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Five Must Masters by Rick Van Arnam
FIVE MUST MASTERS
by Rick Van Arnam
KNOWLEDGE | FIVE MUST MASTERS | 33
“The goal isn’t that people can recite what you say, it’s that they believe it.” - Patrick Lencioni
You passed The Motive test (see Sourced, November 2021 – February 2022 issue, What’s Your Motive?). Congratulations. Get ready, the hard work now begins.
Passing the test simply means that you are leading for the right reasons. It’s not about the rewards – the compensation, the title, the authority to delegate what you don’t like to do while keeping what’s fun– it’s about the responsibility to lead others – to care for them, to enjoy watching them grow, to know that you are playing the long game.
So just how do you do that? What’s your plan?
In Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Motive, he lays out the five responsibilities at which a leader cannot whiff. While Lencioni has been writing books for over twenty years, and although this is his most recent effort, he will tell you that this is the book he should have written first. I agree. I’ve been working with or leading teams going on forty-years, and I can’t find a better model to follow that explains what to do and why to do it, as a leader. I believe these five responsibilities, call ‘em skills or disciplines if you’d like, apply to platoon leaders in the Army (where I started) all the way to the CEO position. It’s why I use this book to coach leaders and why, at the Anthony Marano Company, we over-communicate these in working with our leaders.
RICK VAN ARNAM
AMC Vice President of Leadership, Team Development and Strategy
The Five Responsibilities a Leader Must Master
1. BUILD THE TEAM 2. MANAGE SUBORDINATES
3. RUN GREAT MEETINGS
4. HAVE DIFFICULT AND UNCOMFORTABLE CONVERSATIONS 5. BE A CHIEF REMINDER OFFICER
Must Master #1 Build a Cohesive Team
This is where it all started for the AMC Executive Team five years ago. After leadership passed to our third generation (Anton and Damon) in 2016, we started this journey with an executive offsite meeting. A consultant then, I recall that the offsite was productive, even if it may have felt awkward. It was a newly formed team, and everyone was unfamiliar with sitting around a fancy table for two days sharing personal histories and uncovering our purpose and core values. It was a productive start and, most importantly, the discipline to build a team was set.
That’s the counsel for a leader at any level. First, build your team. Stick to the process. Have confidence that if you build the team the right way, the results will follow. And that’s the why – teams are charged with delivering results. The best teams, we call them healthy teams, have a different kind of trust, debate well, commit to popular (and unpopular) decisions, hold one another accountable, and have rigor to look at a scorecard. Those are
the five behaviors outlined in The Five Dysfunctions of a
Team by Patrick Lencioni, but these are not unique to
Lencioni’s thinking. Google has conducted in-depth research to tease out differences between their highperforming teams and teams that struggle. They also concluded that high performing teams create a “psychologically safe” environment (fancy words for trust) and team members generally speak in the same proportion (the ability to debate well). And that’s the how – be deliberate to build those five behaviors on your team.
Must Master #2 Managing Direct Reports
This is probably more surprising to CEOs than for midevel leaders to hear, but the principle applies at any level. Don’t assume your people can read your mind or know on their own what needs to be done and how. Team members need guidance and direction. It’s your job as a leader to provide that. That’s the why – team members need, and want to know, what you expect of them.
One of the greatest mistakes I’ve observed was by a CEO of a Fortune 100 organization who, even though he was adamant that his team follow a process to build a cohesive team, would not direct his reports to do the same. His reasoning was understandable. First, when he was in their shoes (he had been promoted from within), he resented being told how to build his team by his CEO. Second, he assumed correctly that his reports were smart and experienced, and that they would figure it out on their own. But by failing to provide specific guidance to manage what he expected, the company had uneven and differing results at the next level and beyond. As a company, it’s the difference, in my opinion, between doing B work or A+ work. As I told another leader who didn’t want to provide specific guidance, “It’s okay. You will be mediocre, so just be really good at being mediocre.”
At the Anthony Marano Company, we use simple tools such as screens with red, yellow, and green statuses, to inform team and individual scorecards. These statuses inform the agendas for both weekly team and one-on- one meetings. And that’s the how for us – use clear and simple tools to set goals, track progress, and set meeting agendas.
One final note on one-on-one meetings, to be transparent, AMC has debated this internally a lot. There is a little art needed by managers when running one-on-one meetings. What needs to be managed will vary between a highperforming team member and a struggling, or new, team member. So, adjust the frequency and agenda items by situation, but don’t NOT manage your people.
Must Master #3 Run Effective Team Meetings
Most times I avoid sports comparisons, but I can’t here. For eye-rolling readers, please follow along a bit.
