Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 1: This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is going to be a slightly longer one part
Speaker 1: of the series where I interview fascinating people about how
Speaker 1: they take their days from great to awesome and any
Speaker 1: advice they have for the rest of us. So today
Speaker 1: I am delighted to welcome Ron Friedmant to Before Breakfast.
Speaker 1: Ron is the author of the brand new book Super Teams.
Speaker 1: So Ron, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, Laura.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to have you here. Why don't you tell
Speaker 1: our listeners a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I started off as a professor's teaching psychology
Speaker 2: at colleges and universities, and then I went off into
Speaker 2: the corporate world and my job was to be upholster.
Speaker 2: My role was to figure out what it is that
Speaker 2: people believe and then advise organizations using psychological principles. And
Speaker 2: what I discovered being the corporate world was that there
Speaker 2: was a massive divide between the latest science and the
Speaker 2: modern workplace. And it was everything from the way that
Speaker 2: companies hire to the way that managers motivate, to the
Speaker 2: basic cloud of a modern office just appeared blind to
Speaker 2: so many great insights about how we can get people
Speaker 2: to be more motivated and engaged and productive. So I
Speaker 2: turned my attention to writing my first book, and that
Speaker 2: was the Best Place to Work. And in it, I
Speaker 2: turned over a thousand academic studies into plain English, so
Speaker 2: that regardless if you're someone who's running an organization or
Speaker 2: just starting out, you had the best research on creating
Speaker 2: a great workplace. And in my new book, Super Teams,
Speaker 2: I talk about how to create the best possible team.
Speaker 1: Awesome, Well, teams are good. And yet this is the
Speaker 1: question for you, Ron, what makes a team good? Because
Speaker 1: I know in your book you do a lot of
Speaker 1: comparisons between the best teams and everyone else to find
Speaker 1: out what it is that the best teams do differently.
Speaker 1: So how did you determine that a team was a
Speaker 1: good team?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: What are the metrics there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we ran surveys where we pulled thousands of
Speaker 2: workers across a wide range of industries and we asked
Speaker 2: them two key quess about their teams. The first question
Speaker 2: was how effective is your team at achieving its goals?
Speaker 2: And the second question is compared to other teams in
Speaker 2: your industry, how would you rate your team's performance? And
Speaker 2: then we took the teams with a perfect score, a
Speaker 2: very tiny group, about eight percent. We call them super teams,
Speaker 2: and we look to see what are the super teams
Speaker 2: doing differently compared to the average team.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you found there were all sorts of different
Speaker 1: things that they did. A lot of people think that
Speaker 1: work is about teamwork is about collaboration, and it obviously is.
Speaker 1: But one of the first things you talk about in
Speaker 1: the book is that you found that super teams actually
Speaker 1: prioritize individual focused time. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that a lot of times organizations say
Speaker 2: they want collaboration, but what they get instead is constant communication,
Speaker 2: and that's not the same thing as collaboration. If you
Speaker 2: look at the most successful collaborators, what they tend to
Speaker 2: do is they tend to cycle between deep work and
Speaker 2: then collaborative work to fine tune those ideas and just
Speaker 2: to take a step back. So, what are the super
Speaker 2: teams actually doing differently? The first key strength that we
Speaker 2: found and we found three of them. The first key
Speaker 2: strength is that they do a better job of getting
Speaker 2: more done by better managing their time. Energy and attention.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure that's an idea that is hugely appealing
Speaker 2: both to you and too listeners of the show, because
Speaker 2: you're so good at identifying these great productivity tips. That's
Speaker 2: what they're doing at the team level. I think at
Speaker 2: most organizations, people are left to scavenge for focused time alone.
Speaker 2: And what we found is that, in fact, a lot
Speaker 2: of the productivity tips that people use to create opportunities
Speaker 2: for deep work end up slowing down the team because
Speaker 2: one person's deep work is another person's bottleneck. And so
Speaker 2: if everyone is individually incorporating these productivity tips, like they're
Speaker 2: turning off their email, or they're batching their email, or
Speaker 2: they're turning off notifications, that tends to slow the team down.
Speaker 2: The best teams are collaborative in their approach to focus.
