Keith Ferrazzi and Forbes reporter Brittany Lewis discuss his new book Never Lead Alone: 10 Shifts from Leadership to Teamship on 'Forbes Talks'.
Keith Ferrazzi, a #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Never Eat Alone, Leading Without Authority, Competing in the New World of Work, and his newest book, Never Lead Alone: 10 Shifts from Leadership to Teamship. Keith is an acclaimed global executive team coach, who stands at the forefront of transformative leadership having coached the transformation of Fortune 500 corporations, the World Bank, fast growth Unicorns and even governments of entire countries. The founder of Ferrazzi Greenlight, Keith spearheads behavioral shifts in leadership and high impact teams, empowering organizations to thrive in the ever-evolving landscape of business.
Keith's research can be found in prestigious publications including Harvard Business Review, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Fast Company, and Inc. Magazine, where his columns serve as valuable insights for business leaders.
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0:00 Introduction
2:14 How To Lead With Honesty In Uncomfortable Situations
4:56 Keith Ferrazzi's Background
8:10 How The Workforce Has Changed- Post-Pandemic
14:05 TeamWork Notes For Growing Together
17:57 How 'Never Lead Alone: 10 Shifts From Leadership To Teamship' Is Important
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Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.
Keith Ferrazzi, a #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Never Eat Alone, Leading Without Authority, Competing in the New World of Work, and his newest book, Never Lead Alone: 10 Shifts from Leadership to Teamship. Keith is an acclaimed global executive team coach, who stands at the forefront of transformative leadership having coached the transformation of Fortune 500 corporations, the World Bank, fast growth Unicorns and even governments of entire countries. The founder of Ferrazzi Greenlight, Keith spearheads behavioral shifts in leadership and high impact teams, empowering organizations to thrive in the ever-evolving landscape of business.
Keith's research can be found in prestigious publications including Harvard Business Review, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Fast Company, and Inc. Magazine, where his columns serve as valuable insights for business leaders.
Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1
0:00 Introduction
2:14 How To Lead With Honesty In Uncomfortable Situations
4:56 Keith Ferrazzi's Background
8:10 How The Workforce Has Changed- Post-Pandemic
14:05 TeamWork Notes For Growing Together
17:57 How 'Never Lead Alone: 10 Shifts From Leadership To Teamship' Is Important
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
Stay Connected
Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.
Category
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now
00:07is Keith Ferrazzi, author of Never Lead Alone. Keith, thank you so much for joining me.
00:12Brittany, this is going to be a lot of fun. I've been looking forward to it.
00:15It is going to be a lot of fun because I want to talk about all about your new book, Never
00:20Lead Alone. So first, I want to extend a big congratulations. It just came out. But in
00:25the book, you lay out what you describe as a roadmap to having an extraordinary team.
00:30So first, I want to talk about the timing of this book, because in the past few years,
00:34we've really seen this paradigm shift in the workplace from COVID happening and everyone
00:39was forced to work from home to pre-COVID when everyone was in the office. And now some
00:45teams are hybrid, some teams are remote, some teams are full time. So talk to us about where
00:49we are right now and why it was important for you to write this now.
00:54Well, this book is after 20 years of research. Since 2000, I have been coaching high performing
01:01teams. And in the last 10 years, I doubled down on my research associated with teams
01:08that are in what one would call the disruptive sector, those fast growth, unicorns, etc.
01:15But interestingly enough, you mentioned virtual work. In 2010, I did a five-year research
01:21project on what are the new rules, particularly what are the new people rules in a virtual
01:27world. All of that information is in this book. And what I want to really awaken people
01:34to what's most important is that I think we've over indexed on leadership. I know that's
01:38heretical to say we're focusing so much on the role of the leader. We've forgotten what
01:44the role of the team is. We need to focus on teamship. And to that, I'll give you a
01:49quick for instance. It's one thing leaders have to give feedback. We know that that's
01:54tough to do and getting leaders to give good feedback is rare. However, we've got to get
01:59the team to give each other feedback. Leaders have to hold the team accountable. The team
02:04has to hold each other accountable. The team has to lift each other's energy up. So this
02:09is a roadmap for what should we expect from the team to do.
02:14And I loved this roadmap because it talks a lot about things that are really important
02:19in a team. You talk about that candor. You talk about making sure that everyone's voices
02:24are heard. I guess my question to you on that point is how, let's say you aren't the leader
02:29on your team. Let's say you're entry-level, mid-level. How do you make sure your voice
02:33is heard and assert your opinion without feeling like, hey, am I stepping on anyone's toes
02:38here?
