Lessons

Lesson Info

Team You

So the element that I want to talk about now is one of the nearest and dearest to my heart's it's, the one that if I could talk about and it would be the on ly thing I would talk about. No, it would be the second thing I would talk about. The first thing I would talk about is the gratitude strategy, the thank you card habit, the letting people know, but really, that strategy wouldn't come into play without this concept. Now, over the years, I've bounced between trying to do a lot of things by myself, trying to do them on my own. I grew up in a culture where it it was better to be done right by yourself than it was to be wrong and give it done wrong by delegating, and I've learned over the years that by building this team, those people who are around me and getting toe learn with and from them has been absolutely amazing. I've been lucky and fortunate and blessed, and any other way a word that you use that lets you know just how amazing the world is when people show up, and I've got a c...

ouple of people that I want to talk about, besides the people that we've already mentioned, but years and years and years ago, I got to meet a woman named francis has so blind and francis household line if you don't know of her yet she was most known for her work with the girl scouts of america. Yes, she's wearing the congressional medal of freedom, which she pretty much wears every day that I have ever seen her, that she has earned this accolade of making major positive movement happened around the world. Now I happened to meet miss cecil bind because I happened to be in new york, and I happened to get an invitation to someone's a book signing, and I looked over in the corner and I saw this woman sitting there and I knew who she was is she didn't know who I was, and when I approached her and introduced myself to her, the question she asked me floored me he was a woman who I just met that I had known about but didn't know who I wass and she looked at me and she said, jason, what do you need? And it did, it shocked me. I mean, new york is a fast city, this world that I'm in it's a fast world, and here was this woman who is looking at me asking, what do you need? And I'll tell you, I I wanted to answer with something very quickly, but in that moment of looking in her I I realized she was actually very serious. I went back to my hotel and back to california and over the next three weeks I crafted my ask and trust me I went through ask and ask and ask and ask until the one that I could make to the best of my ability was a collaborative one. And so now the francis has so buying leadership institute and I have partnered in a program called leaders in action and what she does with her connections to the white house to the military organizations of america to the nonprofits ah, those were the three areas she works the most in so politics service and this world of other service we interviewed the leaders who are making major things happen and every time I talked with this hassle buying it's always what do you need now? Years ago I was sharing with you a little bit about my experience of getting the book deal and one of the things that happened was it is a short story long so I was at a conference I went to a panel discussion in any time I get that intuitive I probably should be here and I follow that it's amazing what happens and the panel conference was called from blogged to book in fact another creative live instructor here at creative live, pam slim was the moderator for that panel and over about an hour and a half she led to other publishers, through a discussion of what it took to go from a blawg to a book, and after that session was over, I approached one of the publishers, matt, from wiley publishing in new york. We had a quick conversation, I gave him this my card, I took his card and we broke away. I'm walking the streets of austin a couple of hours later, I'm going to the next panel discussion that I was heading to of standing at the crosswalk, waiting for the light to turn green. I look over and there's matt from the panel from the publisher from new york, and I said, hey, I wouldn't jason, I was in your panel, we traded cards, he looked at me like he didn't know who I wass I didn't take it personal. I reminded him of what we had talked about, and he said, email me your portfolio, what you've got. So I texted jodi, I said, hey, I'll see you later tonight I went back to the room, I spent about six hours putting together a portfolio that I had started. I sent that over to him. Eight days later, I received an email that was clarification eighteen days from the day that I met matt, john wiley and sons sent me a contract in a check. Listen jason you now have four and a half months to write this book at the end of which will give you another check and your book will be out on the shows great so of course I started calling people I started calling my family started calling my friends started calling anybody who I could tell this story to and it was amazing the response is that I would get because immediately I started building this team now I've got a quote up here on the on the screen that you've seen that you kind of wondering where does this quote come into this story and it came in one of the guys that I called I called joe he was very excited and I called one of my other colleagues acquaintance now I didn't defend him off facebook but when I talked to this one guy and as I was explaining to him the project that I was working on I got this book deal eighteen days they sent me a check oh my goodness I'm so excited his questioned on me on the phone was wow jason wins the book do I said that's the craziest part of this thing it's doing four and a half months his silence on the other end and then the first thing he said put me on my seat he said jason four and a half months I don't think you're going to be able to do it and I paused now I didn't cut him out didn't delete him from my address book didn't unfriend him from facebook but over the next four and a half months I submit to you this question any time we did talk over the next four and a half months guess what? I did not bring up the book I just didn't even bring it up when he asked me how it was going fine, we moved on to another topic because were there some days can you imagine that I didn't think I was going to be able to do it where they're absolutely and what if happens stance on one of those days I happen to be on the phone and I happen to say