[00:00] Keith Ferrazzi: When I sat in the room of Jeff Bezos’s team, that team hands down, everything was on the table. There was no meeting after the meeting. No private texting behind people’s backs. It was all on the table. You wrestled it to the conclusion that’s a high performing team. It’s called a challenge culture.

[00:23] Jim Harshaw: Welcome to another episode of Success for the Athletic Minded Man, real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business and life. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today I bring you Keith Ferrazzi. Keith Ferrazzi is the author of the number one New York time bestselling book, never Eat Alone.

[00:45] I’m sure you’ve heard of the book. You probably have at least heard of it. If not, read it and have it on your bookshelf. He’s also authored Leading Without Authority, Who’s Got Your Back, Competing in the New World of Work, and his most recent book Never Lead Alone. I’m not gonna do a whole lot of introduction about Keith because he talks about a lot of the things that he’s done over the years in the episode.

[01:05] But he’s a fellow Pittsburgher like me, fellow wrestler like me, and he’s also worked with some of the top companies in America. He talks about working with Jeff Bezos and at Nike, and so he pulls back the curtain on what it’s like to work. For those organizations and the type of work that he does with companies like that and how that directly applies to you, whether you’re in a leadership role or otherwise.

[01:30] So encourage you to give this episode not only a listen, but give it a share. Let somebody know who is a leader in your life, whether it’s a, a colleague, a coworker, uh, a friend who likes these kind of interviews, loves these kinds of books, the types of books that Keith has written. Give it a share. That’s how I’m able to go out and attract the best guests for the podcast and for upcoming episodes.

[01:55] So, all right. Thank you for giving it a share. Thank you in advance for that. Let’s get into it, my conversation with Keith Ferrazzi. Keith, welcome to the show.

[02:04] Keith Ferrazzi: I am excited about being here. You, you bring up such great old memories of Western Pennsylvania wrestling. I couldn’t wait to have this conversation.

[02:13] Jim Harshaw: Well, let’s start there. Your dad, like my dad was a blue collar, my dad was a sheet metal worker. Your dad worked in the steel mills and you know, you, you saw him outworking his peers and only to be told to slow down and take us back there. Take us back to that experience and, and how that has shaped your life from that moment moving forward.

[02:33] Keith Ferrazzi: Yeah, look, I mean, there is a direct tieback to the new book that I have coming out around high performing teams. You know, give, you, gave me a chance to reminisce. I’m gonna take it. I, you know, one of the things my dad was exceptional about was always investing in helping his son level up. I mean, it was ridiculous.

[02:50] Simple things. Like in fifth grade I started wrestling and my dad found one of my cousins and got me a personal wrestling coach. Like we had zero money, zero money. But he was always about me leveling up as a little kid. Uh, you know, I must have been. Probably again, in fifth grade, he got me typing lessons, like, who thinks about that?

[03:12] My dad is a blue collar steel worker. Never, you know, nobody in my, my family has ever seen college. And my dad’s thinking, okay, my kid’s gonna be white collar and I want to make sure he knows how to type. You know, we didn’t have computers back then. This was just typing, right? A regular typewriter.

[03:31] Jim Harshaw: So he saw a different future for you.

[03:33] Keith Ferrazzi: He just always wanted to make sure that as he envisioned the future. He always asks the question, how do you level up? And that’s always been my objective. So I’m definitely a seeker. You know, I never am stationary. I always believe I can get better. Frustrating thing for me is when I coach executive teams and they actually think that they’ve arrived, you know, they think that they’re, because they’re the executive team of a Fortune 500 company that, that they know what they’re doing.

[04:02] I gotta tell you what’s about to occur. In the world of work with AI and other things, none of us know what we’re doing. And if we don’t lean into the world with a deep sense of curiosity and a desire to level up 30% every year and get better and better, then, you know, we’ll never, we’ll only be mediocre.

[04:19] So anyway, that, that’s, that came from my father. The other thing is my old man. You know, he himself was that he was a steel worker at Kenna Metal in Pittsburgh. And back then, in the old days of manufacturing, the steel industry was very top down. It was hierarchical. It was a command and control. And my dad was just trying to hump his butt and do better as a immigrant family, Italian.

