#HRTechChat: Steven O’Brien on Building High-Performing Teams Through Strategic Role Design

[00:00:00] Hey, everyone. It's Dylan Taggart here. I'm here with another 360

[00:00:03] Insights HR TechChat. Today, I'm joined by Steve O'brien. Steve is the Senior Vice President of People Solutions

[00:00:10] at Cineos Health. People Solutions is an agile HR practice within Cineos Health that focuses on

[00:00:16] strategic projects, transformations, and building high-performance themes. Hey, Steve, thanks

[00:00:21] for joining. Hey, Dylan. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. And just so everyone knows,

[00:00:26] Steve and I actually met because we were interviewing him for a different project,

[00:00:29] but he was saying so many interesting things that Nick Byron and I decided to put him on a podcast.

[00:00:36] Love it.

[00:00:37] Yeah, and here he is today.

[00:00:39] So, Steve, do you mind telling people a little bit about yourself before we dive in?

[00:00:42] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:00:43] I've been in HR or talent acquisition for about 20 years now.

[00:00:49] Like many folks that got into recruiting, I got into it accidentally.

[00:00:52] Honestly, I did an undergraduate degree in philosophy, not because I desired to be unemployed.

[00:00:58] I had plans for grad school, but I met a woman who's now my wife.

[00:01:03] And, you know, as 22-year-old boys can do, I abandoned all plans that I had made to see where that relationship might go.

[00:01:12] Worked out.

[00:01:13] She's my wife and the mother of my children.

[00:01:15] And I was able to find, especially at the entry-level stage, a place where really all they wanted to know is whether or not I had a degree.

[00:01:23] And recruiting was that place.

[00:01:25] What I didn't expect to do was fall in love with it.

[00:01:28] I really enjoyed the performance and competitive aspect of recruiting, the problem-solving, and the relationship-building work.

[00:01:37] So for about 15 of my 20 years, I spent most of my time focused on building large talent acquisition teams programs and doing talent acquisition transformation.

[00:01:48] And then in the last five years, focused on HR tech and sort of more traditional HR domains like what I'm doing now.

[00:02:00] Awesome.

[00:02:01] And one of the unique things we were finding when we were talking to you, Nick and I, was you had a very science-based approach to talent.

[00:02:11] Do you mind, or at least that's what it seemed like to me, do you mind talking a bit about how that came about and where you feel like it's going to led you?

[00:02:20] Well, there was sort of a natural incentive to try and find alternative ways to look at talent or to figure out alternative ways to build high-performing teams.

[00:02:31] When I was working with IBM, so I was at IBM for about 10 years, I ran an outsourcing practice.

[00:02:41] Outsourcing, especially human capital outsourcing, is difficult to run where you produce a margin, basically.

[00:02:49] The company that is outsourcing to you wants a price break.

[00:02:52] They want it to be less expensive than them doing it themselves, but they also want performance improvements.

[00:02:58] They want it to be better for less, which is achievable.

[00:03:01] However, it's not easy.

[00:03:03] And so there was a lot of incentive for me to try and find different approaches to understanding talent and different ways to think about organizing teams so that my cost base was as low as possible.

[00:03:18] But the performance was as high as possible.

[00:03:21] And one of the first things that I became suspicious about was this idea of top talent and bad hires.

[00:03:30] And now I don't want anyone to misunderstand.

[00:03:32] I'm not discounting that there are talented folks that you want in certain roles or that there are folks that are a bad fit.

[00:03:40] But I had found at the time that that idea sort of dominated the landscape.

[00:03:47] When it came to organizing and building teams or trying to solve for high performance, it was all about hire the right people.

[00:03:54] Well, that's an interesting idea.

[00:03:58] It is a dominant myth, but it's very, very expensive.

[00:04:02] And my experience with sort of a very talent centric or individual centric view was that it didn't produce consistent results.

[00:04:11] Sometimes you hit a home run.

[00:04:12] Sometimes you didn't.

[00:04:13] And you were sort of left sort of wondering, well, what happened?

[00:04:16] As an alternative to focusing exclusively on this idea of top talent or avoiding bad hires, I became really curious about the role of other factors like preferences, motivation, interests, for example, and wondered if they were measurable.

[00:04:38] If there was a way to actually understand those during the hiring process.

