Empowering Teams for Peak Performance: Bill Lennan's Insights

Speaker 1: 0:03

This is the Rebel HR podcast, the podcast about all things innovation in the people space. I'm Kyle Rode. Let's start the show. Welcome back Rebel community, really excited for the conversation today with us. We have Bill Lennon. Bill is the founder of an organization called 40% Better. We're going to be talking all about employee engagement and all sorts of fun topics along the way. Welcome to the show, bill, thank you. Thank you, it's good to be here. Well, we're extremely excited to have you all the way from sunny California as I sit in Windblown Iowa. So the joy of podcasting is getting to hear how wonderful the weather is everywhere else. So thanks for joining us, certainly All right. Well, I want to start off with a question that I ask almost every single founder, and that is simply what motivated you to put in the time, energy, blood, sweat and tears to found 40% Better.

Speaker 2: 1:05

So great question. First of all, the shortest answer is when I started leading my first software teams, I wanted to find a course like this that gave me the skills, the mental models, the approaches, very small baby steps like how to be successful. And I couldn't find it, and so I did a lot of my own research. I did a lot of experimentation. It worked out really, really well, but it frustrated me that I couldn't find something that taught this, and then, years later, as my teams kept getting better and better and better, I had executives and peers asking me how did you pull that off? Because we thought it was impossible, and I didn't have a good way to explain it until about five years ago, and so this is where this came from.

Speaker 1: 2:05

Awesome. So when we were getting ready and talking about the podcast and preparation here, I think one of the areas that I think is really fascinating to me is the amount of productivity increase that you can see when you do these strategies to help your team be ultimately happier and more engaged. And so walk us through your approach on driving productivity through what I would describe as like engagement initiatives.

Speaker 2: 2:43

Great. So I tend to think of two things for my teams. First of all is how do I help them to be happier at work which also tends sometimes to have trickle over into their private life, their home life and, at the same time, how to have them be more effective, and so a lot of it is listening to them. I'm a huge fan of doing one-on-ones every week. They're 15 minutes, they're in the calendar. I have no agenda whatsoever, it's just what's going on for you today and how can I make your life better. And trying to figure out how to connect the dots in ways that might not be so obvious. And so that's led to people who want flex time right, because they've got kids, they've got to get to school, they need to pick them up. Making sure we schedule around that. What I found was that the more flexible I become, the higher the productivity levels out of my team become. That's one area, and the other thing is I'm never the smartest person in the room.

Speaker 2: 3:56

I always want my team to have as much ownership as possible of solving problems, and even if I think I've got a really good solution, I don't speak first.

Speaker 2: 4:09

I always wait until I've heard them, and then if somebody says what I was already thinking, I don't even say anything, and if nobody does, then I'll say okay, I don't know if this makes sense or not, but what about? Blah, blah, blah? And sometimes it's a great idea, and sometimes they're like that sounds good, except and it's already been in somebody's head, and for me that's always a win. I like that feedback. I spend a lot of time also figuring out how to get everybody else in the company to be happy supporting my team, and so I've learned, for example, how to make sure I get a lot of input from all the other stakeholders in the company, as well as how to sell the executives on giving me money to do stuff that makes my teams happier. And the more productive the team becomes, the easier it is to go to the execs and say I'd like to go spend some money. Here's the rationale behind it, and so far I've got a pretty good success rate on that.

Speaker 1: 5:24

So it's funny because I like the way you articulated this. So, a lot of times, we talk about driving engagement. I think it's almost, at this point, overused the term empowerment, right, you know where it's yeah, yeah, which, in some cases. Just to be clear, I think it's funny when I hear the term empowerment, because a lot of times it means like I don't want to do it, so you get to. But what you just described is that you are actually using empowerment to drive engagement where you're not the one with all the answers. Right, you're giving people the ability to come up with their own ideas, right, exactly. And at the end of the day, none of us really want to go to work and just be dictated to as to what we should do and how we should do our jobs. Right, we're not at least not yet we're not these AI robots that just follow logical work paths and execute to the productivity expected. Blah, blah, blah. Right, but so often we think about things in these terms, where it's like we're just trying to create this system and people operate within the system, as opposed to letting people have a little bit of opportunity to voice their ideas. So I'm curious.

