Transcript of Patrick Lencioni: 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, How to Turn Conflict into a Leadership Advantage | Leadership | E394 New

Today's episode is sponsored in part by Shopify, QWO, Indeed, and Experian. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you grow your business. Start your $1 per month trial at shopify.com/profiting. QWO is an AI-powered phone system that brings your calls, texts, and contacts together in one place. Try QWO for free, plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to qwo.com/profiting. Indeed helps you attract, interview, and hire talent all in one place. Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at indeed.com/podcast. Experian is a financial app that negotiates your bills and cancels unwanted subscriptions. Get started with the Experian app today. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com/deals.

A vibrant organization is one that's healthy. I can't tell you how many really brilliant groups of people failed. Because they were smart and they knew their business, but they weren't healthy. Patrick Lencioni, a bestselling author and founder of The Table Group, the pioneer of the organizational health movement. He spent his career helping leaders build healthy, high-performing teams. The people that run the organization have to be behaviorally aligned and cohesive, and you have to put a little bit of structure in place, just a little. That's what a healthy organization is.

What do you actually do when you go into these companies and try to determine whether they have an unhealthy or a healthy culture?

When you go into an organization and they're talking about, well, marketing doesn't do this, or sales doesn't do this, or engineering can't do this, you're like, oh, that's a problem.

One of the things that I wanted to dive deep on today was the 5 dysfunctions of a team.

Okay, the 5 dysfunctions are very straightforward. At the base of the triangle is trust. Trust leads to conflict, which leads to commitment, which leads to accountability, which leads to the collective results of the team. If people don't trust each other, the other 4 dysfunctions are not gonna be overcome.

So when it comes to trust, what are some things that leaders do that really sabotage trust where they don't realize that they're doing it?

The biggest one is that—

What's up, Young and Profiting family? Here's something most leaders don't realize. When businesses fail, it's not always because of strategy. More often it comes down to one thing, an unhealthy team. As a founder of a leading team of 60, I'm fired up for today's conversation with Patrick Lencioni. This is an extra special episode because we recorded it live and in person in Nashville. So if you want the full human connection and experience, you can actually watch this episode on YouTube or Spotify Video. Patrick is a bestselling business author and one of the sharpest minds on organizational health. Today we're getting into why smart teams still fall apart, what healthy team leadership looks like, and how to spot dysfunction before it quietly destroys your culture. Longtime listeners, you already know Patrick, and we loved his last episode so much that we're replaying it this Friday. So stay tuned for that. And if you're new here and you're all about listening, learning, and profiting, hit that follow button so you never miss what's coming next. Pat, I am so excited for this conversation. First of all, I'm so excited that we finally get to meet in person.

In person.

I know we've done like hours, literally hours of content together online. I interviewed you about 2 years ago, and that's when I first discovered your work in Working Genius. I did a webinar with you. What was that, 3 weeks ago?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we keep hearing from people that have seen it.

Oh my God, I'm getting such good feedback from it.

Oh, that's great.

That was probably one of the most fun web— probably definitely the most fun webinar I ever did.

That's wonderful.

It was just so cool to have a co-host and you did so great.

And for us too. I mean, we were all saying like, man, we love that you know our stuff so well.

Yeah.

And when you talk to somebody who's passionate and knowledgeable, it just makes it fun and interesting.

Now, something that's interesting for my listeners is I'm part of a lot of entrepreneurship groups.

Yep.

And when I told them I was doing this webinar with Patrick Lencioni, everyone was like, oh my God, I can't believe you're doing— you're like a god to other entrepreneurs. Like, like you really are. People just love your stuff. Everybody that I talk to that's an entrepreneur, like my favorite entrepreneurs that I'm friends with that I know are so good, they all have read your books and like they treat it like it's a Bible. And you should just be so proud of everything that you've put out in the world for entrepreneurs.

Well, that's very kind. And as a lover of God, I know I'm not him.

I know you're not God.

But I know you didn't mean that. But it's really wonderful to know that so many people are using our stuff. And I meet people that I've never met before who go, I've been using your stuff to run my business for 15 years. And it's like, thank you, God, that I get to serve people and help people and doing what I love. So it's a blast.

And speaking of what you love, how would you describe the problem that you actually try to solve?

Off?

Like, like, what is your mission?

Oh, I love that question. So it started, and for the first 24 years of my business, it was simply this. I was a kid and I saw that my dad was frustrated at work, and I didn't like that because I loved my dad. And I learned that there was something called management and business. And when I got out of college and had my first experience, I decided, oh my gosh, there's a lot of dysfunction in the, in the workplace. And I wanted to make work fulfilling and dignifying. And I knew that I needed to help companies be successful, but so that they could combine success with the dignity of their employees. And so what I was really trying to do is make work a good experience for people to make their lives better. And I didn't want it to be— to cause them to lose dignity. So that was really what we were setting out to do. But since I started my career at Bain, I knew that if I couldn't help CEOs make their companies more successful, they wouldn't actually want to invest in making it healthier too.

So let's stick on that word health. Can you define organizational health in your own words?

Yeah, you know, we struggled for years, Hala, on trying to figure out what the right word is, because it's wholeness, it's, it's soundness, it's, it's making it functional. And we were like, we don't want it to sound like healthcare, But we really said it really is, a vibrant organization is one that's healthy, and that means it makes sense. And it really comes down to 4 things. The first one is the people that run the organization have to be behaviorally aligned and cohesive. They have to treat each other well.

Yep.

