How Improving Team Habits Improves Results, Teamwork, and Worklife with Charlie Gilkey

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Content is Profit. Today, we'll be breaking down how improving team habits improves results, teamwork, and work life. To drop these value bombs, I have brought to Charlie Gilkey in the EO Fire Studios. Charlie is the CEO of Productive Flourishing, a bestselling author, advisor, podcaster, and speaker. His latest book is Team Habits. Learn more at betterteamhabits.com. And today, Fire Nation, we'll talk about the eight categories of team habits.

0:39We'll talk about how small teams can work with team habits. We'll talk about true value creation in a company and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Charlie and our sponsors. Imperfect Action, hosted by Steph Taylor, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Imperfect Action is a bite-sized online marketing podcast for business owners who want to get straight to the point. Join Steph Taylor as she answers all your business marketing questions. Recent episodes include five must-knows to sell your online course, program, or membership, and four steps to grow your email list for your next launch.

1:13Listen to Imperfect Action wherever you get your podcasts. Charlie, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hello, Fire Nation. I'm so pumped to be back, so pumped I can't put my words together. But what I would say to answer that question, becoming successful, it's not rocket science. It's not super difficult. It's just a lot of consistency and grit and showing up. And I think a lot of people think that it's a silver bullet or that it's a matter of sheer luck. And it's not. It's who hangs in there long enough, who shows up, who provides value and does that long term.

1:53So it's not that hard to understand. It's hard to do. Fire Nation, you can already tell we're going to have a heck of an episode. And I definitely, by the way, am getting flashbacks because I first interviewed Charlie back in 2012. I was actually in my main office. I can picture it so clearly right now having this conversation. The episode went live January 25th, 2013, but we recorded it in 2012. And it was just way back at the beginning, one of my first like 20 or 30 episodes. and it's fun to reconnect. Once again, as today, Fire Nation, we are talking about improving team habits because it will improve results, teamwork, and work life.

2:36And you've created eight categories, Charlie, of team habits. What are they and how did you come up with these? Well, I didn't actually create them as much as I observed what it takes to make a great team. And so when I list off some of these categories of team habits, what you can probably think is like, oh, yeah, well, great teams do this and they do that and they have that. And so it's really just looking at the fact of like, what are the common use are our language? What are the common tactics, techniques and procedures that all to all teams use? And how do we make better habits around those?

3:10And so those habits are habits of belonging, team habits of goal setting and prioritization, team habits of communication, team habits of meeting, meetings, team habits of decision making, team habits of planning, collaboration, and then what I call your core team habits, which are just the personal effectiveness things that we decide to do together. So for instance, JLD and I might figure out that, wait a second, we both do our best planning for the week Monday morning. And we might ask our team, oh, everybody does it Monday morning. So how about instead of us scheduling a dumb meeting at 10 o 'clock on Monday morning and eating up all of our time, we decide, no, that is as a team when we're going to do this personal stuff and make room for that so that we can all be successful together.

3:58So those are the eight categories of team habits. And again, teams have great meetings. They communicate well. They set goals well. You can see how that's going to play out, John. You believe, Charlie, that focusing on individuals is actually less effective than focusing on team habits. Many people think the opposite of that. So tell us more. Well, it turns out that most of us don't like to be changed by other people. We don't wake up in the morning and it's like, oh yeah, I'm totally open to the change plan that JLD has for me today. It's not the way it works. And it also turns out that the way a team operates determines how much the team is going to do.

4:39So it's like you don't rise to the level of potential of each individual teammates. You fall to the level of your team's habits, right? And this is why great players can join bad teams with bad team habits and perform poorly. And, you know, the vice versa can happen. Bad team players can join a great team and all of a sudden they rise. And so, one, it's more effective to change your team's habits because while we may not be open to someone else's change, a lot of people are open up to changing the way they work, which is why the productivity industry is so big, right? And when you change your team's habits for the better, it creates this common operating system that people can just fall in on and do well.

5:22And, John, what I'm really trying to do here is take that background anxiety and uncertainty and frustration that just is a part of working in a team and remove it. Because what if we can just show up and do the great job that we're here to do with a team of people where we have an operating system where we can work well together? That's what I'm trying to get to. Now, we all have different team sizes. So is there an actual ideal team size for the concepts and team habits? Because, you know, some people have a small team. Some work mostly with contractors. Other people have a larger team. Can team habits help everybody?

5:58Yes. And so I give a more formal definition of the team is the four to eight people that you spend 80 % of your time working with. I don't care whether they're contractors. I don't care whether they're W-2s. That's not important. It's that you show up most of your days and rock with these folks. And it turns out that most teams end up being that size. Now, if you have a team of two or three, it absolutely will still work because you're still going to have goal setting conversations. You're still going to have communication that you need to do. You're still going to have meetings. But especially once you start getting to teams of four to eight, you got to really knock that down.

