691: Dr. Ron Friedman - The Science of High-Performing Teams, Chevy Chase, Toxic Teammates, The Succession Writers' Room, Deleting Recurring Meetings, Why Side Hustles Are Good, and Why Only 8% of Teams Make the Cut

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk www. LearningLeader.com https://www. LearningLeader.com New Book - The Price of Becoming www. LearningLeader.com/Becoming https://www. LearningLeader.com/Becoming Ron Friedman is a psychologist and researcher who has spent his career studying what separates great teams from average ones. His research, which has surveyed thousands of professionals across dozens of industries, became the second most-read article in Harvard Business Review history. He is the author of three books, including his latest, Superteams: The Science and Secrets of High-Performing Teams. This is brought to you by Insight Global https://insightglobal.com/learningleader/. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. Key Learnings Ron's dad threw himself into impossible challenges and taught his family the dignity of hard work. A physician in Israel, he didn't want his son in the army, so he picked up the phone and started dialing hospitals in New York City until he landed a job at NYU. He pulled his family out of a country he knew, didn't speak the language fluently, and succeeded anyway. Ron dedicated Super Teams to him. He recently passed away. Only 8% of teams qualify as super teams. Ron's team polled thousands of workers and asked two questions: How effective is your team at meeting its goals? And how does it compare to others in your industry? Super teams hit the perfect score. The only office amenity that statistically drives performance: quiet space for focused work. Not the gym. Not the ping-pong table. Most offices are an attentional war zone. That's why people prefer working from home. How a team works matters more than where a team works. Remote, hybrid, in-office. The data shows none of those predict performance. Intention does. Don't make meetings the default. Make them the last resort. Super teams are 50% better at avoiding unnecessary meetings and 54% less likely to schedule recurring ones. Recurring meetings are insidious. Once they're on the calendar, removing one feels like breaking up with someone. So they just live there forever. Ron's rule: no decision, no meeting. Have a question? Pick up the phone. Have an update? Record a video or send an email. Don't pull people away from their work. The average worker loses 18 hours a week to meetings. And another 11 hours to messages. That's three-quarters of the week gone before they've achieved a single task. Meeting-free days cut stress in half and increase productivity by 71%. People go home feeling satisfied because they were able to actually do the work. Three pillars of super teams: They get more done by managing time, energy, and attention. They don't just collaborate. They actively make each other better. They're never satisfied. They're constantly building skills and improving. Recovery isn't passive. Scrolling Instagram or binging Netflix helps you wind down, but it doesn't restore your energy. Mastery experiences do. Learn a new song. Try pickleball. Cook a new recipe. When leaders recover, their teams perform better. A well-rested leader shows up in a positive mood. That mood lifts the team. Investing in your own recovery isn't selfish. It moves your team forward. The best leaders support their people's side hustles. Not because they assign them, but because their people feel they have permission to grow outside the job. That's a signal you care about the person, not just the output. Three factors predict trust in a leader: competence, caring, consistency. Any one of them breaks down and trust breaks down. "How was your weekend?" is lame. Be specific. Ask about the kid's soccer game by name. Specificity proves you actually thought about the person. People need to be appreciated for who they are, not just what they do. That's how they feel cared for. The top three characteristics of toxic teammates: unreliable, bad attitude, and arrogant. The top three characteristics of the best teammates: knowledgeable, dependable, and a good communicator. Notice what's not on the list. Funny. Good listener. Caring. Those are nice-to-haves. They don't move the team forward. The best teammates make excellence the norm. On super teams, 94% say their teammates motivate them to do their best work. On super teams, 82% say they feel worse about letting down their teammates than their manager. When people know their teammates are counting on them, they work harder. Constant togetherness is not collaboration. The Succession writers' room cycled between solo writing and group critique. Real collaboration protects focus time first. Brainwriting beats brainstorming. Have people generate ideas alone first, then bring them to the room. You get higher quantity and higher quality ideas. 97% of feedback fails to lift performance. Over a third actively makes it worse. What does the 3% do differently? Focus on one thing at a time. Future-oriented, not past-oriented. Top performers want to know what they did wrong. Confidence allows them to absorb criticism and correct it. Most people aren't there. Gauge the feedback to the person. Great football coaches give feedback differently to the quarterback than the lineman. Know your people. Adjust your approach. Comedians get better at the Comedy Cellar because of what happens next door. Seinfeld, Chappelle, and Schumer gather at the Lemon Tree Cafe after sets to critique each other. Ryan calls it the "see it, say it" mentality, an ethos his teammate Geron Stokes brings every day. Great compliment, say it. Falling short of the standard, say it. The best teammates care enough to tell you how you can improve. Ron's champagne moment a year from now: his 19-year-old daughter landing a finance internship she earned on her own. Reflection Questions What's your recurring meeting that should be a breakup conversation? When was the last time you asked a teammate something specific about their life, by name? Or are you defaulting to "how was your weekend?" What's your version of the Comedy Cellar's Lemon Tree Cafe? Who do you go to for the candid feedback that makes you better? More Learning #422: Ron Friedman https://learningleader.com/ronfriedman/ - How to Reverse Engineer Excellence #535: Geron Stokes https://learningleader.com/geronstokes535/ - Maximizing People #647: Tim Ferriss https://learningleader.com/timferriss/ - Effectiveness Over Efficiency Podcast Chapters 00:00 The Price of Becoming - Pre-Order Now! 01:09 Meet Ron Friedman 02:41 Ron's Dad and the Dignity of Hard Work 03:47 Two Workplaces, Two Cultures, One Lesson 06:01 The Super Teams Methodology 07:13 The Only Office Amenity That Drives Performance 08:50 How a Team Works Matters More Than Where 13:06 The Three Pillars of Super Teams 16:11 Meeting Guidelines That Actually Work 18:42 The Power of Meeting-Free Days 22:23 Why Guidelines Beat Rules 23:40 Side Hustles, Recovery, and the Goldman Sachs CEO Who DJs 28:53 The Three Factors of Trust: Competence, Caring, Consistency 30:13 Why "How Was Your Weekend?" Is Lame 31:02 Get Specific or Don't Bother 31:22 The Manager Who Asked About Miranda by Name 32:08 The Spreadsheet for Remembering People 33:09 What Makes a Toxic Teammate 35:05 Chevy Chase and the Cost of Burning Bridges 35:52 The Best vs. Worst Teammate Traits 37:08 How Tom Brady Lifted an Entire Organization 38:06 Why Super Teams Hold Each Other Accountable 39:39 Inside the Succession Writers' Room 40:46 Brainwriting Beats Brainstorming 41:41 The Candid Feedback Culture That Drives Improvement 43:06 Painting in Red: The Power

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Hawk?

