The 4 Secrets of Passionate Organizations
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“People succeed by capitalizing on who they are, not trying to fix who they aren't.”
–Mike Goldman
Secret #1: Acceptance - Embracing Individual Differences
The "golden rule" should be replaced with the "platinum rule": treat others as they want to be treated.
Leaders must recognize and appreciate individual differences rather than treating everyone the same.
Secret #2: Leverage - Maximizing Strengths Over Weaknesses
Focusing on employees' strengths provides greater potential for growth compared to fixing weaknesses.
Identifying whether weaknesses are skill/knowledge-based or talent-based is crucial; focus on improving skills and knowledge, not talents.
Secret #3: Trust - Empowering Teams with Clear Outcomes
Trusting employees means defining clear outcomes and letting them find the best way to achieve them.
Leaders should provide a clear vision and goals, and share essential information with the team for better decision-making.
Secret #4: Celebration - The Power of Fun and Recognition
Celebrating progress, not just results, can prevent burnout and maintain motivation.
Incorporating fun and recognition into the workplace can improve relationships, productivity, and project outcomes.
Creating a Passionate Work Environment: Final Thoughts
Implementing the four secrets can significantly impact employees' enthusiasm for their work.
Leaders should strive to create an environment where employees are excited to work most, if not all, of the time.
The ultimate goal is to build a leadership team that fosters a culture of acceptance, leverage, trust, and celebration.
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When your alarm clock went off this morning, did you just get this big smile on your face and say, Oh my God, I can't wait to go to work today. If you did, that's great, but you're in the minority. For most people, that's not true. I could remember I did a workshop for. About 30 partners in an accounting firm many years ago.
And I asked them that question, I said, How many of you, when you woke up this morning said, Wow, God, I can't wait to go to work today. And like one and a half of them raised their hand. There was one woman who was almost embarrassed to say she was excited to go to work. So 28 out of 30 partners were not excited to go to work that day.
And my message to them was, Man, you guys are the leaders of this organization. I know what you're making. You're partners, so you own the place. You get to have some control over what's going on. If you're not excited about going to work, what do you think the rank and file employees are feeling? What impact would it have In your organization, if most people got up, just fired up to go into work, they didn't say, I have to work.
They said, I get to go to work today. What impact would that have on your revenue, on your profit, on your clients, on just the level of fulfillment? Your ability to keep great people, attract great people. Think about the impact it would have if everybody had that level of passion, positive passion, not, not anger, but, but happiness and excitement to go to work every day.
Now I know that's not going to happen every day, even if you own the place, but man, what would it mean if that happened more often?
Well, To do that, to help you with that, I actually want to talk about my first book and I can't believe it's over 60 episodes and I'm close to episode 65. I'm not sure what number this is, but I'm over 60 episodes in and I haven't talked about my first book yet.
My first book, the first edition was published back in, Oh God, I think 2000, I don't remember 2000 something the second edition I think was published in 2013. I ought to know this. I've only written two books, so it's not like I should be forgetting when the first one was written. I am working on a third though, by the time you're listening to this, maybe that'll be done.
But anyway, I'm digressing. My first book was called Performance Breakthrough, the Four Secrets of Passionate Organizations. So what I want to do on this. This episode is very simply take you through those four secrets and I know you'll find some things that you could use to create a more passionate organizations and the four secrets for, you know, I'll tell you what they are quickly and then, and then we'll, I'll go through them, uh, deeper.
The four secrets I call acceptance, leverage, trust, and celebration.
So let's talk about acceptance. When we grow up, we learn the golden rule. Treat others the way you want to be treated. I actually think that's a pretty crappy rule. I mean, I know the reason for it, but I don't think we should treat others the way we want to be treated.
I think we should treat others the way they want to be treated. Not everyone wants to be treated like us. And that's okay. Thank God everybody's different. So acceptance, this first secret of a passionate organization means except that everyone's different except that not everyone is like you, except that we shouldn't be treating everyone exactly the same way.