Speaker 2: They're doing things like setting aside dedicated focus blocks for
Speaker 2: ninety minutes where everyone can focus together without having to
Speaker 2: respond to emails. Or they're doing things like meeting free
Speaker 2: days where people have the opportunity to just really get
Speaker 2: things done without having to constantly be interrupted. And so
Speaker 2: the best teams are taking a team approach to solving
Speaker 2: this focus problem.
Speaker 1: I love how you put it that people are scavenging
Speaker 1: for time, because yes, a lot of the advice people
Speaker 1: are giving to claw back this focus time from the
Speaker 1: constant communication is about stopping the back and forth. But
Speaker 1: we want to make sure that we have an opportunity
Speaker 1: for both. And the problem is, you know, often, like
Speaker 1: the whole forty hours a week is consumed in the
Speaker 1: back and forth. So talk about this, how would you
Speaker 1: run a schedule like as a team, like, how would
Speaker 1: you talk about doing this so that everyone could have
Speaker 1: that focus time? I mean you said sort of ground rules,
Speaker 1: like what do you do?
Speaker 2: One of my favorite tips on the book is something
Speaker 2: I call meeting guidelines, and meeting guidelines are a simple
Speaker 2: fix to unproductive meetings. So here's what meeting guidelines mean.
Speaker 2: It means getting clear with your team on what deserves
Speaker 2: a meeting and what doesn't. A lot of organizations just
Speaker 2: simply allow anyone to call a meeting for any purpose,
Speaker 2: and unfortunately, many people use meetings as a crutch. It
Speaker 2: prevents them from having to make a decision and it
Speaker 2: gives them license to procrastinate because after all, they're waiting
Speaker 2: for other people's input. So when you set meeting guidelines,
Speaker 2: what happens is all those opportunities for unnecessary meetings evaporate.
Speaker 2: So within my team, we have a simple rule, no decision,
Speaker 2: no meeting unless there's a decision to be made. We're
Speaker 2: not going to pull people away from doing their work.
Speaker 2: If you have a question, pick up the phone. If
Speaker 2: you have an update that's an email or a screen capture.
Speaker 2: Another example of a meeting guideline in super teams is
Speaker 2: from the company Percolate in New York City. They have
Speaker 2: a meeting guideline that says no spectators. If you're not
Speaker 2: contributing to the meeting, you don't need to be there.
Speaker 2: It's not a criticism, it's respect for your time. And
Speaker 2: so what happens is when you have these meeting guidelines,
Speaker 2: you can literally save people ten hours a week. And
Speaker 2: one thing I didn't mention that I think until now,
Speaker 2: is that most employees end up spending eighteen hours a
Speaker 2: week in meetings and then another eleven hours a week
Speaker 2: on email. That leaves about a day to do a
Speaker 2: week's worth of work. That's the reality many of us
Speaker 2: live in. And what happens when you have a week
Speaker 2: to do a single you have a single day to
Speaker 2: cram a week's worth of work, you look for ways
Speaker 2: to create more time and a lot of For a
Speaker 2: lot of workers, that means coming in late or working
Speaker 2: on coming in earlier, or staying late, or working on weekends.
Speaker 2: And that approach conserva you in the short term, but
Speaker 2: if you keep working like that, invariably are going to
Speaker 2: burn out.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about the other sorts of collaboration that
Speaker 1: people are trying to claw their time back from when
Speaker 1: when we don't have a healthy work environment. That's things
Speaker 1: like slack and like the frequent long emails like you
Speaker 1: mentioned you have, you know, meeting guidelines. I'm curious about,
Speaker 1: you know, things like slack and email, how people preserve
Speaker 1: time for focus and yet also make sure that people
Speaker 1: are responsive.
Speaker 2: I think the key is getting clear with your team
Speaker 2: on when we're going to be monitoring our message and
Speaker 2: when we're all going to log off. And I think
Speaker 2: this assumption that we all need to be available for
Speaker 2: each other all day long is not just wrongheaded, but counterproductive.
Speaker 2: And so if we as a group can agree that
Speaker 2: between let's say nine to eleven every morning, we're going
Speaker 2: to focus on't getting our work done, but between eight
Speaker 2: and nine in the morning, and then eleven to twelve
Speaker 2: in the morning, we're going to check our messages. That's
Speaker 2: a perfectly reasonable response. Now, of course, there are going
Speaker 2: to be vary variations depending on what industry you're in,
Speaker 2: so an approach that can work for a creative team
Speaker 2: might not work for a for a PR team. But
Speaker 2: the point is to be deliberate and intentional about how
Speaker 2: you're carving out time instead of just assuming that focuses
Speaker 2: something individuals need to find time for.