Speaker 1: 6:45

So you mentioned this, okay, and I love this. This is right on your website. So, as I was preparing for this, I might have laughed out loud when I read it, but you mentioned the use of flex time and that you saw a productivity increase in inflex or in. You saw productivity increase because of the usage of flex time and the more flex time there was kind of this direct correlation between productivity. So I think a lot of people are probably thinking, oh well, then we need to roll out flex time, right.

Speaker 1: 7:22

But I think that I think this is a little bit of a risk where we think that this is the definition of engagement, which is these like these perks, right, so it's the, the infamous like Google ball pit or Facebook gives you free food, or oh, so-and-so's, got unlimited PTO or so-and-so, just got these, these exorbitant raises. And our assumption a lot of times HR is at the forefront of guilt here. We assume that that's driving engagement, that's the engagement initiative. That's not really the case. So walk us through how you approach actual engagement and the actual tactics and strategies that work in getting people happier and ultimately more engaged in production. Sure, Sure.

Speaker 2: 8:09

So we break 40PB up into two distinct areas. One of them is mental models for leaders to like wrap their heads around, and the second one is what are the skills that support the mental model? Because if you have a mental model but you have no skills, then it's not going to work. And if you just learn the skill but you don't have the mental models, then you don't have an application for that particular skill set, right? So part of this also is I think about things as being 1% better every day. It's a Japanese kaizen model, right, and so I think about this as a compound interest. Right, I've got this team, and if I get them to be 1% better every day, I'm not going to really notice it day over day, but in a year I'm going to look back and go, oh, holy cow, right, there's been a big change. And so I look at the team as a bunch of individuals and each one's a little bit different, and so part of what's happening to one-on-ones is I'm finding out what's their desire, right. What is it that they want to be having that's going to make their life work better and make them more productive at work, and I kind of don't care what it is right. If I think I can do something that will help make that work effectively and I'll get better productivity, then I'm all for it.

Speaker 2: 9:34

Sometimes it's from people who want to advance their careers and they want some guidance and some coaching and some opportunity to expand into areas that they haven't been able to do in the past. Right, I've had folks who completely transitioned out of my team to completely different parts of the company, with my blessing, because that was what they wanted to be able to do, right, and so I'm encouraging people to figure out where it is they want to go. What do they want to do? If the box they're in right now is where they're totally happy and that's all they want to do, great. But if I and me, we're all good.

Speaker 2: 10:12

But I really want to understand what else it is they want to have operate, and so I listen a lot in those one-on-ones. I try and figure out how to get people to number one, trust me and be able to be vulnerable on our one-on-ones with me. And the second part is how do I get them to be vulnerable with the team? Because they can be better with the team when they're willing to be courageous, right, and so I work on getting them comfortable in those conversations to be able to speak up in the team meetings. Oftentimes what I find is that people that are shy, introverts, are also brilliant, and the company doesn't get to benefit from their wisdom because no one's taken the time to figure out how to get them comfortable speaking up in team meetings.

Speaker 1: 11:16

So I think that's something I think maybe would be interesting to dig into a little bit. I know that in your segment of the work that you are doing on this team, it's pretty technical, right, and so I have to assume there's probably quite a few introverts that prefer to work in the tech industry, right?

Speaker 2: 11:40

Right, oh, yes.

Speaker 1: 11:43

I'm like working to not have to interact with people in a lot of cases. Right, I have a lot of engineers, kind of a similar thing sometimes. But I think this is important that so often there's amazing insight, there's amazing talent and organization just doesn't necessarily see it because it's not at the forefront or it's not the noisiest person in the room which a lot of times gets all the attention. And so as you're working with these individuals and as you're working with these teams and you spot kind of these quiet geniuses or shy all-stars or whatever term you want to use, how do you notice that? And then walk me through how you cultivate that comfort, because I do think I have seen introverts be extremely successful professionals, but there's almost always been some level of external support to help them be heard. So what do you do? How do you work through that as you observe that or notice that that might be the case.