6:33So many of us have experienced what it's like, like we're rocking with one or two people and things are easy. and all of a sudden we get to four or five and it gets hard. Well, it gets hard because any action you do in that size of a team is a social action as much as it is an individual action. And so we got to get those team habits great. So if you're in a big department, you got like 50 people in there, those 50 people are not your team. We might say it like in all the sort of missives and like we're a team. No, you're not actually a big group. You're a team of teams. But in that small team, of four to eight people, that's really where I want us to spend most of our work on.

7:11And the benefit, John, is that these are people you know intimately. You have a lot of rapport with. You have a lot of ability to change and sort of roll with. And I want us to personalize those relationships. So it's not about changing my team. It's about changing John and JM and Angela, people we know who we want to do better with and do better for. Fire Nation, wow. Wow. Hope you're taking a lot of notes here because this is something you can apply to your team immediately. Now, just a question because I know so many people have their favorites. I mean, there's Asana, there's Slack, there's Teamwork, there's fill in the blank.

7:49There's so many different tools out there to help teams, quote unquote, communicate. Do you have a favorite or do you not think that's very important? I have some favorites, but at the same time, I don't think it's important. Right. So I think at a certain point, the conversation about Teams versus Slack, like they basically do the same thing. Right. Let's not get into a quibble about that. I think Asana is great for a multifunction sort of get it done tool. But that's also it's a downside. So I would say that, honestly, I didn't mean for so many things to be counter trend here, John, but this is how it turned out.

8:21Most teams need to start far simpler. We need to go back to whiteboards. We need to go back to note cards. We need to go back to some of those because those make you focus on the fundamentals and not get into rabbit holes about whether you tag something correctly or like that's not essential. What's essential is did we get the right things done together? And it turns out a whiteboard, a flip chart, some note cards, you know, a simple Google slide about what you're working on can go so much further than rabbit holes upon rabbit holes of task management systems. I love it. I love the counter trends.

8:55I love being controversial. I love being polarizing. I mean, the reality is having somebody jump every single time their phone or their computer beeps with some random notification that may or may not be important. Think about it, Fire Nation. This is where you're trying to be in this productive, flourishing world. We have a lot more to talk about around this topic and more when we get back to thanking our sponsors. I remember searching for the perfect CRM when I first launched Entrepreneurs on Fire. And it's tough to know which platform is going to be right for you and your business. Being in major startup mode, I wanted to choose a CRM that could keep up with my big growth goals.

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10:41Field of Greens is radically different. Each organic fruit and vegetable was medically chosen to support heart and vital organ health. You're going to love this product. But if for any reason you don't, they're offering a 100 % money-back guarantee. Plus, I got you 15 % off your first order and free rush shipping. Visit fieldofgreens.com and use promo code FIRE. That's promo code FIRE at fieldofgreens.com. Fieldofgreens.com. Charlie, we're back and you say that teams are actually the lowest level of true value creation in a company. What do you mean by this? It seems like it should be the individual, right?

11:22Like someone shows up and they're doing a thing, but anytime that person does something, it goes into a matrix of other players. And we've all seen that occasion where someone does fantastic work by themselves, but the team chews it up and it goes nowhere. We've also seen the opposite where someone does mediocre work, but because of the value and the team habits and work ways of the team, it turns into excellence. And so when you really think about what it takes to get something done in a company that's got more than one person, the team becomes the atomic unit that you have to look at, not just the individuals.

12:02Because if we keep this individual approach, we're going to continue to have people who seem to have a lot of potential, who seem to have a lot of great attitude and spunk, but their utilization is so low. And when they get into a team, things get gummed up. So I think it just has us look in the right places. And the other thing that it does, John, is it makes it so that we get out of this habit of putting all team change initiatives on any given individual, including the team manager, right? And instead of making individuals work harder and smarter and crunch more, we can say, hey, what's not working at the team level that we can fix?

12:48That if we fix that, we have five people, we have eight people who work 10 to 15 percent better versus just trying to get one person to work 30 percent better. You're going to get far better cumulative and exponential gains by focusing on the team than the individual. Well, let's dive deeper in this because a lot of people believe that the team habits champion must be the owner or that team leader or manager. But again, you have a counter opinion to this. So share more specifics now. You know, as I've done this work for a long time and, you know, JLD, we have a shared background of working in teams, right?

13:23It cracks me up because where did we raise our hands and say, hey, the team leader has to facilitate all the meetings, has to lead all the meetings. Where did we all agree to that? And yet, that's how we operate. But when we look at it, most team leaders, managers, executives have so much going on. They're not trained. They don't know. It's just a lot going on that if we expect them to solve all the problems, we're not going to solve it. And so I'm just saying, look, if you're willing to stand up and say, hey, this thing is broken and I want to fix it, and I'm willing to put myself on the line to make it happen, you can be the champion.