Speaker 1: Is there a way to spend less time on email?
Speaker 1: I'm curious about that one in particular.
Speaker 2: I think there is, but I think that what it
Speaker 2: ultimately comes down to is a carving out time for
Speaker 2: on email hours. But beyond that, one of the things
Speaker 2: we find that super teams do more often is that
Speaker 2: they write out standard operating procedures that detail how a
Speaker 2: project is supposed to be done instead of relying on
Speaker 2: people to contact their teammates with constant questions. The more
Speaker 2: specific you can get about how things are done the
Speaker 2: right way, the less communication you need to have. And
Speaker 2: so that's another way of freeing people up from the
Speaker 2: constant communication that unfortunately sinks too many of our days.
Speaker 1: Absolutely well We're going to take a quick ad break
Speaker 1: and then I'll be back with more from Ron Friedman. Well,
Speaker 1: I am back talking with Ron Friedman, who is the
Speaker 1: author of the brand new book super Teams. So Ron,
Speaker 1: I was fascinated to see that teams could super teams
Speaker 1: could be remote or hybrid too. I think there's a
Speaker 1: story out there that you know, the real teams, the
Speaker 1: real productive teams are all in the same place, that
Speaker 1: that's what real collaboration looks like. And you found that
Speaker 1: it was really location agnostic.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. So we often hear about CEOs who
Speaker 2: call everyone back into the office with the assumption that
Speaker 2: the team will be more effective and closer knit if
Speaker 2: they're all in the same location, And in fact, there's
Speaker 2: research showing that there's actually conflicting research on this. Some
Speaker 2: research says we're working from home. Other research says we're
Speaker 2: more effective working at the office because you were better
Speaker 2: at establishing trust and have more collaboration. So in our study,
Speaker 2: we looked at something completely different. We looked at where
Speaker 2: are super teams more likely to occur? And what we
Speaker 2: found is it doesn't make a difference. They're just as
Speaker 2: likely to happen working remotely as they are hybrid and
Speaker 2: in office. And that's because where a team works isn't
Speaker 2: nearly as important as how the team works. And I
Speaker 2: got to tell you, I get an inside look at
Speaker 2: the way a lot of organizations operate and the number
Speaker 2: of smart, ambitious professionals who lose hours of their day
Speaker 2: commuting just so that they can get to the office,
Speaker 2: fire up their laptop and attend the same zoom meeting
Speaker 2: they could have included themselves in from home is heartbreaking.
Speaker 2: And making the most of our our time together in
Speaker 2: the same location requires intention and planning. It's one thing
Speaker 2: to require everyone into the office another to say, look,
Speaker 2: we're going to leave it up to you to figure
Speaker 2: out where your most effective, but on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 2: we're going to have strategic conversations. So get your pre
Speaker 2: reads in on Friday so that everyone can show up
Speaker 2: ready to contribute. The latter is taking advantage of what
Speaker 2: togetherness has to offer while empowering people to be productive
Speaker 2: in the way that they work best.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that remote or hybrid teams do need
Speaker 1: to pay attention to, specially to make sure that they
Speaker 1: are maintaining that that close knit sense.
Speaker 2: I think there are opportunities for any team to work
Speaker 2: more effectively, and that applies to remote teams. I think
Speaker 2: remote teams have to have some clear rules about when
Speaker 2: video calls, for example, are useful and when they or not.
Speaker 2: One of the things I talk about in the book
Speaker 2: is that we've defaulted to video calls ever since CO
Speaker 2: and THEY and during COVID. It's served a purpose. It
Speaker 2: allowed us to feel like we were on the same
Speaker 2: page and seeing each other's faces and we weren't alone.
Speaker 2: But there are some important costs to video calls that
Speaker 2: we often often ignore.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 2: So in real life it's completely unnatural to stare someone
Speaker 2: in the face for an hour straight on video calls.
Speaker 2: Looking away feels rude, and so we overcompensate and it's exhausting.
