OS 005 - Build a High Functioning Team

Hey, it’s Hugh. Thanks for joining me today. Today’s topic is how to build a high-functioning culture. I spent 40 years as a musical conductor. I will use musical analogies; I can’t help it. I know how to build a high-functioning culture. I worked 40 years building choirs, hiring great orchestras, and putting them together to create great ensemble. The name of my companies is based on the combination of the words “synergy” and “vision.” Synervision represents, in a non-musical situation, that sense of ensemble, which defines a higher functioning culture. Although these very competent musicians don’t give up their skill to be in a group, they enhance that skill with paying attention and performing together at a much higher level. The conductor doesn’t make it happen; the conductor inspires it and gives the space, just like a leader of a charity, a corporation, a non-profit, a church, or a business creates the space for people to function. I find that the biggest limit to high-functioning cultures is the autocratic leader that says, “Do this and do it this way.” That just pours cold water on human initiative and enthusiasm. I call myself the transformational leadership strategist because I am not a coach nor a consultant. I represent the integration of strategy and performance. We have a piece of music as a conductor that is just a piece of paper with dots. Nothing happens until we make it happen. The performance mode is key. We are only as good as the team around us. If your team is not functioning, if your team is not representing your principles and values, we are in trouble. Assimilating a high-performing team is an art. Let me give you my four steps. This is a surefire way to make sure you have the right people in the right seat on the right bus. Building a high-functioning culture in the organization you are leading is very intentional. We talked in the last session about creating a strategy, and I gave you some beginning thinking points. Certainly it is a lot more complex than I can give you in a podcast. I can give you some of the fundamental principles in the place I sent you before, thedefinitiveleader.com. There are some leadership lessons there, and there is a free report there called “Building a Sustainable Enterprise.” It’s not by accident. We must create the strategy. Out of the strategy we define the competencies we are going to need in our organization: on our board, on our staff, the collaborators, affiliates, joint venture partners, it’s a culture of high performance. We as the leader define that culture. Transformational leadership is a leadership system that is a high functioning, high-performing culture. The culture responds to every nuance of the leader, just like a very skilled orchestra responds to every nuance of the conductor. It’s no accident. We influence and empower people, and we limit people. After we have worked on ourselves, which is the first step, followed by the strategy, and now, only now, can we find the right people to fit the values and the principles we have defined in our culture and the strategy. Here are the four steps. By the way, when you go to hughballoupodcast.com, you get the link where you can print out the lesson if you can’t write it down or are driving. Hughballoupodcast.com will take you to the landing page that lists all of these podcasts and the transcription of what I am talking about. We don’t expect you to remember it all, so we have written it out for you. If there is a download, it will be linked on that page. 1) Competency: You want to make sure you have defined the competencies for the people you want on your team. We have done this in the strategy. You sit down and make a list. Here are all the people I need, and here is the sequence. Your strategy defines what you need when. When do you need this competency? Do you have the resources to pay them?