Ep9 Win With the Team You've Got (Or Keep Making Excuses Forever)

Joe Blackburn  0:00  
When you're the leader, you know you could do what I did at first, which is just like, throw my hands up and say, this sucks. Or you could try to find their talent. Everyone has something and can they contribute? So you have to orchestrate that with the people you you know you've got the players on the field right now. Have to win.

Jason Croft  0:18  
Welcome to the lion's edge, where top performers sharpen their teeth, hosted by Joe Blackburn, founder of The Lion, who is relentlessly dedicated to helping business owners lead multi million dollar teams and me. Jason Croft, I transform unseen entrepreneurs into industry leaders by developing their market gravity. Each week, we reveal proven strategies and raw insights to help you maximize your business, multiply your wealth and make your family indestructible. Now let's create your edge. Welcome to Lion's edge, Joe. It's time for another rant.

Joe Blackburn  1:00  
Oh my goodness, I've only got one left in me. So let's get this done. All right.

Jason Croft  1:05  
I like this concept that I hear you mention, and we've talked, we've touched on it a couple times, this idea of winning with a team you've got right when there's a back and forth, I think, you know, keep moving forward. Don't sit in like, Well, yeah, always

Joe Blackburn  1:21  
be recruiting. Here, always be recruiting.

Jason Croft  1:23  
There's no question, yeah, but yeah, but that's the other side of it is, always be recruiting, like looking for that next level, because hopefully your your business is growing moving forward, and you're actively doing that, and there is a balance right between, hey, let's This is who's on, on the boat right now, let's keep going while realizing the limitations on your team. Where does this come up? A

Joe Blackburn  1:52  
lot. Well, from, for me, it came from my sentence in corporate America, where you inherited a lot of team members. And if they see this, it's not personal. Love. You guys don't be pissed. But you you inherit, you inherit people. Or if you're running your own business, you've hired some people that maybe weren't what you thought they were going to be. So my experience was we couldn't terminate, and if we did, the process was so long, and it just, it's like, you got to know where to place your chips and but, and that was kind of the pissy attitude about it. But then if you make a little shift to, well, maybe this person does have some strengths, does have some greatness, they can do some things. So when you're the leader, you know you could do what I did at first, which is just like, throw my hands up and say, this sucks. Or you could try to find their talent. They have it. I mean, everyone has something, and can they contribute? So you have to orchestrate that with the people you you know, you've got the players on the field right now. Have to win even, you know, I'm always say, always be recruiting. Yeah, you should have an eye out for the next person, or a great person, or whatever that is. However you have to function today, and you have to win today. So the first thing you want to do is make an assessment of the team and find out where they are strong. You know, if you have, you know, we kind of grade people, if you've got all D players. Hey, you probably need to get out and recruit. But you 8020 would say you probably have an A and a B, and then maybe a, d, N, A, C, and, you know, the F will find their way out. But if you spend your time, and I, you know, HR organizations do this backwards, they'll, they'll look at that D player and say, put them in a pip and spend all this time, blah, blah, all this shit. And it's like, why would I spend my time trying to, you know, puff that D up to a C. And in a smaller business you're gonna have, it's, isn't it called prices law where, like, 50% so if you had six people, three of them are gonna do almost everything, but you still have to have those other people. So the best thing to do is a Find Your a player who is your best, and pour into that person. That's where you'll get most of your leverage. You've probably seen some sports teams be carried by a superstar if you've got one, regardless of the fallout, because there will be some, you've got to take that person and get them as great as possible, I mean, to my detriment. And if she ever sees this, you know, my a player is now running a huge business, and she carried a lot of the load. She did it a lot, almost all of it. Sometimes she even told me about how much she was doing, but she was awesome, and is awesome, and has grown up, so you've got to develop that person, even if it costs you, because they may leave or they may, you know, get recruit, recruited up within an organization, or how, whatever it is, but your best bet to win with a team you got is identify who your best player is.