[00:04:42] And then once you had the individuals in your organization, the role that team design, organizational design, and the culture that you put somebody in, how that activates or changes what talents somebody is willing to exhibit.

[00:05:01] And so that was sort of the origin story.

[00:05:03] About 15 years ago, I began the exploration.

[00:05:06] I'm now fully committed to making sure that when it comes to building high-performing teams, I don't wander too far in the direction of a talent-oriented view or sort of a top talent, bad hire-oriented dichotomy.

[00:05:21] Gotcha.

[00:05:22] And in terms of, I like that concept of the teams you design, the organization you design, and the culture you put someone in can activate someone's talent.

[00:05:30] Give an example off the top of your head of where someone was maybe hired for something, but where they were put, or maybe this happened to you as well, where you were put kind of changed that and maybe brought out some good qualities or bad qualities.

[00:05:45] Yeah, I do have a success story, and I'll share just a personal story as well.

[00:05:49] Well, it wasn't a negative experience, although I'll refer to a jarring moment for lots of people.

[00:05:55] I got fired out of my second job.

[00:05:58] So I had reached a point two years in where I, like many folks with two years' experience, I had arrived at the insight that I was woefully undercompensated, and I needed to be valued appropriately.

[00:06:09] So I began the quest to find somebody that saw in me what I saw in me at the ripe old age of 25 or whatever.

[00:06:17] And I had never changed jobs before, had no insight into what led to good fit or performance for myself or anyone.

[00:06:25] And I joined a company that the fit and the culture were really terrible.

[00:06:30] In particular, the managing director of the firm that I joined was one of those gentlemen that he could joke with you, but you couldn't joke with him.

[00:06:40] But at that stage of my life, I was not adept at decoding that social nuance.

[00:06:46] And I ended up being fired for insubordination, basically, because I was joking back with him in public, and it was just too much to handle.

[00:06:53] So I only lasted there about nine months.

[00:06:56] It was a jarring experience at the time, and in retrospect, it's been a real gift because it set me on a path towards recruitment process outsourcing and some of the transformation work that I do now.

[00:07:06] But it was really an illustration of just being in the wrong place as an individual, a culture that doesn't match or align, or an organization that hasn't figured out or isn't arranged in a manner that activates your talent.

[00:07:20] You can come across as a bad hire.

[00:07:22] I mean, they were convinced I was a bad hire.

[00:07:25] They got rid of me, right?

[00:07:26] But then I've had very different experiences at companies like IBM, where the way that that role was designed had a lot of autonomy afforded to me, a lot of task variety, a lot of task significance.

[00:07:40] And that was a recipe to bring out the competitive and previously sort of latent capabilities that I didn't have access to at that other company.

[00:07:52] So that is just a personal experience that I've had.

[00:07:56] Within recent years, I have found myself taking over teams frequently, and in that, I'm afforded sort of the diagnosis of the person that's handing the team over to me.

[00:08:09] And there was an individual on a team that I recently took over that was just labeled as a problem, right?

[00:08:18] Because of, at this point, my commitment to first understanding the way that the environment somebody is in is conditioning their behavior and performance.

[00:08:28] I set aside the diagnosis, and I said, you know, let me figure out if there is something environmental that is preventing this person from bringing their best self or offering to the organization that we were at their capabilities.

[00:08:43] Turns out that by changing a few dynamics in the reporting structure, their role design, and the way that we were setting goals, that person's actually been promoted twice.

[00:08:54] They're uncontroversially a top performer.

[00:08:57] They are in the middle of the organization but regularly intersect with our management team, our executive leadership team, and run projects with them.

[00:09:06] Great reputation, extraordinary turnaround, and it's the same person.

[00:09:11] It's just an individual that has been placed into an environment that activates them and removed from a situation that deactivated them.

[00:09:21] Very interesting.

[00:09:22] That makes a ton of sense because sometimes it's just the wrong situation can bring out the best and the worst of you, but it's not always your fault.

[00:09:33] It's part of your – it is somewhat your manager's responsibility to kind of play for the chess pieces in a way.

[00:09:38] Yeah, I think that's right, and I think as you grow and as you gain more experience as a professional, it's valuable if you can begin exploring and become curious about what brings out the best in you

[00:09:48] and how do you select environments or roles that you believe are going to do that.

