as a physician who had a job in Israel and picked up the phone and just started dialing for jobs, just started calling hospitals in New York City until he found a job at NYU. And, you know, that was a risk. He pulled his family out of a country

Starting point is 00:03:27 he knew, didn't really speak the language. and succeeded. And that was inspiring. Wow. What made you choose it dedicated to him? He just recently passed away. I'm sorry to hear that.

Starting point is 00:03:38 I love hearing about great people that have influenced you. And so I appreciate you sharing that, man. Yeah, I appreciate you asking. Yeah, for sure. A little bit more about your backstory. You compare and contrast

Starting point is 00:03:50 a couple of different experiences in your life. One, when you were at the firm, and one when you were at the agency, I won't spoil the story. I want to hear you tell it in your words. I've read about it, but I'm curious. Can you tell me how these two experiences at the firm and at the agency, how they impacted you?

Starting point is 00:04:11 Yeah, so I started out as a professor teaching at colleges and universities. And what I discovered being a professor is you're basically kind of teaching the same thing over and over again. And so I wanted to learn new things. That's the thing that got me into academia in the first place. So I decided to get a job outside of academia. And I got a job as a pollster. So my job was to measure public opinion, figure out what it is that people believe, and then help organizations shape those opinions using psychological principles. And so my first job was at a political consulting firm.

Starting point is 00:04:41 And it was incredibly high pressure, cutthroat. You had to consistently stand out in order to demonstrate how smart you were. Do you remember the quote from the book about being the smartest person in the room? You got to be the smartest person in the room or you're deadwood. That's how we were taught to succeed. And I left that firm and I then one joined a marketing agency and that marketing agency was basically the cultural opposite. Collaboration was the agency's primary focus. And so we were constantly in team building activities.

Starting point is 00:05:13 Every meeting involved at least like 10 people. We were even encouraged to keep our doors open. We had private offices. We were not allowed to close our doors because it sent a signal that you thought your work was more important than the teens. So objectively, both of those. businesses were wildly successful. And if you were to just write up case studies about what makes for a high-performing team using those individual case studies, you'd walk away with vastly different lessons about what are the factors that drive high performance.

Starting point is 00:05:43 And so in super teams, and we'll get into the methodology, what we tried to do was look at thousands of teams so that we didn't have to rely on anecdotes to determine what drives high performance within teams, we looked objectively over thousands of teams. What are the actual drivers of high performance? So your office burns down, okay? Burns down. And you're given a generous insurance payout to rebuild it. You guys did this work. This is some of the research you did. If you want to have a super team, what's most important to build back up in that office? So we in our research, And let me just take a step back and talk about the methodology. So we pulled thousands of workers across a vast array of industries, everything from lawyers to

Starting point is 00:06:31 physicians to salespeople. And we asked them two key questions about their teams. Number one, how effective is your team at meeting its goals? And secondly, compared to other teams in your industry, how would you rate your team's performance? Then we pulled out the teams with a perfect score. We called them super teams, a very small group. about 8% of the population qualifies as super teams. And we looked at what are the super teams doing differently

Starting point is 00:06:58 compared to average teams? And we looked at everything, from the way they structure their day, to the way they run their meetings, to even the way they recover in the evenings and on vacation. So we were able to pull out the exact behaviors that drive performance. So you asked about office design.

Starting point is 00:07:16 So one of the questions we asked in our survey was we basically put out a list in front of people, all the amenities that we read about in the news, everything from ping pong tables to an office gym to basic things just like collaborative spaces or quiet offices where you can have private conversations. And we ask people, which of these do you have in your office? And then we look to see what are the amenities

Starting point is 00:07:39 that actually drive performance? And only one proved statistically significant. And what that one feature was, a quiet space to do focused work. And that says, so much about why people prefer working from home is because most offices are an intentional war zone. It's impossible to get work done. So I think it really speaks to how if you're looking to design an office that drives top

Starting point is 00:08:08 performance, don't start with the office gym or the office game room. Focus on giving people the opportunity to do deep work. This seems like the opposite of Silicon Valley, which then spread through the entire country, which was open office plans. I actually think I talked to someone who was designing an office where I worked once, and they said, well, they say it's this open thing to collaborate. It's actually just to save money because they could squeeze more people into an office plan. So they say all that stuff. And I was like, all right, I'm not really sure all that. But so it used to be open offices. I'm not sure if it still is. Now also companies are sending

Starting point is 00:08:44 people back to the office. In some cases, five days a week. Some are hybrid, but some are every day. What about for those who are either hybrid or fully remote? Because the question I get frequently is how do I build culture with a remote team? What do we do to make sure they follow the values, they believe in the values, they get after? Yes, we do off-sites a couple times a year and get together. But for those who are either hybrid and or remote, how can they become and stay and get better as a super team? You know, there's a lot of conflicting evidence about where we're most productive. Some research shows that were up to 25% more productive working from home. Other research shows that actually it slows down performance because you end up deteriorating trust and communication

Starting point is 00:09:31 when people are very far away from each other. So in our work, we looked at where are high-performing teams most likely to emerge. And as it turns out, the answer is none of the above. It doesn't matter whether you're remote or in office or hybrid. And it's because how would teamwork is vastly more important than where a team works. And here's what I mean by that is you hear a lot of CEOs say, we need everybody in the office, we need everybody in the office, because that's going to build culture and collaboration and et cetera. And I got to tell you, I work with a lot of high performers. And the number of people who end up wasting hours of their day commuting to the office just so they can fire up Zoom and join the same meeting they could have attended two hours ago is heartbreaking.