I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it what might have come across from him I told you so alternatively where there's some grace days that it was awesome and I was great and I was on track and ahead of schedule yes and if I had happened to have talked to him until about great, it was what might I have run the risk of receiving? Okay, but be careful and so for me I just decided, you know, I'm going to take that out the second thing I did after that conversation so have the conversation as I pulled out a piece of paper and I started a mind mouth up I introduced this yesterday where I literally put my name in the middle of a piece of paper in a circle and I drew out thes spokes those of you watching online do this on a white bored on a flip chart here in the studio audience take a dedicated piece of paper in the middle of that piece of paper a little circle with your name in it and then a spoke system now everyone's going to always ask me jason, how many spokes should I have on it at least one we'll start there and what I did and I'll introduce this as we go through is I actually broke that mind map into ten for this project well, I knew there were ten chapters of the book and I actually the end of each spoke I put one person's name who I thought I could activate about one chapter of my book I thought I'd be a little bit easier if I reached out to one person at a time for one chapter at a time now behind me on this screen you're about to see three prompts appear and each one of these as important as the other I always start with this one because this is the easiest one to start with so on your pieces of paper on your note pad off to the side if you just start a little list if you want to write people's name initials are fine, and if you need to write in code that's totally okay, some of you watching this at working my one writing code just so that people don't see every single name that you're writing down, and as you're writing this, I'll talk to you just a little bit about it. This list is the real one for me as I'm traveling if over seventy to ninety six hours, I do wind up in a conversation with someone along with the way it could be a friend of a client, I get introduced and we go out for a drink after work and we meet for a run through central park for me. I also include the names of the author's I'm reading or the documentaries that I'm watching folks. If I spend eighty seven minutes watching a biography of helen keller, I add helen keller to my list that's someone who I just spent a lot of time with that book about steve jobs, it was like this big read on the kindle it's a little bit easier because you don't realize how many pages you have left to go, you just swipe the pages, but when I read that book, I realized I had spent fifteen hours with steve jobs that week, that was a lot of time where I was getting surrounded by that influence. Now, next to that or underneath that, what I might want to add to continue this inventory, and by now you might be a six people, eight people, twenty eight people were going to keep on going. Who are the people that you get to spend time in with around in company with in conversation with in communication with whether that's on the phone on skype, text messaging, emailing who inspire or encourage or allow you to think bigger at the end of today's course, we'll talk a little bit about the absolute significant of mentors. This is generally the area where my mentors show up a few comments about mentoring some I'll save for later one I want to share with you now one of the most careful things that I can run is to surround myself by mentors who are willing to see me bigger, and it sounds interesting. It sounds harsh, but I've been surrounded by people who had meant toward me over the years that when I got to a certain level there, homey, oh, static response was set, I had reached the level that their mind could handle so that's why this list is so significant? Who are the people that when you drop an idea of what you're thinking about what you're reading, what you're working on? Their eyes light up and they push on you and they say things like, oh, you're working on that? Have you met this person? Have you gone to that conference? Have you read this book and that kind of pushing you along the way now? I rarely and people who have known me for years should on people, so when I dio you've got to know it's an important one when someone's asking me for advice I rarely should on them. So when I d'oh you got to know this is a big one, I'm going to ask you to honestly assess who should you spend less time with now? Of course, on the front side of this, you may be thinking yourself, but I have to spend time with the people and they may not have that big vision of me they may not inspire or engage me, I'm going to keep on going through that list I've already established a little bit earlier today. There are other ways that I spent time with people that I can start to go through that list I shared with you the tactic of meat unsubscribe ng from magazines. Now let me just play this one out when I realize that the magazine that I get no matter what magazine it isthe there's one person who's in charge of that issue there called the editor that one person decided what every single page of that magazine landing in my mailbox, sitting on my desk and traveling with me around the world until I put those pages one good one person and if I realize you know what I need to change my influence, I'm unsubscribe ing to their view of the world or I'm subscribing to their view of the world. And I don't know if you've done this lately, but go home tonight. Go look at the magazines that are on your desk, on your coffee table in your backpack, go to that editor and go look them up, go learn about what their background is, how they got to be where they are, what gives them the view of the world that they're serving up to you has been fascinating when I do this. I take that little bit of extra time. I don't want to spend less time with that influence. I want to spend more time with that influence. I got hired by a organization in ohio years ago, and they were a small, the hedge fund trading house, about fifty people on the staff and the hr the training manager had me come out, and before I arrived on scene about, I don't know, I think about four weeks, three weeks before I arrived, I got a big box of books in the mail. And there are books on investing and there were books on that world they were remember