And that comes, you know, they have to have trust and good conflict and hold each other accountable and commit to things and, and get results. But it, they, to do that, they had to be intellectually aligned too. They had to, they had to be like, Yeah, this is why we do this. This is what success looks like. This is how we're going to get there. And that's what we spent most of our life doing at The Table Group is helping companies get behaviorally and intellectually strategically aligned. But beyond those first two things, then they have to communicate the heck out of that. They have to just talk about it all the time, repeat themselves. We always say CEOs are CROs, Chief Reminding Officers. Too many of them don't like to do that. And finally, you have to put a little bit of structure in place, just a little, to reinforce all that. That's what a healthy organization is. Now, most organizations, the vast majority of healthy organizations are really successful because they figure out how to get smarter because they're healthy. I used to live in California and work with a lot of startups. I can't tell you how many really brilliant, groups of people failed because they were smart and they knew their business, but they weren't healthy.

Yeah.

There was infighting, politics, misalignment. And it was so weird because I thought, all these smart people are failing. And some companies that don't seem all that smart were succeeding because they were just so much healthier and aligned.

Yeah, so when people prioritize strategy and knowledge over organizational health, Would that never win, even if you have the smartest people, the best strategy, organizational health comes first in your mind?

Yeah, it can. You can succeed for one cycle.

Okay.

Especially if it's a business that lives on like pure innovation. So maybe you come out with a product and for a year or two you can get through it, but ultimately the dysfunction starts to invade. And I remember I was just thinking about this the other day. I think it was Peter Drucker who said, Culture eats strategy for breakfast. I think it was him who said that.

Yeah, I remember that one.

And it is so true. Now, now the problem is CEOs that hear that, then they go to work with a consultant who's super touchy-feely. And I'm not that. I'm so glad that I started my career at Bain, which was all about analysis and strategy, because I said, okay, that's important. And if you can combine a healthy culture with that, any CEO will buy into it. But if you come in and say, let's get naked and hold hands and sing and fall each other out, catch each other falling out of a chair, that's, that's just dumb.

Yeah. So what do you actually do when you go into these companies and try to determine whether they have an unhealthy or a healthy culture?

You know, it's so funny because everybody wants to come up with an assessment or a survey. And what, what, what I like to do is if I can observe the team in a meeting, that's all you need. I can see the behaviors. And, and in other words, do they debate with passion? Do they ask tough questions? Do they have hard conversations around the business? And is there like some level of what we call healthy conflict, which an outsider might think, whoa, this is kind of an uncomfortable conversation, but they're not uncomfortable, they're just going after it. So we can tell like that. The other thing you can do is you can talk to people in the organization at every level and just find out like, Do you come to work and, and have a sense of where you belong and what you're all trying to do? And are you aligned? Or do you ever compete with people in the organization? Healthy organizations don't have people competing internally. They're, they're focused externally on their competition and on serving their customers. And when you go into an organization and they're talking about, well, marketing doesn't do this, or sales doesn't do this, or engineering can't do this, you're like, oh, that's a problem.

And honestly, if I observe an executive staff meeting for 45 minutes or an hour, I usually can see the signs that that's happening.

So what does healthy conflict actually look like? So not just the conflict itself, but over time, like how do people in business handle conflict in a way that's healthy?

It's a great question because, and, and the, the, the key is this, it's always a little uncomfortable. I've been married for 33 years, and if tonight I go home and my wife and I have a discussion, an argument, a debate, a disagreement around something important, which is what we do in our companies, it will be a little uncomfortable because there's that moment where you're like, how come you don't understand this? And we have to do this. And there will be a little bit of tension and discomfort. And that's a sign that it's real. Mm-hmm. Healthy conflict, though, you know, when you're engaging in it, that it's not the end of the relationship. You're not worried that like, this is, this is it. You're just worried that like, this is gonna be uncomfortable. But you know, we've been through this before. This is how the sausage gets made. And it's by virtue of the fact that we're, we're willing to do this, that we know we're gonna come to the right answer. And afterward, we'll be really glad we did. But while we're going through it, it's not fun.

Yeah.

But running a company is not supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be real. Mm-hmm. Marriage is is wonderful, but there's a lot of real moments that are kind of uncomfortable.

And once the decision is made, even if it wasn't the decision that you wanted, it's all about committing to that decision, correct?

Yes, and if you don't have that conflict, at the end of the conversation, you don't really commit. I've seen teams do this. It's like they don't want to have conflict, so the leader goes, okay, we're going with Plan A, and I don't— I know Plan B and Plan C are possibilities, but we don't need to talk about them. I've chosen Plan A. People don't weigh in because they want to avoid having disagreement, nobody really buys in. And they go back to their team. And here's how you know it too. And their team goes, how was the meeting? And they go, well, we're doing Plan A. What do you think? I'd have done Plan B. And now people aren't really in. But if everybody debates at that meeting, the leader can then go, we're going with Plan A or Plan B because of what you said. People will go back to their office and go, we're doing Plan B and we argued about it and they heard me. It wasn't what I wanted, but I think it's right and we're in. So conflict is actually necessary to get to commitment. And when we skip conflict, people don't really buy in.

They, they smile and nod and, and it's called artificial harmony. And then they go back and they, they don't really agree.

I loved hearing about this term artificial harmony. I actually just learned about it when I was studying for this interview. So what is artificial harmony exactly? How does it show up?

And, you know, I think it's a bigger problem in our society today than it's ever been. And that is when we get together and we think, my job is to affirm that person and make them feel good and to avoid any discomfort here. The problem is, then there's something left to be said. And the organizations that struggle with artificial harmony the worst are churches, because they think we're supposed to get along, because we're supposed to be nice all the time. And so you go to a meeting at a church and people are smiling and nodding, and then they go out in the parking lot And they go, that lady's a dingbat, or that guy's a jerk. And it's like, oh, actually, you should have said that in a kind way, but in a direct way and worked through it. So it's when we trade off in-the-moment disagreement and discomfort for long-term disagreement. And what happens when we go with artificial harmony, we end up— it's so interesting when we don't have conflict around ideas. It ferments over time into conflict around people. So, so it's so funny. It's like people on a team that care about each other will actually argue in the meeting, and then afterward they feel like it's been said.