[00:09:53] In addition, I think that it's important, you know, especially for folks in the first 10 years of their career,

[00:09:59] to really reject labels and fight any temptation you might have to accept identity statements like,

[00:10:08] I am this, I am not that, you know, those types of things.

[00:10:11] Because the reality is the amount of potential that we have as people is extraordinary,

[00:10:18] and it is a process of discovery to figure out what that is, right?

[00:10:22] It isn't a test, it isn't I graduated college, it isn't I had one good run at my first job out of college.

[00:10:29] It is really something that you've got to explore and discover so that you have access to,

[00:10:34] sort of as a self-management practice, what is going to make me as effective as I can be.

[00:10:41] Yeah, I feel like you mentioned something in our initial talk that, you know, I can't remember,

[00:10:48] I think you said it was a hill, will, hill.

[00:10:50] You touched on two things, I hadn't heard someone in your position bring up before,

[00:10:55] and like that skill doesn't always matter, we're overlooking things that matter a lot.

[00:10:59] But also, you touched on that great man theory, I think.

[00:11:02] Yeah, yeah, so let's talk a little bit about like sort of the great man theory of history or the strong man.

[00:11:07] And again, I want to caution that I'm communicating about degrees or priorities.

[00:11:13] I don't mean to say that like there aren't impactful leaders, right?

[00:11:16] That's not the point that I'm making.

[00:11:17] I just think that we lean very, we're biased in the direction of sort of strong man theories,

[00:11:24] in part because we think in narrative, right?

[00:11:26] Like we think in story format, we watch and read stories about heroes and villains, right?

[00:11:32] And so we're sort of primed to think about things through that lens.

[00:11:39] It's easier to illustrate some of the flaws by taking a look at not the hero side of the equation,

[00:11:47] but sort of the villain side, the bad hire.

[00:11:51] And I've always found, so in all my years in talent acquisition, I have never really liked,

[00:11:56] one, the phraseology, we hire top talent.

[00:11:59] One, because everybody says that.

[00:12:02] If everybody's hiring top talent, I don't know, is everybody that gets hired anywhere top talent?

[00:12:07] It seems like that's probably not what's going on.

[00:12:10] But then there is sort of the myth of the bad hire, so to speak.

[00:12:13] And I always wonder, like, what does that mean when we say that?

[00:12:18] Are we saying that it's a bad hire for us?

[00:12:20] It's a bad hire for the circumstance.

[00:12:22] It's a bad hire for the team, right?

[00:12:24] And so like a contextual understanding.

[00:12:25] Are we saying that person is a bad hire?

[00:12:28] And if we're saying that person is a bad hire, what do we do with them, right?

[00:12:32] Do you like set them outside the city?

[00:12:34] They're not able to be employed anywhere.

[00:12:35] They're just a bad hire.

[00:12:37] And when we think about that, it grinds on us for good reason.

[00:12:40] And it begins to invite the understanding that's probably not what's going on.

[00:12:44] There probably aren't people that just shouldn't be employed.

[00:12:48] What is it then that leads to the fact that that hire didn't work out?

[00:12:52] And that's where the hill, will, and skill idea begins to fold in as another explanation

[00:12:57] for what we experience as talent.

[00:13:01] So Gartner has the model.

[00:13:02] I would love to take credit for it.

[00:13:04] I can't.

[00:13:05] I can say that it aligns with my experience.

[00:13:07] And it does map onto some of the priorities that I have set for team design and high performance

[00:13:15] cultivation.

[00:13:16] And basically, it's looking at roles and jobs through these three different lenses.

[00:13:21] So hill is how difficult is the job?

[00:13:26] That includes org design, role design, and fit, right?

[00:13:30] Does this person align well?

[00:13:32] And are they driven by the kind of work that they're going to find in the role?

[00:13:36] Or is it draining to them?

[00:13:38] Will is do I want to do it?

[00:13:41] Is the team environment that I'm working in one that matches sort of my partnering and

[00:13:47] communication and cooperation style?

[00:13:49] And then skill is skill, right?

[00:13:51] Do I know how to do the job?

[00:13:53] What I find most fascinating, though, about what Gartner has done with this model is they're

[00:13:58] able to run some experiments to try and size the magnitude of effect that these three dimensions

[00:14:04] plays when it comes to high performance.