one of the titles was the intelligent investor which actually turned out to be a pretty good book once I understood a little bit about what the guy bedroom was saying another book that was called why smart people make big money mistakes that was on behavioral investing and people make emotional decisions and start to get themselves in trouble so sometimes that any rate when I got these books and the client had said hey jason I hope you have a chance to glance through these kind of our books for the company so I went over to the online search engine I was using and I typed in all the author's names and there's a website that I use where I can actually get contact information for people and one of these authors the contact information that showed up was his phone number so I pick up the phone it was four o'clock in california was seven o'clock in boston I dialed the ten digits and he answered the phone turned out I called him at home answer the phone I said hi my name's jason I'm doing some research on your book difficult mr chat he said where you from I said I'm jason I'm just doing some research chat any gave me twenty minutes on the phone three weeks later you could imagine I walk into the client's office us and the client of course asked, right? Hey, we sent you this book say, jason, did you read the books? I said yes, and when I interviewed the author of that one, the client was like, you interviewed the author of the book we sent we haven't talked to the author of the book we sent, so what I'm building is this grouping of people, I really believe that we can expand our vision of who we will let influence. Yesterday I talked about a book kind of influential book to make all the seven habits of highly effective people you've probably heard of that what you know, millions of copies sold, and I wrote that title so earlier, I think I told you about the book that was what got you here won't get you there. I wrote that one as who got you here won't get you there, so you could imagine what I did with the seven habits of highly effective people, right? Seven people of highly affected habits and occasionally I'll go back through and I'll just take this listing of seven I'll keep the topics off to the right hand side and I'll swap out who do I need now to help me with my health? Who do I need now to help me with my career? Who do I need help now with my relationships? Now seven just worked because it kind of went along with that, but you get to decide of those habits that you want to start creating of that mastermind group or support network, whatever you wind up calling that I would want to pick and start to move through. So those of you who have started this process, you've got your name there in the middle of the paper. For those of you watching online, hopefully you've done this on a white board or a flip chart or in your notes and it's always as current as its current meaning. One new email has changed my team, one new opportunity has shifted who it is that I need to reach out to change in the seasons are changing opportunities. We're going to launch a side website to what we're working on. I need to add someone to my team, that means by default, I might want to take someone off of my team, and when I'm looking through this, I'm looking for that call it a balance of not just age of not just experience of not just gender of not just culture, but as much as I can that's possible, I remember when I was writing the book your best just got better, and I made that team map member had ten people excited, ten chapters. And what was need is when I would go talk to some of those people on my team. I was chatting with irene at one point, and I had her at the end of one chapter of the book I mean, she was a ceo of an international bank around the world very, very busy woman and she dropped something in a conversation, which she started talking about feedback, and I realized she was the one I needed on my feedback chapter. So what that part of the story tells is that this kind of shifts in this kind of moves now, as long as you've got at least one one person, if you've got one person that you can put on your team map, this next activity will work everybody in the room, let me ask you to draw a little rectangle kind of like this and on the top of that rectangle, go ahead and drop in one of your team members names now, knowing that this might shift when you leave here tonight and you might have a conversation with someone on the airplane tomorrow. But for now and as I look at this, I'm gonna smile because every single one of you looking at these initials down the side, you know exactly where I'm going fozie bet online if you saw the sudden before lunch here we go with that team member what is a transactional conversation I need toe have? What is a relationship building? What is a opportunity development and what is in other now when you experiment with this, you might find that there are people that I can move the conversations around with literally when I've done this, I spread across some transactional conversations that when I look back at this from a new perspective, I could bunch those into one or two people as far as the relationship building tony earlier on, we had talked about how to quickly go from that initial meeting great two developing some kind of a relationship to creating that opportunity. One of the things that this helps me with is in pacing that most appropriately, I'm going from this to that to that one there are other times when you're going to look down at that team map, you look down to that one member and you realize wow there's, no transactions it's all relationship let's go to dinner, it's up a conversation about that class you went to about that book you're reading about that event you participated in about that, that that that you're bringing the community together to me this team map and then the extrapolation out of whatever I went up calling this some people call these agendas some people call these the items to discuss I've kept these over the years so I have a little off to the side part of my organizational system here are the things we talked about last winter this spring over the summer I'm always hoping that as we go through the time together, the conversations move mohr and mohr toward the relationship building or the opportunity of development where it gets super interesting those of you've to me those of you who wrote down someone's name if I can share this exercise with them so let's say I write