chuckle on team building when leading a team do you feel that there is any
benefit to team building exercises or retreats well this is a interesting
question that actually he I feel I'm fairly qualified to answer because we we
laugh and I we have a little business called echelon front where that's we
work with a lot of different companies on a different a wide range of different
categories sometimes we go in to work with a business sometimes we're going to
do a keynote speech for a business like they'll be having a big meeting and
we'll go in and do one keynote speech for an hour and we leave and we're done
but most of the time we're doing more long range stuff where we spend time
with the company we go in but often times we do do some kind of situation
where the company has decided to do some kind of a leadership off-site or a
team-building exercise or a leadership retreat and we mostly get involved with
the leadership although that does sometimes trickle down to where we will
do some work with all the frontline troops so we constantly see these these
leadership off sites and we speak and or lead them sometimes we run the whole
thing and there are definitely some outstanding events and we've
participated in and led some outstanding events with with companies and I think
one of the most important things about these off sites is it forces the
leadership team to detach from the day-to-day firefights of what the
businesses no matter what the there's no businesses where the CEO and the c-suite
are like sitting around not doing anything they those those companies
don't exist that least that I've seen those you know you're trying to expand
you're trying to grow you've got competitors making moves so you're
you're in the fight and then you've got operational things that are happening so
you're in the fight so when you do these leadership off sites that it's good that
you get them to focus on some other development in some whatever issues
they're having in areas where they can improve so there it gives them the
opportunity to focus on those things it also gives them the opportunity to
self assess as a team how they're doing in themselves as leaders how they're
doing and and when I talk to people about leadership and teamwork and the
shortfalls and the pitfalls that exist and then when I when they hear me talk
about it they recognize their own weaknesses I every time I get done they
go man when you were talking about you know when you were talking about ego
sometimes I think I let my ego get in the way over that when you were talking
about covering movement I don't think I do when you're talking about ownership
they they see areas of their own weaknesses and they see where they can
improve and then when you get the whole team that's all learning that same
information they're all doing that same self-assessment and then the whole
leadership team gets aligned behind the same leadership principles of ownership
and humility and cover move and simple decentralized command and all those
things that I talked about that is extremely powerful it is extremely
powerful and we see really drastic turnarounds with the companies that we
work with and it's awesome it's awesome to see and then one one thing that we do
when we work more in-depth with a company we do our own leadership off
sites where we do simulated combat and I know it sounds it sounds if if I
wouldn't have done it so many times I would be surprised that it's it's
possible but we take either paint guns paintball guns or airsoft guns and we
teach them the basic shooting principles and we teach them some basic small-unit
tactics and then we go perform meshes we have them perform missions and every
time they got eight guys they got ten guys they got twelve guys girls whatever
in their group and they go and assault the target they come up with a plan they
go out we put one person in charge and that person has to lead a mission and
they what they theorized in the classroom they now get to put to the ten
and they learn those lessons very very clearly you know we'd see a guy that
would be a really strong leader and he was okay I'm the I'm in charge this run
here's what I'm gonna do here's the way the planets go down you're gonna do this
you're gonna do this you're gonna do this you see that micromanagement start
and then as soon as they start the operation everyone is expecting to get
micromanage so no one's thinking on their own
so now you get a decentralized a lack of decentralized command and everything
goes sideways and nobody does anything cuz all being waiting to be told what to
do so so that's an example of the kind of things that people learn so with all
that yes absolutely we will you know I've been to and we run some some pretty
awesome team-building exercises and retreats and leadership off sites that
are that are great and we've seen awesome results from the wall
I've also sat through some off sites that are that are not that effective um
you know you get situations where people don't open up or there's no exchange
they or you get these team-building exercises that that some people set up
and there's some kind of physical or mental challenge and while they might be
hard and they might take some teamwork to perform they don't break the paradigm
that the company is in so they'll end up leading through that challenge whatever
it is whether it's a some kind of a PT some kind of physical training or some