02:39That's a great question. So a couple of thoughts. First of all, the way the book is structured,
02:44we believe that there are 10 critical shifts. After 24 years of research, we have seen 10
02:50critical shifts that a team needs to go through. Each of those shifts is a chapter. Each chapter
02:55has a hero story of an individual that we would admire like Terang, the CEO of Elf Beauty,
03:01et cetera. These individuals are crushing it. And then after that, there's just some
03:05very simple practices. So if you're an individual coming into a team and you want to make sure
03:12that you're actually the tipping point to change the team's culture, you can volunteer
03:17to do some things, simple practices that are recommended for the team as a whole, but to
03:22yourself. So one of my favorite practices is called stress testing. It's when something
03:26you're working on, you would like to get the team's input on, right? So you go to the team
03:32and you say, listen, I read this book and I really, I found this cool little practice
03:36called stress testing. I've got this initiative. I would love it if you all would be willing
03:40to stress test it. And by the way, I'm not asking you to take over or, or hijack this
03:46work. I'm just asking you to give me double barrel feedback. What I'm going to do is I'm
03:50going to present what I've been doing, where I think it's been successful, where I'm
03:54struggling and where I'm going next. And what I want you to do as a team is to break
03:59in the small groups of two and write down after about 10 minutes of conversation, what
04:05challenges do you have for me? What am I not seeing? What innovations would you offer?
04:10And if you have any offers of help, that'd be super. Now that's a process that of course
04:15it would be great for leaders to start instituting in teams where every member of the team is
04:20stress tested on their critical threads of work. So that what you start to do is you
04:24start to breed the team to be better at giving each other feedback, breed the team to pointing
04:29out risks, challenging each other, giving each other ideas, giving each other support,
04:34et cetera. But in this case, you brought it to the table and hopefully this is the kind
04:39of thing that contagiously could catch on because you could then show how valuable that
04:44read that that input was and other people could do the stress test process as well.
04:48But that's just one of 37 practices in this book. My hope is that people will consume
04:53them like popcorn on a movie night. Well, before we get into more of them, I want to
04:59talk about you a little bit because in the book you describe your background. You're
05:03from Pennsylvania, just like me, a blue collar family. You're from Philly though, right?
05:09Yes. Right outside of Philly, Bucks County. But so opposite sides of the state, but still
05:15Keystone say, I'm sure you're Steelers. I'm Eagles. But you go from a blue collar upbringing,
05:22you go to Yale and then you eventually go to the C-suite. So when was the moment for
05:27you where it clicked, Hey, this is how I build a successful team. This is going from leadership
05:33to team ship. What did that look like? What a super question. Thank you. Um, so I wrote
05:39a book 20 years ago called never eat alone. And that book has global success. And it's
05:48really all about how you as an individual need to build your authentic relationships
05:54to open doors, create possibility for yourself and your career, et cetera. Um, but at the
06:00core of it, it's all about how relationships work and the criticality of authenticity,
06:07the criticality of, of, of mutual support and generosity. This idea that, that, uh,
06:14as individuals, we reach out into the world, we create an environment around ourselves
06:18through being generous to others, being authentic, opening ourselves up, et cetera. Well, I started
06:24researching relationships. And then along the way, I found that the closest, most intimate
06:30relationships we have, the two or three of them, I call them co-elevating relationships,
06:36relationships that, that lift us up and that we lift each other up. Those relationships
06:40are fundamental, fundamentally defining for our success. And that became the instigation
06:46for me to realize that so few teams were that so few teams were truly at that co-elevating
06:53standard. And so in my work coaching, I really navigated very much toward high performing
06:59teams and giving them an inoculation of what I found at the time they really needed. They
07:04needed real butt kicking accountability with each other. They needed high degrees of candor,
07:09but they needed that out of care, out of, out of commitment to a mission, but commitment
07:14to each other. And little by little over the last 24 years, I have grown a methodology
07:19that is now used in the turnaround of some of the most successful, well-known corporations
07:24in the world, even governments. We're using this in governments right now to really try
07:30to get to an entirely different level of performance.
07:34As anyone who's ever been on a team knows, building a successful team is all about those
07:39relationships. And you point out in the book that it's harder to, relationship building
07:45is a little different than it was pre COVID because before you would walk to the water
07:49cooler, you would see a coworker, maybe a colleague, you're not in the same team and
07:53that's how you meet. You have a conversation, you have a shared interest, you build a relationship
07:57that way. Now it seems to be more strategic. You have to go out of your way a little bit
08:01more because of this hybrid, possibly remote setup. So talk to us about how to build a
08:06relationship now, not out of happenstance.