[04:44] And he kept being told to slow down you. Something you referenced in my book. He kept being told to slow down ’cause it made everybody else look bad. He was told that by his managers. Right and I, that, that broke my heart. Also re realizing that at the time the Japanese steel industry was crushing the American steel industry and they were doing it because they were adopting new ways of working, total quality management, six Sigma, Kaizen, et cetera.

[05:08] And as a result, they really crushed the American steel industry, which was at the pinnacle. Over time, we have to recognize that if we are not constantly evolving our ways of working, we’re gonna be crushed by the disruptors. Today, those disruptors are ai and we need to be leaning in on how we change fundamentally our ways of working.

[05:31] Jim Harshaw: What does that mean for the average guy listening right now? You know, they’re doing their job. They’re, they’re, you know, they, they could be doing anything, anything in the professional world. They, they may be an executive, they may be an lawyer.

[05:41] Keith Ferrazzi: Yeah. No, I totally, I don’t care if you’re a lawyer. I don’t care who you are.

[05:44] You should ask yourself the question, what would it mean for AI to be my partner in reinventing my role? Now, the natural inclination would be that if AI really does its job, it’ll edge me out. And in fact, that might be true, no question. There’s gonna be jobs like call center workers and others that are gonna disappear pretty soon, within the next three to five years.

[06:09] And what you need to be asking yourself is, are you the kind of person that have the capacity to be, to be curious? To lean in and to reinvent your role as a partner with ai. But then even to go one step further and say, if I look at the person I I get work from, and I look at the person where I hand work, to, how do I reinvent that whole workflow?

[06:31] How does AI change all of that? And if you are the kind of person that does that, here’s what I would say. The company’s gonna find a place for you because that’s the kind of leadership, whether or not you have an authority or not, that’s the kind of leadership. That we need today. We need people who are willing to be curious, lean in, ask the tough questions, work with your peers differently, crack the code, partner with AI differently.

[06:56] If you are that kind of person, you will not be the first person to lose your job. Yeah,

[07:03] Jim Harshaw: and for the listener, this goes back to a concept that you’ve heard me talk about really, if you’re a long time listener, I’ve talked about it ad nauseum. Is, is this concept of keeping your job growing, you know, advancing your career is, is gonna come down to not just waking up and doing the same thing today, because that’s what I did yesterday and doing the same thing tomorrow for no better reason than that’s what I did today.

[07:24] It’s gonna require you to, to, like Keith said, stop and ask the question, you know, well, how can I be curious? You know, let me look at the workflow in front of me and behind me. And I call this concept the productive pause. It, it’s in for listener. It’s, it’s defined as a short period of focused reflection around specific questions that leads to clarity of action and peace of mind.

[07:45] And so that’s what Keith is talking about. It requires this, this pause, asking the right questions.

[07:50] Keith Ferrazzi: You know, there’s an old joke, um, you’ve probably told your audience before. Two guys walking in the woods. Bear comes out of the woods. One guy takes off running in their, in his hiking boots, and the other one pauses.

[08:04] Takes his hiking boots off, puts on his tennis shoes, and the other guy looks back and goes, dude, you can’t outrun a bear. And he looks over his hands. I’m sorry, I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you and I, look, we are in a competitive world, there is no question, and there will be people losing their jobs.

[08:23] And those people are people who lack curiosity and lack innovation and lack reinvention. So look, I mean, you spin ahead. I wrote a book called Never Eat Alone that many people have heard of. It’s a, it was a global bestseller and it’s really all about how relationships are the door opening of opportunity for all of us.

[08:42] That book. Helped me become the youngest chief marketing officer of Deloitte ever. I mean, I was 29 years old when I was the chief marketing officer of Deloitte, youngest partner

[08:54] Jim Harshaw: and the youngest, or at least what we think is the youngest at the time, CMO of any Fortune 500 company. Yeah,

[09:00] Keith Ferrazzi: yeah. When I was over at Starwood Hotels and we helped to create the Star War hotels and resorts and look, all of that came with that same methodology, which is your willingness to be curious and step into the fray when.

[09:12] When at Deloitte, the CEO had said that he wanted to see Deloitte at the same level of McKinsey and Accenture, all of these other big highfalutin consultant firms. And, um, we were not, we were the lowest of the Big eight at the time, what was called the Big eight. And I said, well, that’s interesting that you want to do that.