Most NFL fans likely love or hate the New England Patriots. No matter where you land, I believe it is fair to say that Bill Belichick probably runs a pretty good practice. After all, how could his teams compete for the Super Bowl year-in and year-out? Critics of this may point out that he had Tom Brady or that it’s his system, which are both true. But where did the team get aligned on who was going to do what, when, and how? In practice. I’ve never attended a Patriots’ practice, but I get the sense Belichick runs a good one. I imagine there is some structure, coupled with behavioral expectations that include player-to-player accountability. And that’s the why for football teams– if you want to win championships, practice like a champion.
The same is true of meetings and teams in business – the why. If you want to win as a team – get great results – meet like winners. And it’s the leader’s responsibility to make sure that happens.
The most important meeting is the weekly team meeting. This is when some structure is necessary. The purpose of the meeting is to make small, timely decisions to keep the team on track toward agreed upon goals. Toward that end, championship caliber meetings rely on a scorecard review and team member input to identify the most important topics that need attention (a resolution, decision, guidance). Championship caliber meetings also end similarly – with a recap of decisions made and quick alignment on what needs to be shared with others afterward. At AMC, we also review our company purpose and core values, often mining for stories that reinforce our clarity. And that’s the how.
“Meetings... where leaders are supposed to perform.” CEO
-Anton J. Marano CEO Anthony Marano Company
A couple more notes on the how. First, it can take a few reps to get this down. Most weekly meetings are run poorly. It’s not always easy to begin a new habit; trust the process. Second, the leader should be more like a conductor leading an orchestra. The leader doesn’t have to take the notes, run the white board, or drive a visual aid. The leader should orchestrate the debate, keep things moving along, make decisions, and force closure and clarity.
This seems obvious, but who among us hasn’t ducked telling someone close to us what he or she needed to hear? This is hard. It may also be that single learnable skill that helps the team the most. Nothing turns a team around more quickly than when a team member hears firsthand what he or she is doing that is holding the team back. And that’s the why – leaders can’t avoid having any conversation that holds the team back.
Only one of two things will happen when a leader has a difficult conversation.
It is possible that the team member won’t take the feedback and opt out. That’s okay. I’ve seen many teams, often overnight, improve performance simply because a poor behaving team member departs. The quicker the team member opts out, the better. It will never happen, though, if the difficult and uncomfortable conversation doesn’t take place.
It is also possible that the team member takes the feedback and decides to change behavior. That’s even better - and what I believe most leaders and team members want as a result of having a needed conversation. And some more on the how. Team meetings are the best place to quickly address the difficult and uncomfortable conversation. To borrow an Army term, when a leader (or any team member) makes an “on-the-spot correction” (whatever is holding the team back) with others present, the chances of it happening again are diminished. It’s like setting the bar a bit higher. No one wants to fall short. Gnarly, more difficult topics will arise, and those topics may best be held for the one-on-one. But don’t default to the one-on-one setting when the entire team may benefit from hearing this.
Must Master #5 Be a Chief Reminder Officer
Of the five “Must Masters”, being the Chief Reminder Officer may be the easiest to do, but is often done the least. Leaders arrive at leadership positions often having the advantage, to borrow a lyric from the play Hamilton, of being “in the room where it happened”. They leave the room and might tell their folks what happened one time, maybe twice. And then the leader moves on, wrongly assuming that everyone knows what the picture, purpose, and plan is and what their part is. Big mistake.
You see, the goal of reminding people isn’t simply to make sure they know, but to help them believe. And that’s the why. The most engaged employees don’t just know why the company exists and what
behaviors are accepted, they also understand how their work fits into the bigger picture. They see their part and believe their work makes a difference.
It’s the how that makes this difficult for leaders because a big part of the how is to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, and repeat. And in the repeating, the best leaders get creative. They tell stories and are able to make the complex, simple.
One leader who is pretty good at being a Chief Reminder Officer is Dave Duncan, Chairman/CEO at Silver Oak Cellars. Silver Oak makes some of finest Cabernet Sauvignon wine in the world. His company hunts for what they call Bottle Stories. Bottle Stories are simple, customer anecdotes about why they select Silver Oak for life’s most important gatherings. These Bottle Stories are told and retold, inspiring company employees in the work they do and reinforcing Silver Oak’s commitment to excellence. That is just one example of the how.
Our work at the Anthony Marano Company will never be done in sharing what we call our Org Clarity. We are though, well beyond reciting it, and are pursuing stories from customers, vendors, and employees that reinforce all that we are about. We are committed to becoming better at telling stories to master this fifth, and final, must – the one that should be the easiest, but is often the most overlooked.
So there you have it. If you passed the The Motive test, it’s up to you to now go on and build your team, manage your subordinates, run great meetings, have difficult and uncomfortable conversations, and be a Chief Reminder Officer.
Nothing is More Rewarding!
Sources
The Motive, by Patrick Lencioni
“What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team,” The New York Times Magazine, February 25, 2016.