Speaker 2: And so there's research showing that if you are on
Speaker 2: video calls all day, you're going to have less energy
Speaker 2: and make worse decisions than if you had those same
Speaker 2: conversations on the phone. Now, to be clear, there are
Speaker 2: that opportunities for doing video calls when when they're actually
Speaker 2: quite valuable. So for example, if you're just establishing a
Speaker 2: relationship or there's a disagreement in those cases, getting on
Speaker 2: video calls makes complete sense. But because you're you can
Speaker 2: see the other person's face and you're less likely to
Speaker 2: and misinterpret what they mean. But unless that's the case,
Speaker 2: if you already have a relationship and there's no disagreement
Speaker 2: in place, there's no reason to use video calls. Stick
Speaker 2: to phone calls. You'll have a lot more energy as
Speaker 2: a result.
Speaker 1: Well, let's get to that place of trust, because one
Speaker 1: of the things that super teams are built on is
Speaker 1: having a lot of trust in your colleagues. Now, obviously,
Speaker 1: trust is something we can build up over the long
Speaker 1: haul of working together and knowing that the other person
Speaker 1: is there for you. But you talk about some ways
Speaker 1: that you can kind of build that trust more quickly,
Speaker 1: like when a team is starting up. What are some
Speaker 1: ways that we can quickly build trust with a colleague.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the things that is I think really
Speaker 2: fascinating is that trust is built on reciprocity, and so
Speaker 2: the more trust you give, the more likely it is
Speaker 2: to be reciprocated. Now, let's take a step back for
Speaker 2: a second, because one of the things I do in
Speaker 2: the book is I talk about what are the three
Speaker 2: pillars of trust? What is trust actually founded on and trust,
Speaker 2: by the way, just to define it for people, because
Speaker 2: it tends to get fuzzy for a lot of folks
Speaker 2: in terms of like the idea of trust gets thrown
Speaker 2: around in leadership circles a lot. But what is the
Speaker 2: actual definition of trust? Well, trust is being willing to
Speaker 2: take on risk while still expecting a positive outcome. And
Speaker 2: so if I trust you to do a good job
Speaker 2: with this podcast, making myself vulnerable while still expecting the
Speaker 2: podcast to sound great at the end. And in the
Speaker 2: book I talk about what are the three pillars of
Speaker 2: trust in the workplace? Because it does vary depending on
Speaker 2: your role, So the things that define trust in a
Speaker 2: working relationship aren't necessarily the same elements that define trust
Speaker 2: with a doctor or with a neighbor. So at work
Speaker 2: it comes down to three things. One is competence, how
Speaker 2: well you do your job. The second thing is care.
Speaker 2: The second pillar is caring how much do you care
Speaker 2: about other people? And the third pillar is consistency how
Speaker 2: predictable are your behaviors? And you need to have all three.
Speaker 2: Any time one of these pillars is missing, trust tends
Speaker 2: to degrade. And so, for example, you can have someone
Speaker 2: who's really caring and really consistent. But if they do
Speaker 2: a bad job, that trust is going to break down.
Speaker 2: And so what it comes down to, I think is
Speaker 2: identifying for any relationship where you're trying to build trust,
Speaker 2: figure out where the opportunity these are for elevating any
Speaker 2: of the pillars that may be weak.
Speaker 1: And how can we turn a colleague into a friend?
Speaker 1: So you know, obviously, when you like the members on
Speaker 1: your team, this has all sorts of positive benefits, and
Speaker 1: friendship is something that has developed. What can we do
Speaker 1: to turn a colleague into a friend.
Speaker 2: In the book, I talk about the psychology of friendships,
Speaker 2: and there are some recent findings in the science of
Speaker 2: friendships that I think are really interesting. One of them
Speaker 2: is to assume your colleagues like you. Most of us
Speaker 2: dramatically underestimate how well liked we are, and that leads
Speaker 2: us to pull away and act in ways that make
Speaker 2: us less likable. So, for example, if you're joining a
Speaker 2: party and you assume people don't like you, you may
Speaker 2: be slightly withdrawn or less likely to smile. But being
Speaker 2: more extroverted and smiling more actually gets people to like
Speaker 2: you more, and so it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 2: The second tip I discussed in the book is being
Speaker 2: really curious. People love to talk about themselves. The more
Speaker 2: questions you asked, the more likable you tend to be
Speaker 2: be viewed as. So I give the tip of think
Speaker 2: less like a ted speaker and more like a podcast host.
Speaker 2: Don't worry so much about impressing others, try to be impressed.