Now we tend to do that as leaders. It's a lot easier for us to treat everyone the same. And why do we do that? Do we do that because it's fair to do it that way? Do we do that because it's the right way to do it? No, we do it because it's easy. It's easy to treat everybody the same way. Try to motivate, motivate everybody in the same way.
Try to coach everybody the same way. Train everybody the same way, but it doesn't work. You can't motivate two different people the same way if I wanted to get you to work some extra time to get a project done. It may be that you'd be motivated if I said, Hey, once you get this project done, you know, I'm going to give you a bonus check for $5,000 dollars.
Maybe that motivates you. If money is your big motivator, there's nothing wrong with that. But if someone else is motivated by more time with their family. Motivating them with 500 bucks to work another 20 hours a week over the next few weeks, that's not going to motivate them. Maybe what would motivate them is once the project is done, give them some days off to go spend with their family.
Let's talk about training. Everybody's different. Everybody has a different, there are different learning styles, right? You may learn best by, if I gave you a new, oh, I don't know if I gave you a new,service that you had to be in charge of or a new service that you had to sell, maybe the best way for you to learn it.
would be to read everything you could about that service and spend a few weeks doing nothing but learning and reading and maybe a little role playing. Now, others might say, train me that way and I'll shoot myself before, before I'm done. Let me at some clients and let me learn on the job. Let me learn while I'm doing, I learn best by making mistakes, or I might learn best by watching someone else and not reading.
People have different training styles. People have different learning styles. People have different values that may impact all of those things. So what are you doing to really get to know your employees and then what are you doing with that information? Some thoughts on how you could better get to know your employees.
Number one is you should be having one on one meetings with each of your direct reports, if not every week, every other week. And those one on ones shouldn't just be about holding them accountable for stuff you've asked them to do. Some of those should be coaching sessions where they're bringing what's important to them to the table.
But the more you meet with them, the more you talk to them, the more you hear what some of their challenges are, or some of the things that they love to do, the more you'll get to know them. Another way to better get to know your employees is to watch them, watch how they act in meetings. Do they lean forward and they're the first ones to talk and they like to lead and dominate a conversation or do they like to sit back and have others talk first?
What are some of the things they do that seem easy to them? What are some of the things that they do that seem hard to them? so have one on ones, watch them. Another way is to ask them. You know, ask them what motivates them. The last time they were super motivated, what happened right before they were super motivated the last time they had to learn something new, what method did they use that worked really, really well?
You could of course do things like personality profiles, DISC, or Myers Briggs, or there are values assessments, or, you know, there are so many out there, and some of them are actually really, really good. So there's a whole bunch of ways you can get to know your people. So instead of living by the golden rule, you could live by the platinum rule.
The platinum rule is treat others the way they want to be treated. So secret number one. Acceptance. Accept that not everybody is like you. We're all different. Let's go to secret number two.
Secret number two I call leverage. Traditional thinking says that when we work with our team members, when we work with our direct reports, we've got to spend time working with them to fix their weaknesses.
And thank God they've got these great strengths, but we've got to work to fix their weaknesses. And what happens when we spend most of our time trying to work on weaknesses with somebody? Well, number one, I'd say, you know, people tend to In areas where they're weak that those may be areas they don't enjoy very much they they're stressed by them They may be frustrated in those areas.
So if we're spending more and more time trying to fix their weaknesses My guess is that employee is probably not feeling very great You know about their job. If we spend more time trying to fix their weaknesses and that's kind of stressing them out, what do you think might be happening in areas of strength for them?
Well, in a lot of cases, those strengths are going to become less strong. So you wind up doing is by just hyper focusing on trying to fix people's weaknesses or trying to fix your own weaknesses. We tend to take what's weak and make them better. Probably not get them to the point of super stardom, but take what was weak and maybe get it up approaching to mediocre.
But at the same time, in the areas they were doing great, they may lower their performance a little bit. And all of a sudden, everything is coalescing around mediocre. And now we've got mediocre performance in a person who's probably not that thrilled. Now, of course, if someone is weak in an area that is core to what they do, of course, you've got to work on it and or maybe they're in the wrong role, but it's important to talk about the difference between skills, knowledge, and talent.