  As I've told you before, I am super pumped about my next book, The Price of Becoming. It will be out in a few months. In the meantime, I have sent it to some leaders that I really admire. One of them is four-star General Stanley McChrystal. I asked him what he thought, and he sent me back this email, quote, "Having led in environments where preparation, discipline, and trust determine outcomes, I found The Price of Becoming deeply authentic. Ryan Hawke captures a truth familiar to those in uniform. Excellence is earned through

• 0:39Ryan Hawk?

  consistent effort, accountability, and the willingness to stay uncomfortable long after others stop." Man, so cool. I hope you will choose to preorder my book, The Price of Becoming. You can do it at learningleader.com and see all types of preorder bonuses, or if you want, just go straight to Amazon and preorder The Price of Becoming. Thank you so much.

• 1:08Ryan Hawk?

  Welcome to the Learning Leader Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawke. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now, on to tonight's featured leader. Dr. Ron Friedman is a psychologist, researcher, and the author of Super Teams: The Science and Secrets of High-Performing Teams. Ron and his team spent years studying what the best teams in the world actually do differently, surveying thousands of professionals, analyzing

• 1:51Ryan Hawk?

  more than 100,000 data points, and publishing research that became the second most-read article in Harvard Business Review history.

• 2:03Ryan Hawk?

  During our conversation, we discussed why the most popular productivity tips show zero correlation with better team performance and what super teams did instead. And then what Chevy Chase and Tina Fey reveal about the difference between a toxic teammate and a great one. What the succession writers room teaches us about the kind of feedback that actually makes teams better. And then the research on recurring meetings that led Shopify to ban them entirely. And what happened when they did. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Ron Friedman.

• 2:48Ryan Hawk?

  So I loved reading about briefly, your dad. You said he threw himself into impossible challenges and taught us, I love this, the dignity of hard work. Can you tell me more about your dad?

• 3:02Speaker 01

  My dad was a physician. I grew up in Israel and my dad did not want me to go to the army. Felt like he wanted his family to be safe and he came to the US as a physician, had a job in Israel and picked up the phone and just started dialing for jobs. Just started calling hospitals in New York City until he found a job at NYU. And you know, that was a risk. He pulled his family out of a country he knew, didn't really speak the language and succeeded. And that was inspiring.

• 3:32Ryan Hawk?

  Wow. What made you choose to dedicate it to him?

• 3:35Speaker 01

  He just recently passed away.

• 3:36Ryan Hawk?

  I'm sorry to hear that. I love hearing about great people that have influenced you. And so I appreciate you sharing that, man.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I appreciate you asking.

• 3:45Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, for sure. A little bit more about your backstory. You compare and contrast a couple of different experiences in your life. One, when you were at the firm and one, when you were at the agency. I won't spoil the story. I want to hear you tell it in your words. I've read about it, but I'm curious. Can you tell me how these two experiences at the firm and at the agency, how they impacted you?

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I started out as a professor, teaching at colleges and universities. And what I discovered being a professor is you're basically kind of teaching the same thing over and over again. And so I wanted to learn new things. That's the thing that got me into academia in the first place. So I decided to get a job outside of academia. I got a job as a pollster. So my job was to measure public opinion, figure out what it is that people believe, and then help organizations shape those opinions using psychological principles. And so my first job was at a political consulting firm, and it was incredibly high-pressure, cutthroat. You had to consistently stand out in order to demonstrate how smart you were. Do you remember the quote from the book about being the smartest person in the room? You've got to be the smartest person in the room, or

• 4:54Speaker 01

  you're deadwood. That's how we were taught to succeed. I left that firm, and I then went, joined a marketing agency, and that marketing agency was basically the cultural opposite. Collaboration was the agency's primary focus. And so we were constantly in team-building activities. Every meeting involved at least like 10 people. We were even encouraged to keep our doors open. We had private offices. We were not allowed to close our doors because it sent a signal that you thought your work was more important than the team's. So objectively, both of those businesses were wildly successful. And if you were to just write up case studies about what makes for a high-performing team

• 5:35Speaker 01

  using those individual case studies, you'd walk away with vastly different lessons about what are the factors that drive high performance. And so in super teams, and we'll get into the methodology, what we tried to do was look at thousands of teams so that we didn't have to rely on anecdotes to determine what drives high performance within teams. We looked objectively over thousands of teams. What are the actual drivers of high performance?

• 6:00Ryan Hawk?

  So your office burns down, okay? Burns down. And you're given a generous insurance payout to rebuild it. You guys did this work. This is some of the research you did. If you want to have a super team, what's most important to build back up in that office?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  So we, in our research, and let me just take a step back and talk about the methodology. So we polled thousands of workers. Across a vast array of industries, everything from lawyers to physicians to salespeople. And we asked them two key questions about their teams. Number one, how effective is your team at meeting its goals? And secondly, compared to other teams in your industry, how would you rate your team's performance? Then we pulled out the teams with the perfect score. We call them super teams, a very small group. About 8% of the population qualifies as super teams. And we looked at what are the super teams doing differently compared to average teams? And we looked at everything from the way they structure their day to the way they run their meetings,

• 7:04Speaker 01

  to even the way they recover in the evenings and on vacation. So we were able to pull out the exact behaviors that drive performance. So you asked about office design. So one of the questions we asked in our survey was we basically put out a list in front of people, all the amenities that we read about in the news, everything from ping pong tables to an office gym to basic things just like collaborative spaces or quiet offices where you can have private conversations. And we asked people, which of these do you have in your office? And then we looked to see what are the amenities that actually drive performance? And only one proved statistically significant.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  And what that one feature was, a quiet space to do focused work. And that says so much about why people prefer working from home is because most offices are an attentional war zone. It's impossible to get work done. So I think it really speaks to how if you're looking to design an office that drives top performance, don't start with the office gym or the office game room. Focus on giving people the opportunity to do deep work.

• 8:16Ryan Hawk?

  This seems like the opposite of Silicon Valley, which then spread through the entire country, which was open office plans. And I actually think I talked to someone who was designing an office where I worked once. And they said, well, they say it's this open thing to collaborate. It's actually just to save money because they could squeeze more people into an office plan. So they say all that stuff. And I was like, all right, I'm not really sure all that. But so it used to be open offices. I'm not sure if it still is. Now also, companies are sending people back to the office. In some cases, five days a week. Some are hybrid, but some are every day. What about for those who are either hybrid or fully remote? Because the question I get frequently is, how do I build culture with a remote team?

• 8:59Ryan Hawk?

  What do we do to make sure they follow the values? They believe in the values they get after? Yes, we do offsites a couple of times a year and get together. But for those who are either hybrid and/or remote, how can they become and stay and get better as a super team?