People that can't argue in the meeting, it lingers, and eventually people find out, what are you saying about me in the parking lot? And now they've really hurt one another. So what we say is, don't kick that can down the street. Have that conversation there. Continue to build on that trust. And then you get so much more used to it. The next difficult conversation you lean into and it leads to really good things.

Why do you think it's a worse problem now? Do you think it's just younger generations not knowing how to have conflict?

I think social media. I think, I think because— and so I have 4 kids, all between 27 and 19. And it's— I can't— it's so funny. Over the years, I'm like, why don't you just pick up the phone and call him? And they're like, Oh no, I don't need to do that. I'm like, do you think the tone of his voice, like, because they're buddies, I was like, or even like in relation, I have 4 boys. I'm like, well, maybe you should call her and ask her if she wants it. No, no, no, we just text. If I put a period at the end of the sentence, she'll know I'm not happy. I'm like, I don't get it. And I think that society has become more separated and COVID certainly accelerated some of that. And I think that human beings desire depth of interaction. It's like you and I talked about, even though we had these great conversations on Zoom, there's something about finally being together in 3 dimensions that allows you to take it to that next level.

Yeah.

And so I just think that it's— there's too many other options and society has kind of made it okay. And there's so many— I was talking to a guy yesterday whose entire company is virtual, and I know he was kind of sad about that. Now, some of that's necessary. And man, the things we can do on Zoom these days is great. But there's something about getting to see people on a regular basis. It's wonderful. And, and so I think it's just the nature of society.

Young Improviters, raise your hand if you've ever Googled one tiny symptom and then 5 minutes later you're convinced that you're dying. I know I have been there, done that way too many times, but instead of guessing and spiraling, I use Zocdoc. In fact, I've been using Zocdoc for like 10 years. I literally don't know how to book doctor's appointments any other way. It's a free app and a website that helps you you find and book high-quality in-network doctors based on your needs. You can search by symptom or specialty, read verified patient reviews, and see doctors with available appointments right away. If you're a busy entrepreneur and you need to squeeze in a doctor appointment on a random time, you can find the doctors that have availability when you have availability. Want an in-person or video visit? It's no problem with Zocdoc. There are over 150,000 providers across all 50 states and over 200 specialties. Any doctor you could imagine, any visit that you need, Zocdoc will have you covered. And most appointments happen within 24 to 72 hours. So next time you start doom scrolling your symptoms, skip the stress and book a real appointment with a real doctor on Zocdoc.

Stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to zocdoc.com/profiting to find and instantly book a doctor that you love today. That's zocdoc.com/profiting. Zocdoc.com/profiting, and thanks to Zocdoc for sponsoring this message. Hey, YAP fam, I'm not afraid to say producing this podcast requires skills I do not naturally have. From audio engineering to video editing, I have to hire experts who are way better than me in those areas. And as I scale my podcast, this becomes more and more important. And every time I need to hire, my first thought usually is, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. When you sponsor your job on Indeed, you find candidates with the exact skills you're looking for without the stress of digging through endless resumes. Sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. That means you're not tossing your post into the void. You're connecting with qualified people who can actually help your business grow. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

And listeners of this show will get a $75 Sponsored Job credit to help your job get the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire. This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Yeah, fam, you know that moment when it's 1:00 PM and you realize the only thing you had all day is coffee and maybe a banana? Well, that used to be me for years. In fact, my mom used to always make the joke that even though I don't fast for Ramadan, I fast pretty much every day by accident because I'm so busy. And that's why I'm currently obsessed with Huel. Huel makes nutritionally complete meals that you can drink. They've got this Black Edition ready-to-drink that is packed with 35 grams of protein, 27 essential vitamins and minerals, no artificial sweeteners, all under $5. And by the way, it tastes good. Now, my business partners have been obsessed with Huel for years. One of my business partners actually used to only eat Huel for 2 meals of the day, and then he'd have a real dinner.

And at first I thought he was crazy and I was scared that Huel wouldn't taste good, but it actually tastes really good. So now I'm on the bandwagon too. Huel. Has become my breakfast routine. I love their daily greens. So I get my protein from the Black Edition ready to drink. I get my greens from the daily greens and Huel has got me covered. Consistency and consistent nutrition does not have to be complicated and Huel makes it stupidly simple. And now there's a limited time offer. Get Huel today with my exclusive offer of 15% off online with my code PROFITING. So that's code PROFITING, huel.com/profiting. New customers only, you get 15% off. Again, that's huel.com/profiting. And thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show. So one of the things that I wanted to dive deep on today was the 5 dysfunctions of a team, which I think we've been talking a little bit about, but I'd love for you to just go over each 5 at a high level and then I'll ask you some follow-up questions. And I wanna do some scenarios where I give you a scenario of a team. Mm-hmm.

And then you tell me what's their primary dysfunction, their secondary dysfunction.

That's fun.

And, and how we can solve it.

I love this. Okay. The 5 dysfunctions are very straightforward. At the base of the triangle or pyramid, however you wanna describe it, is trust. And that is, if people don't trust each other, the other 4 dysfunctions are not gonna be overcome. So the lack of trust needs to be addressed. And when we talk about trust, we're talking about vulnerability-based trust. Like, if you and I are going to trust each other, we have to know that the other person's willing to say things like, I don't know the answer. I think you're smarter than me. Can you tell me how you did that? I think I screwed up. I'm sorry I was kind of rude yesterday. Like, buck naked about, I'm not going to cover up who I am. We're going to be really raw. And that is what leads to trust. Some people think trust is just, I've known them for a long time, and so I can predict their behavior. It's about vulnerability. So you can build trust with somebody in a matter of weeks if you work on it. You can work with somebody for years and never have trust. So it's vulnerability.

