Building high-performance teams – Gordon Tredgold [Interview] |LeadersHum

About Gordon Tredgold

Gordon is a leading inspirational speaker helping a multitude of organizations for operational cost saving. He is the most sought after leader to turn around failing departments of multinational organizations and is the author of the book F.A.S.T, which was a finalist for the Management Book of the Year 2017. He’s also the founder and CEO of Leadership Principles Ltd. A Leader who is passionate to learn more, an internationally acclaimed keynote speaker, and a contributing author at leading websites like Forbes, Fortune, and Business Insider.

Aishwarya Jain

We have the pleasure of welcoming Gordon today to our interview series. I’m Aishwarya Jain from peopleHum team. Before we begin, I just want to start with a quick introduction of peopleHum. peopleHum is an end to end, one view, integrated Human Capital Management Automation Platform, The Winner of the 2019 Global Codie Award for HCM, that is specifically built for Crafted employee experiences and the future of work. We run the peopleHum blog and video channel, which receives upwards of 200,000 visitors annually and publish around 2 interviews with known names globally, every month

Aishwarya

Welcome, Gordon. We’re thrilled to have you.

Gordon

Thank you. I’m thrilled to be on the show as well. Thank you so much.

Aishwarya

So the first question I had for you Gordon was, tell us something about the interesting work that you’re carrying out at leadership principles.

Gordon

So, I do coaching, consulting, and speaking. Unfortunately, with the Coronavirus, I was due to be speaking in India in April in ‘People matters’ in Bangalore, Mumbai, and Delhi but due to the travel restrictions, a lot of those conferences are rescheduling for later. In the end, I was, due to speak at a number of HR conferences.

So I speak of those events and my passion is looking to give people the tools to become better leaders and show them how to create, engage teams, motivate teams, create culture, and deliver results.

I have worked in that turnaround arena for the past 25 years. When I first started, I was doing a lot of small turnarounds. So for that, it was much more about my own personal capabilities to be able to turn things around. I was very hands-on, but as you develop and go up, I was leading teams. Then I was leading teams of teams of teams. And it’s at that point, once you get 2 to 3 levels back, then “It becomes less about your technical capability and now it’s all about your ability to lead, mobilize and motivate”.

“It becomes less about your technical capability and now it’s all about your ability to lead, mobilize and motivate”.

Over 20 years, I’ve really focused on trying to understand and simplify it and what I do now is sort of speaking and writing and coaching and I look to share simple techniques to empower people to be better leaders.

Aishwarya

I see. And what do you believe are the primary focus areas in building high-performance teams?

Gordon

So I’ve written about 1200 articles on leadership, motivation, team building, engagement, delivering results, and being successful. But I think one of the things that we need to do to build a high-performance team, is we have to create an environment in which people could be successful. A lot of times, I hear people say, ‘the performance of my team is terrible. I need to get rid of my team.’

And then I say “So, what are the things that are causing problems?” And they say ‘my team’s terrible’. OK, but why can’t they perform? And more often what I find is that the team has not been told what they need to do. They haven’t been told what the goal or objective is. So not only do they know what to do, they don’t have clarity over what success looks like.

They haven’t been given the tools to do it. They might not even have the skills to do it all. They might not have the time to do it and sometimes it could be because they just don’t want to do it. But in terms of percentages, that last one is less than 5%.

So the fact that they don’t know what to do, they don’t know how to do it. they don’t have the tools or the time or the skills, this is not the problem of the team. This is the problem of the manager. So to create high performing teams, we’ve got to put our teams in a position where they can be successful. And the four simple things that we can do are “We can give clear direction, be very specific about what success looks like.”

“We can give clear direction, be very specific about what success looks like.“

We can give our teams the space to be successful. Don’t micromanage them. We’ve chosen them for a reason.

Let’s trust them to do their job and then let’s ask them, “do you have everything you need to be successful?”, and when they say yes, they’ve accepted ownership because they now know they can do it.

