Inspired Action For Imperfect Humans – S2EP6: “The Great Turn Around”
“The Great Turn Around” Brief Summary of Show:
In this episode learn to take inspired action as we ask the question “How can I turn my team around in quick order no matter what my position on the team is?” Hosts Kyle and Christopher tell a story about “The Great Turn Around” during the Winter of 2008, and their time at a popular airline during one of the worst winters in Canadian history. Real stories, real research and 5 key strategies for ALL team members to turn their team around and to get back on track.
Calls to Action:
Tell us your “inspired stories” stories by visiting www.InspiredActionPodcast.ca
Christopher Lawrence LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/career-life-coach-christopher-lawrence/
Kyle Kalloo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-kalloo/
Change My Life Coaching & Strategic Leader LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/6446498/admin/
Change My Life Coaching: https://changemylifecoaching.ca
Strategic Leader: https://strategicleader.ca
Resources:
https://www.everythingdisc.com/home.aspx
“The Great Turn Around” Transcript:
When you got hired, I’ll never forget the date. December eight of 2008. And that was the beginning of the end of our relationship.
[Announcer] Is the thought of being imperfect keeping you from taking action? Welcome to Inspired Action for Imperfect Humans. Each week, we give you real life stories and thought-provoking research that inspires your soul to live a more fulfilled life through your own actions. From the heart of Calgary, Canada, here are your hosts award winning coaches, Christopher Lawrence and Kyle Kalloo.
Hello, hello, people of the world. Welcome to Inspired Action for Imperfect Humans. I like potatoes, even if I don’t eat them.
So you talk about me getting to stories and keeping us on time but then you start off with all these shenanigans. So what are we talking about today?
I did just lecture you on not wasting time in these podcasts, like you usually do. You know what we’re gonna do today? We are calling this “The Great Turn Around of 2008.” So I’m not talking about the economic downturn of 2008.
Well, I know what I remember when you’re talking about 2008.
Me too, December, 2008 was one of the worst winters that Canada ever had. It was a crazy winter across the entire country. Like, there was a point where I think there was snow like, it was snowing excessively in every major city. And I remember this so well, we were still engaged at the time. I had just left WestJet a couple months before and you were still working there and you had a new position. You got hired, I’ll never forget the date. December eight of 2008. And that was the beginning of the end of our relationship. Because Kyle started wearing, he got into a new leadership position and started wearing a Blackberry as a fashion accessory. And then he got married to that Blackberry and I gave him a choice. He could choose the Blackberry or me and he chose the Blackberry, and he still wears it as a fashion accessory today.
I do not, I do not wear Blackberry.
Does anybody even have a Blackberry, are they done now? I don’t know about these things, are they? I think this is really about doing turnarounds in teams. I think Kyle, I want you to share your story and I think a lot of people can relate to this as an employee and as a leader, and there’s gonna be some inspired action. People are gonna want their notepads for this. Do people still use pen and paper?
Besides you?
Oh, I love a list.
I think they do. ‘Cause some people do say, if there’s something about writing things down and I agree with that, writing, typing, as long as you get it down, I think is important but let’s, sorry to digress there, let’s get back to December of 2008. You know, the story that Christopher is kinda prompting too, is that accepted a new position and it was with an airline I was with, and at that time, to be honest, every province had snow and this is in the command center which is you’re responsible for crew and plane and all that stuff, knowing where people are supposed to be.
So crew scheduling, right? So it’s like, you gotta know where your crews.
Day of operations.
And you had just accepted as, I think it was a senior manager position or something and basically the team was in a little bit of a mess.
At the time, as the manager of crew scheduling was really more around making sure you’re leading teams who are dealing with some very stressful situation. Like, if the crew and the scheduling and the last minute all the stuff that happens behind the curtain.