Okay.

Trust enables conflict.

Okay.

Because when I know that you— we trust each other and we're vulnerable, I can debate with you about something. And you know, and I know that if you're right, I'm going to go, oh wait, I think you're right. Oh, I'm so glad you kept arguing with me about that. And I know you will too. So we don't think that disagreement and conflict is a threat to our relationship. It's actually the pursuit of truth, which is good for our relationship. Makes sense?

Yeah, it makes total sense.

Trust leads to conflict. Without trust, conflict is bad. Now I'm just trying to win the argument or maybe even manipulate you.

Okay.

Okay. Conflict is what allows us to have commitment, like we talked about before. So you argue with one another. At the end of the argument, you either convince somebody or the leader goes, okay, we've had every argument we could have. I'm going to break the tie. People will buy into that. Commitment is necessary to overcome the hardest dysfunction, which is the fourth, which is the unwillingness to hold people accountable. Accountability is key. And the thing is, we're just not going to turn to each other in a meeting and say, hey, Hala, I think you're not doing what we agreed to. Or, Pat, I think you kind of violated something right there. Because if you know I never really committed to it, how much confidence are you going to have to remind me that I fell short? But if we all committed, then it's like, hey, we committed together. So what's going on? That is the hardest one. In society, I think this is human nature, people don't like to say, I think you need to do better. And then the final one seems so obvious, but it's, it's about results. And the last dysfunction of a team is when people aren't paying attention to the collective results of the team, but rather their own results.

And this is natural. I'm, I'm more worried about my department or my career or my reputation or my status or my bonus. Real teamwork means overcoming that dysfunction to focus on my results rather than ours. So those are the 5 dysfunctions. Trust leads to conflict, which leads to commitment, which leads to accountability, which leads to the collective results of the team.

So well explained. Good. Very well explained. So when it comes to trust, what are some things that leaders do that really sabotage trust where they don't realize that it's, that they're doing it?

The biggest one is that they, are invulnerable. In other words, they buy into that saying that a leader's job is to always be on and to be confident. And, and I always like to say there's that old saying when I was a kid, there was this deodorant commercial that said, don't let them see you sweat.

Oh yeah.

And the best leaders are the ones that go, check this out, because you go, so you know you're sweating. Of course we're all sweaty. And then people go, oh, well, if you can acknowledge your flaws or shortcomings, then all of us can, and we can enter in this together. See, the leader has to dive into the pool first, but many leaders are like, well, if I'm vulnerable, I could lose credibility. They could take advantage of me. And that's why one of the greatest things a leader can do is say, I have the confidence and the faith and trust to go first. I will be vulnerable. Years ago, after I wrote my first book, I worked with a very famous CEO. First client, and he stood up in front of his entire team and nobody would ever just disagree with him. And he stood there and I, he did 360 feedback reluctantly, and I administered the tool and he stood up to go over the results with his team and he read out the first flaw he had and he said, what do you guys think? And they all said, no, I don't think you have that flaw.

And they went around the room and all confirmed and affirmed him and that he didn't have the, and I interrupted and I said, you're the only people who filled out this survey. And he just didn't want to hear it, and they didn't want to tell him. And that was the day he basically said, don't, don't expect me to be vulnerable. And nobody else did. So they'd go around in meetings and they'd say, I'm doing fine, I'm doing fine. Nobody ever wanted to say, I think I'm, I'm struggling, I need help. Alan Mulally, the CEO of Ford, the guy who turned around Ford years ago, said that was the hardest thing, is getting people to admit when they had a problem, because they'd go to meetings and try to project confidence.

That's so interesting. Something that we do at my company, I think I told you this before, every single team meeting that we have, we open it up with our one word. And you're allowed to say, I'm tired, I'm cranky. Um, but a lot of times it's, I'm happy, I'm excited. But sometimes people are like, I'm sick today.

Yeah.

You know, and then you just kind of know where everyone's coming from. And maybe that's a good thing, I guess, for, for vulnerability.

It, it's absolutely good. And it's not until people start to say the negative ones sometimes that you realize the positive ones are real. If everybody comes, goes, I'm fine, and it's like, you don't look fine. It's like, actually, I'm really grumpy today.

Yeah.

And then they're like, okay, you're human. That's what we want is we want to know that the other person is authentically human. You don't trust people that can't be human. And it's just like the Christmas card thing. When people send a Christmas card, said our family's perfect, you're just like, I'm not learning a lot from them. And it's when that person finally goes, you know, we struggle with this, don't you? And you're like, Oh, thank you for being authentic. Now I can be authentic and we can actually love one another in truth.

Something else that I found really interesting when studying this, this book, which was really the first time I really went deep on it, was, was studying for this interview, was this idea of peer accountability and why that's so important and why accountability can't just come from managers. So talk to us about why it's important for your actual peers to keep you accountable.

First of all, the leader can't be there all the time. And if the leader is the sole source of accountability, that's, that's a massive burden on them. And it doesn't transfer responsibility to the team. And so peer pressure is a very powerful thing. It can be very powerful in a negative way. It's kind of like, think about kids, you know, when your parents tell you to do something, but your peers are actually telling you to do the wrong thing, the peers usually win. But if you can create positive peer pressure, If we— if you can agree with your friends, like, and you see this in life. My son who just moved here, he's going to join this group called— that's called F3. And it's a bunch of guys who get together at 5:30 in the morning. I'm glad they didn't ask me. And they get together and they work out for half hour and then they get to know each other, they pray, and then they go live their lives. That kind of not authoritative peer pressure is so powerful in making one of people do the right thing. So on a team, If your teammate, and this is true in sports, when a teammate says, hey, you need to go harder during the game, it's, that's even more powerful than the coach telling you.