Starting point is 00:10:16 making the most of our time together requires intention and it requires planning. So it's one thing to say, you know, we need everybody in the office five days week. And it's another to say, okay, look, we're going to trust you to figure out where you work best. However, on Tuesday and Thursday, we're all going to get together and we're going to have strategic discussions. So get your pre-reads in on Friday so that everyone can show up, prepared and ready to contribute. The latter is taking advantage of what togetherness has to offer. We just need to be more intentional about what are the outcomes we're trying to get out of people and then work backwards. Instead of saying we're going to figure things out based on where we want people to be.

Starting point is 00:10:53 Yeah, I will say too, I think this has to do, just from my experience, maybe where you're at in your career. So being in an office, sitting in a cubicle, listening to my colleagues, I was working sales, like listening to them make calls sitting in their cubes, like where I could actually plug in or they could plug in with me and come sit with me. my manager could do that, and then being able to copy what they said verbatim until I figured it out on my own. If I was at home every day doing that job, I think I would have failed miserably. I needed that office for that. Now, I wonder if maybe times have changed and younger people are just coming out of college or better prepared. I don't know. But I think there is an element to it depends on who and where you're at in your career. Because, yeah, I sincerely think if I didn't have the office for that first decade, I probably fail at that. I don't know. What do you think about

Starting point is 00:11:45 that? Let me support what you're saying, which is it depends on the person, depends on the organization, depends on the manager, depends on the team, depends on the culture. That's not a very tweetable quote, right? Because that's not what people want to hear it. It's complicated. Yeah. That said, let's look at the evidence. Okay, so what are people better off doing at home? Well, if you're a self-starter and you're organized and you're an introvert, you're going to do great working from home, but there are certain tasks that benefit from being surrounded by people. Specifically, tasks that are draining or boring tasks. So, for example, you know, I used to work in political campaigns, as you know, the classic political campaign activity was stuffing envelopes.

Starting point is 00:12:26 Probably don't do that anymore, but that was what we did 20 years ago. And so if you ask people to stuff envelopes for four hours at a time and you put them in a cubicle, that's pretty dreary work. But you put people in a room and you play some music and you order some pizza, that's a party. That's an envelope stuffing party.

Starting point is 00:12:45 So being around other people raises our energy levels. So when the task is difficult or boring, that's beneficial. The other thing it's good for is creativity. There's research showing that we have more spontaneous conversations

Starting point is 00:12:55 and we can build off ideas a little bit better when we're together in a room. And so it depends again on the tasks. And so it just requires being a little bit intentional and then working backwards.

Starting point is 00:13:05 Got you. Okay. This one really stuck out. to me recurring meetings. It's easy for me to say now that I don't work in corporate, I work with corporate America leaders. I don't work at a company in corporate America though, but we had a million recurring meetings. I have a disdain for them. So I love seeing your research. I love seeing what Shopify did. Can you talk to me about recurring meetings? Yes. Okay. So, Ryan, if you allow me, I'm going to take a step back and kind of build a picture of what are super teams

Starting point is 00:13:32 doing differently first and then dive into recurring meetings specifically. So I talked to about how we did the research, we asked people whether their team is effective in reaching its goals and how it compares to other teams in its industry. So what are super teams doing differently? Three big pillars. Okay. The first pillar, they get more done by better managing their time, energy, and attention. The second big pillar, they don't just collaborate well. They actively make each other better. And the third big pillar is they're not satisfied doing great work. They're constantly building their skills and improving over time. So super teams is about all of the practices and habits and tactics that enables the best teams to achieve those three outcomes,

Starting point is 00:14:12 getting more done, making each other better, and improving overtime. So you asked about recurring meetings. That fits into the first bucket. How do they better manage their time, energy, and attention? So let's talk about how the average teamwork works first. The average worker loses 18 hours a week to meetings. They then lose an additional 11 hours a week, digging themselves out of messages. That's three quarters of their week gone.

Starting point is 00:14:37 before they've achieved a single task. So we keep asking ourselves, why are people getting burnt out at work? A better question is, how are people managing to get anything done in the first place? So super teams are much more deliberate with their time at the office.

Starting point is 00:14:52 They don't make meetings the default. They make it a last resort. They're 50% better at avoiding unnecessary meetings, and they're 54% less likely to schedule recurring meetings. Now, recurring meetings are particularly, insidious because once you have a recurring meeting on your calendar, it's very difficult to remove it because it requires having an uncomfortable conversation with your meeting mates. It's basically like

Starting point is 00:15:18 breaking up with someone. It's like saying, I don't find our time together valuable anymore. It's a really difficult conversation to have. So by default, we just end up having this time suck on our calendar week after week. And so you asked about Shopify. Shopify installed a meeting calculator on people's meeting scheduler so that when they schedule a meeting with multiple people, they can see the actual price and the cost to the company of that meeting. Now, I'm not sure that that is necessarily the best approach because I've worked in an organization. I'm sure you have two, Ryan, where there are certain people who love costing the organization money. And so ironically, it can actually get people to invite more people to the meeting just to really stick it to the man. But that said,

Starting point is 00:15:58 I feel like the better solution is having better team practice. around what deserves a meeting and what doesn't. And I talk in the book about meeting guidelines, and we could talk about that too, if you'd like. Yeah, share some of those. Yeah, so meeting guidelines are probably the most effective approach to shrinking the number of meetings you and your team are attending. So what are meeting guidelines?

Starting point is 00:16:21 It simply involves getting clear with your team on what deserves a meeting and what doesn't. Most companies have no meeting guidelines, just about anybody can call a meeting for any reason. and it's a problem because people use it as a procrastination tool. It feels productive to call a meeting. It makes it look like you're on top of things to your teammates. And then it gives you license to wait because you're waiting on people's insights during the meeting.

Starting point is 00:16:47 So it's a real problem. So getting clear with your team is the solution on what deserves a meeting and what doesn't. In my team, we have a very simple rule. No decision, no meeting. Unless there's a decision to be made, we're not going to pull people away from that work. If you have a question, pick up the phone. If you have an update, that's a video capture or send an email. Another example in the book is from a company called Percolate.