[09:34] Let me go think about how we could do that. I was a kid, I was a summer intern actually. I went around and I did research about what McKinsey was doing, what Accenture was doing, et cetera. And I put a dossier together of the practices of all of the most competitive firms, and I presented it to the CEO and the CEO’s blown away.

[09:53] Nobody in the firm had taken that kind of ambition drive, uh, proactivity, but it was, that was the
[10:00] hook. For he and I to build a personal relationship that ultimately cultivated in my getting radical acceleration of my career. And that’s called, that book was called Never Eat Alone.

[10:10] Jim Harshaw: A lot of the listeners have probably heard of that book, read that book and have it on their bookshelf,

[10:13] Keith Ferrazzi: and that’s a really important book to me still is.

[10:15] We have a course that we, we offer people called, you Can Get it@connectedsuccess.com. It’s an eight week course teaching folks. How to really live a life that’s relationship focused, build your network, open up doors of opportunity, et cetera. And at the end of the, the course, um, the entire class comes out to my home in LA for graduation.

[10:38] It’s, uh, it’s an amazing community. But that started me on the path of really being a thought leader focused on high performance. And what I realized over the years is high performance is not a solo sport, it’s a team sport. One of the things probably that stopped me from being aware, aware of this early in my life was I was a wrestler.

[11:02] That’s a, that’s an individual sport. You know, one of the things I noticed up at Nike when I’ve been up there a number of times is that the group that the basketball, the guys, they, they worked differently together than the, uh, the, than the, than the track guys, and then the runners do, particularly the long distance runners.

[11:21] So, you know, what we know in sports is the team is as important as the coach. And when you are successful as a team, and this is where I started realizing that most business teams are mediocre because they’re all hub and spoke to the leader. It’s one thing for a leader to give you feedback, but what if we got the team to give each other feedback?

[11:42] It’s what happens in that locker room conversation. It what? It’s what happens in the huddle. How does the team give each other coaching? How does the team hold each other accountable? How does the team lift each other up? And that’s the new book, 20 years of Research around High Performing Teams. It’s a shift from hub and spoke leadership to 10 shifts that you as a leader or you as a teammate can adopt.

[12:06] In order to achieve a higher degree of performance and what I call co-elevation, where the team is committed to a mission, but they’re committed to pushing each other to get there.

[12:15] Jim Harshaw: Yeah. Elevating each other. Co-elevation. I’m elevating you, you’re elevating me. And, and a rising tide lifts all ships. And you’re right.

[12:22] Co-elevation

[12:23] Keith Ferrazzi: is

[12:23] Jim Harshaw: the term. It’s,

[12:23] Keith Ferrazzi: that’s exactly the right term.

[12:25] Jim Harshaw: Yeah. I mean this is, I mean, so talk you gave on this and you were saying. You know, there really wasn’t a term out there for this. Like you’ve seen this concept you’ve studied with, worked with, consulted for these, these high performing teams around the world, and there really wasn’t a term that, that described exactly what you’re, what you’re talking about.

[12:42] And that’s like for the listener, like you’re, you’re getting a peek behind the curtain. At some of the highest performing teams, what is happening at the Nikes and at at these brands and these businesses that are world class at what they do. And some of ’em you’ve heard of, some of ’em you haven’t, but they’re world class at what they do.

[12:59] And, and Keith is sharing this with us. So, so in in, in the book you cover the 10 shifts. If there were one or two that, that you would put on a billboard, Keith, what would those ones be? The most important

[13:12] Keith Ferrazzi: one, hands down, is shifting from conflict avoidance to candor. When I sat in the room of Jeff Bezos’s team, that team hands down, everything was on the table.

[13:22] There was no meeting after the meeting. No private texting behind people’s backs. It was all on the table. You wrestled it to the conclusion that’s, that’s a high performing team. It’s called a challenge culture. Now it’s sometimes not the most delicate culture, right? But what I can tell you is that it’s the highest performance culture.

[13:45] If you can’t put it all on the table, it elongates getting stuff done. There’s the politics, there’s the, the cycle time of, of change is, is much, much, much longer. So all of us needs to start to embrace this challenge culture idea. There’s practices we can use, like a lot of teams or organizations will have things called a report out where you show up and you give a report on your initiative.

[14:13] Here’s what I’ve been working on is, you know, it’s usually a 20 page deck and you’re clicking through it and et cetera. We created something that I saw in some of these highest performing teams like Amazon, that I call a stress test. So change every report out to a stress test, A stress test. Somebody knows that they’re gonna have their initiative beaten up, but not because they’re trying to throw us under the bus.

