Any bad apples in your team? | Issue #186
How Bad Apples Ruin It For The Rest Of Us
Struggling with productivity? Ever stopped to wonder why? Could you be carrying a few bad apples?
Look around any company and, chances are, you’ll find at least one negative or challenging person. You know the type. Mood hoovers that suck the joy out of any interaction. People who bitch about others behind their backs or dismiss people’s ideas. This toxic behaviour from a few bad apples can spread like a virus. So much so that researchers have warned it can spoil the whole apple cart.
What it Takes to Become a Great CEO with Scott Keller
Having travelled to every country in the world, Scott Keller, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, New York Times best selling author of Beyond performance 2.0 and CEO Excellence, was looking for a new challenge. And he found it during lockdown.
Along with his fellow authors, he sought to uncover what makes the best CEOs of this century the best. They combined extensive quantitative analysis with in-depth interviews with today’s top CEOs to understand what sets exceptional leaders apart.
And they found the best CEOs have to master six core things to become great. Because, and Scott uses the analogy of Ashton Eaton, the greatest decathlete of all time here – no decathlete is the best 100 metre runner in the world or the best Javelin thrower, they have to not suck at anything, while being amazing at everything.
In this episode of The Melting Pot, Scott shares the methodology they used to narrow down their list of CEOs from 7,800 to the 67 they interviewed, before discussing the six things they found were the core of every great CEO.
Recommended Podcasts
Tim Ferriss is a self-experimenter and bestselling author, best known for The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been translated into 40+ languages. Newsweek calls him “the world’s best human guinea pig,” and The New York Times calls him “a cross between Jack Welch and a Buddhist monk.” In this show, he deconstructs world-class performers from eclectic areas (investing, chess, pro sports, etc.), digging deep to find the tools, tactics, and tricks that listeners can use.
Recommended Articles
Do Your Marketing Metrics Show You the Full Picture?
To provide a full view of marketing’s impact, the authors suggest creating a marketing road map that illustrates: the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing campaigns, the role of marketing programs in driving sales and satisfaction, the value of the brand and capabilities, and the impact of marketing-related activities in other functions.
5 Reasons Your Employees Don’t Understand Your Company’s Vision
Leadership teams often spend hours wordsmithing their business’ vision, mission, and strategy, only to hear employees complain, “We don’t have a north star.” Executives are often surprised by this feedback of a lack of an aspirational vision and immediately spend more time trying to craft the perfect statement. This mistaken approach makes scant progress in clarifying their people’s perception of a clear path forward.
Are You Paying Attention to the Right Sales Metrics?
Executives are responsible for the future value of any business. So, having a useful dashboard of leading indicators that are predictive of the overall health of the revenue stream is a valuable asset. Rather than “measuring to prove” with the typical data found in forecasts, take a rigorous, in-depth look at what could be improved within your sales process.
Recommended Reads
Connect by David Bradford and Carole Robin
Often described as transformational, ‘Interpersonal Dynamics’ has been the most popular elective course on the Stanford Graduate School of Business MBA for forty-five years. Distilled into a book for the first time, Dr David L. Bradford and Dr Carole Robin use seventy-five years of their teaching on the course to explain how to build more powerful and satisfying relationships with colleagues, partners and friends. The structure of the book follows the general arc of relationships, with real-life examples from the course, the authors’ work with organisations, their own personal lives and even their working relationship with each other. Focusing on relationship-building through self-awareness, engagement, communication, building trust and giving and receiving feedback, the practical takeaways and memorable concepts have been honed over decades of teaching. At the end, self-assessments help to deepen the reader’s learning. It’s the proven route to better, more fulfilling relationships at home and at work.
The gift of struggle by Bobby Herrera
Every leader has stories about the challenges they have faced and struggles they have overcome. In the moment, those situations require strength, patience, perseverance and courage. With time, those struggles provide us lessons for how to be better leaders. Bobby Herrera learned to see those struggles as gifts. As the co-founder and CEO of Populus Group, Bobby never imagined the challenges of building a $500 million organization that serves tens of thousands of people. Throughout his life, he experienced the divergence between the intentional leader he wanted to be, and the less engaged version of him that showed up at the office every day. One day at a company meeting, he decided to share a story about one of his first struggles as a young adult. That story, a pivotal experience that had transformed Bobby’s life, inspired his employees with its radical transparency, humility and the idealism of Bobby’s dreams for the company. In The Gift of Struggle, Bobby shares twelve of those stories from his leadership journey.
News from the farm
CEO Bootcamp with Verne Harnish and Dominic Monkhouse
What are the constraints in your business? What’s keeping you from scaling?
This September, Verne Harnish is coming to the first CEO Bootcamp in the UK to spend time with you and 9 other business leaders and their #2’s in a 4-day reinvigorating experience.
You will work closely with Verne and Dominic to address your more pressing challenges and uncover those opportunities you’re overlooking and that will truly help you move the needle in your business.
Apply today to join Verne and Dominic at Lucknam Park Hotel & Spa, near Bath (UK).
Monday 12th, September – Thursday 15th, September
MEANINGFUL ACTION FOR MONDAY
Get feedback from your team with ‘Stop Start Continue’
Many CEOs tend to focus on the things they enjoy doing, rather than those that only they as CEO can do. This has to stop. As CEO you need to be full time in your role. Everything else is someone else’s job. Remove the ego.
This is particularly true when companies get through the 100 person transition. And a great exercise to get feedback from your team is ‘Stop, Start, Continue’ to plan for the next year. We’ve recently done this with a client and the CEO was in the room. However, you might find it interesting to leave if you’re not getting the unvarnished truth from the team.
Upcoming events
Scale Up Workshop with Dominic Monkhouse – 23rd June
Are you on your way to achieving the goals to set up for this year? Is your team aligned and rowing in the same direction to execute your vision? If your answer is no, or if you hesitated, we can help. Join Dominic Monkhouse on a half-day practical session, to get away from the uproar of the everyday commercial world and look at your business afresh – to recognise your strengths, your weaknesses and your opportunities.
Quote of the week
“One bad apple lowers team performance up to 40%”
Will Felps
Dominic Monkhouse
Dominic offers business coaching and management development, strategy planning and organisational change, using tried and tested methods to launch your organisation onto an unparalleled growth trajectory. His programme is a function of his broad experience, his deep expertise and a proven process used by over 2,700 firms worldwide.