Starting point is 00:17:11 They are a content marketing software company. And Percolate, they have got a rule that says no spectators. So if you are not contributing to the meeting, you don't need to be there. That's not a criticism. It's respect for your time. And there's also a practice I talk about in the book from Cass Sunstein, who worked at the Obama White House for a number of years. and they had a rule that said meetings are 15 minutes long.

Starting point is 00:17:33 And if you need more time, no problem. Just ask the team leader for permission. What all these practices do is that they ensure that people's time at the office is spent doing actual work. And they're not required to come in early, stay late, and work weekends just to do their job. I think that one hits home for me because now I may have with my team now or team of coaches, sometimes I've gone so far the other direction. I go, wait, actually, we probably need to meet about this. We probably need to have a meeting to talk with it because my background's in corporate

Starting point is 00:18:05 America for a long time. And I spent so much time in meetings that it bothered me that I think I've swung the pendulum too far. Interesting. To saying, I never want to, Eva, I love you guys, but I never want to meet with you because I never want it to be that leader who was like, why are we meeting? You know what I mean? So the answer is probably having guidelines.

Starting point is 00:18:26 We got to make decisions. We got to get things done. So let's meet the talk about that. seems like the better approach. You know, I appreciate you raising that because I, like you, prefer not to have meetings. I really am someone who loves moving things forward and putting my head down and doing the work. I just think that this requires being intentional. The answer is not no meetings.

Starting point is 00:18:44 The answer is not we never meet for anything. In fact, there's research in the book from a study published, the MIT Sloan Journal, looking at what is the ideal number of meeting days? So they looked at meeting free days. By the way, meeting free days, the impact of meeting free days, If more leaders understood the impact of meaning-free days, I don't think that it's a question, just how much this would catch on throughout the country.

Starting point is 00:19:07 It slashes stress in half. Productivity shoots up 71% and it makes people go home feeling satisfied because they were able to get work done. So in this study, they looked at the impact of meeting-free days. Those are the findings. But then they looked at what happens with people abolish meetings altogether. And that's not good either,

Starting point is 00:19:23 because then what ends up happening is trust breaks down, communication breaks down. So the ideal number of days for meetings is two. So three meeting free days, that's kind of ideal. Now, of course, it depends on you and your company, what you're trying to achieve. As I say in the book, what works for a sales team might be comically inadequate for a team that's dealing with press issues and crisis management. So you've really got to adapt this, but the key is being intentional and importantly, critically, not leaving it to individuals. This is one of the other findings we uncovered in the book is all these productivity

Starting point is 00:19:57 hacks that we've been reading about for years, things like back your email, put your phone in the other room, turn off notifications. That can work for the individual, but it slows down the team because one person's deep work is another person's bottleneck. So you've got to tackle these on the team level, because if you leave it to the individual, it becomes a focus free-for-all. Where everyone's got their own individual schedules, they're not sharing it with the team, and the team slows down. One of the real-life examples I have is really bad. We had this rule, which was, I love the rule. No internal meetings on Thursdays. Okay. This was the rule set by the president of the company. No internal meetings on Thursday. You can meet with your customers. In fact, you should be

Starting point is 00:20:44 meeting with them, right? No internal meetings on Thursday. And I was brand new. I come in. I'm in a leadership role. And I'm thinking, this is great. I love this. I'm excited. Let's go crushed on Thursday. no internal meetings. We're not going to slow you down. And it was, I think, maybe two or three weeks later, I get an internal meeting request from an SVP who was above me. And I was like, I'm in a weird spot. I go, well, I thought we don't do internal meetings on Thursday.

Starting point is 00:21:07 And he goes, well, this is an exception. And then another SVP had an exception. And then another person had an exception. And before you know it, the president's saying this stuff. And then I'm having an internal meeting with that person who created that rule. and they create these rules, but then we're like, well, but, you know, these are exceptions. And there were just hundreds of exceptions over the course of that year. And I thought, man, I have no trust in you.

Starting point is 00:21:34 I don't believe in you. I don't want to follow you. You create this rule and then you yourself break it. It just, it really had a, at least for me, a very damaging effect on how I felt about the leadership within the company. And I was one of the leaders. So I think if you're going to create these rules, you've got to follow them. I mean, this seems like Leadership 101, but if you're going to create things like that, you better follow through on it.

Starting point is 00:22:00 I love that story. One of the biggest mistakes that leaders make is saying one thing and rewarding another. So you just cited one example. Another example is saying that you value work-life balance and then you promote the people who work on weekends. As you correctly point out, the damaging effect of that is that people learn to tune out what you say. Yep. they just look at what you do. And you're undermining trust in a way

Starting point is 00:22:22 that's very difficult to rebuild. Now, that said, I will point out that when it comes to these meeting-free days, there's a reason I chose the word meeting guidelines and not rules. And it's because they should be malleable. There are going to be certain situations where you do need to work around them.