Speaker 2: And the final thing, and this is taken from the
Speaker 2: story of Scalia and Ginsburg, who famously diametrically opposed Supreme
Speaker 2: Court judges, who ended up becoming best friends. How do
Speaker 2: they become such great friends? It wasn't because they did
Speaker 2: trust falls or icebreakers. It was because they found ways
Speaker 2: to make each other better. And that's a real key,
Speaker 2: is find ways to make other people succeed in their role.
Speaker 2: In the case of Scalia, he was a grammatical savant
Speaker 2: and he would improve Ginsburg's writing, and Ginsburg, in turn,
Speaker 2: was really good at helping Scalia modulate the tone, the
Speaker 2: emotional tone of his decisions not to alienate people. And
Speaker 2: so in both cases they made each other better.
Speaker 1: Love that all right, Well, We're going to take one
Speaker 1: more quick ad break and I'll be back with more
Speaker 1: from Ron Friedman. Well, I am back talking with Ronen Friedman,
Speaker 1: who is the author of the brand new book Super Teams.
Speaker 1: So just a little bit more about the teams before
Speaker 1: we get to your schedule. Ron, this is sort of
Speaker 1: between you know, individual schedules and teams. You found that
Speaker 1: members of super teams were more likely to exercise. Now
Speaker 1: that seems a little bit unrelated, so maybe you could
Speaker 1: explore that for us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, A lot of times when we think about exercise,
Speaker 2: we focus on our health. But one of the more
Speaker 2: surprising findings in the last few decades is that exercise
Speaker 2: also makes us smarter, and it's for some very concrete reasons.
Speaker 2: When we exercise, we get more blood flowing to our brain,
Speaker 2: which helps us sustain our attention and makes us less distractable.
Speaker 2: It activates the memory reasons of the brain, so we
Speaker 2: are able to soak up information more quickly and retrieve
Speaker 2: it when we need it. And critically, exercise puts you
Speaker 2: in a good mood, and when you're in a good mood,
Speaker 2: you do everything better at work, including connecting with colleagues
Speaker 2: and winning over new clients. And so exercise isn't some
Speaker 2: something that makes us look good or feel good. It
Speaker 2: actively makes us better at our jobs. And on super teams,
Speaker 2: we find that they exercise more often. Members of super
Speaker 2: teams tend to exercise for eighty four more minutes per week.
Speaker 1: That's a lot. That's almost as many minutes as we
Speaker 1: need to be exercising. Not quite, but it's getting there.
Speaker 1: But is this something that people were I mean, this
Speaker 1: was kind of more like people do before or after
Speaker 1: work though, right, this doesn't necessarily like you know, they
Speaker 1: go and go as a team to the gym over lunch.
Speaker 2: That's right. In fact, one of the one of the
Speaker 2: more fascinating findings in the research on super teams is
Speaker 2: we looked at what are the amenities they have at
Speaker 2: the office, and we look to see Arthur particular amenities
Speaker 2: that make a team more effective. And among those amenities
Speaker 2: that we tested were office gyms, and super teams were
Speaker 2: not any more likely to have an office gym. In fact,
Speaker 2: there were all these amenities in our study where you
Speaker 2: included everything's like ping pong tables and collaborative spaces, and
Speaker 2: the only office amenity that made a difference when it
Speaker 2: came to team performance was having a quiet space to
Speaker 2: do folks to work, and that says so much about
Speaker 2: what people really want from their workplace, and it's why
Speaker 2: so many people prefer to work from home. It's because
Speaker 2: most offices are have become an attentional war zone. And
Speaker 2: so if you're looking to lift up your team's performance,
Speaker 2: create a focus based don't worry about the ping pong tables.
Speaker 1: Yeah, less foosball more. Have people work from home twice
Speaker 1: a week, that's probably a better management there. So Ron,
Speaker 1: let's pivot to your schedule here. You know, this is
Speaker 1: a show called Before Breakfast. Do you have any sort
Speaker 1: of morning routine?
Speaker 2: I walk my dogs and I listen to podcasts like
Speaker 2: this one, and I find that Yeah, I find that
Speaker 2: it really helps focus my attention on the big ideas
Speaker 2: instead before I get lost in the minutia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is there a what does the rest of your
Speaker 1: schedule look like? So you get up, you walk your dogs,
Speaker 1: What does the work day tend to look like? From there?