Now, how do you improve peer accountability, or how do you know it's a problem?

If you never see it happening, and this is where meetings are so big, 'cause remember I told you before I'd observe a meeting. If I never see people on a leadership team or on any kind of a team holding each other, saying like, hey, by the way, I think you guys need to do a better job on that. It wasn't up to snuff. If that never happens, you know that something isn't going on because everybody is going to have that sometimes. So the question is, how often do people give each other tough feedback? And, and like I tell people, it's actually a sign of love for a peer to actually tell somebody something hard. I used to think when you don't hold people accountable, it's because you cared about them. It's actually selfishness. It's actually, I don't want you to dislike me and I don't wanna feel uncomfortable. I'd rather let you suffer through poor performance than me have to take a risk to tell you something. And you know what's so funny? When I, when I say that to teams, they usually get it. I say, if you're never pushing each other, you don't love each other.

And they're like, well, we do. And I'm like, so do you ever tell somebody they're not doing enough? No, 'cause I care. And I'm like, about who? And they're like, yeah, about me. So, so that's how you know. You know it because you see it. And I said this before, it's, it's uncomfortable, but it's, it's after you go through that with somebody, you know this, you have dear friends that have gone there with you. Afterward, you're like, you cared more about me than others who wouldn't.

Yeah.

So that's what we have to teach in our organizations as well.

Cool. Um, okay, let's do scenarios. I have a game called, Diagnose the dysfunction.

And I'll admit if I don't know.

Yeah, I'm sure you're going to know everything.

Mm-mm.

Okay, let's start with the first one.

All right.

A senior leadership team meets weekly. Meetings are polite and efficient. Nobody interrupts. Disagreements are rare. After meetings, executives privately complain that decisions are unclear and priorities keep changing. Execution is inconsistent, but nobody raises it in the room.

Classic, common, comfortable, and dangerous. Mm-hmm. Because eventually there's gonna be so much resentment. And that's why what they're doing is they're trading near-term discomfort for long-term discomfort or maybe failure. And, and it's funny if people go, oh gee, we never get on each other's nerves and nobody ever complains, but we failed. And it's like, then people are really, really upset. So that what, that what has to happen there, it starts with the leader. And what we say is you need to be vulnerable first, and then you need to become a miner of conflict. You have to mine for disagreement. So you have to go to meetings and go, and when you suspect that two people aren't on the same page, you have to go, you guys don't agree, do you? And they're gonna go, oh no, no, we're fine. No, I don't want you to be fine. I wanna know what you really think. So I want you to take different sides of this issue and I wanna hear from you. So if a leader is neither vulnerable nor is inviting and mining for conflict, that scenario is what they're going to get. And if they say, well, I just— we just don't— nobody ever challenges one another, it's because you're not making it impossible for them not to.

I was just with the leader of a big organization, and he would just never enter into the difficult conversation. And I was consulting to them, and he wanted me to provoke it, and I would tee up something, and somebody would say something, and he would not participate. So everybody else sat back too. And I just realized he has some wound that cannot allow him to participate in conflict. Nobody on his team is gonna do it.

Mm.

They think that they're gonna get punished for doing it.

Yeah, that's so important. What about the fact that so many meetings are virtual now? Do you think cameras need to be on?

This is very interesting. I remember right after COVID started, we, we had probably our third meeting on Zoom, and I remember sitting there and I said, I have to do this. And one of my great employees who I've worked with for 30 years, I mean, she is like a part of my family. I said to her, I don't think that you're doing this right, and I'm a little concerned that you're not stepping up on this. And we talk about it later. It's like, that's when— what's that saying? This shit just got real. Because we had the first difficult Zoom conference. Because Zoom, two dimensions make it so much easier not to go there.

Yeah.

Because one, after the meeting's over, you can't go check in with somebody very easily. So we're like, oh, I don't want to go there. So on Zoom, you have to be even more intentional about having hard conversations. And it's harder. It's just harder because you just want to get off the call and you just don't want to go somewhere where you're going to have to do— you have to kind of have a call after the call and after the call. So what this— you can do it. There's teams that are purely remote that are better than teams that work together, but they have to work harder to make sure they do it.

Yeah, it sounded like a lot of it was like noticing people's body language. And so cameras do need to be on at the very least if you're going to be doing virtual meetings.

You know what else? This is really interesting. I just thought of this. I think we should turn off our own camera so we can't see ourselves. Because how often in life have I been looking at my own face?

Yeah, I do that all the time.

And we, and we all do. And so we're, we're over-critiquing ourselves. We don't get lost in the moment and we're like, oh, look at me, I look like this. And yeah, for every 10% of meetings where it would be good to know that, there's 90% where you need to be unaware of yourself and just there. So I think that sometimes I think phone calls are better than Zoom.

Well, yeah, I mean, I have to be honest with my company, only really client calls are cameras on. Every other call is cameras off. And I find that we're really in the zone and productive and, uh, I don't feel like anyone's like not paying attention or anything, but to your point, I can't see what's really going on.

Yeah. I think that when there's trust, a phone call can be messier. You have more fluidity. You can be doing things if you know they care.

Yeah.

Sometimes on Zoom, if you don't, they have to be paying more attention, but you really wanna get at the underlying issue is, I wanna trust them enough to know that we can be having this conversation with no visuals and it can be great.