Like, if a flight gets delayed or grounded or…
How does it impact everyone, their duty time. Lots of things can really kind of go wrong. So picture this, two weeks on the job. and let me just back this up a little bit, a lot of the leaders, I also coach as well. We always talk about your first 90 to a hundred days and in politics, you hear that where the president or the prime minister says, Hey, in my first hundred days what do I wanna get done, what are the things we want to do? It really sets you up. So in the leadership side, it’s really about assessing. In that time, you get 90 to 100 days to see the lay of the land, know your team, know what you’re responsible for really make sense. And here’s the head fake, although you know, on day one, day two, day five, what some changes you may have to make, it doesn’t make sense strategically to do those changes yet because the team knows you’re new. Like, how do you feel if someone joins your team on day one they’re like, stop doing this, stop doing that. Even though they may have some information it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t land well. So if you’re a leader who wants to go on a team and start those changes right away, I’m gonna tell you to be a little bit more strategic in your leadership and you need to really kinda assess. So that was Christopher, my plan. My plan was to go in, get to lay the land, it’s a technical role, lots of moving pieces and I wanna be able to do that, two weeks later, the worst snowstorm, like you mentioned in Canadian history is happening at every airport at the same time. These things happen at an airport and you could always say, Hey, weather’s bad at west, let’s move everything out east. Weather’s bad out east, let’s move everything out west. But when you have the entire country, pretty much gonna be on lockdown, it’s a problem. New team, didn’t know a lotta the lay of the land, so I had to make some decisions very quickly.
I remember that actually, you came home one day and you said that one of your crew schedulers had actually lost an entire crew. So like folks, when this happens, you have to find hotel rooms for your crew. Like, this is part of the role. You have to find hotel rooms for your crew ’cause they can’t fly, they’re gonna max out their duty time so they now need what’s called minimum crew rest. So they have to now go rest. I remember that there was just so much going on that one of your crews schedulers actually lost a crew and you had to pull her aside and be like, I’ll use a different name, but Jennifer, calm down.
Who use that name either?
Take a breath, just slow your mind. We’re gonna figure this out.
‘Cause it felt personal, think about it, a lot of us who do our jobs and responsible for certain thing, it is personal. And if you know your role is to be something and something happens, you’re gonna get emotional about it, and you’re gonna get your mind starts wandering to things. So of course, it made sense.
Well, it totally does. And, and your team, it was in a bit of a place before you started like, it wasn’t functioning very well.
Which is why I think I was attracted to that role or why I think another leader sought me out.
You are truly attracted to chaos, which is why everybody now knows that you were engaged to me. Everybody thinks you rescued me but what they don’t understand is I saved your life. So yeah, so this is interesting, I remember at that time like, you turned that team around in three weeks like, it was probably one of the most impressive things that I ever had a line of sight to, from a leader, in my history up to that point. Like, you turned this team around in three weeks.
Yeah. I think when you look back at it, you see it. But in that moment, Christopher, it’s really was recall, command and control leadership. You just had to know where the players are, how to move those, how to start thinking strategically.
It was crisis.
And the tactics that goes with it. Thinking strategically is only half of it. It’s what do you do now to actually execute that plan? So we had to do a few things, I’d love to share a couple of those if that’s okay.
I’m really curious, Kyle ’cause I think this really important ’cause these are things that both leaders and employees need to keep an eye on. These are the watch out fors. I’m curious, ’cause this is like, some of this could have been prevented, like, yes it still would have been a hard time but had the pre-work been done and no insult to the previous manager, ’cause I know who she is and she’s a lovely person but she admitted to you that it’s like it was time for me.
It was a lot.
It was time for me to move into something else. And I still have a tremendous amount of respect for her for what she did in that organization. But what were some of the key problems, like, what were the watch out for? So you walked in and like, what would the team have said that they were noticing? What would you have said, like, what were the problems or the watch out fors?
I think it’s just how the team is working together. And I didn’t see a lot of together, I saw a lot of I’m in my own lane, let me do my thing, let me not lose a crew, if I get a call, I’d deal with it myself and task saturation. When you could look at someone you could see them going and going, and going. And sometimes this team in particular, felt that people outside of them thought they’re doing nothing. If anything, they were very busy may not have been productive, but very busy. So task saturation would definitely be something you notice right away.
Yeah. I agree, and I think lots of times leaders get into positions, and then they forget where they came from.
I call that the leadership amnesia. ‘Cause when they weren’t a leader they’re going to say, Oh, if I ever become leader, I’m not gonna do that, I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do that. And then they become a leader, and then they forget all about those things they saw that they wanted to do better, they want to do different. And here’s thing I’m gonna say, It’s not entirely their fault for forgetting, only because the operational, these other type of information that they didn’t have access to on the front line, they’re now exposed to and they’re trying to juggle those different pieces. How do I actually take the vision that my senior leader has and put actions around it, and then also, make sure the front lines taken care of That’s what’s happening to them, so then they just default to what they saw previous leadership did which may be a lot of barking, maybe a lot of low patience, not really working on team but they were just more focused on deliverables. I just know people are not delivering, so I’m gonna treat them a certain way to get them deliver.