Jason Croft  4:54  
And I think that goes hand in hand too, with that same mentality of work on your strengths. Your weaknesses in in yourself. You know, it's like, Oh, I could, you know, I'm not really great with data and messing with this stuff, but I really want to get better at it. And you can spend all your time getting this much better, or you can pour into what your absolute gift is, and you're going to skyrocket past everyone else and fill in those holes. I think that's there's a correlation there to a team as well, and because they also feel it like, if you're you've got that a player, and you're giving all your attention on that D, trying to get them to a C, that a player is just like, Okay, what else do I have to do to get any kind of attention and love around here and support.

Joe Blackburn  5:44  
So your first order of business is there. Then you go to the movable middle, so to speak, you can get a lot of lift and leverage on improving that area. So you want to evaluate them, what they're good at, what drives them. I mean, I don't think it's rocket science to align compensation to outcome, but you'd be surprised a lot, especially in smaller sized businesses, comp is usually aligned to what the owner feels they can do versus what motivates their people. So if I want to make my team a self organizing mean I want some leverage within peer pressure to perform. So we may have individual goals, but we also want an overarching team goal that if you know the C player just taps out, it affects everyone, and you'll get that benefit of peer pressure, but more so even before you get to that is, how are you aligning comp? Because if some people, if they were only motivated by money, they might be running their own company. So you're, when I say one of the team you got, it's unlikely you're going to get two of you. Now, you may have someone has the potential to be you, but not in the beginning. So then I would go to that movable middle and figure out, where can they help us the most? Eliminate the things that they don't do well and don't help with. Try to leverage those through AED you guys all know what that is, right, automate, eliminate, Delegate whatever ad, same process. But what I want to figure out is, how can I get them to want to do this and not have to tell them how to do it all the time. So that comes with alignment. So if I'm clear in where I'm going and my vision and compromise that, I mean, this is like, 101, but again, the hard part about it sounds easy, right? Like, okay, we'll just do this. The hard part is there's people involved number one, and they all have personal lives. That's number one. And if you run a business, that's 1015, five people, I promise you the personal life is 50% of their day. Promise, they got shit going on, they got kids getting sick, they got whatever. That's part of it. So you have to, you have that drag on the business that you have to deal with, because even though you're all in it to win it, it still is a family atmosphere. So you have to win with that mentality that I'll help you, you have to want to win. I will help you. I'll do what I can. I'll be flexible, whatever it is, but you have to want to win. And if someone doesn't want to win, then you got to figure out a way to get them out and replace them. That's where the recruiting comes in. But today we're talking about who I have, and in geography, not every you know community is overflowing with a players, like you hear on LinkedIn, like, only hire a players, really. If I only hired a players, it'd be like a one and a half person organization. I'd be half and then I'd have an A player. But do you see, you know what I'm saying? Kind of like we are now, like, Lauren's an A player, and then I just piss her off all day long, and she seems to function. It works, yeah. But if I want to win with the people I have, I have to get to know them, develop them, find their strengths and give them the belief that we can win. Because if your attitude, and I'm guilty of this, if your attitude is, we're fucked. Guess what? You will be so it's a winning mentality that's a big part of it is we're gonna win no matter what. And if you allow the worst person to dictate decisions and actions, you definitely will have a horrible ride. So they can contribute what they can you can try to do whatever with them, but they don't dictate what happens. You don't lead to them, even at the expense of hurting some feelings or whatever it is you the hierarchy is the hierarchy you pour into the person that wants to be developed and has the ability to be developed the most, then you do everything you can in the middle, and you've gotta win with that team. So you could tell yourself, well, I just don't have the right people. I don't have the right people. Well, maybe you're the leader. Have you thought of this? So you're gonna have to figure that out, and it's not easy. Yeah, it can be simple, though. So I would say a big part of this is find out what drives them. You know, we've got people that have hourly jobs, salary jobs, commission jobs, bonus all those different things at the end of the day, a lot of the time, especially in that movable middle it's not money if they were driven by money, they would do something else. It could be autonomy, it could be recognition. It could be days off. It could, you know, it So, figure that stuff out. Here's a good way to do it, talk to them. Why are you there? What is it you like about come you know, like have a conversation, and in these smaller businesses, that's easier than having an HR person sitting in the room with you while you're asking questions, actually evaluating you to see if you're violating HR rules. So like, that's a much easier way to connect with someone. And at the end of the day, it takes time. But as the leader, if you can give them the hope and vision and a path for everyone, it doesn't mean just one person gets the path. What? What is my you know, if even in recruiting, I don't just show up and this is it, it's where does this lead to? So if I can do that and articulate it and invite it more than any I mean, what I say is somewhat important. But like they used to tell us, you're in the fishbowl, you're now, now the leader. Here's the fishbowl sitting out on everyone's desk, and they're just watching you swim around. So if you want them to win, you have to win. You can't whine, you can't fold. They're gonna watch you close. So I it's something in when we go through it, in the line through coaching, is we make those, all those evaluations and then take