Starting point is 00:22:40 But your sighting is a little bit different, which is that nobody was following it. So it's basically nonsensical. You don't want to do that. But when you develop these meeting guidelines, one of the things that I would strongly recommend is that they not come top down. You don't want to be showing up saying,

Starting point is 00:22:55 hey, I just heard this great podcast with Ryan Hawk and Ron Friedman, and we're going to be a lot of changes around here. That's not going to work. Work with your team to figure out what would be best that would enable them to get their job done more effectively

Starting point is 00:23:09 and really kind of start out by saying, hey, let's have a conversation about what differentiates our most successful meetings from our least successful meetings. meetings. And then through that, you can, I think, surface some general principles that would lend themselves quite effectively to meeting guidelines. And you don't need to do all of them at once. You need to have five meeting guidelines. Just start with one. Test it for a week. Come back and say,

Starting point is 00:23:34 hey, was that helpful? Okay, what are we doing next? That's how super teams improve over time. It's through experimentation. Speaking of experiments, this is a little bit of a departure, but it's also personal. So maybe that's why I piqued my curiosity when I was reading about it. Side of hustles, side gigs, doing things. I mean, even Goldman Sachs CEO, right, as a DJ, and yet he got heavily criticized for this. So this podcast started as a side hustle, so as a side gait. Now, I left corporate America at the end of 2017 to do it full time. But I was working in a real job, and the whole purpose of this was to create a leadership PhD program for myself. I'd gotten my MBA, gone back to school, and I didn't love the whole process. So is there a better way

Starting point is 00:24:19 to earn a leadership PhD. Well, I thought starting a podcast in 2015 could be that. And that's ultimately what this has become. And I did not have any intention for it to be this. But here we are. But the side hustle actually, I think, made me way better at my job. Because I was learning on the side about how to be a better leader. And then I could implement what I was learning.

Starting point is 00:24:39 Now, I know people have different side hustles. Like being a DJ may not help you, but maybe it does help you be a better leader. I don't know. Can you talk to me about the research and what you learned and why it could be beneficial for your people to have side hustles. Yeah, so there's two ways I could take this. I'm going to start off with talking about how super teams use their time off.

Starting point is 00:24:57 So there's research on how we most effectively recover after hours. Most people think that when they're not working, they're automatically recovering. That's not the case. Doing things like scrolling Instagram or binging Netflix, that can help you wind down, but it doesn't restore your energy. So what does?

Starting point is 00:25:15 Well, it's mastery experiences. It's taking on challenging activities that stretch your skills and help you learn new things. Those are the types of activities that tend to really recharge you. So that can mean things like learning a new song on the piano or playing pickleball or just trying out a new recipe. Those are the things, if you really reflect on it, those are the things that really recharge you.

Starting point is 00:25:35 And so in the book, I have a story of Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, and he on his off hours works as a DJ. In fact, had a song in the Top 100 during COVID, which is a remake of Whitney Houston's, I Want to Dance with Somebody. And he took a lot of heat for it, especially in the Wall Street Journal. People said, hey, you know, shouldn't this guy be focusing on his job? He's getting paid $35 million a year.

Starting point is 00:25:58 He's leading thousands of people. And what the research shows is that actually, when leaders do something completely different and recover their energy, not only do they show up more effectively, but their team is more effective. And that's pretty striking. How could a team's performance improve as a result of what the leader did the night before? And it's because when a leader shows up well-rested, they're in a positive mood. And that positive mood leads people to enjoy their job more and work harder.

Starting point is 00:26:28 And so that's a really important lesson for people to take away, which is if you are investing time in your own recovery, that's not selfish. That actually moves your team forward. So now you asked about moonlighting. That's a different study. And what the research shows on moonlighting is that when people moonlight, meaning that they take on a side hustle, when they do it, because they are high in autonomy, meaning they feel like it's their choice, they want to be doing it,

Starting point is 00:26:52 and they want to master a new skill, that lends itself to hire engagement when they show up back at the office for their regular job. Now, that doesn't mean that everyone needs to have a side hustle. All it means is if you're motivated to do it out of mastery and autonomy, it's good for your engagement. And the best leaders actually encourage their team to do those things.

Starting point is 00:27:13 Now, they don't go around telling people, hey, you need to take on a side hustle. That's not what our research shows. What it shows is that among super teams, people believe that their leader is supportive of their side hustles should they want to take them on. And what that tells us more than anything is that they feel like their manager and their leaders have their back when it comes to their personal development and personal growth. They're not just supporting growth when it benefits the organization.

Starting point is 00:27:38 They're doing it because they want to see the person grow. And that helps us identify what the best leaders do differently, and that is that they support growth wherever it happens. I think it's a great interview question when you're thinking about hiring somebody as learning about what they're curious about, interested in, outside of the work. And then remembering that when you do hire them and foster that and support that and ask questions about how that's going so that you're genuinely curious about them as a person beyond, did you hit the number, did you hit the number, did you get the number, did you have the number, you know, that type of thing. I felt when I think about my best teams that I was leading, there was a lot of that. happening all over, all of us doing it together with each other and people were into different things. And I had one guy who made beer and then we had a game maker and then we had someone who loved

Starting point is 00:28:26 golf and then you have someone who loves history and in team meetings or things like that or one-on-ones where having conversations about these things that are restorative, as you would put it, that lifts them up, makes them come to the office in a good mood. We as a team, we cared about those things about each other. Yes, we worked hard, but we also had this care and love for one another about what you're into and celebrated the differences. And I think that brings people together too. A hundred percent. And I will say it doesn't come naturally to everyone. Especially if you're a high achiever. I feel like if you are a high achiever, your focus is on getting things done. You're focused on moving the ball forward and all this like, how was your weekend stuff? That can feel

Starting point is 00:29:07 unnatural. And that's why it's so important to look at this research because what it tells us is if you're trying to elevate the performance of the people around you. And by the way, this is not a skill most leaders are taught. Most of us get promoted to a leadership position because we're really effective at doing our job. That's not the same thing as managing or leading people. And so you need to think about it a little bit differently when you're trying to bring out the best in people focusing on what did you do yesterday, what are you doing today, where you need my help on. That's going to help them be more effective in their role, but it doesn't necessarily help them feel like they're cared for. And unless people feel like they're cared for, you're not going to