08:09Oh, that's fantastic. There's an entire chapter called purposeful bond building verse, not
08:15serendipitous. So you're right. Prior to the pandemic, we were bumping into each other
08:21in hallways, coffee rooms, et cetera. And during the pandemic, many CEOs felt that that
08:27was lost. And as a result, they wanted to drag people back to the office. I'm not here
08:32to argue policies of how many days in the office, et cetera. But what I can say is that
08:40many leaders decided, and this is what we've done. We have observed some of the highest
08:44performing teams. We watch their practices, we extract their practices, and then we make
08:51sure that statistically significant they work in other companies. And then when that happens,
08:56they become a high return practice. What we realized was the companies that practice things
09:00like energy check once a month, everybody on the team goes around and says, what's really
09:06right now draining your energy? And by doing that and by having a social contract that
09:13the team says, we have each other's back. When somebody is lacking energy, we're going
09:18to be of support to that person. If it's personal, because something's going on with the kids,
09:24or if it's professional because of struggling on a particular project, that energy check
09:28becomes a very important safety net. Companies and teams that practice these regular energy
09:34checks statistically have a higher relationship score than what we did prior to the pandemic.
09:41Using serendipity alone, bumping into each other accidentally in hallways. So regular
09:45purposeful energy checks is one of the practices, and that's one of the practices in one of
09:50the chapters. But as I said, there's a ton of them for you to try on.
09:54The energy checks, anything from a sweet and sour, then a professional, a personal professional
10:00check-in and to an intimacy dinner. And this really, you know, you talk about professional
10:07as well as personal check-ins. So how do you get someone to open up about their personal
10:11life? Because as a colleague, you might think someone is, you know, answering an email a
10:16little short, they're a little curt when they're talking with you, but really they have something
10:20going on at home. Maybe their mom is sick or something like that. So how do you dive
10:24deeper and get personal with people in the workplace?
10:28You know, I feel that during the pandemic, we broke through that wall pretty seriously.
10:34You know, when we would come to a meeting on a video conferencing, we would stop and
10:41we would say, just checking in, is everybody OK? And, you know, you would know that somebody's
10:46mother was struggling in assisted living or et cetera.
10:50So I think we broke through that wall.
10:51Now, I know that we've rubber banded back to old behaviors mostly, but I think we're in
10:58an era where people want to bring their authentic self, their full self into the workplace.
11:03Now, that said, I was at a session the other night where we were doing a long, slow dinner
11:08and the team, the point was when the team is together, let's use that precious time to
11:13really go deep. And we were doing one of these energy checks in a dinner format, which
11:18tends to be a little bit more vulnerable.
11:20And one of the ladies said, you know what?
11:22I just don't believe in this.
11:23I don't believe in bringing your personal life to work.
11:26And and I was like, that's fine.
11:28It's perfectly fine.
11:30If you're feeling comfortable enough that you can sit and be present in this, we totally
11:34welcome you. If you want to chime in, feel free.
11:38By the time it got to her, she was very comfortable sharing.
11:42It doesn't mean that she has to be.
11:43Everybody has their own aperture of how they want to conduct themselves, their own social
11:48comfort, their own security, insecurity, all of those wonderful things that make up us
11:53as humans. And it's perfectly fine.
11:56You let people come to the practice as they as they'd like.
12:01I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about meetings, because everyone's been in
12:06a meeting where you leave the meeting and you say, you know, that meeting could have
12:09been an email. I don't feel like we got anything done.
12:12I feel like we wasted some time here.
12:14And you want to shatter the myth of the meeting.
12:17How do you do that?
12:19Your questions are so fantastic.
12:21It's clear that you read the book, you picked out some of the critical shifts that we would
12:25start if we were coaching a team that we would start with.
12:28And this is called meeting shifting.
12:30So let's let me give you a scenario.
12:33Somebody comes into a meeting.
12:35Let's say it's a big one.
12:36Twelve people in the average meeting of twelve people, four people think that they're
12:41heard. And let's say the topic is a cost reduction effort that we have.
12:46So we get into the room, we start talking about this.
12:50Four people are fully heard.
12:51People are having the meeting after the meeting, talking behind each other's backs,
12:55DMing each other, etc.
12:57On the other hand, if we had started this meeting in an asynchronous document, let's say,
13:02you know, a Google sheet and somebody writes into it the question, what's the real
13:08problem we're trying to solve here?
13:10What is a bold solution to solve it?
13:11I'm just making up the question.
13:12Those are there's a chapter with a bunch of these really good, meaty questions we've
13:17heard. And people write that stuff down in a shared document where everybody can see.
13:22Now, you read that document before you come into the room and you've actually done an
13:27entire round of collaboration where everyone's voice is invited to be heard fully, not
13:32even even the introvert or the person that needs a little bit more contemplation time
13:37than being called on quickly in a meeting.
13:39And now you can land the plane in one meeting.
13:42You can actually get to the decision making in one meeting.
13:45So you've taken the cycle time of collaboration, which is like many meetings, and it's
13:50not even that thorough because people are back channeling and you've moved it to a
13:54transparent, healthy one type one type cycle.
13:59Now, this is the kind of thing we see all the time.
14:01And it's time to reengineer work is the real issue.
14:05And you had a case study in the book where one company actually keeps a running tab of,
14:10hey, how much does this meeting cost?