kind of a boat race or something like that they'll lead through that challenge
the way they always lead the way they currently lead so nothing is learned and
nothing is gained and no leadership advancement has been made and all I've
done is actually all they've actually done is reinforce the bad leadership
situation that they already have so that's that's one of the things that
I've seen that can be problematic and that's why we've gone in the direction
that we go where we really focus on let's do let's look at leadership and
the team working together how what the leadership dynamics are what our
weaknesses are what we see where we uncover the friction where we see the
team not working well the we see the leaders not stepping up and
leading where we see the leaders egos getting away I mean there's so many
things that we uncover and find it's it's phenomenal and it and it really
does make it fun for us yeah you know because every time you see a new
leadership team you it's it's like diagnosing a patient and you you look at
the problems that they're having they say oh well you know what try this over
here take this off a little bit in the next thing you know you've got that
patient up and running and they're winning
we're like a mechanic we grab the car right yeah you know oh yeah some of
those leadership or not leadership necessarily but these these
team-building retreats - sometimes it seems like whoever organized them really
wasn't focusing on results they were just focusing on our and you all you
know retreat so they make it in like the
Bahamas and all these you know these activities are like kind of fun you know
then everyone's administrative thing or something yeah and fun can be part of it
you know there's there's bonding that happens there's getting to know each
other and that's always positive um but the if you're I'm all about having fun
I'm all about bonding but I'm even more about learning I'm even more about
improving the guy the people we work with the the guys and girls that we work
with I want them to be better leaders right that's what I want
yes and so yeah sure do I want them to get some team challenges yes but like I
said I don't want that just reinforce the paradigm Authority and the
leadership paradigm with are already in I want them to improve so let's actually
break down and look and and analyze and diagnose what the issues are and then
let's solve and you know it's not it's not always it's not only is that these
teams go in and they're well you know we don't get hired by companies that are
failing in fact most of the time we get hired by companies that are doing well
that want to do better so when I say we diagnose what the problem is it's not
that is it's not a problem where it's causing the company to failure but it's
a friction point where it is holding the company
back from really reaching the best best next level and going from being a really
good company or even an outstanding company to the best-in-class company so
it's like a it's like a multivitamin not a painkiller yes you know that's not my
another and I read that somewhere you know the micromanaging thing yeah
and that's it's funny cuz you're the first person that I've heard say that
this where you said they'll start micromanaging and then all of a sudden
the people getting micromanaged expect to get micromanage so they stopped
thinking right so a new person so yeah that happens all that Cindy it goes the
other way too if you come to me and you say hey joko how you want me to do this
and i go figure it out mm-hmm and you say hey boss can you show
me how to do this I say figure it out when we get in the field you're gonna
know that I expect you to figure it out right yeah man like when I when I Drive
with my wife she'll start micromanaging like how I Drive like get in this Lane
or or you know just you're going too slow or too thick too fast whatever too
slow typically yeah but here's the thing you know I don't think yeah front seat
in her case but yeah man for sure and I don't lose my temper I'd be like okay
but that's what I do I shut down my brain and then so one time jade was
riding with us and he was uh no it was actually I was micromanaging Jade and he
put it in these good terms which I thought were good he said either be the
Navigator hundred percent cuz he stopped thinking you know or don't be it at all
you can't just start chiming in when you think I'm going too slow
you know otherwise yeah I don't want to if sir is yelling at me hey you're going
too slow I'm gonna be like okay how fast you want me to go I'll go that fast so
if you're navigating on the map you're gonna have to tell me every turn to make
don't say hey you're gonna make this right and then I make the right thing
you just sign off you know cuz you're you're anticipating the micromanage
exactly right man and I think it kind of goes automatically you know you got to
put in a lot of words if you knew that Sarah never said anything to you and you
got in the car call me ya know the you had to have the route prepped before
you got in the vehicle we might go a little bit too slow but still man well
it's all me as far as thinking goes mm-hmm yeah man don't micromanage or
when you micromanage don't expect them to just all of a sudden start making you
know creative decisions it's just hot it's hard it's hard for it to work that
way men