Speaker 2: 13:00

Sure, the starting thing is I used to have really bad social anxiety, like horrible social anxiety, and I was that shy, introvert and I figured out how to get myself out of it. In a way that's repeatable, and I've now taught my process to a bunch of other people. But in the team context, what happens is I will notice that somebody, as they're trusting me more and more, they will say things in our one-on-ones but they won't volunteer as much in the team meetings, and so, as I noticed that discrepancy in the communication, then in team meetings I'll start to become more proactive about asking their perspective, asking their opinion how do you think we should solve this? All that kind of stuff, right, and I try to get them to open up, and I'm not in a rush about this and I'm not particularly aggressive. I think one of the key pieces to making this happen is looking at it through a long lens, where you're like, yeah, in the next six months, 1% better every day. I really want to help this person to be able to move ahead.

Speaker 2: 14:17

The most extreme thing that I've done is with one team. I actually you know you talk about the noisy people in the room, right, I got the noisy people into a private meeting and said I've got this problem and I need your help. And they said sure, what's going on? And I said there's these people on the team that you guys really like and respect and I know they're really really smart and I want them to speak up more in the meetings. And they were like yeah, we know them, they're part of our team, they're great friends. Of course, how can we help you? And I said I want you to not speak in meetings for the next six months until I tell you you can speak up. And they said, of course, no problem, these are our friends, we'd be happy to help them. And I said thank you so much. That was a really hard request for me to make and I really appreciate you being willing to do this. And they were like, yeah, no problem. No, we like these people and we'd love to have them contribute more in the team meetings. And I said, okay, great, I reminded them before the next meeting of what they'd committed to, to make sure they didn't like inadvertently, you know, go a little bit, you know. And like, speak up, right, and then forget about it, right.

Speaker 2: 15:36

And then I just the meeting started and we and I just waited and everybody was looking at the noisy people and they were looking at me and I was just sitting there waiting and so I asked the shy people what their thoughts were and they were like, well, what about them pointing to the noisy people? And I said no, they're not going to say anything for a while, because I really want to hear from you guys. And it took a couple of months before I didn't have to prompt anymore. This is why patience is so important is because they've got years of particular behavior and I was trying to change that right and, no matter what they said, I congratulate them and I thank them both in the team setting as well as in private Took about three months and then they were speaking up and it was easy and they were used to the pattern.

Speaker 2: 16:35

And at four months the noisy people called a meeting with me and said we don't want to talk in the meetings anyway. And I said and they said because we recognize that we have actually done software design that they coded to our spec. That was bad and they would have done better code than we would have done.

Speaker 2: 16:55

And it completely flipped the dynamic in the team right. Very, very level playing field after that and everybody was comfortable speaking because I said, okay, you know you're free to speak, to speak now because you see this, and they were like we're okay. The underlying fundamental model here is go out of my way to give airtime to the shy people and to really encourage them to speak up, both in the one-on-ones and in the team meetings, and give them preference, if I possibly can, over the people who are usually noisy, and I have to be patient about that. I don't know how to rush that right now.

Speaker 1: 17:52

I think if you forced it or rushed, it probably wouldn't have worked as well, right, there would have been, it would have felt contrived or Really uncomfortable.

Speaker 1: 18:01

I think what's really interesting is, you know that that that story, I think, is a powerful, a powerful example of what I would consider to be, you know, somebody feeling Pretty psychologically safe in that environment, right, in operating in different Mode than they're used to, which is not like that's, it's really hard right, really uncomfortable, especially in, like a group setting For somebody that's not comfortable.

Speaker 1: 18:26

So I think it's, you know that's that's a really, I think, kind of a powerful insight and I think I like how you focused on, you know, the fact that, like it wasn't a one time thing, right, this isn't necessarily a quick fix. This is about, you know, sustainable performance and so, right, right, I love the fact that kind of your, your, your noisier people or the people that were maybe a little bit more chirpy in meetings were, you know, kind of kind of understood the, the brilliance of the more, more quiet individuals. So I have to believe that this is part of that, that productivity blueprint, right where you've got, you've got people who are Vocal enough to call out, hey, this might not work, or this might work and prevent us from from going a path or direction that just doesn't make sense. Am I on to something there?