Yeah. So actually Kyle, I wanted to go do some research on some stats ’cause you know me, I love this kind of stuff. And I think it will be really helpful for people to feel empowered and validated, to hear these stats both leaders and team players, and employees. And you’re gonna love these ’cause they actually come from DiSC Wiley and the five behaviors of cohesive team. And I know that you are an authorized partner in all of their tools and that you help teams and you do still to this day turn teams around for a living. And sometimes it takes three weeks, most of the time it takes a little bit longer but most teams are into crisis like that team was, so I’ve got a few stats here that I just thought were totally interesting. So 84% of coworkers, includes leaders, bosses, colleagues, peers, subordinate, employees, people that work for you. So 84% of coworkers said, when their colleagues admit their mistakes, they trust them more.
Absolutely, like think about that. If someone said, listen, I F’d up, I really messed up on that thing. Like how do we feel?
Well, this is the thing, because I think you came in and I remember one of the first tactics you did, and we’re gonna talk about this in the minute. But you actually shadowed these people, like, you actually went and sat with them for 10 days.
There’s a show about this Christopher, it’s called undercover boss.
Well, this is a thing, but you, you actually did that. Not as an undercover boss, you actually just went and sat with them on the phones and to her calls. And they said to you, I remember this clear as day, they said, you don’t have to do this and you said, but yes I do. If I’m going to lead you, and you are going to trust me, I need to do this. and you made mistakes, and admitted those mistakes during that time.
Absolutely.
Did you know that 71% of coworkers said, they thought their workplace would be more effective if people were more frank with their opinions.
Why people don’t engage in that type of conversation? I think it’s because they’re trying to avoid a conflict, but if you knew what the person next to you or on your team really felt about it and felt like they can speak without feeling that it’s gonna be punitive or you’re gonna make fun of them, or whatever. But if they could actually say, then you would either know how to respond to them or say, you know what, we never thought of that way.
You know, it’s interesting because having worked, ’cause I work mostly, I do work with leaders a little bit. I work mostly with employee basis, I’m a little bit of an employee advocate and…
A little bit.
Okay, find me a soapbox, I’ll sat on it. But one of the things that I can say is that if I’m stereotyping Canadians in a workplace, Canadians are so passive aggressive in the workplace, we’re really afraid of what I call, peer honesty. And actually, I think we’re even afraid of honesty with compassion or honesty with empathy. As Canadians, what we value is I don’t want to hurt your feelings, so I’m gonna say nothing, but I’m gonna be talk about it behind your back, or I’m gonna do passive aggressive things and you should know. I’ve coached over 2000 people in an one-on-one setting, I’ve coached over 10,000 people in group settings. And so have you, Kyle, like, I know that you’re in the thousands with these things as well. This is the thing that we see over and over again is this lack of cohesiveness because people actually aren’t having honest conversations but I think people also mistake ’cause we’re really unpracticed out at in our corporate culture. People mistake honesty and fact-based honesty with opinion. I’m just being honest, I don’t like what you’re wearing. I’m just being honest, that was a stupid decision. Those are opinions, that is not honesty. So we get it wrong all the time, we probably need to do a podcast on taking inspired action.
I totally agree.
Around communication, sorry. Inspired action around communication.
If I could step back a little bit about hurting other people’s feelings, here’s the thing, that’s actually quite arrogant of you to think that, what you’re gonna say is gonna hurt other people’s feelings. I’m entitled to my feelings, you can say Hi to me and it could hurt my feelings but I decided that. I’m not saying words don’t have power, I’m not saying, you don’t have to be mindful of your words. But if you really saying, I don’t wanna be honest with this guy, that’s gonna embetter him and make him better in the organization or as a person ’cause I wanna spare his feelings. The head fake is, you wanna spare your own because you may not like what’s at the other end of that which it could be a rebuttal, it could be a response, it could be feedback coming back.