[14:37] It’s because they won’t let us fail. There’s a shared commitment to giving that person all of the insight possible, so we won’t let them fail. Now that stress test starts with his understanding that we’re gonna give Jim all of our feedback and nothing’s gonna be left on the table. Now the the point though is Jim doesn’t have to take all of our advice.

[14:58] He just has to take all of our input. There’s a big difference when you’re, when you’re hierarchical, we’re used to looking up and saying, somebody gives us feedback, we gotta do it ’cause it’s the boss. When you’re, when you’re working with a high performing team, the input is, is just that it’s input. So it relieves some of the stress and strain about it.

[15:17] So the the person gives the presentation, here’s what I’ve been working on, here’s where I’ve struggled. We always make people share where they’re struggling. Here’s where I’m going next. But then the team’s job is to write down in small groups of two where there’s a higher degree of psychological safety, here’s what I think you might be missing.

[15:35] Here’s an idea for you. Here’s where I could help. You know, there’s cultures that we write about all the time. I’m trying to turn the culture that you dream of into simple practices, and that’s what the book does. So in the chapter three around moving from conflict avoidance to candor, we introduce several practices, one of which is stress testing that you can use.

[16:00] And it’s a very simple way to execute on the promise of movement from conflict avoidance to candor.

[16:07] Jim Harshaw: And it is interesting. This is not just an opportunity for everybody on the team to criticize, put down, tell you where you’re wrong. You even said, you said, you know you. You might say, this is an idea I have for you.

[16:20] Here’s how I can help. Here’s some advice. This isn’t just, Hey, everybody, this is a chance to just, you know, humiliate and, and crush this person. It’s a chance to coate them, to love them, to serve them, to help them. And, and that’s the, the spirit of this, it is not a spirit of, and I think that’s what people maybe are afraid of with candor is like, oh, I don’t wanna hurt their feelings, or I don’t wanna put myself out there and get my feelings hurt and give everybody a chance to shoot me down.

[16:46] No, it’s, it’s a culture that sounds like that has to be in place. That allows this kind of candor and lifting up,

[16:52] Keith Ferrazzi: yeah. I use different words for culture. I talk about a social contract, like in every relationship there’s social contracts. You know, I, I could have a relationship with somebody and the social contract is, you know, we don’t push each other too hard.

[17:08] We’re we’re good buddies, you know, I know you’re a little bit of an, of a screw up, but I don’t care. We’re just fishing buddies. I’m not gonna, you know, you come and complain that. Your, your new boss is, is, is an SOB and doing X, Y, and Z. Isn’t it interesting? The last three bosses had the same problems, but you know what’s consistent there and I don’t say anything.

[17:28] ’cause we’re, we’re, we’re good buddies. That’s a social contract. There’s another social contract that two friends could have, which is shit, dude, like you are the problem. I love you and you need to realize that. You know, you will continue to turn over. You’re not gonna be able to take care of your family the way you should.

[17:47] I love you and you need to get your stuff together. Like that’s a different kind of social contract. And so what we talk about in the book is three layers of high performing teams. The challenge layer defines success. That’s that middle layer, but you can have it with love, you can have it with commitment.

[18:07] You can have it with care. You can have it because that with the relationship layer, we can build relationships. So we don’t wanna let each other fail. Right? And the top layer is how do we collaborate and meet differently? You know, meetings are the poorest form of collaboration. We show up in meetings, we start conversations, and then there’s multiple meetings after.

[18:27] If we only used Google Docs and other things in advance, get everybody’s point of view well known before you show up in the room, then you show up in the room and you can land the plane in one meeting. We’ve gotta start using tools like AI and other things better. And uh, we call that 21st century collaboration.

[18:43] Jim Harshaw: You know, as far as teaming up with people and having, you know, that that social contract, I think back to my wrestling days and for the listener, whatever sport you may have participated in, whether it was wrestling, basketball, baseball, we all had that teammate who was like, cool with like letting us, you know, go party or do the wrong thing.

[18:59] And we also had those teammates. Who were like, who called you out? And maybe you called them out and you, you had that relationship where you could challenge each other and call each other out, and like, that’s really what we’re looking for is, is those kinds of social contracts. And, and I’ll extend this beyond the corporate, you know, the, the, the, the meeting room or the boardroom for the listener.