Speaker 2: 19:18

Yeah, I mean I want that from everybody, right, right, you know, I want everybody to feel comfortable saying this might not work and I want everybody comfortable saying what about if we try, whatever it happens to be, and when we can get to that point, then I've got the most.

Speaker 2: 19:40

I'm trying to think what the word is here. Everybody feels like they have the freedom and the ownership of problem solving and it's not just stuck with those people that are noisy have to solve the problems and I'm not going to worry about it, and that that, for me, it's really my big fear is that there's going to be people on the team that see really smart solutions and they're afraid to say it out loud, and I know that's a. That's a huge driver for me is I know that from experience those shy people do have great ideas and you know, in that particular instance, the engineers that were noisy said, hey, we, we did bad stuff, they would have known better. I think that was a great insight and it's it's humbling when that happens, which I think is a really valuable mental model for people doing creative stuff like that. To be able to have in the back of their head is some humility about what, what it is they're creating, because there's a bunch of people that are going to be impacted.

Speaker 1: 20:51

Absolutely. It's interesting, you know, I think I think one of the areas that that's interesting about about this approach is this this really comes down to what he's what you started talking about at the beginning of this discussion, which was, you know, having these, these vulnerable conversations and really you know, getting to understand your team on a on a deeper level than I would say. You know many, many leaders to. A lot of this comes down to, you know, just, strong leadership skills, and I know a lot of your work focuses on kind of these, these frontline leaders. You know these, these, these really impactful positions, and so, as you're working with organizations and as you're, as you're reflecting on and how to kind of cultivate this type of a Type of happiness work, what guidance would you give for us HR professionals that are looking to develop our leaders, have this type of skill set and to be thinking in these terms as it relates to helping empower and engage our teams?

Speaker 2: 22:02

So the first, the first mental model, and I have to credit my first, the CEO.

Speaker 2: 22:08

The first the CEO at the company that I first was a team lead. You know he said on a day to day basis that the first level, team leads, have the most power in the company because we're wrangling the people on the frontline, individual contributors are actually making things happen. So, I think, figure out how to support and train and educate those people and give them the right mental models. And then not just the mental model, but specifically what are all the skills they need to be able to make it happen? Right, we use analogies all the time when we're talking with people. Swimming is a really valuable skill to have, and if I just told somebody that and swimming, by the way, is a gateway sport, there's a lot of stuff you can do when you can swim. But if I just told somebody you should learn how to swim and then walked away, it wouldn't be nearly as valuable as if I said, hey, you know, I know how to teach you how to swim and how to really see the water as a playground and and be able to open all those doors to scuba diving and surfing and white water rafting and whatever else it is. You know that's out there, right. So you have to know HR needs to have their heads wrapped around all the mental models, first of all, and then you know whether it's you or whether you're, you know, bringing in somebody like us, right to have the stack of mental models available in the context, where to use them, and then what are all the skills to back those up so somebody can actually execute. And then, and then you can just you know things, move ahead and and you get those outcomes that you want, which is happier and more productive, more engaged employees, because and everybody knows how to do it right.

Speaker 2: 23:52

The other part of this is that if you're doing this for the first level Team leads, and you're doing it for the people on their teams who think they might want to become team leads in the future, part of it is you got succession planning built in automatically and the, the the folks on the teams that are thinking about being team leads now have a. They understand the success metrics, they know how to behave to be A viable candidate and better than that, if they're doing this stuff, then the execs see them as a safe promotion because they're already doing all the work right. They already see that oh Mary's 10% of her time she's doing the stuff that a team lead would be doing and she's doing it really well. That's awesome. Maybe we should see how to get her to be doing more of that right.

Speaker 2: 24:52

And that way You've got this virtuous cycle because people see how to get ahead, and one of the things that I In this part of the world here all the time is Companies not knowing how to tell people how to get promoted. Number one and number two they're hiring leaders from outside, which is really frustrating for the individual contributors who want to get a promotion, and this this way, yes is another one of those. How do you get better engagement? It's giving people a clear career path of Of how do you get ahead.