And then the other two things we need to give are: if it’s going well, give them recognition. If it’s not going well, ask them what they need and give them that support.

So,

Give them a clear direction.

Give them space.

Give them the tools they need.

Give them recognition when they do a good job.

If you just do those four simple things, your team will start to perform better and if you do that consistently, you’ll create a culture of high performance.

People want to be successful. Nobody wants to be on a failing project so it’s you who pulls them in a position to succeed. In my experience, 99% of people will choose the option of succeeding.

Aishwarya

I see. And if they do really good work and you want to recognize them, then what is the time frame of recognizing? Because probably if you recognize them a bit too much, it might get to their head or they would start underperforming?

Gordon

So how many times would I have to tell you ‘you’re beautiful’ before you got sick of hearing it?

Aishwarya

Oh Yeah, that’s a good one.

Gordon

I’ve worked with teams where we’ve increased performance by 50 to 500% and in some cases, our performance was at rock bottom.

I worked with one team where we were trying to achieve our service levels and our achievement of service level was 0%. As we started to go through that turnaround, once the team started providing accurate reports, I gave them positive feedback.

“Good job producing reports. They’re accurate. They’re honest. We’re just not doing a great job.” And then as it starts to improve, then you start to give them positive feedback for the improvements. Then when it is met for three months in a row, you give them feedback. You’re not giving them feedback for the, “it’s a nice, accurate report.” We’ve moved on.

So I have to keep raising the bar for what we want them to achieve in order to motivate them to keep becoming, a higher and higher performer.

Aishwarya

Got it, Got it

Gordon

We have to start right at the beginning. One of my key talking points is that we start recognizing people before they are successful.

We recognize them for the effort and a lot of people tell me we shouldn’t do that. And then I asked them, “Do you have any children?” They say “Yes”. I asked them, “What did you do when your child took its first two steps and then dropped onto its bottom?” And they said, “We cheered”.

Really? They didn’t walk. They didn’t win a 100 meters, didn’t run a marathon, and then they tell you, yeah, but I wanted to encourage it to take a few more steps, then a few more. Because if I encourage it at the start, it will start to walk along quicker. Yeah, completely agreed. Now apply the exact same principle to your team but after three months, you’re not praising them for two steps. Instead, you’re praising them for walking, running, sprinting.

Aishwarya

It’s a gradual step process. Right?

Gordon

Yes,

Aishwarya

Right.

Gordon

Yeah. You don’t go from par to brilliant overnight. It takes time. And if you go from par to brilliant overnight, then how sustainable is that? Like if you increase that quickly, you can easily drop back.

What we want to do is, we want to make it part of the culture. We want to embed these improvements and with one of the companies, I worked with, I was there for five years in the senior Vice president role. Once we started giving them credit, people started performing in different areas.

So what they did was, in order to get more praise, they looked for other areas where they could go and improve things and do more work. So they became an organization that not only did great work but then looked for other areas to work on. I didn’t tell them to do that, it became the culture of the organization. We want to create that almost ‘addiction to success’, and I just “Keep lifting the bar a little bit higher and the things will follow it.”

“Keep lifting the bar a little bit higher and the things will follow it.”

Aishwarya

Right there, so pushing them little by little, for them to get addicted to their success.

Gordon

Clearly effort is what gets recognized and gets repeated. We want them to repeat the effort until they are successful. And then we celebrate their successes.

If somebody does a good job now go on, give them praise, public recognition, immediate, sincere, inauthentic, and enthusiastic. Go and do that.

Aishwarya

Well, that’s wonderful advice. I think that would really help in creating a successful team.

Gordon

Well, I’m just working for Fujitsu and I was brought in, I was the fifth project manager to take over a project that has been difficult. We managed to deliver it by taking that approach and giving people a clear direction.