[00:14:09] What's striking in the results that they have put together is that the hillside of the equation,

[00:14:16] role design, fit, org design, is four times more effective at increasing and improving individual

[00:14:25] and team performance than changing the skill composition of an individual, whether it be

[00:14:30] through training or hiring somebody else.

[00:14:31] That's a fascinating result.

[00:14:34] If you think about four times greater impact, and in theory, if you are avoiding having to

[00:14:43] hire someone else, you're also financially much more efficient.

[00:14:49] And this was the sort of the early experience that I had designing teams at IBM was without

[00:14:55] having the insight on the mechanisms of action or any of the refinement about the model.

[00:14:59] It was just sort of this intuitive, when I don't focus on changing the talent out, and when

[00:15:07] I focus on correcting team dynamics, fit, goal setting, and some of the environmental factors,

[00:15:12] organizational design, too, is highly impactful, I am able to produce far more financially efficient

[00:15:20] teams, too.

[00:15:20] And so that's a real potent thing for anybody that has to think about the budget that they

[00:15:27] have in order to produce an outcome for a customer.

[00:15:31] You drive much better customer results when you're financially efficient.

[00:15:35] Hey, this is Brent Skinner, host of Small Talk Window here at the Work Defined Podcasting

[00:15:41] Network.

[00:15:41] Have you ever wanted a short podcast to listen to during a coffee break of your work day?

[00:15:46] You've come to the right place.

[00:15:48] My guests dispense with a small talk as quickly as possible and settle into a meaningful conversation

[00:15:54] around the world of work.

[00:15:58] Absolutely.

[00:15:58] Yeah, it's a really interesting way to look at it.

[00:16:00] And it kind of ties into something I've been looking at myself in my own practice.

[00:16:07] I'm kind of looking at the 40-hour work week a bit.

[00:16:09] Obviously, there's some trends that are moving away from it.

[00:16:12] I don't see why we shouldn't move away from it.

[00:16:14] We used to work 80 hours, 70 hours, you name it, a week as a standard.

[00:16:18] Or you lived and worked with us in the same place.

[00:16:22] That was standard.

[00:16:24] One would assume, if that trend is linear or whatever you want to have it be, that we

[00:16:30] should be working less than we are based on the rate of technological change.

[00:16:35] How do you, as a leader and as someone who looks at efficient teams, grapple with that?

[00:16:41] Grapple with the reality that we could work less if we wanted to, leveraging technology?

[00:16:47] And how do you kind of put that on a balance sheet where you say, well, we can pay people

[00:16:51] the same.

[00:16:52] They're going to work less hours, but we're going to get the same or better results.

[00:16:55] Or is that just kind of a myth?

[00:16:57] Is that not possible?

[00:16:58] How do you think that looks for now and in the future?

[00:17:01] Because work is changing.

[00:17:02] Yeah.

[00:17:04] So my approach to that question, I'll sort of tackle through two vantage points.

[00:17:10] One is just the question, do we get more work done in less time now?

[00:17:18] Long story short, the answer is yes.

[00:17:20] And that is very much my experience as well.

[00:17:27] However, what people want from their work is not universal, right?

[00:17:35] People have different priorities and there's different stages of life.

[00:17:39] There was a time when even though I was very efficient and I was working on an efficient

[00:17:46] team, I worked 60 hours a week because I wanted to, right?

[00:17:50] And so yes, I got more work done, but I also had a lot of time and a lot of appetite and

[00:17:55] I wanted to keep growing and I wanted to keep developing.

[00:17:57] And so I do avoid sort of mandate oriented or sort of like broad brush, like we should

[00:18:03] all work less things, because I think that that begins to wander into personal preferences

[00:18:09] and what are you trying to accomplish as an individual.

[00:18:11] That said, when it comes to designing roles and managing teams, it's more effective in my

[00:18:18] opinion, and it does lean into the ability for somebody to work less hours to be goal

[00:18:24] or metrics oriented with the work product and to focus on that.

[00:18:29] And from a financial perspective, to make sure that the efficiency and effectiveness of the

[00:18:34] team maps into your financial model, right?

