I Spent 3 Days With My Team | HERE’S WHAT I LEARNED

So in my role in my company, leadership is a very important aspect of what we do. And part of leadership is feeling together and feeling bonded. So I did something really cool. This week we have a conference going on where we’re broadcasting our conference online. So I brought a large portion of my team into one house here in the Atlanta area. And we’re going to stay together throughout this conference.

And I’m super excited to share with you what the experience is like. And then talk to you about what I learn in terms of being a leader and in terms of leading a team. So the first thing I want to do is introduce you and show you the house. So come on in.

Okay. So you can see it’s kind of a workspace. We’re going to be doing a lot of electronic things. We have a lot of electronic stuff set up. This is the living area and here’s the kitchen. Here’s the team in here talking. So I get the pleasure of staying with these people for the next three days. And it’s going to be really, really fun. And I’m super excited about what I learned about my team and about being a leader. And I can’t wait to share it with you.

I just spent a week here in Atlanta teaching at my annual conference, which we broadcasted live. And the way we do that here in the COVID world is I bring my team into a house. We rent a big old house and we broadcast it to our following live. And it was a really amazing experience.

I made a recap video and you’re going to be able to see that, but this video, I want to talk about what I learned as a leader and staying in the house with my team. In the first lesson I think I learned is it’s really important to know your team more intimately than just their job, if you want to lead them effectively. The people in my team have different personalities.

They have different skill sets, different ways that motivate and inspire them, different things that irritate and annoy them. And when you get to know them on a personal level, you kind of earn the right to be their leader. And it’s not just enough to know what they do in their job. You have to know who’s important to them.

You have to know what matters to them. You have to know how they live their lives. And it’s wonderful to stay in a week with people. And you see one member of your team wakes up in the morning and cooked boiled eggs. And another member of my team has a girlfriend and he checks in with that girlfriend every day. And you have to be able to spend time around people to learn those things, and you earn the right to lead them.

I think another lesson that is really, really important is also being vulnerable to my team, cause just as important as it is for me to get to know them beyond their job, I think it’s also important for them to get to know me. I think leadership is a personal relationship. I don’t think it’s just like, I’m the boss I’m in charge, so I get to lead. I think there’s a personal relationship that develops that allows us to be a connected cohesive unit.

And what happens is productivity goes up and, and the work that we do becomes more special in the work that we do becomes more involved. And the positive benefits just from connecting are not countable. I mean, it is remarkable how important it gets.

And I think the last thing I’ll say is the amount of respect and appreciation goes up because I learned just how hard my team works and they learn how hard I work and how devoted we are to one another and to accomplishing the goals that we want to accomplish. And it’s, it’s phenomenal. I mean, it’s, there’s nothing like being around a team of people where you all feel respected and you all feel like your contribution to what we do is appreciated.

And I think all of that is how you run an effective team and you couldn’t do that unless you spent time around your team. And we really spent time. Like we went, we went to Adam’s house, we went out to eat, we went to the aquarium. Like we really spent time together bonding and connecting, and it only makes our team a more cohesive unit.

So when you got to study leadership and you think about how to lead, there’s all these things about what you should be doing and not doing, but please don’t forget building relationships with your team is like the top priority.

And I think that’s what matters most. So now about to fly home. And sadly I’ll be away from my team because we’re all working remotely still these days, but I’m so honored and privileged I got to spend this time with them. So I’m off. I’m going to go get on a plane and fly home and start working back in the regular world.

And the conferences ended. And my team’s going to fly back to New Zealand and stay here in Atlanta and me and my camera guy, we’re going to go back to Dallas. But I will take the relationship we built going forward and we’ll continue to build upon them. So be well.