[19:17] It’s like. Who’s that person for you as, as, as a father, as a husband in your health and fitness, in your business, in your, you know, in, in the sales calls that you have to make if you’re in sales. Right. Finding those people who you can, you know, to use your word, Keith Coate. Exactly.

[19:34] Keith Ferrazzi: And you know, I wrote a book years ago about this subject called Who’s Got Your Back?

[19:39] Jim Harshaw: That was your second book, right?

[19:40] Keith Ferrazzi: Yeah, it was my second book That was the earliest research into high performing teams. I didn’t know that that’s what it was. I wrote the book, you know, never Eat Alone. Broad Network is important. How do you build that network? Then I wrote a book, how do the Close Ties really, really define who you are and how you succeed?

[19:56] Who’s got your back? What I started realizing is how important the
[20:00] team is and how few teams are exceptional and how many are mediocre, and that’s when I started serving organizations. So we coach teams. We don’t coach executives. Like I don’t have any clients that I’m just coaching the executive. I coach teams.

[20:17] And as a part of that, sometimes there’s ones z, two Z conversations I have to have, you know, I’ll, I’ll call two individuals and, and then I’ll say, listen, we need to have a conversation. ’cause the two of you, you’re stopping progress in the team. I’ve got one team right now. I’m, I’m like locked and loaded on two individuals in that team that are holding up the team.

[20:35] But to me it’s about the team dynamics and how’s the team working and what’s the social contract among the team. You know, we’re, we’re very infrequently each other’s coaches in teams, and that is a major level up. There’s a, there’s a beauty company called Elf Beauty.

[20:51] Jim Harshaw: I know it well. I have two teenage daughters, so,

[20:54] Keith Ferrazzi: oh, there you go.

[20:55] Well, listen, crushing it in the category, growing, stealing, market share cycle times of new product development, two months versus two years. And the big guys, and they have a full teamship mindset. Teamship is all they focus on. And they’d never leave a room without sharing what they’re feeling. They lift up each other’s energy and care about each other.

[21:16] I mean, it is an extraordinary culture, extraordinary set of social contracts.

[21:21] Jim Harshaw: For those who haven’t heard, ’cause this is another term of yours, teamship versus leadership. Talk about Teamship.

[21:26] Keith Ferrazzi: Yeah. That mean, look, it is the basic idea of when you think of leadership, you usually think about somebody standing up on a podium directing, right?

[21:35] Getting the most outta the people. I want that person to step off that, and I want the team to step up and meet that person. And I want to realize all teams need to step up 30% right now. Teams sit in rooms and they’re conflict avoidant. They don’t share what they’re thinking. I’m coaching one major, major brand that we all know, and I’m doing an offsite, you know, and I’m, I’m interviewing individuals and they’re saying 50% of the stuff they’re saying to me, they would never say in the room with their peers.

[22:03] And my job is to figure out how to make it safe. To create an environment, but also the practices so that they can, part of that is this idea of say, stress testing. If I could normally stress test you, Jim, let’s say you’re a CFO. I can’t stress test you because you’re all powerful. You decide my budget, I’m not gonna push back on you.

[22:23] But if I organize a conversation and I say, what are the levers of growth for the company? We all, and that’s called a collaborative problem solving discussion. And we all come up with them and one of the levels of growth is how we budget. So we put that down and then what we say is, okay, if that’s a level of growth, let’s stress test how we’re doing.

[22:43] So Jim, you’re now asked to present where we are with finance and how we’ve been doing in finance. And simple, it’s like, here’s what I’ve been been working on, here’s where I’m struggling, here’s where I’m going. And then we all go into breakout sessions and say. Jim as CFO, here’s what we think you’re missing.

[23:02] Here’s an idea that could support you, and here’s where I’d be happy to help. That is the kind of conversation we wish would happen in the open. And if we’re just gonna have a group of 12 people talking about it, it’s not gonna happen. But if you use a structured process against finance, a critical level of growth, then people are gonna do it.

[23:21] People will take assignments like this, and the way to change culture is change process and practice. Yeah.

[23:27] Jim Harshaw: And, and give people ownership and give people a chance to, to share. And, and, and you know, like you talked about earlier, candor. So, and you also mentioned having a, a, a safe place and making it safe to share ideas.

