The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 394 - Sports Teams

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hey, Pete.

Pete: I was having a coffee and a chat with a good friend of mine yesterday. And she said something comparing elite sporting teams to corporate teams that made me lean back in my chair, scratch my imaginary beard, and go, "Huh, that's interesting." I don't know what to do with this interesting thing that she said, but I feel like you might be able to help me.

Jen: Oh, the thought of you with an imaginary beard that's being scratched is hilarious to me. But also, I absolutely love a sports metaphor. So, let's do it. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: I'm so glad you love sports metaphors. I do too. I feel like we haven't used that many in this podcast, and maybe we should start doing some more, starting today. Okay, so my friend Bianca is a former elite Australian sports woman. She represented Australia in netball, which is a sport that most North Americans won't understand. And I won't bother to try and explain, but needless to say, she was at the very, very top of a very global sport, and is now doing a bunch of work in media and sport and also doing work helping corporates and teams. And we catch up semi-regularly and talk about the things we observe and notice, and the similarities between sport teams and corporate teams, and everything in between. So yesterday, she was talking about, "In a sporting environment, what makes a great team?" A great team is we have a shared vision and a shared definition of success. And we have a shared game plan that we're all trying to play. And we each have a position within that game plan. And our goal is to play our role, not try and play someone else's role. And if we can all do that and we can all contribute and we can all perform to the best of our ability in that role, we increase the likelihood of getting success, i.e. winning the game and then hopefully winning more games and maybe winning a championship. And I was nodding along, going, "Yeah, of course. That makes total sense." And then, she was saying, "And so, what about in a corporate world?" Well, in a corporate world, I think there's some similarities, which is a high-performing team is one who trusts each other and understands which role is being played by whom. And we have a shared vision and a shared goal and a bit of a game plan or a bit of a strategy for how we're going to hopefully succeed. And yet, I was struck by the difference that she pointed out, which is in a sporting context, A., there's a finite amount of positions on the team. And also B., there is a complete understanding that if you are not performing your role, you will lose your spot on the team. And that's baked into sport. If you're not doing the job that the team wants you to do, you're no longer on the team. And you go back to maybe the reserves or whatever, and you train harder and you get better, and maybe you get back on the team, which is great. And what we were talking about is in a corporate setting, that doesn't often happen. That what actually usually happens in a corporate team is teams expand, i.e. there's not a finite number of positions. And I could recount hundreds of examples of working with leaders who go, "We just need a few more resources on our team. We just need a few more people to help with all this work." Which, is sometimes true. I have no doubt. And I also got thinking, "Huh, what is it about the finite nature of the number of members on a team that could be interesting to look at through a corporate lens?" And in a corporate context (for a bunch of reasons, many of which are valid), it can be really hard to get rid of or have the conversation with someone who might not be performing to the ability that we want. And there's a whole bunch of reasons why. And so, that was the observation that she made that made me lean back in my chair and scratch my imaginary beard. And I haven't figured out what to do with it, other than I thought you might have some thoughts.

Jen: Well, now I'm scratching my imaginary beard. Because I remember hearing a very successful founder, a CEO of a company, say that the most important part of their job was when they were doing the hiring, in the early days.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And so, this is making me wonder what it is in elite sports, in the recruiting, the scouting, the assessing, the evaluating of a potential player for one of these positions. What is it about that, that is more specific or more robust, that it not only helps identify the right talent (or hopefully identify the right talent) but it also sets the clear expectations, because the scouting and recruiting process is so rigorous?

Pete: I love that. I wrote down, "Hire slowly and fire fast." I can't remember who said that, but it was another one of those founder types who had built a successful company and scouted it out. Which was like, yeah, the most important thing in my job is hiring really slowly and getting the right person and doing the recruiting analysis, or whatever it is. And then, if I realize there's...on the flip side, if there's someone that doesn't quite fit, firing fast. Not trying to drag it out, for their sake and also for the team's sake. But to go to your point around the recruiting and the hiring, to use that term in a sport context, it is interesting to think about most sports have teams of people that are scouting other leagues for certain positions or players. They're watching videos. They're approaching people. They're having interviews. They do medical tests. They do psychological tests. There's so much rigor to even getting a position on a squad. Which then, maybe you get a position on a team. That is not quite the same in a corporate context. The corporate context is often a handful of job interviews with a series of questions. And I've heard it often described that the skill of navigating a job interview is a different skill to the skill of performing the job. So what can happen is you can hire someone who's really good at doing a job interview, but not necessarily as good at playing the role you want them to play on the team, which you might find out after the fact.