Speaker 1: 25:27

Yeah, it's. I Think we've all been in those meetings where it's like, well, I feel like I want to grow, I feel like I want to promote. I think I can't remember the statistic off the top of my head, but it was. You know, one of the most common reasons for people leaving organizations is because Nobody can tell me how to get promoted. Nobody can tell me how I want to grow.

Speaker 1: 25:46

I'm looking for career growth, you know, and I think I think it was a McKinsey study a couple years ago that came out for the first time. It was, it was not paying benefits, it was career progression was the number one reason for people, you know, job, job Abandoning or job jumping or whatever term you use. And so I think it's, yeah, it's, it's a really, you know, really, really important thing for an organization to be thinking about. And and it's it's really what I mean, what we talk about as we think about how do we build Resilient organizations, how do we build a culture that's kind of, you know, sticky and and and how do we, you know, reduce kind of the churn, right, right, turn over and that sort of thing. And you know, so, I know, you know this, this frontline leader, this, this direct supervisors, is such a Such a critical role and I think so often what happens is you get the.

Speaker 1: 26:44

You get the individual contributor that was the top individual contributor, that gets thrust into this role but doesn't necessarily get a whole lot of training in what leadership is Versus being a great individual contributor and right, and I've seen this time and time again where there's this like, hey, joe, congratulations, you just got promoted. Here you go. Now, five of your, your former peers, are now your direct reports go right, right, right. And then there's this and it's like, you know, sink or swim a lot of times. So so, as we're helping, as we're trying like and I think most HR people are like yep, whoops, and we know we shouldn't, but sometimes we just get so, so, stick and busy. So so what are some tactics or some mental models we could think about for for these leaders that are like making this transition? Where we can, we can help, provide some support and some help and some guidance for, you know, leaders that are trying to navigate these, these types of challenges.

Speaker 2: 27:50

Yeah, so that's a great question. Thank you for leading the witness. I appreciate that. It's.

Speaker 2: 27:58

Hopefully you know in advance that Joe is going to be someone you're going to be promoting, right, you're? You're looking at them Not two days in advance, but months, or you know, maybe even quarters in advance, and getting them prepared Then and saying, look, you know having a conversation about it right, and not having it be a surprise when you say, hey, look, we're thinking about you, know, promoting you because you're high performing. However, you want to phrase it right and there's a set of skills that you need to know how to do in a set of mental models that you need to have to be effective at that role, and so we want to train you in the mental models and the skills and give you opportunities to start experimenting with it so you can try it on, because the last thing you want to do is promote somebody and then have them go. Oh my god, I hate this job. This is the worst thing in the world. I just want to write code. Why are they making me be in charge of all these people? This is a nightmare and why did Kyle do this to me? Right? And so you want to give them an opportunity and you want to give them a space to learn. It's not so good to get people to learn how to swim by just throwing them the deep end of the swimming pool. They never end up being really comfortable in the water, and so we want to teach them in a way that, for them, feels successful and where they can experiment in a low-risk environment and build up their skills gradually over time and also have the opportunity to opt out and come back and go.

Speaker 2: 29:42

I don't want to run a team. I'm not ready for that right now. Maybe in five years. But that's not where my head's at today. And how many times have you seen where somebody got promoted because they were that great individual contributor and then the team performance went down Because you've put them in this place? That's completely not their comfort zone. Without recognizing oh wait, a minute. They're amazing at writing code, but they don't know how to talk to people. Right, right, and that's the. You know. I tend to think of learning things before you need them. I took driving lessons before I had a driver's license. You know, we teach people math in school before they're actually in a workplace where they have to understand numbers Right, and so I think about how do I teach people leadership skills in advance to get them ready so that when they get that promotion for them it's psychologically really, really easy and it's not a moment of panic.

Speaker 1: 30:50

Yeah, that's a novel idea. Let's train somebody how to drive the car before we throw them the keys, right? Right or in this case, let's teach them how to be a leader before we say, hey, here's five people, good luck.

Speaker 2: 31:00

Right, right, because don't drive off the cliff.