When we think about strengths and weaknesses and what do we work on skills and knowledge are things we can build over time. So if someone is weak because they don't have the right skill or they're lacking some knowledge, take the time and get them there. But if someone is weak in something that is more of a talent, a natural talent,
they may just not have. That talent. Now I know we have plasticity in our brains, sure, but I'm sure when you think about yourself, there are certain things that just come easy for you, you know, for me, getting up and speaking in front of people tends to come easy for me, taking things that are complex and simplifying them, is easy for me.
But there are other things when it comes to paying attention to detail and dotting every eye and, and crossing every T when it comes to, you know, detailed, you know, financial analysis. Oh, those are things I, I hate doing and I just don't have a real talent for.
So when we think about that, if someone is weak in an area that is more of a talent, well, You're going to have a real difficult time getting them to improve. People succeed by capitalizing on who they are, not trying to fix who they aren't. So where are you spending your time, especially with your best people?
Is it on trying to, to, to, to. Work with them on their strengths, I would argue, and I have seen that people actually have more potential to grow in an area of strength than they do in an area of weakness. So what are you doing to help your folks grow in areas of strength? Now, again, this doesn't mean we ignore weaknesses, poor performance still needs to be confronted.
This isn't about just ignoring people's weaknesses, but we need to understand if those weaknesses are skill based, knowledge based or talent based that skills or knowledge based go to it, work with them. If it's talent based, I would argue you're better off finding a way to manage around it than trying to get them to be someone.
How do we work around it? Well, there are, if you look at many leaders out there and number twos, there's a, there's a great book called, um,rocket, Oh my God, I forgot the name of the book. rocket fuel, I think is the name of the book. And it talks about visionaries and integrators. And very often you might have a CEO.
That's an amazing visionary. They have the ability to see the big picture and create this incredible vision of where they want to be and come up with 150 potentially great ideas to get there. But they may not have the talent or the desire to get into the detail and actually execute the details and make that stuff happen.
That's where the integrator comes in. Typically a successful CEO. That's a visionary has. A partner in crime, a number two, maybe their COO who's an integrator, that integrator may not have the same talent for seeing that vision, crafting that vision, communicating that vision.
They may not have the same talent for coming up with 150 creative ideas to get there, but they may have a talent. For the step by step approach to getting things done, holding people accountable. So the way that visionary CEO manages the fact that they're not great in the details, they manage around it by partnering with a strong number two.
So one way to leverage someone's strengths and not ignore weaknesses. One way to manage around those weaknesses. It's to partner with someone who's strong in an area where you're weak, or if it's someone that works for you, find someone who's strong in an area they're weak that they can partner with, maybe shift their role.
You know, I've seen salespeople that are phenomenal at building relationships, but they just don't seem to have that killer instinct, what it takes to close the deal. And they struggle day after day after day. Well, maybe if you shift their role to more of a relationship building, business development role or a service role, they will become a superstar overnight because you're leveraging their strengths.
So what are you doing to best understand the strengths of your team members? And what are you doing to leverage those strengths? So the first secret of a passionate organization exists is acceptance. The second is leverage.
The third is trust. Trust is about defining outcomes for people and trusting that they will find the best way to get there.
Is there one best way to perform in a role? You know, I'd argue it depends on someone's talents on someone's style on someone's values. What works for me is not necessarily going to work for someone else. So trust our people. If you hired the right people, trust them to find the one best way that works for them.
Now to do that, you better have a crystal clear vision. If you're at point a, you better know where point B is because you can't very well trust someone to find their way of doing something. If you haven't told them where the finish line is, you can't trust them to climb the mountain all by themselves.
If you haven't even told them what mountain to climb. So to make this idea of trust work, to make the idea of defining outcomes, not the steps. Work is you need a crystal clear vision. You need a set of goals that help people truly understand what it is you want. You need to share that visit vision. You need to share information that maybe you're not comfortable sharing.
I work with a lot of leaders, especially closely held businesses or family businesses. That don't share any numbers, even with their leadership team, let alone the rest of the organization. And I understand the hesitancy to be sharing bottom line, you know, profitability numbers, because there's a fear.