Jason Croft  11:48  
action. Two things that come up. One is when you're having that conversation with each of your people that you've got to get through that initial barrier of, oh, I am in here talking to my boss. I will say the right thing, you know. And there's, that's, that's another part of that human skill, the art getting through, like, okay, look, I, I'm, I really want to get real with you, and part of that is making sure that's an environment they feel like they can, you know, you can get past that, so you can really understand what they want. Yeah, at the core, but even in that process, how, how transparent should you be? Can you be when it comes to sitting your a player down? Like, look, you're the a player. You are no numero uno here, I want to acknowledge that, and even through your middle and maybe even down to the D, like, look, there's, here's my frustration, like, how transparent in all of that can you be as as a leader? Well,

Joe Blackburn  13:06  
I think you can be fully transparent in a way, to especially approach the a player. Because this is gonna happen for sure. They're gonna pick up on you, don't ever correct, spend time, make a big deal, do a bunch on D, they're Why are you always picking on me? Why am I well, because I believe in you. Have you? I mean, have you ever had a coach that like ripped you a new a hole all the time? Do you think it's because they thought you stunk? No, it's because they saw the potential in you and decided that's where they're gonna allocate time and energy, versus a kid that you know is just there with a great attitude that kind of helps, you know, right? Great. But if you don't call that out,

Jason Croft  13:50  
it gets wasted and distorted.

Joe Blackburn  13:53  
Yeah, so what you talk to them about is, I'm going to be harder on you than anyone else, because you have the most potential. You know, why does Why don't you say it when this person does it well? Because they're about at their cap. We're getting about as much as we can. You have this much room. So where, if you were running the show, where would you put time and energy? I mean that, and it's nor especially newer, and you bring someone in, or you form a new business, or whatever it is, you'll quickly be able to discern it as a leader who can do what and who's capable what. But the, you know, it's a two fold thing. The people below are gonna see the true moral energy in this person and have some resentfulness, and that person's gonna think you're on their ass all the time. And that's, you know, if leadership are easy, there'd be a lot of them. By the way, last time I checked, I it's scarce. So the hard thing is the courage to say, I'll help you. Here's where I want you to be. Put a plan in place, and then you have to, you have to pour a little into that. But if you have someone that has the potential to be a super. Superstar for you, for them, for the clients, for everyone involved. That's where you put your time and energy. I was a superstar. Let's just go there. My mentor, God knows he ain't gonna watch this, but that dude was relentless on me. And I mean relentless. He would make up stuff to be pissed about and to call into question. And in the beginning, I'm like, I'm not even getting paid to do this. And he said to me, he goes, Look, it's going to be as hard as it can possibly be in here, because when you get my job, there is no safety net. There isn't now, now you're in the real world, that shit that was easy compared to the, you know, the things we were going through, and I was, I'm grateful for it. I mean, grateful to today that that was that hard, because then it wasn't, you know, the real world was like, Eh, not a big deal so, but he put a lot of time and energy into making my life hard and challenging. Hell we he put meetings on the calendar and not tell me if I needed to be there. I had to make the decision, is this worth my time? Is it worth the drive? Is this a good use of leadership time or a bad use of leadership time? He wouldn't tell me. He just it'd just be on the calendar. Hey, here's a meeting in this area, or, you know, location, we're having a meeting. I Yeah, and sometimes I showed up, and it was like, this is a piss waste of time, and I heard about it, and sometimes I didn't show up, and then I heard about that, but I'd learned to make a decision on where my time was best used, because in that job, you only have so much, and people are pouring stuff onto your calendar. He was teaching me how to figure out where the best use of my time and talent was and it was hard, and I'm again, it was hard, but super helpful.