• 9:15Speaker 01

  You know, there's a lot of conflicting evidence about where we're most productive. Some research shows that we're up to 25% more productive working from home. Other research shows that actually it slows down performance because you end up deteriorating trust and communication when people are very far away from each other. So in our work, we looked at where are high performing teams most likely to emerge? And as it turns out, the answer is none of the above. It doesn't matter whether you're remote or in office or hybrid. And it's because how a team works is vastly more important than where a team works. And here's what I mean by that. Is you hear a lot of CEOs say, we need everybody in the office.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  We need everybody in the office because that's going to build culture and collaboration and et cetera. And I got to tell you, I work with a lot of high performers. And the number of people who end up wasting hours of their day commuting to the office just so they can fire up Zoom and join the same meeting they could have attended two hours ago is heartbreaking. Making the most of our time together requires intention and it requires planning. So it's one thing to say, you know, we need everybody in the office five days a week. And it's another to say, okay, look, we're going to trust you to figure out where you work best. However, on Tuesday and Thursday, we're all going to get together and we're going to have strategic discussions. So get your pre reads in on Friday so that everyone can show up prepared and ready to contribute. The latter is taking advantage of what togetherness has to offer.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  We just need to be more intentional about what are the outcomes we're trying to get out of people? And then work backwards instead of saying, we're going to figure things out based on, you know, where we want people to be.

• 10:53Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, I will say too, I think this has to do, just from my experience. Maybe where you're at in your career. So being in an office, sitting in a cubicle, listening to my colleagues make, I was working sales, like listening to them make calls, sitting in their cubes, like where I could actually plug in, or they could plug in with me and come sit with me and my manager could do that. And then being able to copy what they said verbatim until I figured it out on my own. If I was at home every day doing that job, I think I would have failed miserably. I needed that office for that. And I wonder if maybe times have changed and younger people are just coming out of college or better prepared. I don't know, but I think there is an element to it. It depends on who and where you're at

• 11:35Ryan Hawk?

  in your career. Because yeah, I sincerely think if I didn't have the office for that first decade, I probably fail at that. I don't know. What do you think about that?

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Let me support what you're saying, which is it depends on the person, depends on the organization, depends on the manager, depends on the team, depends on the culture. That's not a very tweetable quote, right? Because that's not what people want to hear. It's complicated.

• 11:57Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  That said, let's look at the evidence. Okay, so what are people better off doing at home? Well, if you're a self-starter and you're organized and you're an introvert, you're going to do great working from home. But there are certain tasks that benefit from being surrounded by people. Specifically, tasks that are draining or boring tasks. So for example, you know, I used to work in political campaigns, as you know. The classic political campaign activity was stuffing envelopes. Probably don't do that anymore, but that was what we did 20 years ago. And so if you ask people to stuff envelopes for four hours at a time, and you put them in a cubicle, that's pretty dreary work. But you put people in a room and you play some music and you order some pizza, that's a

• 12:43Speaker 01

  party. That's an envelope stuffing party. So being around other people raises our energy levels. So when the task is difficult or boring, that's beneficial. The other thing it's good for is creativity. There's research showing that we have more spontaneous conversations and we can build off ideas a little bit better when we're together in a room. And so it depends again on the tasks. And so it just requires being a little bit intentional and then working backwards.

• 13:05Ryan Hawk?

  Got you. Okay. This one really stuck out to me. Recurring meetings.

• 13:11Ryan Hawk?

  It's easy for me to say now that I don't work in corporate, I work with corporate America leaders. I don't work at a company in corporate America, though. But we had a million recurring meetings. I have a disdain for them. So I love seeing your research. I love seeing what Shopify did. Can you talk to me about recurring meetings?

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Yes. Okay. So Ryan, if you allow me, I'm going to take a step back and kind of build a picture of what are super teams doing differently first, and then dive into recurring meetings specifically. So I talked about how we did the research. We asked people whether their team is effective at reaching its goals and how it compares to other teams in its industry. So what are super teams doing differently? Three big pillars. Okay, the first pillar, they get more done by better managing their time, energy, and attention. The second big pillar, they don't just collaborate well, they actively make each other better. And the third big pillar is they're not satisfied doing great work, they're constantly building their skills and improving over time. So super teams is about all of the practices and habits and tactics that enables the best teams to achieve those three outcomes,

• 14:12Speaker 01

  getting more done, making each other better, and improving over time. So you asked about recurring meetings. That fits into the first bucket. How do they better manage their time, energy, and attention? So let's talk about how the average teamwork works first. The average worker loses 18 hours a week to meetings. They then lose an additional 11 hours a week digging themselves out of messages. That's three quarters of their week gone before they've achieved a single task. So we keep asking ourselves, why are people getting burnt out at work? A better question is, how are people managing to get anything done in the first place? So super teams are much more deliberate with their time at the office. They don't make meetings the default. They make it a last resort. They're 50% better

• 14:57Speaker 01

  at avoiding unnecessary meetings, and they're 54% less likely to schedule recurring meetings. Now recurring meetings are Particularly insidious because once you have a recurring meeting on your calendar, it's very difficult to remove it because it requires having an uncomfortable conversation with your meeting mates. It's basically like breaking up with someone. It's like saying, I don't find our time together valuable anymore. It's a really difficult conversation to have. So by default, we just end up having this time suck on our calendar, week after week. And so you asked about Shopify. Shopify installed a meeting calculator on people's meeting scheduler so that when they schedule a meeting with multiple people, they can see the actual price and the cost to the company of that meeting.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Now, I'm not sure that that is necessarily the best approach because I've worked in organizations, I'm sure you have too, Ryan, where there are certain people who love costing the organization money. And so ironically, it can actually get people to invite more people to the meeting just to really stick it to the man. But that said, I feel like the better solution is having better team practices around what deserves a meeting and what doesn't. And I talk in the book about meeting guidelines and we could talk about that too, if you'd like.

• 16:10Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, share some of those.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so meeting guidelines are probably the most effective approach to shrinking the number of meetings you and your team are attending. So what are meeting guidelines? It simply involves getting clear with your team on what deserves a meeting and what doesn't. Most companies have no meeting guidelines. Just about anybody can call a meeting for any reason. And it's a problem because people use it as a procrastination tool. It feels productive to call a meeting. It makes it look like you're on top of things to your teammates and then it gives you license to wait because you're waiting on people's insight during the meeting. So it's a real problem. So getting clear with your team is the solution on what deserves a meeting, what doesn't. In my team, we have a very simple rule. No decision, no meeting.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Unless there's a decision to be made, we're not going to pull people away from their work. If you have a question, pick up the phone. If you have an update, that's a video capture or send an email. Another example in the book is from a company called Percolate. They are a content marketing software company. And Percolate, they have got a rule that says no spectators. So if you are not contributing to the meeting, you don't need to be there. That's not a criticism. It's respect for your time. And there's also a practice I talk about in the book from Cass Sunstein, who worked at the Obama White House for a number of years. And they had a rule that said, meetings are 15 minutes long. And if you need more time, no problem. Just ask the team leader for permission. What all these practices do is that they ensure that people's time at the office

• 17:41Speaker 01

  is spent doing actual work and they're not required to come in early, stay late and work weekends just to do their job.

