During practice 135 we introduced a few newbies to the 12 playbook. This team of high performers has been practicing together for the better part of three years and as they made their way into another ho-hum kinda practice they paid little attention to the newbies struggling to put together their playbooks. I made a point to point out to the team of cagy veterans that there was a newbie team of four. None of them had put the playbooks together before. Nobody from the other four teams moved a muscle.
Nobody.
I simply sat back and watched the newbies struggle amongst themselves. And, I watched the four teams focus only on their own. And, this is a really good team who have become closer than almost any team I’ve seen in the world of work or studied, for that matter. Yet here they were, the best of the best, experiencing something epic.
Epic fail, that is…
You see, you cannot take any plays off in practice if you have any hope of tasting high performance in the world of work. I came down hard on this team. I ripped them all a collective new one. They got exactly what they deserved. I told them the truth as best I could without sugar coating or any kinda soft set up. The truth is crisp, clean, and oftentimes has an antiseptic kinda sting to it. You and your team, most likely, need a cleansing sting a bit more often. Kinda hurts to hear, doesn’t it…
Your team is NOT defined by the beliefs you espouse. Your team is defined by the behaviors it allows, condones, encourages, and disciplines. Fact.
You are defined by your behaviors. Healthy humans author their deeply held beliefs and align behaviors accordingly. They close their own integrity gaps when they say one thing and do another. Healthy cultures do likewise. Few take the time to routinely, rigorously, and uniformly align beliefs and behaviors. Few. Few leaders have the nerve for fixing their cultures alignment issues. Few feel they’ve earned the right. Few, truth be told, want to take responsibility for their own culture much less their company’s.
Are you?
BUILT TO LEAD 