People will know how profitable the company is, and then they're all going to ask for more money. Well, I got news for you. Doesn't work that way. People think if your revenue is 50 million, Most people in your organization have no idea how a profit and loss statement works. How a cash flow statement works.
If you're making 50 million dollars in revenue, they think the owner is putting 30 million dollars in their pocket. They have no idea that a 10 to 15 percent net profit is a damn good net profit. And then you're going to take a lot of that money and invest it right back into the business. If you don't share top and bottom line numbers with your people, you are not going to be able to trust them to do what's right.
Not only for the top line, but to do what's right for the bottom line. So you need to get comfortable sharing. If you want that passionate environment, you want to be able to trust people. You need to get more comfortable sharing information with people. You need to create more of a participatory environment than a dictatorial environment.
In a dictatorial environment, your team's effectiveness is going to be limited by your vision and knowledge. In a participatory environment, your team is going to rise higher because they can take advantage, you can take advantage of all the team member strengths. In a dictatorial environment, your team is going to get paralyzed if you're not available to help them make a decision.
In a participatory environment, your team can make effective decisions with or without you. In fact, you can go on vacation and your business is better while you left. In a dictatorial environment, you feel ownership for all decisions. In a participatory environment, one of trust, the team feels ownership.
For all decisions. So the first secret is acceptance. The second, leverage. The third, trust.
The fourth, I just call celebration. There's a reason why in sports, teams play better in front of the home crowd. It's because they feel celebrated. It pumps them up. Now, most of you are probably very good at celebrating the end result.
If you have an incredibly profitable quarter, you might celebrate that. Certainly if you have a great year, you might celebrate that. But a passionate organization is great, not just at celebrating results, but celebrating the progress along the way. Celebrating activity, not just performance. Now why is that important?
It's important because sometimes the actual end result of profitability or of greater revenues or of closing that deal might happen six months after the activity that drove that performance. And if you're not doing something to celebrate that activity, You and your people might get burnt out before you even have a chance to see the result.
So when do you celebrate? What do you celebrate within this secret of celebration? I also think it's important to have fun, to play as an organization. We spend most of our waking hours at work. Shouldn't we figure out how to make it fun? Fun differentiates, fun breeds teamwork, fun stimulates creativity, fun improves productivity, fun attracts customers.
I can remember years ago when I worked for Accenture, back then it was, we were called Anderson Consulting and they used to call us Arthur Androids cause we'd just go in, get the job done and leave. And I was doing some work at Chanel and I had a co lead on that project. Her name was Jessica. And we were working on selecting some software for their boutiques and the project was going well.
And, it was going well but not great. And, and one of my,team members that worked for me on the Anderson side. On the Accenture side, suggested that we take the client out for dinner and have some fun. Now, I tend to be very focused on work and I wasn't focused on should we go out and have fun back then.
But I said that sounds like a great idea, let's do it. We went out for dinner. We went to the Upper West Side of Manhattan. We hit a bar right after dinner. ashamed to say I barely remember getting home. And I rolled into work hungover the next day. And I remember Jessica, my co lead on the client side.
She was a director within Chanel. Looked at me and said, That was fun last night. I said, yeah, it was, and then she gave me the most backhanded compliment I've ever gotten. She said, I didn't realize you guys had personalities. Now what happened that night just by having fun is we broke down that brick wall of professionalism and we actually became friends and the project went much better because we had a relationship now where we could be open and honest with each other and have a little fun.
To this day, and it's, wow, 30 years later, she's still a friend. I did work with Jessica for while I was at three different companies, including my own. We had fun. We celebrated. So how do you play within your organization? What are you gonna do to create a more passionate environment?
What would the impact be if, if most of the time, or at least half the time, people in your organization woke up and said, God, I can't believe I get to go work today.
I'm so excited to go work today. How are you gonna use the four secrets of Four Secrets of Acceptance, leverage, trust, and celebration. to create a more passionate environment. Go make it happen. Build a better leadership team.