Yeah. Okay. That makes a lot of sense.

Yeah.

Okay. Scenario 2, one executive delivers strong individual results, but repeatedly misses commitments to the team and behaves dismissively in meetings. Peers notice but don't confront him. The leader handles it privately. Resentment quietly builds.

Oh, and the key word is privately. And this is one of the things I've been saying for years that people always often say, but we were taught opposite of this, and I don't think it's true. And that is criticize privately, praise publicly. Now, if we're talking about in front of 100 people on stage at a meeting, that's different. But in your teams, We need to have enough trust where we're critiquing, criticizing, or correcting publicly and praising. Because the problem is, so in that case, when the CEO doesn't say to that person in front of the team, hey, I think you care more about your numbers than you do about the rest of the team. And it seems like you're focused on yourself and not about them. If he or she says that in front of the team, two things happen. One, Everybody knows that he or she is holding that team member accountable.

Mm-hmm.

So they're like, I'm so glad the leader is doing that. Secondly, everybody else around the team knows that if I do that, I'm gonna get called on it too.

Yep.

When they don't do that, everybody assumes, well, the CEO isn't calling them on it, and they feel like they have the permission to do that too. So, and, and then they'll go to the CEO. Finally, and they'll go, why don't you ever tell that person? And they'll go, oh, well, I, I do privately. It's like, well, how are we supposed to interact with that if we don't know? Is it uncomfortable? It is. I love my team. I've had some of 'em I worked with for years. I still will call them and they'll call me, critical, in front of people in a meeting. And that's actually slightly uncomfortable and really productive.

Now, what is, isn't there some line that you cross though where it could get inappropriate? Reprimanding somebody. I know that even with my own company, like, we're uncomfortable to call somebody out on Slack, in a Slack channel in front of other people. So talk to me about how we can navigate that.

Okay. And I used to be like, yeah, what is that? Here's the line. If you're starting to have doubts about whether they belong on the team, another, if it's a real corrective action, not a correction, like if I know you belong on the team and you're a good team player and I call you out on something, I'm not threatening your status on the team, that's great. But if I am actually starting to think that I need, I need to rethink whether they belong here, or I'm starting to have doubts, this is the interesting part, then you need to handle that part of the conversation offline. But you still need to go to the rest of the team and let them know you're doing it, because you're protecting their dignity. But once again, if there's a person on your team and they're a bad performer and nobody thinks you're addressing it, they're going to start to get frustrated.

Yeah.

So you have to kindly go, listen, we love that person on our team. I'm taking them through corrective action. I really hope they make it and we're going to do everything we can. I just want you guys to know I'm not ignoring it. And some people will say, well, is that like talking out of school? And it's like, no, if we're on a team, we should have that level of trust. But again, calling someone out in front of the team when you're starting to doubt whether they belong there is cruel.

Yeah.

And that's hard because sometimes you're like, I don't know. And when in doubt, err on the side of dignity.

Yeah, makes sense. That's really helpful. Yeah. Uh, during planning meetings, a leadership team argues intensely. People challenge assumptions. Once a decision is made, everybody commits and executes in alignment. When results dip, they revisit the decision together without blame.

Heaven.

Perfect world, right?

That, but, and, and, and you know it, but, but it says they're gonna fail sometimes and they revisit the decision without blame, but they front load The— so there's discomfort in there, which means when things don't go well, it's not uncomfortable. It's like, okay, I've seen companies, teams of all kinds that fail and, and recover faster than their competitors do that never failed, but they went so slow and they were so tepid because they didn't want to have arguments. Better to, better to make a decision as a team, execute, fail, correct quickly than to sit around and avoid difficult conversations and be slow.

Mm-hmm. Now, is there any situation where, or like something common where people think it's a problem, but really it's one of the 5 dysfunctions? Like, are there any common scenarios where leaders are trying to solve for one thing, but it's really one of the dysfunctions?

I think often people will say that because, because the, they'll look at it some external thing like, Oh, the problem is, is customer service. And then you'll talk to people on customer service and they're, and they'll go, yeah, we're not sure what we're supposed to do. Or they'll say, we have a problem going to market. And then the problem is sales and marketing are not aligned. And, and the sales, I've been in a room and they'll say that like, well, we're having a problem with going to market and they're, they're just not working together. And I'm like, so all the go-to-market people, do they report to somebody in this room? And they'll go, oh yeah, they all do. I'm like, yeah. So here's the question. Are you guys completely aligned? Because if you're not, you're leaving them to fight bloody unwinnable battles with each other. And oftentimes this is very common, Hala. Two leaders at the top are agreeing to disagree and they think that's mature. The problem is they're then giving marching orders to their people. That are not necessarily aligned, and they'll go, it's not that different though. And a little disagreement up here at the top looks like massive confusion, even one level below.

So oftentimes what I find is that a lack of conflict and commitment is what the problem is at the executive level, and it's leading to what look like operational or executional errors down below, but it's really a behavioral thing at the top. More often than not. And, and yet the leaders will go, and I'll hear this all the time, people in our organization aren't working well together. They need to be better at teamwork. It's almost always either a sin of commission, which means they're doing something wrong, or omission, they're allowing things to happen and not doing something about it. So it's very, very common.

Now, a lot of people that tune into the show are entrepreneurs. Yeah. And they're small business owners. They probably have 1 to 50 employees. Is it easier or harder to solve for these dysfunctions in a small team or a big team?

It's easier and more, more important.

In a small team?