[00:18:37] And then if somebody is able to get that work done in 30 hours, I don't really care, right?

[00:18:46] Like, because it's not about the hours, it's about the outcome.

[00:18:51] Now, it does take practice and you have to do some thinking to be able to break roles and

[00:18:55] processes down into deliverables and measurables.

[00:18:58] But when you do that, you can afford employees a lot more freedom to find the work life integration

[00:19:04] balance that's appropriate for them to be far more intentional with how much they want

[00:19:07] to invest depending on their priorities in their career or to spend a little bit more time

[00:19:14] leaving early on Friday to have lunch with their family, right?

[00:19:17] Like, and those are things that I do believe that some personal choice should be afforded.

[00:19:25] And it's a luxury available to us because of efficiencies and improvements in productivity.

[00:19:30] Even things like, and I know it's a sort of bordering on cliched at this point, how trendy

[00:19:36] and popular ChatGPT has become.

[00:19:38] But like, it's a wild productivity tool.

[00:19:41] Like, it is, for me, you know, admittedly wandering into hyperbolic statements.

[00:19:49] Like, it's a game changer.

[00:19:51] The ability that ChatGPT has to synthesize and to give you like, you know, give me the

[00:19:56] five key themes in this article.

[00:19:59] Like that.

[00:20:01] Astounding.

[00:20:01] And that's just one of many efficiency tools that has come into the workplace.

[00:20:08] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:20:09] Absolutely.

[00:20:10] Like, I don't, it's one of those things where, you know, Nick and I have talked about it a

[00:20:15] lot.

[00:20:15] Like, what is AI?

[00:20:16] And we talked to other people like yourself, like, what does it mean for the workforce?

[00:20:20] And in the worst case scenario, it replaces us all and we're all enslaved by an AI, right?

[00:20:25] It's like, when that happens, who knows?

[00:20:30] If that happens, who knows?

[00:20:31] But in the immediate future, it is something where you have to use it or you're going to

[00:20:37] start falling behind.

[00:20:38] And it's kind of the moment we're at the typewriter versus kind of word processor moment where...

[00:20:43] Yeah.

[00:20:45] The turn of phrase that I think is accurate and describes my experience with generative AI

[00:20:54] is we're not in the period of history where, like, the dystopian iRobot is right around

[00:21:01] the corner, right?

[00:21:02] Like, that's not my experience with integrating generative AI.

[00:21:04] However, even if we're not going to be replaced by generative AI, we as individuals will be

[00:21:11] replaced by people that use generative AI.

[00:21:14] And so if you try and stick with the typewriter while everybody else is using a word processor,

[00:21:20] it's going to become noticeable.

[00:21:22] You're going to be going in the opposite direction than the one we just discussed around increasing

[00:21:28] workplace freedom, increasing personal choice.

[00:21:31] You're going to be sort of lashed to something that is anchoring you in a lower productivity

[00:21:38] arena than a lot of your peers.

[00:21:41] Yeah, I think that's extremely well said because it's first off going to be a tool.

[00:21:46] And then beyond that, we'll see what happens.

[00:21:50] But yeah.

[00:21:51] Now to...

[00:21:52] It's a workforce accelerator or a force multiplier, as they say, for an individual.

[00:21:59] Yeah.

[00:22:00] And now to set a team up or to set individuals up to succeed with exploring and becoming curious

[00:22:07] about how generative AI can work or be integrated into their work, you do come back again to

[00:22:15] the theme of wanting to create high-performance environments as opposed to simply looking at

[00:22:20] high-performance individuals.

[00:22:22] I had mentioned previously, I'll just highlight them again, the research on this does have patterns

[00:22:31] regarding what attributes of job design or role design you should consider if you want to

[00:22:38] provide yourself the best opportunity to create high-performing individuals.

[00:22:42] And the pattern is that you need to provide people some autonomy.

[00:22:47] So they've got to have some freedom with how they conceive of their work and how they approach

[00:22:51] their work and the way that they get it done.

[00:22:53] You have to provide people task variety.

[00:22:56] Monotony is crushing.

[00:22:58] Monotony is crushing.

[00:22:59] We...

[00:22:59] We...

[00:23:00] There are very few people that thrive with, you know, widget stamping.

[00:23:06] And then task significance, that what I do matters.