14:03You might need your manager's approval because you might make some changes that they need to know of, but they don't have to be the person to fix it. And think about it. Most managers, I'll back up a little bit. When I was in company command, I would tell my troops, look, there are certain things that I'm focused on that you want me to be focused on. You don't want to mess with higher headquarters. You don't want to mess with pay problems. You don't want to do that. My job is to handle all of that stuff. What I need you to do is your job. If you do yours, and I do mine, we rock. We can make this happen, right?

14:35And so when we look at our team leaders, when we look at those executives on the team, they're solving problems that they need more focus on. It turns out if our team meetings suck, we can get together. John, Charlie can raise a hand and come together and say, look, this isn't quite working for us. It's just us four to eight people. We know each other. We don't like it. Let's change it and go to our manager. If we're neither of us a manager and say, hey, we've got some ideas. We'd like to run with this. Are you okay with this? I'll own it. I just need you to be okay with it. And most managers are going to be like, cool, run with that.

15:09I'm glad you see the problem. And then you can be, you can put yourself on the field to make that change happen. But I think far too many of us are just waiting on someone else to solve a problem that we can solve in our team. And we all stay stuck. So be the teammate you want your teammates to be. If you see a problem, raise your hand, come together, solve it. And speaking of problems, one thing that you've really been talking a lot about specifically and in this book, Team Habits, is that most change initiatives fail because people are trying to sell their team on the solutions rather than the actual problem itself.

15:45So what do you mean by this? Well, a lot of times we'll show up and we'll be like, I have this idea. I want us to do this. And we start immediately with the solution versus taking a pause and saying, hey, I think our collaboration is a little broken. It's a little messed up. Or it could be better. Do you agree? Do you agree? Do you agree? And kind of walk around. And so if everyone agrees on that problem, then start talking about solutions. But the fact about teams and organizations is that there just ends up being inertia and status quo that you just get used to doing things a certain way. and have someone come in there and just say, hey, we're just going to do something different doesn't do much work for you, right?

16:28Why are we going to do something different? Like the way we do works. So that person actually has to sell why what we're doing doesn't work or could work better in ways that the team cares about. Because otherwise, if you just want to change something, like if Charlie just comes in and I just had this great idea and no one else actually buys the problem. It turns out it's a Charlie problem. It's not a team problem, right? But if I come in there and say, look, again, going back to meetings, because it's so easy to beat up on, right? Look, we have way too many meetings and they're too long. Let's say that's the problem, right?

17:02Do you agree, John? Do you agree? Jan, Angela, do you agree? Yes, we all agree. Or this particular way that we communicate during meetings seems to be a problem. Do you agree? Yes, no, yes, no. And you that and then you could tap into your team to help change that problem. But if you just come in with a solution like we're just going to try this great thing that I read over this book on the plane, most likely the inertia and status quo of your team is just going to take over and win unless you really make clear that what you're doing is a problem that the team agrees is a problem. Then sell your solution.

17:36Boom. Fire Nation, we can only cover so much in a podcast episode and Charlie has a whole book on team habits that's called team habits. Betterteamhabits.com is the domain, is the URL. So go there to learn more. Charlie, what is the final point, the key takeaway you want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our entire conversation today? In your team of four to eight people, you have an incredible amount of rapport, responsibility and fluidity in changing. And I want people to look at those four souls or those eight souls around them and say, hey, let's make work better together. Because if you make your work better together in that team, you've made 80 % of your work better.

18:29And you might not be able to fix everything, but better is better. And that's what I want you to go after. Now, Fire Nation wants to learn more about team habits and what you have going on. What is your call to action for our listeners today. I would say pick up the book, Team Habits. It's accessible. It's written for everybody. You'll get immediate tools that you can start applying to your team. So check out Team Habits at your favorite retailer, or you can go to betterteamhabits.com. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with CG and JLD today, so keep up the heat.

19:01For links to everything we talked about, visit yieldfire.com. Type Charlie in the search bar, and the show notes page will pop right up. And Charlie, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks for having me. Roger out. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Charlie for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation. Over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and I've created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment, I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, which is personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk.

19:44The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams. Visit UncommonSuccessBook.com. I'll catch you there. I'll catch you on the flip side. Imperfect Action, hosted by Steph Taylor, is brought to you by the the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Imperfect Action is a bite-sized online marketing podcast for business owners who want to get straight to the point. Join Steph Taylor as she answers all your business marketing questions. Recent episodes include five must-knows to sell your online course, program, or membership, and four steps to grow your email list for your next launch.

20:20Listen to Imperfect Action wherever you get your podcasts.