• 17:50Ryan Hawk?

  I think that one hits home for me because now I may have, with my team now, our team of coaches, sometimes I've gone so far the other direction. I go, wait, actually, we probably need to meet about this. We probably need to have a meeting to her because my background's in corporate America for a long time and I spent so much time in meetings that it bothered me that I think I've swung the pendulum too far.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 18:14Ryan Hawk?

  To saying, I never want to, even, I love you guys, but I never want to meet with you because I never want it to be that leader who was like, why are we meeting? You know what I mean? So it's, the answer is probably having guidelines. We gotta make decisions. We gotta get things done. So let's meet to talk about that. It seems like the better approach.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  You know, I appreciate you raising that because I, like you, prefer not to have meetings. I really am someone who loves moving things forward and putting my head down and doing the work. I just think that this requires being intentional. The answer is not no meetings. The answer is not, we never meet for anything. In fact, there's research in the book from a study published in the MIT Sloan Journal, looking at what is the ideal number of meeting days? So they looked at meeting free days. By the way, meeting free days, the impact of meeting free days, if more leaders understood the impact of meeting free days, I don't think that it's a question, just how much this would catch on throughout the country. It slashes stress in half. Productivity shoots up 71%. And it makes people go home feeling satisfied because they were able to get work done.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  So in this study, they looked at the impact of meeting free days. Those are the findings. But then they looked at what happens when people abolish meetings altogether. And that's not good either, because then what ends up happening is trust breaks down, communication breaks down. So the ideal number of days for meetings is two. So three meeting free days, that's kind of ideal. Now, of course, it depends on you and your company, what you're trying to achieve. As I say in the book, what works for a sales team might be comically inadequate for a team that's dealing with press issues and crisis management. So you've really got to adapt this, but the key is being intentional and importantly, critically, not leaving it to individuals. This is one of the other findings we uncovered in the book is all these productivity hacks

• 19:58Speaker 01

  that we've been reading about for years, things like back your email, put your phone in the other room, turn off notifications. That can work for the individual, but it slows down the team because one person's deep work is another person's bottleneck. So you've got to tackle these on the team level. Because if you leave it to the individual, it becomes a focus free for all, where everyone's got their own individual schedules, they're not sharing it with the team, and the team slows down.

• 20:25Ryan Hawk?

  One of the real life examples I have is really bad. We had this rule, which was, I love the rule, no internal meetings on Thursdays. Okay. This was the rule set by the president of the company. No internal meetings on Thursday. You can meet with your customers. In fact, you should be meeting with them, right? No internal meetings on Thursday. And I was brand new. I come in, I'm in a leadership role, and I'm thinking, this is great. I love this. I'm excited. Let's go crush it on Thursdays. No internal meetings, we're not going to slow you down. And it was, I think, maybe two or three weeks later, I get an internal meeting request from an SVP who was above me. And I, I was like, oh, I'm in a weird spot. I go, well, I thought we don't do internal meetings on Thursday. And he goes, Well, this is an exception.

• 21:10Ryan Hawk?

  And then another SVP had an exception and then another person had an exception. And before you know it, the president's saying this stuff and then I'm having an internal meeting with that person who created that rule. And they create these rules, but then we're like, well, but you know, these are exceptions. And there were just hundreds of exceptions over the course of that year. And I thought, man, I have no trust in you. I don't believe in you. I don't want to follow you. You create this rule and then you yourself break it. It just, it really had a, at least for me, a very damaging effect on how I felt about the leadership within the company. And I was one of the leaders. So I think if you're going to create these rules, you got to follow them.

• 21:55Ryan Hawk?

  I mean, this seems like leadership 101, but if you're going to create things like that, you better follow through on it.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  I love that story. One of the biggest mistakes that leaders make is saying one thing and rewarding another. So you just cited one example. Another example is saying that you value work-life balance and then you promote the people who work on weekends. As you correctly point out, the damaging effect of that is that people learn to tune out what you say.

• 22:19Ryan Hawk?

  Yep.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  They just look at what you do. And you're undermining trust in a way that's very difficult to rebuild. Now, that said, I will point out that when it comes to these meeting free days, there's a reason I chose the word meeting guidelines and not rules. And it's because they should be malleable. There are going to be certain situations where you do need to work around them. But your sighting is a little bit different, which is that nobody was following it. So it's basically nonsensical. You don't want to do that. But when you develop these meeting guidelines, one of the things that I would strongly recommend is that they not come top down. You don't want to be showing up saying, hey, I just heard this great podcast with Ryan Hawk and Ron Friedman and you need to, we're going to be a lot of changes around here. That's not going to work.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  Work with your team to figure out what would be best that would enable them to get their job done more effectively and really kind of start out by saying, hey, let's have a conversation about.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  What differentiates our most successful meetings from our least successful meetings? And then through that, you can, I think, surface some general principles that would lend themselves quite effectively to meeting guidelines. And you don't need to do all of them at once. You need to have five meeting guidelines. Just start with one. Test it for a week. Come back and say, hey, was that helpful? Okay, what are we doing next? That's how super teams improve over time is through experimentation.

• 23:40Ryan Hawk?

  Speaking of experiments, this is a little bit of a departure, but it's also personal. So maybe that's why I piqued my curiosity when I was reading about it. Side hustles, side gigs, doing things. I mean, even Goldman Sachs CEO, right? Is a DJ and yet he got heavily criticized for this. So this podcast started as a side hustle, as a side gig. Now, I left corporate America at the end of 2017 to do it full time, but I was working in a real job. And the whole purpose of this was to create a leadership PhD program for myself. I'd gotten my MBA, gone back to school, and I didn't love the whole process. So is there a better way to earn a leadership PhD? Well, I thought, you know, starting a podcast in 2015 could be that. And that's ultimately what this has become.

• 24:25Ryan Hawk?

  And I did not have any intention for it to be this, but here we are. But the side hustle actually, I think, made me way better at my job because I was learning on the side about how to be a better leader. And then I could implement what I was learning. Now, I know people have different side hustles. Like being a DJ may not help you, but maybe it does help you be a better leader. I don't know. Can you talk to me about the research and what you learned and why it could be beneficial for your people to have side hustles?