Jason Croft  16:49  
I look at it as I call it the whiplash effect, right? Have you seen the movie?

Joe Blackburn  16:53  
I have not. I'm writing it down. Okay, so

Jason Croft  16:57  
it's a, it's a phenomenal and the whole, you know, the story is, you know, Miles Teller is this drummer, and he's pushed from, you know, his teacher in there, who's just insane of pushing him. But it is from that part. There's an amazing dynamic that I watch in this too, that the best comes from. Yeah, there's that push, there's that drive, there's that little bit of insane part. But for that to be fully effective, either from that same person or you've got to have it somewhere else in your life, that nurturing belief, human, you know, hey, I got you aspect. And sometimes those rare leaders can be both, you know, back and forth, I had an amazing professor and back in film school who was both, who's just like, Dear God, this freaking ass in, and he was a father, you know, like, without

Joe Blackburn  17:55  
a doubt, my dad would call that wearing the black hat and wearing the white hat. Some days I come in with a black hat. Some days I come in with a white hat, and the more inconsistent it is, the better it is for you, because that will make you be consistent. Lee, good. I don't care which one you're wearing, so, you know. And again, I owe him a ton and he didn't have to do all that stuff. So, and then I tried to do it when I had that opportunity, and we promoted out our top three people. And by the way, do you know what happens when that happens? Now, you start over with a new person. They're not even on the grading chart, and you got to win with them, because the people above you, they don't. They're like, that's part of the gig. I mean, you get what you asked for. But in the businesses we deal with that, there is a thicker dynamic of family, so it's harder to do that. It's kind of like if, you know, let's say you're dumb and you had five kids. Let's just say you made that choice. Who would do that? It wasn't by Well, I said yes, but anyhow, well, you can't, you know, if you only spend time with one kid, so there's a little bit of that. So you got to spread the ball a little more. The more intimate the setting you have to spread the ball a little bit. But at the same time, you know if, if you find yourself with a revolving door at the bottom, or someone that just doesn't want to be a part of what you're doing, that's probably more you than anything. So you got to win with who you have. And you know, this happens. Some people just have a job, by the way, like some people work for you, they just want to come to work. And they are necessary. They may fulfill a role, but they're not, you know, your a team, so to speak. They're not the team that's going to get things done, and that also helps you in the fact that they may get left out, and people don't like being left out. Why does this group get to do all this stuff? Well, because they work their ass off, and they've got a great attitude, and they're in it to win it. What are you doing? So it's a lever to create some exclusivity within that. So. So it's, I think, we get this perception that there's unlimited talent out there, and that if I don't have at all, I'm doomed. And that's just not true. 8020 rule applies in all instances. You're probably gonna have about 20% of your people, you know, be phenomenal, and the others are gonna be great, and maybe it'll good. And then maybe one that's, you know, if it was a bell shaped curve, there's a curve in the middle and on this side, and then on this side they so that's, that's where you, you know, don't spend your side, on your time on this side of the mountain. That's how I would describe that. Anything else you guys want from me today? I mean,

Jason Croft  20:36  
that's good. We got you fired up. Gotcha, you know, we want, we want. The best of Joe comes from the rants. So this is good, awesome.

Joe Blackburn  20:46  
Felt right. Going into the fourth I'm fired up.

Jason Croft  20:49  
Fantastic. All right, lions, there's your edge. You've just experienced the lion's edge. If this episode lit a fire, if you're ready to push past your current ceiling. There's more waiting for you. Want to see what it takes to become a member of the Lion, visit jointhelion.com to discover how successful entrepreneurs become unstoppable forces and make sure you never miss an episode by hitting subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. This isn't just content. This is your edge.

Speaker 1  21:27  
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