WLP 323 Grow Your Company through Growing Your People
Pilar welcomes returning guest Robert Glazer to talk about helping people develop and thrive in an organisation, the subject of Robert’s latest book “Elevate Your Team: Empower Your Team To Reach Their Full Potential and Build A Business That Builds Leaders. “ He is also the host of the podcast “Elevate”.
Acceleration Partners has gone from hiding the fact that they were remote to becoming a great case study for Bob’s books. Of course being remote is no longer a competitive advantage when looking for talent and they also had their challenges during the pandemic period.
The company has grown from 170 to 300 employees. Some have thrived in this context and some haven’t. Dealing with change has always been a part of running a business, but what was different during the pandemic was that those who’d already gone through challenging times were better suited for the context, but those who were hanging onto the past struggled. For example, if you’re comfortable in a 100 person company, it might be difficult to enjoy working in a larger one.
The company has a certain set of values and ways of working that attract a certain kind of person, so the challenge is to find those people who match the culture and retain them. This was particularly important during the pandemic, when the aspects of culture were highlighted. For example, it was clear which organisations were low trust vs high trust.
Acceleration Partners still has hubs in different geographical locations as the logistics and laws around hiring people mean it’s difficult to “hire from anywhere”.
10.54mins
One of the ways of building the company is to build the team itself through spiritual capacity, intellectual capacity, physical capacity and emotional capacity.
Spiritual capacity: Helping leaders understand who they are, their core values, etc.
Intellectual capacity: All about learning, giving and receiving feedback, holistic skills.
Physical capacity: Mental and physical health (because this affects how we show up) but also things like giving people the time to be healthy.
Emotional capacity: Developing the conditions for psychological safety to be sustained eg how to have difficult conversations, like understanding why a sale was lost
How does location affect how capacity is built in a team, for example emotional capacity? Bob facilitates his people to come together physically to foster stronger connections. Again, it’s important to decide what your culture is like, and to make bold decisions around what “hybrid” means.
What does it mean to be vulnerable in a team? To share things honestly, to show up as yourself, showing mistakes and having conversations around it. If you want to know whether there is psychological safety in your team, ask the team to do something impossible or illogical to see what people say. Psychological safety is organisational trust at scale. It can help you to obtain feedback as a leader too.
Robert Glazer
21.51mins
Part of building capacity in an organisation is promoting leaders within the company.
Organisations tend to operate in different ways regarding developing talent. In some organisations people outgrow their company and leave. If you identify a group of high-performers, it’s important to find where they can fit in the organisation, and sometimes they might be better suited for a role than someone already in it.
Bob stepped out as CEO of Acceleration Partners after a long period of planning with his successor. It took some time to adjust physically and mentally to stepping away from a role he’d held for so long, and to reduce his work load.
One thing that Bob did very consciously when his uccessor took over was to make it very clear that he (successor Matt) was in charge, as people might still look to Bob for leadership. The transition was quite smooth, as both had been working together behind the scenes for two years.
“Becoming a leader means changing all your reward centres, from getting rewarded for what you do to getting rewarded for the performance of your team.”
It’s important to have promotional opportunities for individual contributors beyond management. We should also realise that some people don’t know they don’t like leading until they are in a position of management., so there should also be a way out for those people.
Bob Glazer is the host of the podcast Elevate, which has doubled in audience over the last year, once Bob cut the number of episodes he releases in half. He thinks very carefully about the guests he brings in because he wants to be excited about researching and talking to his guests. One of the moments that has mostly stayed with him was in his conversation with Derek Sivers - that notion of not holding onto past victories, but acknowledging who you are today.
If you’re looking for something to read, Bob recommends “Mistakes were Made but Not by Me” by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronsons.
Post-recording note: And you can find more book recommendations on leadership on his site, as well as his own, including Elevate Your Team, which is now out!
If you enjoyed this particular conversation, check out episode 257, where Bob talks about how to thrive in the virtual workplace.
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