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there's two ways I could take this. I'm going to start off with talking about how super teams use their time off. So there's research on how we most effectively recover after hours. Most people think that when they're not working, they're automatically recovering. That's not the case. Doing things like scrolling Instagram or binging Netflix, that can help you wind down, but it doesn't restore your energy. So what does? Well, it's mastery experiences. It's taking on challenging activities that stretch your skills and help you learn new things. Those are the types of activities that tend to really recharge you. So that can mean things like learning a new song on the piano, or playing pickleball, or just trying out a new recipe. Those are the things, if you really reflect on it, those are the things that really recharge you.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  And so in the book, I have a story of Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon. And he, on his off hours, works as a DJ. In fact, had a song in the top 100 during COVID, which is a remake of Whitney Houston's "I Want to Dance With Somebody." And he took a lot of heat for it, especially in the Wall Street Journal. People said, hey, you know, shouldn't this guy be focusing on his job? He's getting paid $35 million a year. He's leading thousands of people. And what the research shows is that actually, when leaders do something completely different and recover their energy, not only do they show up more effectively, but their team is more effective. And that's pretty striking. How could a team's performance improve as a result of what the leader did the night before?

• 26:19Speaker 01

  And it's because when a leader shows up well-rested, they're in a positive mood. And that positive mood leads people to enjoy their job more and work harder. And so that's a really important lesson for people to take away, which is if you are investing time in your own recovery, that's not selfish. That actually moves your team forward. So now you asked about moonlighting. That's a different study. And what the research shows on moonlighting is that when people moonlight, meaning that they take on a side hustle, when they do it because they are high in autonomy, meaning they feel like it's their choice, they want to be doing it, and they want to master a new skill, that lends itself to higher engagement when they show up back at the office for their regular job. Now, that doesn't mean that... Everyone needs to have a side hustle.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  All it means is if you're motivated to do it out of mastery and autonomy, it's good for your engagement. And the best leaders actually encourage their team to do those things. Now, they don't go around telling people, hey, you can take on a side hustle. That's not what our research shows. What it shows is that among super teams, people believe that their leader is supportive of their side hustles, should they want to take them on. And what that tells us more than anything is that they feel like their manager and their leaders have their back when it comes to their personal development and personal growth. They're not just supporting growth when it benefits the organization. They're doing it because they want to see the person grow. And that helps us identify what the best leaders do differently. And that is that they support growth wherever it happens.

• 27:47Ryan Hawk?

  I think it's a great interview question when you're thinking about hiring somebody is learning about what they're curious about, interested in, outside of the work. And then remembering that when you do hire them and foster that and support that and ask questions about how that's going so that you're genuinely curious about them as a person beyond, did you hit the number? Did you hit the number? Did you hit the number? You know, that type of thing. I felt when I think about my best teams that I was leading, there was a lot of it happening all over, all of us doing it together with each other. And people were into different things. And I had one guy who made beer. And then we had a game maker. And then we had someone who loved golf. And then you have someone who like loves history and in team meetings

• 28:30Ryan Hawk?

  or things like that, or one on ones where having conversations about these things that are restorative, as you would put it, that lifts them up, makes them come to the office in a good mood. We, as a team, we cared about those things about each other. Yes, we worked hard, but we also like had this care and love for one another about what you're into and celebrated the differences. And I think that brings people together too.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. And I will say it doesn't come naturally to everyone.

• 28:56Ryan Hawk?

  Huh.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Especially if you're a high achiever. I feel like if you are a high achiever, your focus is on getting things done. You're focused on moving the ball forward and all this like, how was your weekend stuff? That can feel unnatural. And that's why it's so important to look at this research. Because what it tells us is if you're trying to elevate the performance of the people around you, and by the way, this is not a skill most leaders are taught. Most of us get promoted to a leadership position because we're really effective at doing our job. That's not the same thing as managing or leading people. And so. You need to think about it a little bit differently when you're trying to bring out the best in people. Focusing on what did you do yesterday? What are you doing today? Where do you need my help on? That's going to help them be more effective in their role, but it doesn't necessarily

• 29:41Speaker 01

  help them feel like they're cared for. And unless people feel like they're cared for, you're not going to have trust. So this is another thing we look at the research is what are the three factors that predict trust in a leader? And it's three things. Competence, caring, consistency. People need to feel like you're competent, meaning like you do a good job. Caring, meaning that they feel like you care about them. And consistency, meaning that your behaviors are predictable. If any of those break down, trust breaks down. And so caring is an imperative if you're trying to get people to trust you.

• 30:13Ryan Hawk?

  So maybe I'm too into the weeds on this. To me, this is important. Okay. And I want you to respond. So I'll surface like a thesis. I think how was your weekend is a lame question. Why? Because it's not specific. The more specific, when you're praising somebody, the more specific when you're asking a question, the better it is. So let's say one of my guys, John, has two boys. This is a real person. And I know one of his boys is really into golf. That's Ben. And Colin, his other son, is really into soccer. So instead of saying, how was your weekend to John? I'm going to ask, and I know that he loves watching his son play golf and he loves watching his son play soccer. Instead of saying, hey, John, how was your weekend?

• 30:58Ryan Hawk?

  I'm going to say to him, hey, John, Ben have a soccer game this weekend? How'd it go? And you play golf with Colin this weekend? That shows that I'm thinking about John and I'm specific about him and his boys. I know their name. I know what they're into because I care about him as a person. How was your weekend is lame. That shows you didn't spend one second thinking about me. You can ask everybody how their weekend is. But when you get specific and you go a level deeper, that's when they go, oh, he's actually thinking about me. He remembers. I had a boss who always said, he'd asked me about Miranda. Now, it's not hard to remember my wife's name, but it's so bizarre that. I can't think of another manager that I worked for that would just ask me how my wife is

• 31:41Ryan Hawk?

  doing by her name. And I remember it's Scott Schlesinger, that's the guy. Like, I know Scott listens, his son Reed listens too. And I just will never forget that Scott would ask me how she's doing using her name. And I think that's what good leaders should strive to do is go a level deeper, be specific in your praise, be specific with your curiosity. That's how you show people that you actually care for them.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  I love that tip. It's fantastic. It's actionable. It's memorable. And I'll just add, you know, I mentioned that it's not natural for every leader. I have a friend who literally created a spreadsheet for this very purpose.

• 32:17Ryan Hawk?

  Yes.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  People in his life, in his team, and the details around them. So he can do exactly what you just said. And so the point is, is that if it doesn't come naturally to you, don't just ignore it. There are very simple ways of getting around it. And I think that your point is so effective because what it highlights is that you're not just interested in the things that the person can do for you, you're invested in them as a person. There's a friend of mine wrote a book called How to Feel Loved, Harry Rees. And one of the things that their research shows is that in order for people to feel loved, and we would just adapt this to cared for, right, in the context of work, they need to be appreciated, not just for what they do, but for who they are. And if you can appreciate people for who they are,

• 33:01Speaker 01

  they will feel like you really respect and appreciate them.