Yeah, because what big companies, they can take a hit to the ship and still stay, stay alive. A smaller company, like hiring one bad person or allowing one poor performer on the leadership team, if you have 7 people on your team, one of them that's not trustworthy and that the other people get frustrated by, and when that person is there, it creates problems, that is hugely problematic. So they can get sunk quicker. But the beauty is, and I love working with— I, I think small to medium-sized business is the lifeblood of our society and economy. The great news is if you, you have an easier opportunity to create a real culture in those organizations and to use that culture to create a competitive advantage. So, so it's— the upside is much higher. The downside is lower, but I think most people that start businesses like that because they want that risk and that reward. Working in a really big organization kind of sucks because it's hard to make a difference and you can tolerate a lot of dysfunction over the years and still survive.

Yeah.

And it would be better if it actually hurt more so you'd fix it. So, so I think this is easier and more critical in small to medium-sized companies.

Yeah. That totally makes sense. So when you think about these 5 dysfunctions, you wrote this book in 2002, so over 20 years ago, still more relevant than ever. Like, you know, reading this, it's, it still feels like crazy. It, it hasn't really changed, but has it changed? Do you think about it differently? Like, are, is one dysfunction more important than ever because of the always-on Slack and remote work, global teams? Like, has anything changed the way that you think about the 5 dysfunctions?

So we have the 5 dysfunctions assessment that people take, like a whole team takes it, They fill it, doesn't take very long, and it gives them their results in the 5 dysfunctions. Are we green? We're really good at that one. Are we yellow? We red. We have found over the years that by far the lowest score in general is on accountability. And that's even more than conflict. People willing to say, I think I need more from you, or I don't think you're doing— I think you could do better. There's just something about human beings that just don't like to say that. Yeah, I think the trust and conflict one is the one that's struggled more over time. And for the reasons we talked about before, I think younger generations just aren't— I think that, like, my kids grew up on social media. They then they went through COVID. And even in college, there's less, you know, my kids can do their work from their room. I was in the library because that's— I had to do that. I had to work in groups. And it is a lot easier to go through school and through work on your own.

Yeah.

And so they're, they've adjusted to that, which is not necessarily good. So I think trust and conflict are the ones that are suffering the most. And you know what's interesting, Hala, is that because we're not very good at having interpersonal conflict, the conflict we have publicly is really ugly. You know, I know people that would never sit down with somebody and go, hey, I think I disagree with you politically on this, or tell me what you're thinking about this, let's talk about that. They avoid that, but then they'll go online and just flame someone. Yeah.

In the comments.

You're right. And it's like, really? Why don't you go talk to 'em? I'm not gonna talk to 'em. In fact, I'll smile and nod at them and then I'll know and I'll go and say, it's crazy.

It's, it's really not very healthy. That's so interesting. It's like basically everybody just took it online, all their conflict. That is so crazy. Okay, let's talk about meetings. Yes. So you also wrote a very, very popular book about meetings and, um, Death by Meeting.

Yeah.

I've heard about this book so many times.

Really?

Yeah. I always hear about this book. Um, and so talk to us about meetings and the, like, I am somebody, so one thing that we, we've, you know, is that I'm a galvanizer, right?

Right.

I like to galvanize. So I love meetings.

Right.

And I love daily meetings.

Um, I think, and you make 'em interesting too.

Yeah. And I have a business partner, uh, one of my business partners hates meetings. And one of the things that he did was like remove a lot of the meetings. And I felt like I was, you know, less effective because I stopped having so many meetings. So talk to us about the right balance of meetings, when we should have meetings, when we shouldn't. And also, do certain personality types do better in meetings than, than others?

You know, I remember the day I decided to, to not write this book because I don't ever sit down and go, I'm going to write a book. I think, oh my gosh, I want to figure that out. And then I write a book about it and I write a story about it too, because they're all fiction except for one. I remember sitting with a client in a meeting and everybody there was so bored and I was too. And they were a client. And this is when I was doing a lot more like in the business with clients. You know, this was 20— oh gosh, my kids were— it was 26 years ago because my sons were almost born, my first kids, because I was at this client both when my wife went into the hospital and then was there for a month, and then when, when she went into labor. Both times I was at this client and they said, get to the hospital.

Oh my God.

So I'm in this meeting with the CEO and his executive team, and I'm sitting there just going, there, this is a problem. Somebody's gotta— what is the deal with meetings? And I remember that day sitting there thinking, okay, there's two things going on here. One, it's boring. And boredom is not a good answer for anything. And I remember thinking, 'cause I was, I, I took a screenwriting class in college and said, a boring movie is a bad movie. And boredom allows people, their minds to drift and they, they start to evaluate, this is a terrible movie in the first 10 minutes.

Mm-hmm.

And I remember thinking, if you can't get people's attention in the first 10 minutes of a meeting, they're gonna spend the rest of the time checked out. So, so we gotta do a good job of hooking the people and then being like, hey, you guys, this is what matters. But then I thought, but there's another problem. What is going on here? And I thought, actually, they're having 4 different kinds of meetings in one. And people are never, we're never clear about that. It's like, are we brainstorming or are we just reviewing this? Are we supposed to be voting on it? Are we just supposed to be listening? Should I be taking notes or is this just a check-in? And the answer is yes. And I remember comparing it to family life. And being in the bathroom with my wife in the morning, getting ready to leave for work and her to take the kids to school. And I thought it would be like we were both brushing our teeth. And imagine— I call it meeting stew. And imagine if my wife and I were like, hey, who's picking the kids up from school? Should we have another baby?