The way that I look at this Kyle, is that people are, the phrase I hear over and over, and over again is I don’t wanna rock the boat. And do you know my challenges with that, Kyle? Instead of rocking the boat, they’re walking around ruminating, gossiping, struggling, basically stuffing it down with silence. So instead of rocking the boat a little bit they’re sinking their own ship. And by sinking your own ship, you’re not part of the fleet anymore. So you’re taking down the whole organization or the whole team if you say nothing, like it’s garbage. It’s okay if you rock the boat but do so with facts and intelligence and through non-punitive conversation, it’s okay if the boat rocks a little bit. Girl, sometimes if you don’t rock the boat, you’re sinking your own ship. That’s a good meme, I gotta put that on my social. I’m gonna take a note right now, I got my pen and paper. I’m gonna make a list.
That triggered a memory for me around, the expression that says, one bad apple spoils the bunch. You know what I mean? And I remember saying that feeling quite confident early in my leadership career and something happened, where I was working at the time and I went home, and I said that to my mom, like, yeah, well you now have to do this ’cause one bad apple spoiled the entire bunch. And then she said to me, well, what are the other 11 doing? How did the other 11 stood there and let that one bad apple spoil that bunch? And that’s where you’re just like, oh, why do we do that? And when you don’t speak up, when you don’t say something that you know to be different ’cause you don’t wanna rock the boat or you don’t wanna, really you guys all have a responsibility too to say, Hey, I believe in this. And this is not right, because all the 11 is doing they wouldn’t do that. That one bad apple would be so uncomfortable, turning bad. And should be discomfort. They should have discomfort in that ’cause it doesn’t make sense.
You’re you’re totally right. Do you know what the phrase that people say to get out of it? They say, “not my job” and they throw their hands up. Oh, that’s fucking convenient. Don’t ever say that, it’s everybody’s job to keep this team moving forward including holding your leadership accountable, holding your peers accountable, not gossiping but actually dealing with the issue. If you don’t know how to do this don’t talk to your friend and commiserate, talk to somebody who can guide you through how to have a difficult conversation. And here’s the deal, if you’re not gonna have the difficult conversation, then let it go. Don’t ruminate. Don’t talk to anybody else. But if you’re ruminating and you’re talking to somebody else and you’re talking to everybody but who you need to talk to, you have not effectively let it go and you’re damaging your own brain, and your own psychology. And you’re damaging your team and that’s arrogant. Not saying something, is arrogant.
And that’s why that stat came up.
I love a soapbox, however, we need to get out. What are the five majorly effective teams, what are the five majorly effective things, I’m curious that you did in that role, that every single person whether it be a team player or a leader, what can they do to turn their teams around? Whether that team, maybe it’s even a family situation, but certainly in the workplace, what do they need to do? What did you do that these people could mimic and grow? I’ll try and shut up.
I think the first thing for me was shadow the team. So I did that for about 10 days to really kind of shadow what was happening and it’s not always just to understand what they were going through to be understood before it could be understood in a situation like that. It’s also to appreciate what they’re experiencing ’cause a lot of times some people get that mixed up that says, well, if you understand what I’m going through then… Sometimes I may not like, I don’t know what it’s like to be a female. I just cannot understand it. I can appreciate certain struggles and ’cause a struggle is a struggle period. If you said it’s a struggle, it’s a struggle. I can relate to it, I can appreciate it. I don’t necessarily have to have a full grasp for that understanding. But I think when you’re into a role in your team, you need to either try to understand or appreciate the role that they’re doing and the things they’re going through. And that’s what we mentioned early about undercover boss. They’re in it, they saw it, they could see it. They’re like, whoa. It’s interesting when they go through it how the change happens like that, where they’ve been talking about it for years and nothing happened.
So first thing is you have to understand the other person’s role or situation. You have to appreciate the other person’s role or situation. That’s number one, what’s number two? You have to be able to clarify for everyone on the team, what is the number one priority? We get that there’s many things happening in an organization, operation, and you’re responsible for many things like, these guys they’re were responsible for things they shouldn’t have even been doing but they weren’t clear with what is the number one thing which is, know where the crews are, know where they are ’cause I don’t know where the crews are. How can we get them back on planes, how can we take care of their hotels, how can we take care of their foods, how we can take care of all of those things? So the number one thing is, everyone on the team needs to know what is the number one thing you should be doing or responsible for.
So if you’re a leader, it’s your responsibility to determine that and communicate it. And if you’re an employee and you don’t know, don’t walk around saying, well, my leader, doesn’t do this. Go ask what’s our number one priority in this department right now, you need to know that you need to accept it, you need to get on the ship and row in the same direction. What’s number three, Kyle.