Tell them what you expect. Give them the space to get on with it. Ask them, do they have the tools that they need, If they don’t, give it to them. We delivered that project. We turned it around in 3.5 months. We were the fifth group of people to try. And now the people are asking what other projects are you working on? What else are you doing? I can come and join. People want to be there, have a successful organization. “They want to work for a leader that makes them successful.”

“They want to work for a leader that makes them successful.”

Nobody wants to work on a failing project or underperforming in a poor performing department.

Aishwarya

Talking about the future, right? How do you believe the workplace is going to evolve in the future and how should organizations need to focus on what is termed as the future of work?

Gordon

So interestingly, I’ve worked in IT For 30 years, and the project I just talked about that I worked in Fujitsu that I’ve worked at the start of my career.

I managed a team that was in the same office as I was and then I managed bigger teams that were on the same floor of the same building and then multiple buildings and then teams were offshore or they were with the supplier.

My career as it’s grown, it has constantly changed to different organizations. But this was the first time I’ve ever worked on a project where I didn’t meet 100% of the people. All completely virtual. I worked from home. I had a team in India, in Pune. I only met one person that was when I spoke at an event in Pune. It was nothing to do with the project.

I guess I was in town somewhere for dinner. There were teams from UK, Switzerland, Germany, and I was actually based in Belgium and when you’re working in an environment with a 100% virtual team, we’ve got to have state of the art collaboration tools.

We’ve got to have tools that allow people to be connected and things like we tend to use Skype for the business and that allows us to do Skype chat either during a meeting so we have a side conversation while the meeting is going on.

You’ve got to have the video conferencing tools like we have on Zoom that allows us to have meetings. They’ve got to have all the tools so that they can work on their device. Because when we do that, we’ve given people the tools they need to be involved and to participate.

Then we need leaders who understand how to engage, motivate, and lead people in a virtual environment and that is one of the things that requires significantly more communication.

Because you’re not going to be able to see me sitting in my office, working, or trying to take some cues from what I’m doing in the office, you can’t see me.

One of the key management terms is called management by walking around. But how do you do that if you’re in a virtual environment? It’s a great tool but it no longer exists in the current scenario. So we now have to have leaders who understand how to do virtual managing by walking around. We’ve got to get better at communicating not just verbal communication but also through chat and email.

Email is still a big part, but I’ve seen the decline of E-mail over the last five years, so we’ve got to find a way to be able to make that connection and make people feel involved in order to drive that commitment.

Aishwarya

Right!

Gordon

So I don’t think it’s a different leadership style. It’s the things that make a good leader, you could previously have everybody in front of you. But now it’s virtual.

Those interpersonal personal skills allow you to create, make connections, and keep people engaged because, man, you are 6000 miles away, how do I maintain your involvement in the project?

Now, to answer your question, another thing about collaboration tools is shared document management system.

I work with a product and we use SharePoint. We’re working with multiple customers and we have multiple share points because not everybody can access all the share points which is a sharing of documentation disaster. You need to have a common area where we can all share documents, see documents. A shared documentation repository or a shared work area.

The better that is, the more seamless the work will be between people.

Aishwarya

Yeah, and as I see it, it’s kind of like a pyramid with the tools and tech stack and the cross and then the people part of it, right? I think if you have the right tools for it, you can follow it. You can look at the process and the people.

Gordon

Yeah, Absolutely. And you know those tools like Google Docs where you edit in the same document at the same time? We can’t do that on the version of SharePoint. We need to be at the bleeding edge of collaboration because “One plus one equals three when you get great collaboration”

"One plus one equals three when you get great collaboration”

…if we don’t have the right tools, we’re just gonna be stuck with one plus one equals two, maybe even 1.5.

Aishwarya

Yeah, I think that Peter Drucker management days are over, you have to accommodate yourself with tools, tech, etc. The set of values that a leader has not changed, I think from the past.