Speaker 1: The workday?
Speaker 2: Well, here's a tip that I think some people might
Speaker 2: benefit from. So I actually uhould to teach productivity courses,
Speaker 2: and one of my favorite tips was to always make
Speaker 2: up your to do list the day before, but don't
Speaker 2: worry about the order and which you're going to do things,
Speaker 2: just kind of doing an information dump of all the
Speaker 2: things that you are at the top of your on
Speaker 2: the top of your mind. And once you've written that list,
Speaker 2: I find it's much easier to disconnect. But then the
Speaker 2: first thing I do after breakfast is I'll sort the
Speaker 2: list in terms of what's most important to least important.
Speaker 2: I use a question that helps orient me to what's
Speaker 2: most important to me. So, for example, over the last
Speaker 2: few months, I've been really focused on super teams, and
Speaker 2: so the question I might ask is how important is
Speaker 2: this item to helping me get this book out in
Speaker 2: front of the most number of people? And so I'll
Speaker 2: sort it that way. And that orienting question will be
Speaker 2: different for every person, but it's really valuable to identify
Speaker 2: what that question is for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and whether what you're doing that day is helping
Speaker 1: advance you towards your goals. Do you structure certain sort
Speaker 1: of works at different different times of day or anything
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the things we know from the researchers,
Speaker 2: we're better at doing creative work when we're tired, better
Speaker 2: at doing focus work when we're sharp, and so I'll
Speaker 2: often think of that. I'll keep a list of ideas
Speaker 2: to think about that I will examine before I go swimming,
Speaker 2: for example, because I find that the mind wandering that
Speaker 2: happens when I'm swimming is very conducive to having great
Speaker 2: creative ideas.
Speaker 1: Now, swimming is not an exercise form that I hear
Speaker 1: all that often from people, because the logistics are a
Speaker 1: lot harder to exercise. I mean unless you have like
Speaker 1: a very conveniently pool right outside your door or something,
Speaker 1: which maybe you do, but you how do you make
Speaker 1: that work?
Speaker 2: I appreciate your curiosity for this. Yeah, I would be
Speaker 2: the same way. I'd be asking the same kind of
Speaker 2: questions I go to I got collect gym memberships. Just
Speaker 2: the way I put it, I think there are worse
Speaker 2: things to collect in the world. I have about four
Speaker 2: or five gym memberships, and I go to one for
Speaker 2: because it has a pool. I go to a different
Speaker 2: one because it has great exercise equipment without a television.
Speaker 2: I find the televis really distracting at the end of
Speaker 2: the day when I'm tired. Another one has a great
Speaker 2: basketball court or a pickleball. Community exercise is definitely a
Speaker 2: big part of my life. And it became that way
Speaker 2: once I started seeing some of the research on exercise.
Speaker 2: And I think a big breakthrough for me was recognizing
Speaker 2: that exercise wasn't something I selfishly do for myself. It's
Speaker 2: literally part of my job. If I want to have
Speaker 2: great ideas, I need to exercise. If I want to
Speaker 2: have sustainable energy, I need to exercise. And so I
Speaker 2: think viewing it that way as an investment in my
Speaker 2: future performance has been incredibly valuable.
Speaker 1: Do you get good ideas while you're swimming laps?
Speaker 2: Definitely? And I keep a notepad it's time. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: keep I keep a water proof notepad. They sell them
Speaker 2: on Amazon, and it comes with a pencil and you
Speaker 2: drop down your ideas and just keep it right by
Speaker 2: my lane, right next to my water bottle. I love it.
Speaker 1: I love it. It's like the ideas from the shower.
Speaker 1: You get them, very hard to capture them. But if
Speaker 1: you can figure out the water proof idea, it'll be
Speaker 1: it'll be great. So ron I always ask my guests,
Speaker 1: what is something you've done recently to take a day
Speaker 1: from great to awesome?
Speaker 2: Well, this happened yesterday. So I recently got my copy
Speaker 2: of Big Time by Laura Vanderkam. I'm not sure if
Speaker 2: you're familiar with her.
Speaker 1: I've heard of her, but yes, okay, she.
Speaker 2: Does great work. And in the book, Laura, I'll just
Speaker 2: refer to her as you just for the sake of conversation.
Speaker 2: You talk about being very deliberate with thirty minutes a day,
Speaker 2: particularly at the end of the day, and just if
Speaker 2: you can take advantage of thirty good minutes at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, your entire day will be improved.