[00:23:09] And that if I didn't do this, something desirable wouldn't occur, right?

[00:23:14] So if you get those three ingredients and then you add in one more, which is really tough for

[00:23:18] organizations but important, and that's feedback.

[00:23:20] But if you get those four ingredients, from a role design and an environmental design perspective,

[00:23:28] you are checking some pretty important boxes when it comes to following what the research

[00:23:33] is showing produces the highest probability of high performance.

[00:23:37] And the reason I bring this back up is it's very hard for people to explore productivity

[00:23:43] enhancements or new tools like generative AI if they aren't thriving, so to speak, in their

[00:23:49] current job.

[00:23:50] The motivation, the curiosity, the impulse to explore, the tolerance of what could be

[00:23:56] perceived as failure is lower in individuals that are not thriving or really enjoying their

[00:24:01] workplace.

[00:24:02] And so they're not going to experiment with how they integrate that.

[00:24:05] That's unfortunate.

[00:24:06] And another reason why, not only because high performance is self-justifying, but it also

[00:24:10] creates that exploration or the openness to newness, sort of the growth mindset that you would

[00:24:15] need to say, yeah, I will throw this article in chat, GPT.

[00:24:19] I wonder what it thinks.

[00:24:20] Or like a real case for a problem I'm trying to solve, I'm trying to figure out what the

[00:24:25] best strategy to support Workday is now that it's gone into production, right?

[00:24:29] So we've got our first milestones and waves are in production.

[00:24:33] And I asked our enterprise GPT instance, what does it think regarding two different strategies

[00:24:44] that I'm considering?

[00:24:45] And honestly, it thinks great stuff.

[00:24:48] It has affected the way that I'm approaching the post-production support plan, just with a

[00:24:55] very quick conversation with a generative AI.

[00:25:00] Well, that's pretty cool.

[00:25:01] I use it myself for, you know, breaking down more data than I could possibly do, you know,

[00:25:09] with the same amount of time.

[00:25:10] You know, in five minutes, it'll do what I could maybe do in an hour or more sometimes.

[00:25:16] And when you need to do research, obviously you want to double check your work, but sometimes

[00:25:20] you just need, it's like speed reading at that point, because either you're going to

[00:25:25] speed read it and miss some things, or it's going to speed read it.

[00:25:28] It might miss some things, but little miss less than you miss most of the time.

[00:25:33] We also use it for, so that fourth dimension of sort of preconditions for high performance

[00:25:38] feedback.

[00:25:39] It's a tricky one for a couple of reasons.

[00:25:41] One, I think that the dominant narrative around feedback is it tends to be praise or criticism.

[00:25:47] I think that's the most elementary way that you can think about feedback.

[00:25:51] Another important category of feedback is exploring whether or not I'm effectively pursuing my

[00:25:57] goals.

[00:25:57] And so that's not necessarily criticism or praise.

[00:26:00] It's more about problem solving and reviewing efficiency, right?

[00:26:04] If my goal is X, are my behaviors and my work product aligned with my goal?

[00:26:09] And we can explore that without it ever having to devolve into the reductive, you're not doing

[00:26:15] well, or the overly sweet, you're doing a great job, but that doesn't really tell anybody

[00:26:20] anything besides like, I approve of you.

[00:26:22] So on my team, we collect quarterly a lot of qualitative feedback about every member.

[00:26:29] We sort of do an informal 360.

[00:26:31] It's not as ominous as a 360 because it's routine, as well as quantitative, but it's in

[00:26:37] the qualitative side that this is really an interesting conversation.

[00:26:39] So we just started to use ChatGPT to ingest all of the qualitative feedback, all of the free

[00:26:49] text feedback and create top 10 lists.

[00:26:52] And so the top 10 developmental opportunities and the top 10 existing strengths.

[00:26:57] And I just had yesterday my first six-month review.

[00:27:01] So we do it quarterly.

[00:27:02] So this was six months of data on this individual.

[00:27:07] And their experience was delight.

[00:27:10] They were like, this is amazing.

[00:27:11] And I've never gotten feedback like this.

[00:27:13] And who else are we going to do this for?

[00:27:15] And the answer is for everybody.