Starting point is 00:29:46 have trust. So this is another thing we look at the research is what are the three factors that predict trust in a leader? And it's three things. Competence, caring, consistency. People need to feel like you're competent, meaning like you do a good job. Caring, meaning they feel like you care about them. And consistency, meaning that your behaviors are predictable. If any of those break down, trust breaks down. And so caring is imperative if you're trying to get people to trust you. So maybe I'm too into the weeds on this. To me, this is a good. important okay and I want you to respond so I'll surface like a thesis I think how was your weekend is a lame question why because it's not specific the more

Starting point is 00:30:29 specific when you're praising somebody the more specific when you're asking a question the better it is so let's say one of my guys John has two boys this is a real person and I know one of his boys is really into golf that's Ben and Colin his other son is really into soccer. So instead of saying, how was your weekend to John, I'm going to ask, and I know that he loves watching his son play golf and he loves watching his son play soccer. Instead of saying, hey, John, how was your weekend? I'm going to say to him, hey, John, Ben have a soccer game this weekend, how to go, do you play golf with column this weekend? That shows that I'm thinking about John and I'm specific about him and his boys. I know their name. I know what

Starting point is 00:31:11 they're into because I care about him as a person. How was your weekend is lame? that shows you didn't spend one second thinking about me. You can ask everybody how their weekend is. But when you get specific and you go a level deeper, that's when they go, oh, he's actually thinking about me. He remembers, I had a boss who always said he'd asked me about Miranda. Now, it's not hard to remember my wife's name, but it's so bizarre that I can't think of another manager that I worked for that would just ask

Starting point is 00:31:39 me how my wife is doing by her name. And it's Scott Schlesner. That's the guy. I know Scott listens, his son Reed listens to, and I just will never forget that Scott would ask me how she's doing using her name. And I think that's what good leaders should strive to do, is go a level deeper, be specific in your praise, be specific with your curiosity. That's how you show people that you actually care for them. I love that tip. It's fantastic.

Starting point is 00:32:06 It's actionable. It's memorable. And I'll just add, you know, I mentioned that it's not natural for every leader. I have a friend who literally created a spreadsheet for this very purpose. Yes. People in his life, in his team, and the details around them so he can do exactly what you just said. And so the point is that if it doesn't come naturally to you, don't just ignore it. There are very simple ways of getting around it.

Starting point is 00:32:29 And I think that your point is so effective because what it highlights is that you're not just interested in the things that the person can do for you. you're invested in them as a person. A friend of mine wrote a book called How to Feel Loved, Harry Reese. And one of the things that their research shows is that in order for people to feel loved, and we would just adapt this to cared for, right, in the context of work, they need to be appreciated not just for what they do, but for who they are. And if you can appreciate people for who they are, they will feel like you really respect and appreciate them.

Starting point is 00:33:04 Yeah. I mean, specificity and care and going the extra step, I think, is the name of the the game here. So you also write about toxic teammates. And one of the examples that I just watched this CNN special, so this was top of mind, but was Chevy Chase. Can you share more about this in general as well as the specific story of Chevy Chase? Yeah. So what we did in our research is we looked at what are the best teammates that people have ever had to have in common? And what are the worst teammates that people have ever had have in common? And so we ask people to think about the best teammate they've ever had, and we asked them to describe that person. And then through statistical

Starting point is 00:33:42 methodologies, we were able to pull out the central characteristics of the best teammates and the worst teammates. And so I use the story of Chevy Chasing compared and contrasting with Tina Faye as, unfortunately, for Chevy, he's the toxic teammate in this equation. And I say that because I have a great deal of respect and love for Chevy Chays, one of my favorite actors growing up. And so he disappears around when I get to high school. I have no idea why. It was not until I did this research that I figured out why that happened. And it was because he basically turned off every single person he's ever worked with. I think in the case of Chevi, it's because he tries to be funny in a way that sometimes goes off the rails and can be interpreted as very aggressive. Well, the CNN documentary,

Starting point is 00:34:24 you see how brutal he is to the interviewer? I mean, it's like, oh, I don't know. I felt for her. As I heard her asking questions, man, why are you being so cruel to her? She's trying to put together this documentary about you and he just hammers her. I don't know. I didn't, I thought, like, is something wrong with him? I mean, it was bizarre. I felt the same way. I also appreciated that documentary. I didn't get to see it. I loved it, by the though. I still loved it. I felt there were moments where I felt bad. It's not that hard just to be decent to somebody. You don't have to even be pleasant, but just be decent. You don't have to crush them for basically no reason. I don't know. So anyway, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah. I tell a story about what he was

Starting point is 00:35:07 like in Saturday Night Live. And basically, he comes out of nowhere. He's hired as a writer. He is very funny in the writer's room, so they decide to put him on air. And within like a few weeks of the show going on air, he's the star. He creates weekend update. He takes on the persona of Gerald Ford. He single-handedly almost takes down this president, making him look like a buffoon. And then along the way, he starts getting all of this attention. He gets hired to do all these side gigs. He hangs out with very well-known celebrities, and pretty soon he's alienating his team. He's criticizing their work. He's telling them they don't deserve to be on camera with him.

Starting point is 00:35:42 And inevitably, he gets banned for Saturday Night Live, at least for a period. What it goes to show is how a bad team... There are just so many different ways that a bad teammate can drag a team down. So in our research, we looked at what are the characteristics of the worst teammates and the best teammates? So I'll give you some of the findings. So the top three characteristics of a toxic teammate at number one, is unreliable. This is the teammate who fails to follow through. And then two and three are bad attitude and arrogant. And both of those, we've all had teammates like that. Chevy Chase,

Starting point is 00:36:14 unfortunately, for him is kind of like the classic example of a bad teammate because he was unreliable. He quits the show after one year, and he's got a terrible attitude and he's very arrogant. So what are the characteristics of the best teammates? Number one, knowledgeable. This is the teammate whose expertise the team can go to and rely on. At number two is dependable. The person does what they say they're going to do. And number three is good communicator. This is the teammate who shares information and keeps everyone in the loop. And what I want you to notice when I talk about the characteristics of the best teammates, it's knowledgeable, dependable, and good communicator. You know what's not on there? Funny. Good listener. Like caring. Those are all nice to have,

Starting point is 00:36:56 but they don't move the team forward. And the characteristics of the best teammates, when people think about them, they're the people who wasn't just a nice person to be around. They're the person who made them better. Okay, so Tom Brady, when he went to the Tampa Bay Bucks, one of the things that you heard about him was that he literally lifted the entire organization up.