Jen: Wow. Yeah. The scratching is intense.

Pete: It's pretty raw. It's a raw noodle. It's a scratch of the beard.

Jen: No, it's really making me question if we are sometimes too hasty in our selection process. I don't know that much about the sports world. So sports people, if you're like, "Jen, please," I'm with you. I'm like, "Jen, please." But I imagine that part of what is going on when you are recruiting elite athletes is the runway is long because the actual playing time is so short. You have to make sure that all the things you need are present in each individual, because the length of a career on a court or on a field (or whatever that might be) is not that long. So you don't have the time to say something like, "Well, we'll develop them over time." It's like, well, the career is only a decade long, so you don't really have the time to put into that. There are so many factors that are so specific, that I'm wondering, how do you translate that into something that's as open-ended as a corporate structure? I'm applying this to the acting world right now, and I'm like, gosh, we do so much vetting of people's skills and temperaments and all of that. But still, sometimes errors are made. And when errors are made, there's not that much people can do about fixing them.

Pete: Yeah. So I have some thoughts to answer that question of like, how do we make this translatable? Because I definitely feel like a lot of it might not be. In the sense that, I was thinking about as you were talking, there's also an off-season in most sports, which means we're not playing the game right now. So we have dedicated time to recruit, and find people, and interview them, and coach them, and ask them questions, and do all the tests. Whereas in a corporate context, organizations just keep on going. There's no off-season. There's no deadline of when we start the season. It's ongoing. And so, the need to recruit fast gets kind of baked into most organizations. In which case, we don't have all the parameters and processes that a sporting team might have. However, I feel like we could draw a few learnings from this. If I think about a sporting team that I've been part of or an elite sports team that I follow closely, and I think about those that are really high-performing, and I think about the shared understanding that if you're not playing a role then you'll lose your spot in the team, one of the things I feel like is baked in to such a high-performing team is a constant state of feedback. Where, it won't come as a surprise to me that I'm now not on the team, because hopefully along the line, I've been given feedback on, "This is the thing we need you to work on. This is the role we want you to play. This is the thing you could do better. I love that you did this. How about you try this next time? When you pass the ball to Jen, didn't you see that Pete was open and he's six-foot-seven? You should probably throw it to him, because he can put the ball in the net really easily." There is a constant feedback and video analysis that takes place in a sporting context, that isn't always true in a corporate context. I mean, I run workshops on how to give feedback, because people aren't given feedback. Just that alone, the awareness of what you're working on that is good and the awareness of what role you're playing that is not quite up to the expectations we have, is a huge part of this, surely.

Jen: Yes. Which also brings up that when you're on a sports team, the KPIs are very clear.

Pete: Right. Yes.

Jen: And for the actors listening, who are like, "What language was that?" Key performance indicators.

Pete: Oh, that's so funny. They're like, "What did you just say?"

Jen: Yeah, we don't use those words. But we know exactly if we are performing to the level that we're supposed to be or not. Whereas if there is a lack of clarity about what excellence looks like, what expectations are, what boundaries are, what effort is supposed to look like, then, well, it goes back to the Brené Brown, "Clear is kind." How unkind to not let people know what is expected of them.

Pete: Yeah. It's so funny that you started down this path of clarity, because that was the second thing I wrote down. I wrote three things, as you were saying, "How do we make this actually practical, and is it practical to those in organizations?" The first was feedback. The second was clarity. Which I totally agree with you on, that a sports team is so clear on what they're trying to do and what role they're trying to play. They're constantly emphasizing that through feedback. And also, to the third point I wrote down, through communication. That they are frequently in a process of communicating to one another as a team, from the coaches to the team members. I mean, you kind of live and die in a sports team by how well you communicate to each other. I think the same is true in a corporate setting, although I think it's easier to convince yourself that's not the case and get away with not communicating as much as one should, especially in the hybrid world / remote world of work that we live in and the way that modern work is now structured. It's wild how so many of the challenges I work with leaders on come down to, "Have you been clear? And are you communicating effectively?"