[00:27:17] But it's little things like that, that no matter how much I may aspire, I'm not going

[00:27:23] to be able to build top 10 lists for 30 people after reading four pages of qualitative notes

[00:27:29] or free text notes about an individual.

[00:27:31] And because I'm not going to do that, I can't give somebody that gift of this top 10 list.

[00:27:35] But with generative AI, I can.

[00:27:37] And that is a direct investment in a key component of high performance feedback.

[00:27:45] Have you ever been to a webinar where the topic was great, but there wasn't enough time

[00:27:48] to ask questions or have a dialogue to learn more?

[00:27:51] Well, welcome to HR and Payroll 2.0, the podcast where those post-webinar questions become

[00:27:56] episodes.

[00:27:57] We feature HR practitioners, leaders, and founders of HR, payroll, and workplace innovation

[00:28:02] and transformation sharing their insights and lessons learned from the trenches.

[00:28:05] We dig in to share the knowledge and tips that can help modern HR and payroll leaders navigate

[00:28:10] the challenges and opportunities ahead.

[00:28:12] So join us for highly authentic, unscripted conversations, and let's learn together.

[00:28:18] Yeah, that's a very good point.

[00:28:21] And that's where it starts to bring some things to the table that, you know, without a staff

[00:28:26] of multiple more people, maybe you couldn't do.

[00:28:29] And you can just do it like that, you know, way faster.

[00:28:32] Sure.

[00:28:33] So we're fortunate to be in a time where we've got some of these cool tools.

[00:28:37] Also, the contemporary research on high performance, this is a bit of a sort of self-congratulatory

[00:28:43] statement, I admit, but like is beginning to reflect sort of the elementary or sort of base

[00:28:50] insights that I was gathering before I knew any of the research literature on high performance.

[00:28:57] You've got Gartner's Hill Wheel and Skill Model, which is cool, but the fact that they're seeing

[00:29:00] four times impact from environmental changes as compared to skill changes is really cool.

[00:29:07] And then you've got changes in assessment technology.

[00:29:10] So we've all done DISC and those types of things, and there's nothing wrong with them.

[00:29:16] But there's new products out there now that are similar.

[00:29:20] They're a structured and scientific assessment with statistical validity, but it's not oriented

[00:29:29] towards sort of telling you your personality or your big five attributes, openness, conscientiousness,

[00:29:35] et cetera.

[00:29:36] It's oriented towards telling you what kind of work and situations drive you, right?

[00:29:41] What types of scenarios bring out the best?

[00:29:43] And this is where that sort of self-management and self-discovery part comes forward.

[00:29:46] And what kind of things or what kind of work drains you?

[00:29:51] Now, what's important or interesting to me about that is drivers and drainers don't tell

[00:29:55] you what you're good at, right?

[00:29:57] This is not a competency assessment.

[00:30:00] It's self-discovery regarding things that you tend to run towards and things that you tend

[00:30:07] to run away from.

[00:30:08] And both are important to know.

[00:30:09] On the things that you tend to run away from, you may be very good at them.

[00:30:13] But if they stress you out, it's good to be aware of that fact as well, because you may

[00:30:18] be showing up suboptimally.

[00:30:20] For example, you may be shorter.

[00:30:21] You may be more disagreeable.

[00:30:23] You may be less cooperative when you're doing things that drain you.

[00:30:27] It doesn't mean that you get to not do those things.

[00:30:29] But if you have that self-awareness, you can build, and I think of this positively, coping

[00:30:32] skills, right?

[00:30:34] You can build ways that I don't show up poorly when I'm doing the drainers.

[00:30:37] And to the degree possible, I'm going to pursue as many things at work that drive me as I

[00:30:43] can.

[00:30:47] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

[00:30:48] So one last question before I let you go.

[00:30:51] So if you were to, in five minutes or less, tell someone the rules or tenets to building

[00:30:58] high-performance teams in your ideal approach to hiring, what would you just be like?

[00:31:02] You're talking to someone at a conference.

[00:31:03] They're begging you for advice.

[00:31:05] Yeah.

[00:31:06] What are you telling them?

[00:31:07] What are the main top things?

[00:31:08] Yeah.

[00:31:09] So one of my always-apply rules, when you're looking at a team, always grant them and give

[00:31:19] them credit for what you want them to be, even if they're not showing you that.