[23:39] And so what about the, the listener who’s sitting there saying, yeah, well Keith, it’s not safe, and I’m not the CEO. And it’s not safe where I’m at. And, and this might, may or may not tie in with, another thing I wanted to bring up to you is, is this concept of leading without, without authority. But, but take that worry.

[23:58] Well, when it’s not safe, how do I, how do I approach that?

[24:00] Keith Ferrazzi: Sure. And most people, most people think it’s not safe to be bold and courageous. And, and I would say 50% of that is in your head, 50% of that might be real. So the stuff that’s in your head, you’ve gotta get over the fear, the fantasy. That everyone’s gonna crumble if I tell ’em what I’m thinking.

[24:18] But again, the safety is in the practices. I don’t think most people have safety in a room of 12 people to say to the CFO, listen, I think your old school ways of working or holding our growth back, like that’s a tough conversation to have. That would feel like a throw down. But if we were to implement this book and the simple practices.

[24:45] Give a copy of the, of the book to your, your boss. The first question is, as I said, what are all the things that could encumber or or aid to our growth? And we list them all and then we take each one and we do stress testing against them. Finance will be up and we’ll get a chance to share. And, and you’ll find that when you do this process, your safety goes up at 85% because now it’s an assignment.

[25:10] Yeah. Now there’s also ways to work on the safety. Part of the safety is a lack of relationship, a lack of commitment, a lack of care. During the pandemic, when we didn’t see each other, we lost a lot of our relational connection. And that’s why some bosses are dragging everybody back to the office. But there’s some bosses that didn’t do that, and they said, well, we’re, we’re hybrid now.

[25:34] We’re remote now, but we gotta be even more intentional about building commitment and care. So what they did was they had a monthly. Check in what’s going on in our lives personally and professionally. And everybody would go around and say, personally, you know, I’m worried about my mom. She’s in assisted living.

[25:52] I’m worried about my kid, you know, going through some transition right now, um, or professionally I’m frustrated about this project, this project. So now all of a sudden using a simple practice of a, of a check-in once a month, you’re building empathy, you’re building commitment, you’re building. A sense of shared esprit core among the team.

[26:15] And if you have a social contract that says we have each other’s back, that sharing will then lead to people helping each other. Now, that gives you a little bit more comfort to be able to say, Hey, Jim, you know, I, I wanna suggest that in your role as CFO, I know you’re trying to protect us, but can we talk about.

[26:36] The financial planning process. ’cause I’m, I’m fearful that it’s slowing down our growth. Now you can do that with somebody you have a relationship with. You can’t do it with somebody. You don’t.

[26:46] Jim Harshaw: Yeah. Gosh. I mean, it, it’s fascinating that it, this, this really all comes back to people, right? People, connections, relationships, and, you know, I do some management consulting and some leaders get that.

[26:58] And, and those typically tend to be the ones who, who hire me and us and bring us in and, and work with their teams. And then. I’ve worked with some, and one in particular, a high profile brand who I’ve done some work with and, and they don’t really invest in this work and invest in the, the people, the connections and, and they’re, they’re, they’re struggling because of it.

[27:17] Really Plenty of opportunity there, but they’re struggling because of it.

[27:20] Keith Ferrazzi: Can I suggest though that yes, it’s people and you can either change people out and hire different and better people, but we can also change our process. So getting everybody an individual coach and making everybody more psychologically safe, more courageous.

[27:38] Yeah. Or we can implement a new process called stress testing. We can implement something called a candor break in the middle of a meeting, everybody is asked, go in groups of two, talk about what’s not being said. That should be said, and then come back and we’re all gonna share in, in the room openly what’s not being said.

[27:55] That should be said. It’s process. Process changes people, there’s a phrase which I love. You don’t think your way to a new way of acting. You act your way to a new way of thinking. And that’s a lot of us spend a lot of times talking about mindset. And I agree, mindset’s important, but if you want to change mindset, change what you do and your mindset will catch up.

[28:16] So, you know, it’s, it’s actually, I learned that from aa. I studied AA when I was studying Who’s Got Your Back? I was looking at organizations. Lift people up in significant ways. Weight Watchers, aa, YPO, forums, et cetera. How do small groups of people lift each other up? Because I wanted to apply that to high performing teams and this idea of you don’t just talk about mindset, you change your practice.