Starting point is 00:37:18 The lunchroom workers got better. The assistant equipment manager got better. literally everybody raised their level of performance because this guy had such high standards, was very demanding of himself, was very demanding of others, and everyone felt it. And so you'd say, well, that's a good teammate. They won a Super Bowl. They lifted the level of performance. He was very hard on people at times.

Starting point is 00:37:43 So knowledgeable, yes, dependable, yes, good communicator, probably. But arrogant, maybe. I think he was very reliable. So what do you think when you hear this? because sports is different, right? Sports teams are different. You're trying to win Super Bowls and football, right? What do you think when you hear the story of Tom Brady

Starting point is 00:38:00 is specifically how he lifted up an entire organization when he went from New England to Tampa? Well, it reminds me of a lot of what we see in super teams of how they make each other better. So when we say someone makes you better, that word better can take many forms. And one of the ways that they make each other better that is consistent with what you've just described to me about Tom Brady

Starting point is 00:38:21 is that the best teammates make excellent. the norm. Yes. So when you're surrounded by people who do good work, there's a natural urge to reciprocate and to do your part. And we see that in the data on Super Teams, 94% say their teammates motivate them to do their best work. And then the other thing they do is they don't just inspire more effort. They also foster more accountability. So in our research, we asked a very simple question. We said, when things go wrong on your team, who do you feel worse about letting down? Do you feel worse about letting down your manager or your teammates. And on super teams, it wasn't even close. 82% said, I feel worse about letting down my teammates. When you know that your teammates are

Starting point is 00:39:04 counting on you, you work a lot harder. And the last thing is, and again, consistent with Brady, is that on super teams, being around great teammates elevates your confidence. Just knowing your team has your back gives you the courage to take on bigger challenges and take on more intelligent risks. And at a certain point in your career, taking intelligent risks is the difference between stagnation and improvement. And so unless you're taking those intelligent risks and it's because you feel like your team has your back, your manager supports you, you're not going to grow. And if you're not growing, you're going to be disengaged over time. I also have enjoyed, I love studying, I don't know if I call it art, but the creation of things, of building worlds. I went and spent

Starting point is 00:39:47 some time with Brian Copelman in New York and to work. and hung out in his writer's room when he was running the TV show billions. And so maybe think of that time I spent there when you write about a Jesse Armstrong and the Succession Writers Room and this idea of how he built this room and how it became a super team. I mean, the show was incredible. Can you tell me more about what you learned with the research shows from Jesse Armstrong and the Succession Writers Room? Yeah, so this was news to me. Maybe this might be obvious to other people, but there's no writing going on in the writer's room. They call it a writer's room, but they get together.

Starting point is 00:40:24 They basically talk about what the season's going to look like. They figure out what they want the ending of a season to be, and then they just throw out ideas about what different episodes can be about, and then they go off on their own, and they work individually on their individual episodes, different writers. Then they come back, and then they all read them, and they critique them. So a couple of lessons there. One is, the best teams are not constantly together all the time. I think a lot of times organizations say they want collaboration, they want more collaboration. What they end up getting instead is constant togetherness. And the best collaborations don't work that way. They cycle between individual work and collective

Starting point is 00:41:05 group activities that sharpen the ideas and make them better. And so a classic example of this in the business world is let's all do a brainstorm. Let's all do a brainstorm. Let's all get together and come up with ideas. And what you actually find when you look at the research is if you want better higher quantity ideas, higher quality ideas, you're far better off having people brainstorm individually and then bring those ideas to the conference room. It's called brain writing. And so that's one of the lessons from Succession

Starting point is 00:41:32 is you don't want constant togetherness. That's not real collaboration. The best collaborators, they protect focus time, because unless you have focus time, you're not gonna have great collaboration. The other lesson is they are very candid with their feedback to their teammates. And they go to one another for feedback.

Starting point is 00:41:49 This is one of the key differences among super teams and how they continuously get better is they are higher in something that psychologists call feedback seeking. They're constantly going to one another and asking their teammates for input. They're saying, hey, what do you think of this? And then they're using the feedback

Starting point is 00:42:07 to improve the work before it ever gets to the manager or to the client. And so the sheer amount of feedback is vastly higher in super teams and it's one of the ways in which they're continuously improving over time. One of my teammates named Garon Stokes. I love him.

Starting point is 00:42:23 And one of the reasons I love him is he has this ethos of see it, say it. Now, he's been a football coach for a long time. Now, you know, does leadership stuff with us. And I think everyone appreciates a highly competent person who has a see it, say it mentality. Meaning if you see something awesome, says it. You know, compliment, great job. Very specific again. That's a big word for me.

Starting point is 00:42:49 specificity. Also, if you see somebody not doing it the right way or it's not up to the standard that we've set, which is very high and very demanding, you say it. And so I thought of Garron when I was thinking of this part in the book about succession and this idea of see it, say it. And I also like, I believe it was like painting and red. Is that what they said? The difference between like these lazy scenes versus raw emotional truth. Like what was that about? Yeah, painting and red is about fleshing out the scene and making it using specificity to use your word, really, it's almost the theme of our conversation. Using specificity to make the scene real.