Speaker 2: And I did just that. I went for a walk
Speaker 2: with my wife. It was a very long walk. It's
Speaker 2: like that kind of the first really warm day of
Speaker 2: the year here in Rochester, New York, and it was
Speaker 2: just like so refreshing. We talked about everything, and we
Speaker 2: went kind of went down memory lane. We have an
Speaker 2: elementary school very close to our home, and my son
Speaker 2: is no longer there. He's now in middle school. So
Speaker 2: we went walking by the elementary school and just talked
Speaker 2: about all the great memories we had of him growing up.
Speaker 2: And I have you to thank for that.
Speaker 1: Oh wonderful. Well, I'm so glad you guys got this
Speaker 1: nice walk in the evening. I think a family walk
Speaker 1: is one of the best ideas out there, and I
Speaker 1: love when people do that with their golden hours. What's
Speaker 1: something you're looking forward to right now.
Speaker 2: I'm looking forward having these book launch done.
Speaker 1: I understand. I understand for sure, but it'll be fun
Speaker 1: to see it out there. So where can people find you?
Speaker 1: I understand you have some resources that might be helpful
Speaker 1: for people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've built a lot of resources to go with
Speaker 2: the book so that people can really implement the ideas.
Speaker 2: I know. It's just one of the challenges with reading
Speaker 2: a book is you have all these great ideas and
Speaker 2: you never really put them to use. And so I
Speaker 2: wanted to really make this actionable for people, even if
Speaker 2: they're not leading a team, just to incorporate some of
Speaker 2: these great strategies that we uncovered by studying super Teams.
Speaker 2: So we created a website it's Superteamsmasterclass dot com and
Speaker 2: if you go there, you'll be able to download a
Speaker 2: free masterclass as an action plan with all the best
Speaker 2: practical strategies, and it even comes with a discussion guide
Speaker 2: that you can use to share the best insights with
Speaker 2: your team. So that Superteam's Masterclass dot com.
Speaker 1: And even if you aren't leading a team. I mean,
Speaker 1: are these strategies that you can use, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: you're an individual contributor, you've got a manager. Are these
Speaker 1: things you can put into practice?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And just to give you a flavor of some
Speaker 2: of this, one of the things that I find is
Speaker 2: really effective is to talk to your team about creating
Speaker 2: an experiment. When you position an idea as an experiment,
Speaker 2: like let's say you want to try a meeting free afternoon,
Speaker 2: and it's really tough to sell that to your boss.
Speaker 2: If you go to your boss and you say, hey,
Speaker 2: how about for the rest of our lives, Tuesday afternoon,
Speaker 2: we just don't do any meetings, that might be the
Speaker 2: thing you want to say. But the strategy that will
Speaker 2: probably be way more effective is to say, Hey, I've
Speaker 2: noticed we've been doing a lot of meetings, and I
Speaker 2: wonder if we might be able to try this idea
Speaker 2: I read about in this book Super Teams of trying
Speaker 2: out Tuesday afternoon for an hour and a half, no meetings.
Speaker 2: Let's just see how it goes, and we'll see how
Speaker 2: the team feels, and if we all feel a lot
Speaker 2: more productive, maybe we can try it again. If you
Speaker 2: position as an experiment, it's way easier for people to
Speaker 2: accept and to try, because it's really hard to tell
Speaker 2: your team no, I'm not willing to try an experiment.
Speaker 2: And so that's just one new example exactly. So just
Speaker 2: this one example of one way you could apply it.
Speaker 2: And also we didn't get to talk about this, but
Speaker 2: in addition to looking at what the best teams do differently,
Speaker 2: we looked at what the mem of those teams do differently,
Speaker 2: and so we found a lot of the tips that
Speaker 2: work for individuals also work in the team level. So
Speaker 2: things like planning your week in advance, reflecting on what
Speaker 2: went well, what didn't well, time boxing, all of those
Speaker 2: strategies applied to individuals no matter what team they work on.
Speaker 1: Absolutely well. You'll have to read Super Teams to learn
Speaker 1: more about all those So Ron, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us. Thank you to everyone for listening. If
Speaker 1: you have feedback about this or any other episode, you
Speaker 1: can always reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and
Speaker 1: here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
Speaker 1: you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
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