Number three is about, look at the job description, look at what they’re actually supposed to be responsible for. A lot of times leaders go in and they start firing people, they start moving things around without actually assessing. Did anyone communicate this with them? Did you get into a job that you spend more time in that line that says, other duties assigned? I’ve seen that many times where people doing more of the other duties assigned than the job they were hired to do. When you can revamp that and make sure that is clear. And that’s a whole process, so anyone who wants support on that, you definitely wanna reach out to me but you wanna make sure that is clear for you as the leader and for them ’cause oftentimes the leaders trying to hold them accountable to things that they didn’t know they’re supposed to do.
You and I both do this. I do it when I coach employees, you do this when you coach leaders, whenever there’s a discussion around what somebody’s job is or what the expectation is, you and I always coach, go back to your job description make sure it’s up-to-date and then revamp it and say, this is what I understand I’m doing or this is my expectation of what you’re doing. Let’s have that conversation because you cannot hold people accountable to things that are not clearly understood. Don’t assume that they should know. If you say, well, they should know it’s in their job description, revisit it. When was the last time somebody actually shared their job description with you as a leader or vice versa, you as a leader, you’ve got to revisit it with them, and regularly, performance reviews are never effective. That’ll be a whole other podcast but don’t have time for another soapbox here. But this is the thing, like folks go back to the job description. Actually, I remembered that you looked at their job descriptions, you revamped them. You looked at what they did, what they needed to be doing and you actually created a training program in like a week and a half, and rolled it out to the entire team in a week and a half because you guys were in an urgent situation, you reset the bar. And it was because it was a whole team thing. We’re not about group coaching when it’s about an individual or two but in this case, like, it was more than 90% of the team needed this, what’s number four, Kyle?
Yeah. I had some phenomenal folks who kinda worked through on that. Number four is about, know what success is. Like, you have to know what success looks like. I often use the term, what does Rome look like? Because if people don’t know the clear goal or vision, how are they gonna aim to it? How are they gonna say, okay, this is where it is. Every employee wants meaningful work, we get that. No one wants to be in a relationship without knowing where it’s going. No one wants to be in a job where they don’t know where it’s going. And that’s what it is, make sure they know success is this. If it’s customer service, is it a number, is it a deliverable, make sure they know what success, so that way when they’re there, they’ll know they’re there, instead of the, I don’t know, I think I’m doing a good job, I think we’re doing it right. And the only time they figure it out is when the leader says, Hi, Susie bell.. Yeah, this is a problem. What’s number five, Kyle? Find ways to catch people doing it right. Leaders are so good at holding people accountable when they go outside that line or they don’t deliver on something that wasn’t clear for them to deliver on. People are amazing at doing things well. And unfortunately, for a lot of leaders, we get stuck with dealing with the squeaky wheel and it makes sense ’cause you want it to stop. You want it to be great but these other amazing people who do a good job they have no idea. If you are looking for reason for people who are messing up, you’ll find it. And if you’re also looking for a reason why people are doing a good job, you will find that too.
And this goes for the employee too. Like, I think sometimes employees miss the opportunity to tell their boss that they’re doing a good job on a certain thing, or like, Hey, how you communicated to me was effective. Employees forget to ask, what does success look like in my role? This is a two-way street, we are human beings. Leaders are not gods. They wake up in the morning trying to make their living just like everybody else. They make a lot of mistakes just like employees do, it’s a two-way street. So Kyle, what is our question for our viewers? So what is the imperfect inspired action that we want them to take this week?
Yeah, I would say ask yourself, what is the imperfect inspired action you can do to create a cohesive team? That is really a question. What can you do to ensure that you can create a cohesive team, as a leader, as well as an employee.
Folks, we wanna hear from you in our show notes, you’re gonna see a way that you can contact us on our landing page. We wanna get some of your emails rolling in. We might share some of these in future episodes. Thanks very much, we’ll chat with you next week.
[Announcer] It’s our goal to build a global community of inspired action takers and we can only do that with your help. So if you love inspired action, please leave a review on your favorite podcasting app and share us on your socials, you’ve heard from us, now, we wanna hear from you. Go to inspiredactionpodcast.ca and tell us what is the inspired action you took this week. Next week on inspired action for imperfect humans.
It’s that loyalty, I would say, is almost never extended two ways anymore in a workplace.