Jen: Right.

Pete: I think sports teams do that really well.

Jen: This probably goes somewhere under the umbrella of feedback, but what's occurring to me is where the feedback is coming from. On a sports team, you have coaches for every niche element of the game. There is a head coach. But under the head coach are all these specific niche coaches who are so focused on this one area of the technique, or the game, or the execution, or whatever. And I'm interested in this in the corporate space, and honestly, in the theater space as well. Sometimes, you're getting feedback from someone who doesn't actually have expertise in the area that you're struggling in.

Pete: Hmm. Yeah, that's interesting. And sometimes, you're getting feedback from someone who, for whatever reason, perhaps you don't click with. And that's okay. And in a corporate setting, the feedback is usually coming from one person, which is usually your manager, which has its own in-built quirks because that relationship is a particular type of one, in a corporate context. And I have no doubt, in sporting organizations, there are certain coaches that resonate with certain players, and they seek feedback from them. And then, maybe others that they're like, "No, you know, Jen can be a bit blunt. And I feel like I need some sugar-coating, so I'm going to go talk to Coach Pete instead of Coach Jen," or whatever. The reason I imagine so many of these teams have different coaches is A., they're focused on different skills, but also B., players are going to relate and resonate with some over others. And in a work context, it's very much, you have one, your manager. And if they're not doing a good job of it, you're kind of out to sea.

Jen: I'm suddenly reminded that my friend (and I think your friend too) Stephen Shedletsky, I don't know if he still talks about it this way but I heard him, once upon a time, talk about firing or coaching as right seat / wrong bus, wrong seat / right bus. That sometimes, a person is in the right seat but they're on the wrong bus. And there's just no way that this is going to work. And sometimes, the person's in the wrong seat but they're on the right bus. And so, you need to find the right seat for them on the right bus. And I'm reminded of this story. Once upon a time, back in the early days of Wicked, there was a woman (who shall remain nameless) who was hired as a swing, which is a very critical role in a Broadway show. This is a person who knows, I think it can be like as many as ten different parts.

Pete: Oh my god, wild.

Jen: Maybe it's even more now. But in any case, she was hired as a swing in Wicked. And within three weeks, she was fired because...the way it was explained to me is, "She was the worst swing we have ever had."

Pete: Oh my god, that's brutal.

Jen: A couple of years later, she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Lead Actress in a Musical.

Pete: Wow.

Jen: Wrong seat.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Absolutely wrong seat.

Pete: For sure. Right bus.

Jen: She should not have been a swing.

Pete: That's so funny. Yeah. I mean, in the corporate world, I think about that as the classic case of the smart subject matter expert who is able to do, and get stuff done, and execute, and make things happen. They get promoted to a position where they now lead a team. Maybe they don't enjoy leading a team as much. Maybe they don't want to lead a team. And maybe they're not as good at leading a team. It's not that they're not a good fit for the organization, because they've been really, really good at getting stuff done within an organization. They've been in the right bus, but we've promoted them to the wrong seat. In fact, I had this conversation with another friend of mine yesterday as well, a separate coffee, where we were talking about organizations who actually actively promote and encourage subject matter experts to be held at the same level as a general managers who might manage a team, but with a very specific and different focus. What usually happens in organizations is, "I have to stop being a doer because the only path for me to get promoted is to be a people manager or people leader." What some organizations are starting to do is to go, "No, actually, we have a path for just doers, as well as a path for people who want to lead teams."

Jen: Fascinating. Well, this conversation has really got me thinking, Pete. I went into this wanting to figure out how to get rid of people. And my thinking has really changed to like, "What are we doing to actually build the best teams possible? How are we setting people up for success on the team?"

Pete: It feels like the ultimate question of leadership. And hopefully, listeners out there have enjoyed scratching their imaginary beards along with us.

Jen: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.