Gordon

No, no, I completely agree with you. What made Alexander the Great, a great leader is just as valid today as it ever was. I think the challenge is that some of the poor leaders could get away with it in environments where you see people all day, every day. Now there’s a bigger distance between the people and you’ve got to be able to close that gap.

Aishwarya

Right.

Gordon

You’ve got to be more inspiring. You’ve got to be more emotional. You have to be more engaging. I have a tendency now to over-communicate. It would definitely be over communication if we were in the same physical location.

But the fact that we’re often thousands of miles away, on different time-zones, I think it’s more difficult to over-communicate now. Under communicating? Dead easy. Over Communicating? not so much.

Aishwarya

Right.

Gordon

I think that the other thing that we need to look at before we started this video, we had a five or 10-minute chat and we’ve got to find the time for that social aspect of that chat by the coffee machine and the water cooler. Those are not possible when we’re not in the same location. So we’ve got to find a way to make ourselves accessible, which is always in a formal meeting.

I know. I’ve experienced it and I still managed it. 1000 people would connect with me on Facebook because they wanted to go out, communicate with me through an informal channel.

I would learn so much information about, you know, this is going wrong. You need to look at this where they didn’t want to put it into a formal meeting, formal memo where if you’re in a company, in 20 years ago, they could just, you know, catch as you walk into the camera and say, hey, I just want to let you know. This is going on. You need to build and take care of it.

So we’ve got to find a way to have the Former landing formal and have relationships.

Aishwarya

Absolutely.

Gordon

That’s more difficult in a non-physical stain. On the project I just worked on, we had no video conferencing. It was all audio conferencing. It’s like I’m watching you nod your head. I can’t see that on the audio conference. I don’t know what the percentages are, but I think 87% of communication is nonverbal.

So how are we gonna pick that up? The body language and everything when we’re not in the same physical location. So these are the skills that we need to work on and develop.

Aishwarya

Right! And I think I see a move into the future. There will be millennials. It’ll be all about millennials.

Gordon

It’s all about Millennials now!

Aishwarya

Yeah, about informal meetings. You know, they don’t like rules. They don’t want to be in silos.

Gordon

So yeah, so I just disagree with that. Are you a millennial?

Aishwarya

I am.

Gordon

I’m a baby boomer. Yes. I don’t like, I don’t like rules. I don’t like being in silos. I don’t like formality. I don’t like structure. The problem is, as we get older, we get beaten down. You know, it just conforms, conforms, conforms. And by the time we conform, we forgot that we were rebels. And then we complain about all of the young rebels coming, not beaten down as we are.

So I find leadership, good leadership. It works with everybody. If you give people a clear direction, give them space, give them the tools, give them the praise, that works with everybody, you don’t have to worry about millennials.

I think that the challenge that people face with millennials is that millennials, in my opinion, are much less tolerant of poor leadership. They will tend to call them out more now. Whereas before, my generation might have been a little bit quiet about criticizing the manager, so they tend to call it out or let you know that they’re not happy, which is great.

But I led the team in Germany where the average age of the team was 40. The average tenure in the company was 15 to 20 years. At the same time, I led a team in Kuala Lumpur and the average age was 24 and I had a team in India where the average age was around 25-26.

That same leadership style worked with all of them because you’re putting them in a position to be successful and everybody appreciates that, no matter how old they are. “Good leadership is good leadership. Bad leadership? Millennials are less tolerant to a bad leader. So don’t be a bad leader.”

“Good leadership is good leadership. Bad leadership? Millennials are less tolerant to a bad leader. So don’t be a bad leader.”

Do not blame millennials for you being a bad leader. I see that a lot of people complaining about millennials and it’s like, are you sure you’re not just the bad leader?

Aishwarya

Yeah, that’s interesting. You know, I was talking to Debra the other day and she was telling me the same thing. It’s, you know, millennials, you have to be inclusive about them, we have to work.

That’s NOT all, folks! To continue reading this awe-inspiring blog, click here: https://s.peoplehum.com/hqi19