• 33:04Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, I mean, specificity and care and going the extra step, I think, is the name of the game here. So you also write about toxic teammates. And one of the examples that I just watched the CNN special, so this was top of mind, but was Chevy Chase. Can you share more about this in general, as well as the specific story of Chevy Chase?

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. So what we did in our research is we looked at what are the best teammates that people have ever had have in common? And what are the worst teammates that people have ever had have in common? And so we asked people to think about the best teammate they've ever had, and we asked them to describe that person. And then through statistical methodologies, we were able to pull out the central characteristics of the best teammates and the worst teammates.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  I use the story of Chevy Chase and compare it and contrast him with Tina Fey as unfortunately for Chevy, he's the toxic teammate in this equation. And I say that because I have a great deal of respect and love for Chevy Chase, one of my favorite actors growing up.

• 34:01Ryan Hawk?

  Same.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  And so he disappears around when I get to high school. I have no idea why. It was not until I did this research that I figured out why that happened. And it was because he basically turned off every single person he's ever worked with. I think in the case of Chevy, it's because he tries to be funny in a way that sometimes goes off the rails and can be interpreted as very aggressive.

• 34:23Ryan Hawk?

  Well, the CNN documentary, you see how brutal he is to the interviewer? I mean, it's like, oh, I don't know. I felt for her as I heard her asking questions. Man, why are you being so cruel to her? She's trying to put together this documentary about you and he just hammers her. I don't know. I didn't, I thought, I guess something wrong with him? I mean, it was bizarre.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  I felt the same way. I also appreciated that documentary. I didn't get to see it.

• 34:50Ryan Hawk?

  I loved it, by the way. I still loved it. But I felt there were moments where I felt bad. It's not that hard just to be decent to somebody. You don't have to even be pleasant, but just be decent. You don't have to crush them for basically no reason. I don't know. So anyway, sorry.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I tell a story about what he was like in Saturday Night Live. And basically, he comes out of nowhere. He's hired as a writer. He is very funny in the writers' room, so they decide to put him on air. And within like a few weeks of the show going on air, he's the star.

• 35:18Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  He creates Weekend Update. He takes on the persona of Gerald Ford. He single-handedly almost takes down this president, making him look like a buffoon. And then along the way, he starts getting all of this attention. He gets hired to do all these side gigs. He hangs out with very well-known celebrities and pretty soon he's alienating his team. He's criticizing their work. He's telling them they don't deserve to be on camera with him. And inevitably, he gets banned from Saturday Night Live, at least for a period. What it goes to show is how a bad team, there are just so many different ways that a bad teammate can drag a team down. So in our research, we looked at what are the characteristics of the worst teammates and the best teammates? So I'll give you some of the- Some of the findings. So the top three characteristics of a toxic teammate at

• 36:03Speaker 01

  number one is unreliable. This is the teammate who fails to follow through. And then two and three are bad attitude and arrogant. And both of those, we've all had teammates like that. Chevy Chase, unfortunately for him, is kind of like the classic example of a bad teammate because he was unreliable. He quits the show after one year and he's got a terrible attitude and he's very arrogant. So what are the characteristics of the best teammates? Number one, knowledgeable. This is the teammate whose expertise the team can go to and rely on. And number two is dependable. It's the person who does what they say they're gonna do. And number three is good communicator. This is the teammate who shares information and keeps everyone in the loop. And what I want you to notice when I talk about the characteristics

• 36:47Speaker 01

  of the best teammates, it's knowledgeable, dependable, and good communicator. You know what's not on there? Funny, good listener, like caring. Those are all nice to haves, but they don't move the team forward. And the characteristics of the best teammates, when people think about them, they're the people who wasn't just a nice person to be around, they're the person who made them better.

• 37:08Ryan Hawk?

  Okay, so Tom Brady, when he went to the Tampa Bay Bucks, one of the things that you heard about him was that he literally lifted the entire organization up. The lunchroom workers got better. The assistant equipment manager got better. Literally, everybody raised their level of performance because this guy had such high standards, was very demanding of himself, was very demanding of others, and everyone felt it. And so you'd say, well, that's a good teammate. They won a Super Bowl. They lifted the level of performance. He was very hard on people at times. So knowledgeable, yes. Dependable, yes. Good communicator, probably. But arrogant, maybe?

• 37:51Ryan Hawk?

  I think he was very reliable. So what do you think when you hear this? Because sports is different, right? Sports teams are different. You're trying to win Super Bowls in football, right? What do you think when you hear the story of Tom Brady? Specifically, how he lifted up an entire organization when he went from New England to Tampa?

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Well, it reminds me of a lot of what we see in super teams of how they make each other better. So when we say someone makes you better, that word better can take many forms. And one of the ways that they make each other better that is consistent with what you've just described to me about Tom Brady is that the best teammates make excellence the norm.

• 38:25Ryan Hawk?

  Yes.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  So when you're surrounded by people who do good work, there's a natural urge to reciprocate and to do your part. And we see that in the data. On super teams, 94% say their teammates motivate them to do their best work. And then the other thing they do is they don't just inspire more effort. They also foster more accountability. So in our research, we asked a very simple question. We said, when things go wrong on your team, who do you feel worse about letting down? Do you feel worse about letting down your manager or your teammates? And on super teams, it wasn't even close. 82% said, I feel worse about letting down my teammates. When you know that your teammates are counting on you, you work a lot harder. And the last thing is, and again, consistent with Brady, is that on super teams,

• 39:11Speaker 01

  being around great teammates elevates your confidence. Just knowing your team has your back gives you the courage to take on bigger challenges and take on more intelligent risks. And at a certain point in your career, taking intelligent risks is the difference between stagnation and improvement. And so unless you're taking those intelligent risks, and it's because you feel like your team has your back, your manager supports you, you're not going to grow. And if you're not growing, you're going to be disengaged over time.

• 39:39Ryan Hawk?

  I also have enjoyed, I love studying. I don't know if I call it art, but the creation of things, of building worlds. I went and spent some time with Brian Koppelman in, in New York and toured and hung out in his writer's room when he was running the TV show Billions. And so maybe think of that time I spent there when you write about Jesse Armstrong and the succession writer's room and this idea of how he built this room and how it became a super team. I mean, the show was incredible. Can you tell me more about what you learned with the research shows from Jesse Armstrong and the succession writer's room?