Starting point is 00:43:29 So it's not like there's a classic scene that I cite in the book about, for those who've watched the show, there's a very heartbreaking scene at the end of season two between two characters, and they're basically breaking up. And so in a very kind of like boring style of TV show, what one character might have said was, hey, we need to talk. But here, the line is very different,

Starting point is 00:43:48 and the line is something along the lines of, sometimes I wonder if the sad I'd get from being with you would be less than the sad I'd get being without you. And so it's a very specific way of thinking about it, and I think a lot of people can relate to that. So that's what they do in terms of painting and red. And so they are constantly at each other's throats about like, hey, that's not a very succession way of doing it.

Starting point is 00:44:12 A succession way of doing it would be like this. Now, I want to point out, to your point about see it, say it, I'm not sure that that would work for everyone. And the reason I say that, I have this research also on Watson and Crick about how they were just like so blunt with each other. Like, that's a terrible idea. And that wouldn't work in corporate America.

Starting point is 00:44:33 Well, I don't know if you're going to say like that. I mean, but you could still tell the truth. Just you're not trying to be cruel. Like Chevy Chase in the documentary, he could have phrased, sorry, go ahead. No, no, I appreciate you. Look, I want you to push back.

Starting point is 00:44:46 This is good. That's how we got better. The point I'm making here with Watson Crick is if a person is low on confidence or self-esteem, even the most benign criticism is destructive. And so you need to gauge your feedback to where the person is. And if the person is, again, someone who's not confident, you would be surprised at how effective. Just a nice word of encouragement really is.

Starting point is 00:45:17 especially when someone's down. I think we've all had this. Like, even if you're a high performer, someone's really ambitious, really successful, you know sometimes when you're in the weeds at something and you're, you know, midway through the journey, it's easy to get discouraged. And so having someone say, hey,

Starting point is 00:45:32 you're really making a lot of progress here. That could be eye-opening for them. You know, I talk in the book about, what is the science show about how the best people deliver feedback? And in fact, there's research showing that 97%, this is a pretty striking statistic. 97% of feedback is not effective at lifting performance. And in fact, over a third of feedback actively worsens performance.

Starting point is 00:45:55 And so what are the 3% doing differently? Well, it's a few things. One is you want to focus on one thing at a time. You don't want to overload people with a lot of feedback. Yeah, you should start doing this and that. And I also notice this. Just focus on one thing because it makes it manageable. The other thing is they don't focus on the past.

Starting point is 00:46:13 They focus on the future. So I wouldn't say, Ryan, the way you've asked those questions, you know, I really feel you could have changed X, Y, and Z. What I might say is, Ryan, hey, the next time we do an interview, how about we try this? Now, how I've just delivered feedback to you is I didn't critique what you did and it prevents you from being defensive. Instead, I've opened up the idea of doing something completely different and I've made it a conversation. But can you stop me for a sec? Yeah, please. I would want to know specifically what I did that wasn't that good, though, if you're coaching me.

Starting point is 00:46:46 And I feel like as we build a relationship, hopefully you would know that. So my backgrounds in athletics, and I was coached every single rep was on film. And my coach critiqued every single repetition. And I grew to love it, even if it's stung. But that's how you get better. So only focusing on the future, if it was for me, that wouldn't work as well. And so I think this just shows from a leadership perspective, you've got to know the person you're coaching where some people, you give them feedback, hey, maybe they can't handle it or it'll sting too much and it'll make them get worse. Whereas there are other people, they want to know the specific thing, even if it's a single word or it's the fact that I said the word like too many times within that question, which I know is an issue for me when I listen back to my shows.

Starting point is 00:47:33 I want to hear those specific pieces of feedback so that I can improve. And I would venture to guess there are others in the world who do too. So how does that work with what you're talking about of the most effective way to give feedback? I know I cut you off at too, but I'm curious. No, no. I love that you said that and I'm the same as you. I want to know what I did wrong. And you know who else likes to know what they did wrong? Top performers. Top performers want to know what wasn't great so that they can really focus on it. Yeah. And that has to do with the fact that they are very confident in their abilities.

Starting point is 00:48:10 When you're confident in your abilities, you want to know what you did wrong so you can correct the next time. Most people are not confident in their abilities. You and I are surrounded by top performers all time. Look at you. You're interviewing great authors. You get to be around people who are at the top of their field. You coach people who raise their hand and say, hey, I want to get, I'm good, but I want

Starting point is 00:48:30 to get better. that's not most people. Most of us, if we're leaders, we're leading people who are on the spectrum in terms of how high or low their confidences. So overall, if you're trying to get someone to improve and they're the average person focusing on the future will work a lot better

Starting point is 00:48:46 than telling them what they did wrong. Got you. The next level of that, though, I think some of the things I was going to hit on is having the emotional intelligence to understand the makeup of that person. I remember one of my teammates, in fact, who was wildly talented,

Starting point is 00:49:02 insanely talented. He was very fast. He was awesome. But he shut down when the coaches hammered him. Just shut down. And that was the coach's style. And a lot of us, we were fine or we even got better.

Starting point is 00:49:17 But this one particular player, and I thought my coach could have been a better coach if he had had the emotional intelligence to understand we have this superstar. Not don't baby him, don't be soft. You don't have to do that. But understand that he's a bit different. And when you do that to him like you do it to us, it does not work and it does not make our team better.

Starting point is 00:49:39 It doesn't help us be more effective. And as a coach, that is your job. And so I've always felt that way. At the time, I was too young to fully grasp that. I thought, like, man, you're killing him. But he doesn't seem to respond well like the rest of the team. Maybe we should try a different route. So I think there is an element of this where you just got to know your people, right?