14:12Because time is money when it comes to meetings.
14:15But something that was important that I found really interesting was not staying in your
14:19lane. And this team can comment on this problem and this team can comment on the other
14:24team's problem. Talk about that cross collaboration and why that's so important.
14:28The breaking down silos has got to be one of the most important things we can do to
14:35contribute to shareholder value.
14:37Almost every corporation that I work with, unfortunately, even some of the fast growth
14:42unicorns that used to really work as small, tight groups of founders, but now are
14:47starting to create silos and org charts that they think mean something.
14:51The reality is, if you're trying to get something done, you and I were talking about
14:54this off camera earlier.
14:56If you're trying to get something done, your first question is, who's my team?
15:00And it's who you need to get the job done.
15:02Soon as you realize and this is in the early chapters of the book, we create what is
15:06your relationship action plan, who is your team to define that core team that you're
15:11working with on this project, to define a broader team that you want to be engaged on
15:15this project. And then that broader team is the group that you stress test with every
15:19month, not just your core team, not just the people on your org chart.
15:23So redefining team becomes a critical element of the success of work as we move
15:29forward and breaking down those silos that exist today will add so much value to the
15:34shareholder. And breaking down the silos of criticism in private.
15:39Instead, you're bringing your critiques to the public forum.
15:43What is your advice to people that feel like that's a struggle for them to come forward
15:48into a meeting and critique someone publicly?
15:51And how do you do that in a way that's effective and not maybe detrimental to the
15:55relationship of the team?
15:57Yeah. So there is a company called Elf Beauty and Elf Beauty has absolutely been
16:03crushing it in a highly competitive beauty market where, frankly, some of the biggest
16:08organizations in the world consider this relatively new company.
16:13Right. But it happens to be growing year over year, you know, double digits, major
16:18success. Their market cap is crushing it.
16:21Their CEO just became named as one of the top 100 business leaders in the world.
16:28This group recruits and when they do, they say to everybody, you know what, while you're
16:34here, you're going to grow further and faster than ever in any other company possible.
16:39And in exchange for that, we want you to both give and get feedback fluidly because
16:47we're not going to let each other fail.
16:48We have each other's back.
16:50Giving critique in public is not throwing each other under the bus.
16:54Giving critique in public is a commitment to not let each other fail.
16:58We love and respect everybody in this organization and we're going to make sure that
17:02everybody succeeds.
17:03So it's a shift of the social contract that ideally the leader gives.
17:08Now, the problem with that is that if you're in an organization where you haven't made
17:12that social contract commitment, it can be more difficult.
17:16And that's where you do need leadership to start breeding teamship.
17:20A leader needs to institute the stress testing process.
17:24Now, when the leader does, by the way, the leader can't hijack decision making from
17:29people. The leader can't dive in and hear that feedback and be negative or critical
17:34on somebody. We've got to make sure that all of this data is looked at, not defensively,
17:39but looked at as input, as an opportunity to level up, as I say, co-elevate.
17:47So there is some work to be done around how we think about that input and data, not as
17:52critical, but as as the juice of success and innovation.
17:57I don't want to spoil the rest of the book, obviously.
17:59It's a great read, but you lay out over 30 teamship practices.
18:04These shouldn't be one and done. And just one that I've done over a decade ago was a
18:08intimacy dinner with a team.
18:10And I'm still close with multiple of these those colleagues to this day.
18:14So how do you incorporate these types of practices in your routine, especially with a team
18:20that's been together for five years, 10 years, a really long time and is seemingly stuck
18:25in their routine, stuck in their way, stuck in their once a week meeting or what have
18:29you? Well, the book is really laid out as a workbook.
18:33The intention is you buy the book for the team and then chapter by chapter you read
18:39it. And it's so small.
18:40I mean, the book is it was intended to be as bite sized as possible.
18:45And as and then, by the way, if you buy it, you go to my website and you buy it as a
18:50team. I've developed a bunch of videos per chapter that I give out for free for any
18:57team that wants to go through this together.
18:58So the bottom line is you just go through a chapter by chapter and it tells you how to
19:03talk to the team about picking some practices that we're going to start using on a
19:08regular basis. And they're all in there.
19:10They're all simple, few paragraphs.
19:13Hopefully it's a it's a self-guided tour.
19:15And it's something you can pick up, whether it be the sweet and sour, it's one minute
19:19or two minute per person to these longer practices.
19:23But Keith, I appreciate the conversation.
19:25Where can people find your book?
19:27Everywhere and on Audible, et cetera.
19:31But KeithFarazi.com is where you would go if you want to buy it in bulk for a team so
19:36that you get the videos.
19:38Keith Farazi, thank you so much for joining me.
19:40You're welcome back anytime.
19:42I had such a good time.
19:44Thanks a lot.