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this was news to me. Maybe this might be obvious to other people, but there's no writing going on in the writer's room. They call it a writer's room, but they get together, they basically talk about what the season's gonna look like. They figure out what they want the ending of a season to be. And then they just throw out ideas about what different episodes can be about. And then they go off on their own and they work individually on their individual episodes, different writers. Then they come back and then they all read them and they critique them. So a couple of lessons there. One is the best teams are not constantly together all the time. I think a lot of times organizations say they want collaboration, they want more collaboration. What they end up getting instead is constant togetherness.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  And the best collaborations don't work that way. They cycle between individual work and collective group activities that sharpen the ideas and make them better. And so a classic example of this in the business world is let's all do a brainstorm. Let's all do a brainstorm. Let's all get together and come up with ideas. And what you actually find when you look at the research is if you want better ideas, higher quantity ideas, higher quality ideas, you're far better off having people brainstorm individually and then bring those ideas to the conference room. It's called brain writing. And so that's one of the lessons from succession is you don't want constant togetherness. That's not real collaboration. The best collaborators, they protect focus time because unless you have focus time, you're not gonna have great collaboration.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  The other lesson is they are very candid with their feedback to their teammates and they go to one another for feedback. This is one of the key differences amongst. Super teams and how they continuously get better is they are higher in something that psychologists call feedback seeking. They're constantly going to one another and asking their teammates for input. They're saying, hey, what do you think of this? And then they're using the feedback to improve the work before it ever gets to the manager or to the client. And so the sheer amount of feedback is vastly higher in super teams. And it's one of the ways in which they're continuously improving over time.

• 42:20Ryan Hawk?

  One of my teammates named Garen Stokes, I love him. And one of the reasons I love him is he has this ethos of see it, say it. Now, he's a, he's been a football coach for a long time now, you know, does leadership stuff with us. And I think everyone appreciates a highly competent person who has a see it, say it mentality, meaning if you see something awesome, says it, you know, compliment, great job, very specific. Again, that's a big word for me. So that's specificity. Also, if you see somebody not doing it the right way, or it's not up to the standard that we've set, which is very high and very demanding, you say it. And so I thought of Garen when I was thinking

• 43:02Ryan Hawk?

  of this part in the book about succession and this idea of see it, say it. And I also like, I believe it was like painting in red. Is that what they said? The difference between like these lazy scenes versus raw emotional truth? Like, what was that about?

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, painting in red is about fleshing out the scene and making it using specificity to use your word, really. It's almost the theme of our conversation. Using specificity to make the scene real. So it's not like there's a classic scene that I cite in the book about, for those who've watched the show, there's a very heartbreaking scene at the end of the season two between two characters and they're basically breaking up. And so in a very kind of like boring style of TV show, what one character might have said was, hey, we need to talk. But here, the line is very different. And the line is something along the lines of, sometimes I wonder if the sad I'd get

• 43:54Speaker 01

  from being with you would be less than the sad I'd get being without you. And so it's a very specific way of thinking about it. And I think a lot of people can relate to that. So that's, that's what they do in terms of painting a red. And so they are constantly at each other's throats about like, hey, that's not a very succession way of doing it. A succession way of doing it would be like this. Now, I want to point out to your point about see it, say it. I'm not sure that that would work for everyone. And the reason I say that, I have this research also on Watson and Crick, about how they were just like so blunt with each other, like, that's a terrible idea. And that wouldn't work in corporate America.

• 44:33Ryan Hawk?

  Well, I don't know if you're gonna say it like that. I mean, but you could still tell the truth, just you're not trying to be cruel. Like Chevy Chase in the documentary, he could have phrased that. Sorry, go ahead.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  No, no, I appreciate you. Look, I want you to push back. This is good. That's how we get better. The point I'm making here with Watson and Crick is if a person is low on confidence or self-esteem, even the most benign criticism is destructive. And so you need to gauge your feedback to where the person is. And if the person is, again, someone who's not confident, you would be surprised at how effective just a nice word of encouragement really is, especially when someone's down. We've all had this, like, even if you're a high performer, someone's really ambitious, really successful, you know, sometimes when you're in the weeds at something and you're,

• 45:27Speaker 01

  you know, midway through the journey, it's easy to get discouraged. And so having someone say, hey, you're really making a lot of progress here. It could be eye opening for them. Uh, you know, I talk in the book about what does the science show about how the best people deliver feedback? And in fact, there's research showing that 97%, this is a pretty striking statistic, 97% of feedback is not effective at lifting performance. And in fact, over a third of feedback actively worsens performance. And so what are the 3% doing differently? Well, it's a few things. One is you want to focus on one thing at a time. You don't want to overload people with a lot of feedback. Yeah, you should start doing this and that. And I also noticed this, just focus on one thing because it makes it manageable.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  The other thing is they don't focus on the past, they focus on the future. So I wouldn't say, Ryan, the way you've asked those questions, you know, I really feel you could have changed X, Y, and Z. What I might say is, Ryan, hey, the next time we do an interview, how about we try this? Now, how I've just delivered feedback to you is I didn't critique what you did and it prevents you from being defensive. Instead, I've opened up the idea of doing something completely different and I've made it a conversation.

• 46:38Ryan Hawk?

  But can you stop me for a sec?

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, please.

• 46:41Ryan Hawk?

  I would want to know specifically what I did that wasn't that good, though. If you're coaching me, and I feel like as we build a relationship, hopefully you would know that. So my background's in athletics and I was coached, every single rep was on film and my coach critiqued every single repetition and I grew to love it, even if it stung. But that's how you get better. So only focusing on the future, if it was for me, that wouldn't work as well. And so I think this just shows from a leadership perspective, you got to know the person you're coaching where some people, you give them feedback, hey, maybe it will, they can't handle it, or it'll sting too much and it'll make them get worse. Whereas there are other people, they want to know the specific thing,

• 47:25Ryan Hawk?

  even if it's a single word, or it's the fact that I said the word like too many times within that question, which I know is an issue for me when I listen back to my shows. I want to hear those specific pieces of feedback so that I can improve. And I would venture to guess, there are others in the world who do too. So how does that work with what you're talking about of the most effective way to give feedback? I know I only, I cut you off at two, but I'm curious.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  No, no. I love that you said that and I'm the same as you. I want to know what I did wrong. And you know who else likes to know what they did wrong? Top performers. Top performers want to know what wasn't great so that they can really focus on it.

• 48:06Ryan Hawk?

  Yep.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  And that's, has to do with the fact that they are very confident in their abilities. When you're confident in your abilities, you want to know what you did wrong so you can correct the next time. Most people are not confident in their abilities. You and I are surrounded by top performers all the time. Look at you, you're interviewing great authors. You get to be around people who are at the top of their field. You coach people who raise their hand and say, hey, I want to get, I'm good, but I want to get better. That's not most people. Most of us, if we're leaders, we're leading people who are on the spectrum in terms of like how high or low their confidence is. So overall, if you're trying to get someone to improve and they're the average person focusing on the future will work a lot better than telling them what they did wrong.