[28:42] Jim Harshaw: For the listener who, who’s is getting a lot out of this conversation and they say, okay, but, but I’m not in that CFO position or the CEO position, I’m not in that leadership role. How do, how do I. How do I lead without authority? I don’t have the title.

[28:54] Keith Ferrazzi: Yeah. Well, look, it’s interesting. You, you referred to the book that I wrote right before Never Get Alone Leading Without Authority, is a book that I wrote, helping you as an individual understand how do you, how do you have a vision?

[29:09] And once you have a vision, how do you create a team around your vision, even if they don’t report to you? You know? And how do you open up communication among that, that group of that team? These two really go hand in hand. Never lead alone and leading without authority. You know, you can basically get the same amount of information from both in terms of, because I do believe that whether it’s a formal team that you’re leading or an informal team that you’re leading, there are, there are social contracts you have to create.

[29:38] The first thing is realize that you’ve gotta recruit people onto your team. Don’t wait for the organization to give you authority or to give you a team. If you’ve got a vision that we should implement agile in our project planning down in the weeds of the organization, you could
[30:00] decide that that’s going to be your mission and you could start talking about it to others and suggesting to your boss, for instance, that boy, you know, I think if we, if we implement this agile thing, here’s an article about it.

[30:12] If we implement this agile thing, I think we can get our projects done a lot faster. We can save a lot of money in our projects and you could say to your boss, Hey, let’s pilot something here in our little group and I’d be happy to run with it and let’s co-create this. And then feed the decks up to your boss who can then take it to their boss and look like a big shot and be, you know, it’s like your job is to serve the people that you need to get the job done.

[30:38] And that’s really what we teach. And the book was called Never Lead Alone. ’cause whether you’re the leader or whether you’re a teammate. You’re a leader and the book gives you, it’s, it’s very much written in the form of a workbook, right? It’s step one, who’s your team? Step two, make sure everybody agrees that we’re gonna put it all on the table.

[31:00] So here are some practices and processes we’re gonna use to do that. Step three, break all of our work down into short, agile sprint. So that, you know, we make sure that we have short cycle times getting shit done, pivoting and adjust. We never waste too much money, effort, et cetera. So the book was really written as a workbook for any of us if we want to be successful as leaders, whether we have the title or not as irrelevant.

[31:27] Jim Harshaw: Yes. These are my favorite kind of books because they’re, they’re actionable and, and you can take this, these concepts ’cause. So many times people read a book and they put it up on their shelf, but there, there’s, this is actionable and a way to actually take it and, and, and implement it

[31:41] Keith Ferrazzi: because you are an individual who attracts athletes.

[31:45] I was really looking forward to this conversation because again, I know that we know as athletes that it’s not just our own individual performance, it’s the team’s performance, and that is a big deal. It doesn’t translate into most organizations in the workplace, to be honest. Most teams are broken. Most people are comfortable letting them be broken.

[32:06] And so what I wanted to show up here today and give to your audience was just a reminder that we all know in our gut what you know, particularly as athletes, what we need to do. And we’ve written a workbook for you that helps you identify how do you really be the kind of leader you need to be in the company.

[32:22] Jim Harshaw: So for the listener from Never Eat Alone, first book. Must read for, for any of your, every listener. And it’s kind of a household name in terms of books and personal and professional development to never lead alone. And, and Keith, you have, uh, you mentioned it earlier, connected success.com is somewhere where, where folks can go to, you know, take the eight week course and actually start putting into practice what you shared here today.

[32:46] Where else can people find you, follow, you, take action on, on what you shared here today.

[32:51] Keith Ferrazzi: We do a lot of writing, and our research institute puts a lot out. Everything ends up in LinkedIn, so just follow us there. Yeah, Jim, what a pleasure.

[33:01] Jim Harshaw: Yeah, likewise, Keith, for the listener, I’m gonna have all the links and everything we just talked about here today.

[33:05] We’ll have that in the action plan, as always@jimtrojr.com slash action. Keith, thank you for making time to come and share your wisdom on the show.

[33:13] Keith Ferrazzi: It’s a pleasure. Good to be back in touch with, uh. Another guy from the berg.

[33:17] Jim Harshaw: Yeah, fellow Yinzer and Wrestler from Pittsburgh.

Note: This text was automatically generated.