Speaker 2: 31:03

Right, and the thing that people forget about, I think, because it's not part of the conversation, is what's the financial impact of bad leadership on those five people? Right, if I'm a contributor and my productivity goes down by 10%, that's not as big a deal as if I drive the productivity of my team down by 10% or more, right, right. So now there's a much better, much better, much bigger productivity or economic impact Right, and so I always want to make sure that any beginning promoted looks like a safe promotion. I've never actually asked for promotion Like I've been doing this strategy. I'm sure this is why I got my first team lead role. It's because I started doing stuff and then some executives said, hey, we like what you're doing, we're going to promote you and you got to go find a replacement, right, right. It's kind of the way that I hacked the org chart Because the companies weren't proactive about doing that themselves.

Speaker 1: 32:07

Yeah, and I would say most companies are still not. A lot of times people get promoted or it's because, oh shoot, somebody quit, let's try to pour somebody into it. Yeah, because it'll take too long to train somebody from outside, right, that's usually the kinds of conversations that exist, and so for those of you that are out there that are maybe looking to get into a leadership role, or you have individuals that you see with this potential, you know, getting a little bit proactive can make all the difference in the world. Yeah, with that being said, I want to shift gears. I'm curious to get your responses to the Rebel HR Flash round. Here we go. Sure, question number one where does HR need to rebel?

Speaker 2: 32:51

Well, you made a comment earlier that HR was more worried about not getting sued and they should be more concerned about the. You know the people, right, and HR stands for human resources, right. And I think about how do I optimize resources rather than swandering them, and I no offense, but I think HR has gotten so worried about the legal side of things that the optimization has kind of fallen by the wayside. And I get that there's a ton of legal stuff around HR, but when you can start to look at, okay, how do I optimize my people? The ROI is crazy.

Speaker 1: 33:38

Yeah, absolutely yeah. I couldn't agree more. I mean, I think you know that's part of the reason for this podcast is to change our way of thinking in the context of HR. You know, I always tell people if you do anything purely for the reason not to get sued, you're thinking in the wrong context. Right, like that is not. That's not a great decision tree. Right, like that's not the mental model. I'm guessing that's not one of the mental models, right, try not to pursue it.

Speaker 1: 34:06

It's not one of them. All right. Question number two who should we be listening to?

Speaker 2: 34:16

I have a very broad perspective on who to listen to. I like Alex and Layla Hormozzi. They're kind of the latest people that I've been paying attention to Alex because he has really good productivity models for individual contributors, and Layla because she's really good at running people and they're getting a lot of social media play. If you're not tracking them already, they're easy to find and they're on every channel imaginable. Anybody who talks about servant leadership I'm a fan of, so Leaders Eat Last is a really good book. I'm a huge fan of Jaco Willink's work. I think both of those have a lot of very relevant philosophical perspectives about leadership and how to approach it, irrespective of what your title happens to be, that's kind of my short list.

Speaker 1: 35:20

Yeah, love it All right. Final question so we've been talking about all sorts of cool things, some great stories about some tactics that work for you, some mental models, but we barely scratched the surface. So how can our listeners reach out, connect with you, learn more about some of this work and how to learn more?

Speaker 2: 35:39

So the website's 40pbcom, the number 40 in the letter P, letter B. I was amazed to get a four character domain. That's kind of unusual to find, but it was available for me so I bought it and my email is billat40pbcom again. Really, really simple and easy.

Speaker 1: 36:00

Nice, nice, well, awesome, and we will have that information in the show notes. Check it out. Thank you, bill. Really sincerely appreciate the time here today, thank you, and I think some really, really interesting insights, some pragmatic tactics that we should be thinking about as we think about how to identify, how to support and how to drive some happiness at work, ultimately to help support the work that you've done more productively. So, bill, thank you so much for spending some time with us. Thank you this has been great.

Speaker 2: 36:28

Thank you very much.

Speaker 1: 36:30

All right, that does it for the Rebel HR podcast. Big thank you to our guests. Follow us on Facebook at Rebel HR podcast, twitter at rebelhrguy, or see our website at rebelhumanresourcescom. The views and opinions expressed by Rebel HR podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of the organizations that we represent. No animals were harmed during the filming of this podcast, maybe.