Starting point is 00:49:57 You got to know that they're different and there's an emotional intelligence element that you don't necessarily treat everybody exactly the same. Exactly right. And if you look at football coaches, the better ones, they will give criticism or feedback to their quarterback very differently than they will to their linemen. Part of it has to do with the different tasks involved where there is so much more decision-making and calmness under pressure that's required of the quarterback as opposed to the linemen who's making obviously important decisions as well, but aggression is more important in that position. than it is for the quarterback. Yeah, it's a great point. One more before we go, comedy. I love comedy, so it's cool to read about the comedy seller. Can you tell me the story of Dave Chappelle or Seinfeld,

Starting point is 00:50:39 Chris Rock, the comedy seller? Yeah, so if you haven't been to New York City and visit the comedy seller, it's definitely worth a trip. This is kind of the mecca of comedy. It's in the village. It's not particularly expensive, but it is very difficult to get in. You've got to reserve your tickets up front. You've got to stand online, and you never know who's going to show up.

Starting point is 00:50:54 They have a lineup of particular comedian, but then almost invariably, they'll be a surprise guest. And sometimes that surprise guest can be Jerry Seinfeld, other times Dave Chappelle, Amy Schumer. Sometimes they all show up on the same night, and you get to see that for like the $25 that you paid to get in. Why do all these comedians show up at the comedy seller? A big part of it has to do with the table at the next door restaurant

Starting point is 00:51:20 called the Lemon Tree Cafe. There's a comedian table there, and it's where they all show up and critique one another and give them each other feedback on their comedy. And it's how they get better. And so Mike Barbiglia, whose podcast I listen to, often he talks about how it's one of his favorite places in the world to be. And it's because he knows he's going to be around friends

Starting point is 00:51:38 and they're going to help him get better. And it highlights how the best teammates don't just do their job. You know, a lot of times we think about the best teammates, so someone gets their head down, gets the job done. Actually, no, it's the kind of person who cares enough to tell you how you can improve and helps make you better every single day. when you create a position where people are achieving those three strengths that we talked about,

Starting point is 00:52:00 which is you get to people get to do their best work, people get to feel like their teammates are making them better and they get to improve every day. That's the kind of job that no one ever wants to leave. Actually, one more question. We started personal. We're going to end personal. Let's fast forward. It's one year from today. You are surrounded by the people that you love.

Starting point is 00:52:20 You all are popping bottles, man. Right. I don't know if you drink champagne or not, but go with me. You're popping bottles. You're celebrating like crazy. What are you guys celebrating? I'm a listener to this show, so I knew this was coming. But I will say, for me personally, I'm not a huge fan of celebrating my own personal achievements because I like to stay present, next play mentality. But I am a big fan of celebrating the people around me, particularly my kids. And so my daughter right now, she's 19. She's looking to get into a finance internship.

Starting point is 00:52:52 And this is something that is quite difficult when you're a college student. You don't have any work experience, try to break into one of these big firms. I'm kind of taking the back seat here because I want her to feel like this is something she earned on her own. So she feels like she really deserves it. And so she's not there yet. She's working at it. I know she's going to get there and I can't wait to celebrate with her. It's so cool to hear you say that because I love to hear we're talking about all this work and academia and research and teams and all of your thing. And then your heart opens up talking about your daughter. It really brings this thing home. And I'm a big fan, Ron of your work. Comes at a great time. I've been studying great teams. And when this came across

Starting point is 00:53:29 my desk, I thought, oh my goodness, I can't wait to talk to Ron. I love it if you'd be down to do this again soon. I normally don't ask this here when we're still on the show. But I think there's so much more to get to about teams. And I find you super fascinating because you have this great combination of doing the work. You've been in the work. You've done the thing. And you have all of the academic, the research. So it's the practical application, the stories, as well as all of the science, which then makes it real. And I think that's a lethal combo that is rare. So super appreciative of you, man, this is really good. Super teams, the science and secrets of high performing teams. We just scratched the surface on this book. There's so much more to get to that I think I highly

Starting point is 00:54:13 recommend people reading it because it's so well written. It's fun and very helpful. So Ron, Thanks so much, man. I know we're going to continue our dialogue as we both progress. Thanks, Ryan. I'm a big fan of yours, too. It was great to be here. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club.

Starting point is 00:54:34 If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learning leader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Dr. Ron Friedman. A few takeaways from my notes. The best and worst teammates. What do they do? Well, the best are knowledgeable, dependable. They're great communicators. The worst are unreliable.

Starting point is 00:54:57 They got a bad attitude and they are arrogant. I love this quote from Ron. The best teammates make excellence the norm. I think that was the Tom Brady effect in Tampa Bay. Literally made all the people around him better, led them to a Super Bowl. And then how do you show your teammates love? well, you actually get to know them. You care about them.

Starting point is 00:55:24 Be specific. Specificity is a huge word for me. Do not ask, how was your weekend? Instead, ask something more specific about them, their life, their loved ones. Then do an audit for yourself. Does your team know how much you care for them? How are you showing that? I think these are good questions to ask.

Starting point is 00:55:46 And then the third one, this is the one. this is the one that all leaders in corporate America tell me that I have no idea what I'm talking about when I bring it up with them. And that is audit your reoccurring meetings. For each one, ask, does this meeting need to happen on a recurring basis or can it be an email? Or can I just be a one-off conversation? Are decisions being made? If not, consider deleting it. Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to speak.

Starting point is 00:56:18 spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Dr. Ron Freibin. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and you subscribe to the show. Rated, hopefully five stars. Write a thoughtful review by doing all of that. You are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful.

Starting point is 00:56:44 Thank you so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 691: Dr. Ron Friedman - The Science of High-Performing Teams, Chevy Chase, Toxic Teammates, The Succession Writers' Room, Deleting Recurring Meetings, Why Side Hustles Are Good, and Why Only 8% of Teams Make the Cut

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