[00:31:25] People deserve, this is a strong word, but I do feel that way, to have aspirations that

[00:31:32] they fail to live up to.

[00:31:35] It's also something that we experience in our personal lives.

[00:31:38] And so at work, when you meet a team, start with giving them credit for what you want

[00:31:43] them to be and make that a sincere gift.

[00:31:47] Then focus on changing the environment in a way that maximizes the chance that those people

[00:31:53] attain what you've given them credit for.

[00:31:55] Look at your org design.

[00:31:57] Look at your role design.

[00:31:58] Look at your culture.

[00:32:00] And as you're looking at those things, you want to try and increase the amount of autonomy,

[00:32:06] task variety, task significance, and feedback that you can provide those people.

[00:32:11] Then, about six months later, once you've sort of started that process, then you roll through

[00:32:18] expectations and consequences.

[00:32:20] And what you're looking for as you're looking at that team, once you've given them credit

[00:32:24] for what they're not showing, and once you've maximized the environment so that they can

[00:32:29] attain what you've given them the gift of, you then hold people accountable and look for

[00:32:34] people that are not willing, not able, or not able to fast enough.

[00:32:40] And you begin sort of either finding a way out of the organization for them or into a different

[00:32:45] role that's a better fit for them.

[00:32:47] When you do it this way, not only do you maximize, well, let me say it this way.

[00:32:52] Not only do you minimize the false negative, right?

[00:32:55] You avoid finding people that appear to be low performers, but could have been salvaged

[00:33:02] or could have been positioned better if you focused on the environment.

[00:33:05] You also lead with a spirit of justice that the team gives you credit for, right?

[00:33:11] Because you are now not coming through with sort of your hot take as a new leader.

[00:33:16] You're coming through and enforcing consequences for the agreements that we all made and the

[00:33:22] credit that you already gave to people.

[00:33:23] And that creates a ton of trust.

[00:33:25] And so when you do need to refine the edges, let's say, of a team, instead of it being a

[00:33:30] negative experience or a demotivating experience or worse, an ominous and fear-inducing experience,

[00:33:35] it has a sort of, yeah, he did say that we have to do this, right?

[00:33:42] Like he did say that this is the direction that we're going.

[00:33:45] And that creates a sense of trust and justice.

[00:33:50] Very interesting approach.

[00:33:52] I was writing down notes for that part, for sure.

[00:33:56] Yeah.

[00:33:57] It's just managing people, you know, and keeping them to a high standard is always very complicated.

[00:34:03] And you don't want to be the heavy-handed one that you want to give people a chance for sure.

[00:34:11] And I like that concept of, well, he did say so.

[00:34:16] Yeah.

[00:34:17] And we're all adults here and we can all, you know, hold ourselves accountable as well.

[00:34:23] My experience is I have done some pretty remarkable in terms of magnitude changes to teams.

[00:34:29] And when I follow this approach, it'll sound too good to be true.

[00:34:33] And I don't want to overstate the case.

[00:34:34] It is hard work, but I have not had a single negative experience doing it this way.

[00:34:39] And it has been through some pretty tough changes on teams.

[00:34:43] You really do get buy-in and alignment to a far greater degree than when you sort of rock up with your assessment or, you know, your stack ranking and then, you know, roll it out to people.

[00:34:56] Yeah, for sure.

[00:34:57] All right.

[00:34:58] So one last thing.

[00:34:59] Where can people reach out to you?

[00:35:01] You've said a lot of interesting things today.

[00:35:03] I'm sure you've got to start a conversation.

[00:35:04] Yeah.

[00:35:05] So the best way to get a hold of me is LinkedIn.

[00:35:07] Send me a connection request.

[00:35:09] Happily, I'll connect and shoot me a note.

[00:35:12] It can be without much introduction, just, you know, that you wanted to talk about something.

[00:35:18] This is an area that I'm deeply curious about, very hungry for perspective and experience.

[00:35:23] So gladly we'll receive your point of view or your thoughts about how you create high-performing teams.

[00:35:30] And then importantly, how we create high-performing teams in the modern context, the modern workplace.

[00:35:36] Awesome.

[00:35:37] Well, Steve, thank you so much for joining us.

[00:35:39] And everyone, thank you for tuning in.

[00:35:41] My pleasure.