• 48:48Ryan Hawk?

  Got you. The next level of that, though, I think some of the things I was going to hit on is having the emotional intelligence to understand the makeup of that person. I remember one of my teammates, in fact, who was wildly talented, insanely talented. He was very fast. He was awesome. But he shut down when the coaches hammered him. This shutdown. And that was the coach's style. And a lot of us, we were fine, or we even got better. But this one particular player, and I thought, my coach could have been a better coach if he had had the emotional intelligence to understand, we have this superstar. Not, don't baby him,

• 49:30Ryan Hawk?

  don't be soft, you don't have to do that. But understand that he's a bit different. And when you do that to him like you do it to us, it does not work and it does not make our team better. It doesn't help us be more effective. And as a coach, that is your job. And so I've always felt that way. At the time, I was too young to fully grasp that. I thought like, man, you're killing him. But he doesn't seem to respond well like the rest of the team. Maybe we should try a different route. So I think there is an element of this where you just got to know your people, right? You got to know that they're different and there's an emotional intelligence element that you don't necessarily treat everybody exactly the same.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Exactly right. And if you look at football coaches, the better ones, they will give criticism or feedback to their quarterback very differently than they will to their lineman. Part of it has to do with the different tasks involved where there is so much more decision making and calmness under pressure that's required of the quarterback as opposed to the lineman who's making. Obviously, important decisions as well, but aggression is more important in that position than it is for the quarterback.

• 50:28Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, it's a great point. One more before we go comedy. I love comedy, so it's cool to read about the Comedy Cellar. Can you tell me the, the, the story of Dave Chappelle or Seinfeld, Chris Rock, the Comedy Cellar?

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. So if you haven't been to New York City and visited the Comedy Cellar, it's definitely worth a trip. This is kind of the Mecca of comedy. It's in the Village. It's not particularly expensive, but it is very difficult to get in. So you've got to reserve your tickets upfront. You've got to stand in line and you never know who's going to show up. They have a lineup of particular comedians, but then almost invariably, there'll be a surprise guest. And sometimes that surprise guest can be Jerry Seinfeld, other times, Dave Chappelle, Amy Schumer. Sometimes they all show up on the same night and you get to see that for like the $25 that you paid to get in. Why do all these comedians show up at the Comedy Cellar? A big part of it has to do with the table at the next door restaurant called the Lemon Tree Cafe. They have their comedian table there and it's where they all show up and critique one another and give

• 51:25Speaker 01

  each other feedback on their comedy. And it's how they get better. And so Mike Birbiglia, whose podcast I listen to, often he talks about how it's one of his favorite places in the world to be. And it's because he knows he's going to be around friends and they're going to help him get better. And then highlights how the best teammates don't just do their job. You know, a lot of times we think about the best teammates, so always someone keeps, gets their head down, gets the job done. Actually, no, it's the kind of person who cares enough to tell you how you can improve and helps make you better every single day. And when you create a position where people are achieving those three strengths that we talked about, which is you get to, people get to do their best work, people get to feel like their teammates are making them better and they get to improve every day. That's the kind of job that no one ever wants to leave.

• 52:10Ryan Hawk?

  Mm hmm. Actually, one more question. We started personal, we're going to end personal. Let's fast forward. It's one year from today. You are surrounded by the people that you love. You all are popping bottles, man. Right? I don't know if you drink champagne or not, but for the, go with me. You're popping bottles, you're celebrating like crazy. What are you guys celebrating?

• 52:30Speaker 01

  I'm a listener to this show, so I knew this was coming. But I will say, for me personally, I'm not a huge fan of celebrating my own personal achievements, because I like to stay present, next play mentality. But I am a big fan of celebrating the people around me, particularly my kids. And so my daughter, right now, she's 19. She's looking to get into a finance internship. And this is something that is quite difficult when you're a college student. You don't have any work experience, try to break into one of these big firms. I'm kind of taking the backseat here because I want her to feel like this is something she earned on her own. So she feels like she really deserves it. And so she's not there yet, she's working at it. I know she's going to get there and I can't wait to celebrate with her.

• 53:11Ryan Hawk?

  It's so cool to hear you say that because I love to hear, we were talking about all this work and academia and research and teams and all of your thing. And then your heart opens up talking about your daughter. It really brings this thing home and I'm a big fan, Ron, of your work. Comes at a great time. I've been studying great teams. And when this came across my desk, I thought, oh my goodness, I can't wait to talk to Ron. I love it if you'd be down to do this again soon. I normally don't ask this here when we're still on the show, but I think there's so much more to get to about teams. And I find you super fascinating because you have this great combination of doing the work. You've been in the work, you've done the thing. And you have all of the academic, the research. So it's the practical application, the stories,

• 53:54Ryan Hawk?

  as well as all of the science, which then makes it real. And I think that's a lethal combo that is rare. So, super appreciative of you, man. This is really good. Super teams, the science and secrets of high performing teams. We just scratched the surface on this book. There's so much more to get to that I think I highly recommend people reading it because it's so well written, it's fun and very helpful. So Ron, thanks so much, man. I know we're going to continue our dialogue as we both progress.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  Thanks, Ryan. I'm a big fan of yours too. It was great to be here.

• 54:28Ryan Hawk?

  It is the end of the Podcast Club. Thank you for being a member of the End of the Podcast Club. If you are, send me a note, [email protected]. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Dr. Ron Friedman. A few takeaways from my notes. The best and worst teammates, what do they do? Well, the best are knowledgeable, dependable, they're great communicators. The worst are unreliable. They got a bad attitude and they are arrogant. And I love this quote from Ron, "The best teammates make excellence the norm." I think that was the Tom Brady effect in Tampa Bay, literally made all the people around him better,

• 55:13Ryan Hawk?

  led them to a Super Bowl. And then, how do you show your teammates love? Well, you actually get to know them. You care about them. Be specific. Specificity is a huge word for me. Do not ask, "How was your weekend?" Instead, ask something more specific about them, their life, their loved ones. Then do an audit for yourself. Does your team know how much you care for them? How are you showing that? I think those are good questions to ask. And then, the third one, this is the one that all leaders in corporate America tell me that I have no idea what I'm talking about when I bring it up with them. And that is, audit

• 55:56Ryan Hawk?

  your reoccurring meetings. For each one, ask, "Does this meeting need to happen on a recurring basis, or can it be an email? Or can it just be a one-off conversation? Are decisions being made? If not, consider deleting it." Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, "Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Dr. Ron Friedman." I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that, and you also go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and you subscribe to the show. Rate it, hopefully five stars. Write a thoughtful review by doing "Oh, thank you." All of that, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis.

• 56:41Ryan Hawk?

  And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.