down jodi I have some transaction things to talk about some relationship building things that we're working on some opportunities that were looking to develop if she'll write down one of these for me, then we can sit down in that decision what will we talk about next? We've got an hour about a half an hour we have fifteen minutes we have a quick catch up let's leave the transactions and go straight to let's bunch those altogether and handle those all at once ah question that I have two people is how do you know if someone is on your team? How do you know? And I've always had this and I started this just after I left high school teaching and it's worked for me for the past some are thirteen years after a conversation that I have with someone on the phone skype face to face even text messaging I can do this when that conversation is over, I ask myself the question, how do I feel about the world right now? I'll get total transparency, I used to ask, how do I feel right now? And I realized that was just a little bit too much internal, but when I leave a conversation with a colleague, I asked myself, now, how do I feel about the world right now? And if I feel uplifted, if I feel engaged, if I feel inspired, if I feel activated, that someone that I know that I want to have another conversation with, if I feel disappointed if I feel discouraged if I feel negative, if what we talked about didn't pull me forward, I just look out over the next week or two weeks and instead of three hours together will spend two hours together if I get them on the phone, if I know that if I let them ask the opening question, we're going to go this way. So what I do is I asked the opening question to see if we can go that way. One more thing I'll say about this, and then I want to open it up because I want to hear, I know some of you have worked on the team maps, we're going to see if I could get a couple of examples of how you've used that. And what you might be looking forward to now that we've talked about it, but one of the ideas around this, how do you know is really doing that end of the day assessment? And I don't know how many of you are still doing any kind of a journaling exercise or some kind of a close of the day out, but I've been doing this since before one nineteen ninety six I've stopped at the end of every day, and I've written down between three and ten lines the way I did I win with this is actually by a smaller calendar. So this little handheld calendar that on lee has about an inch of room for every day, and I travel with it and pops up to the side of the bed right before the light goes out open up and I just write down here's, what happened? Here's what I saw here's, how I feel here's what I did, I did one year long experiment three hundred sixty five days in a row, where at the end of the day the last line was a single word, and what I attempted to do was in that one word look back on that eighteen hours and write in a single world word what the day was like at the end of the sphere of sixty five days I typed up all of the words into a long list, and then I hit alphabetical, and I realized that the more words I had those were my miti's. It was I wouldn't have known it by the end of that year. The word friend showed up twenty seven times at the end of a day, twenty seven times when I look back on that day, the one word that was so important to me was friend and there were several other that had that that impact so kind of stepping into this team, you concept let me turn it to the in studio audience s and then hear from the online audience if there's a story you have or a question you have about building this team, but does anybody have an experience using this or practicing with or an idea of how you could use this stepping into what's next for you? I have a couple of separate support groups, I would say one on my personal and one for my business. Um, sometimes I may mix them up as well, because some of the business can become relation and less well, so they become more closer and can you help me in my relations? So I have bought two different groups that I work with and it's really it's really helpful, because if I come up with any new idea, any new todd's I can share it with them to see if I want to move forward and learned their perspective because they know my weakness and my strength. So they advised me on those things. So it is really helpful, even though for this three or four people, it helps. And like you said, it keeps changing or the period of time. It's, not the same person, is always in that group thing. And one off the po, I have a list of people and one of them issue. I read your book all the time and follow everything. So if you there. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I is. You were sharing one of the things that I thought of. You said they know my perspective. They know my strengths and weaknesses is what I heard you say and every now and then. And I got this from a colleague of mine if he's still watching dan lloyd, I'm taking your idea here, and dan had this exercise where he had his team. He actually had a professional and personal team that he had worked for quite a while, and then out of the blue, for whatever reason he experimented with at work, he got a big project, and he went to a white board and he put the project in the middle of the white board and then he gave himself, he said a couple of days and he actually built a team that would help him with that project. It was beyond his work because there were some people in his personal life who he knew would be able to contribute to what he was working on, and it was fast to me it was it was it was a fun experience of taking a look at here is a project I can build a team around in a way I kind of did that with a book, but I didn't call it that still called it my team and then the other thing run journey that you said that sparked inside of me is oftentimes if I'm working on a project and I'm curating that team, I will send them what's influencing me these days, so I'll get them all copies of the book I'm reading or the magazine that I just subscribed to all send them an invitation to the conference that I'm attending I don't always offer to pay for the conference I'm attending, but I invite them to the conference I'm attending because my thinking is if they see what I see here, what I hear listen to what I listened to if they have what I have, then it makes it that much easier for them to be a little bit more informed in their counsel to me