Where are we going on vacation this year? Hey, who's going to take the kids to soccer practice tonight? And then we leave. Were we making a decision? Were we— were we— and we were doing it on the fly. And of course, I like to say, and then you come home from work and my wife says, I'm pregnant. And I'm like, did we decide that? Because I thought we were having chicken for dinner tonight. And I would go to meetings at companies and they were doing the same thing. They were combining like administrative discussions with strategic ones, with personnel matters and tactical decisions. And they were doing it interchangeably. And nobody's good at that. We're not good at it at home. We're not good at it at work. We're not good at it in social situations. And so everybody would leave the meeting equally frustrated, but for different reasons. The strategic people would go, we didn't give enough time to that strategic thing. The administrative people go, we didn't decide on when the Christmas party's gonna be. Somebody else would say, we never really wrestled that issue to the ground. And I thought, oh, you can't do it at once.

And in Death by Meeting, what I decided was the problem isn't meetings, it's bad meetings. And that we've all come to accept that, oh, they're just bad. Like CEOs would go, yeah, I hate 'em too. It's just corporate pants. We just do it. And I realized, no, no, no, no, no. It is the number one thing you do if you're a leader. The number one activity is running a meeting. And which sounds so depressing to leaders, but I remember saying, if you were a football player and you told me, oh, I just hate games and practices, or you were a surgeon, it's like operating these people, I hate it. Or if you're a teacher, it's like, if it weren't for the classroom, I would love this job. When you're a leader, meetings are where you lead. It's where you make decisions, where you get people hooked in, where you debate, where you orchestrate the company. And we had an entire thing called business where the people running business hated meetings. And so what I realized was it's your fault that they're boring and mine as a leader, and it's your fault for confusing them all and trying to do a bunch of things at once.

So I came up with this model that just said, You need to have 4 different meetings and everybody go, not more meetings. I'm like, yeah, 10 minutes a day, huddle up and just talk about what everybody's working on. That's all. Don't sit down. Secondly, once a week, go through the tactics. How are we looking this week? What do we need to do to solve near-term problems? And then every few weeks, it's really ad hoc, but take on that big hairy topic and get into a room, get some beers, get some pizza, and argue. And clear out your schedule, and then once a quarter, go off and step back from the business and reassess. When anybody tried it, this, this model, they were like, it's changed everything. Because what people said is, we didn't hate meetings, we just hated the fact that they were so confusing. And if I go to a 10-minute meeting and know that all we're doing is checking in, I'm going back to work, I don't mind that. Or if I go to a meeting and know we're only going to talk about tactical things, and if somebody brings up some long-term strategic things, We'll carve out 2 hours to go over it on Thursday.

I can do that. Everybody loves the strategic meetings. And then the offsite meetings were more just to like take a breath and check in. Separating them out actually reduced the amount of time people spent in meetings, and more importantly, it reduced the stress of feeling people, people feeling like they didn't know what was going on. So that was a long answer to the question, but separating them out made them actually fun. Or clear, and then the leader had to make 'em interesting. And you're a galvanizer, so you're like, "Come on, everybody." There are certain people that are like, "Okay, where's the minutes?" And we're gonna go through the first thing, and it's like, no, nobody loves that. So find a person that likes to galvanize and get people rolling and help them, let them help with the meeting.

00:50:56

Yeah, I'd love to follow up with you on that. So in terms of having fun meetings, like what have you seen work the best to make meeting, like, do you think like every meeting should have a presentation that goes along with it? [Speaker] No. Best guess, what's some good ways to have a fun meeting?

I love this. It's gonna come right full circle to something else. You know what makes a good movie? I was a screenwriter and I still do love to write screenplays. The essence of every great movie, story, book, TV show, anything is conflict. And you know, to go back to literature in class when we were, it's man versus man or woman versus woman, you know, man versus nature, man versus himself. There's a conflict where, where there's some tension that needs to be resolved. And every one of your meetings by definition should involve tension. Like, like I think we should start our meetings and go, hey, if we mail it in today or we're bored or we're checked out, we're probably going to make decisions that aren't very good. Our competitors will be really happy. Our employees are going to be really confused and we're going to feel bad 2 weeks from now when we have to live with that. So let's do this. Let's lean in for the next 45 minutes or 2 hours or 10 minutes and really pay attention, because if we don't, something really bad could happen. That alone would make people go, okay, let's focus.

Well, we get to the meetings and how do we start the first 10 minutes? Okay, so let's go through the most boring things first. What's the schedule look like? And people are just like, oh no. So get people hooked into the fact that what you're about to do is the most important part of your job. And even a CEO could say, and I'm gonna evaluate this team based on how we perform here. We're not just trying to get time off the clock.

And who's in charge of preparing for the meetings?

Okay, that's a great question. The leader is, is responsibility for making sure that happens. So they are accountable for making sure that happens. They can delegate something based on a person's strengths, skills, their working genius to say, I want you to be responsible for this and you to be, but they cannot. You can delegate that, but you can't abdicate it. They can't say Susan's gonna run our meetings. So Susan, what are we talking about? No, you're the leader. And as far as preparing goes, I'm actually a believer in not overpreparing, but coming there and, and reviewing what's going on in the first 10 minutes. Like, so where do we stand on our key things that we're working on?

Mm-hmm.

And going around, so how do you think we're doing? How do you think we're doing? And then as a result of that first 10 or 15, which is really fun, then going, okay, what are the things that are red? What are the things that are yellow? What are the things that are green? We should talk about the red ones. So what people do during meetings is they go around and they go, okay, marketing, you have 15 minutes. Sales, you have 15 minutes. Accounting, you have 15 minutes to operations. Well, maybe we should spend 45 minutes on sales because that's the big issue. Because we're not there to represent our department. We're there to run the company.

Yeah.

And so when it's too structured, like everybody gets a certain amount of time and there's an agenda, half the time people don't know what the agenda should be till they get there and look at what's going on. And somebody goes, did you guys know about that fire that happened yesterday within the business? And they're like, no, we should probably address that today. So I think what we call it is create a real-time agenda, and that gets people interested because they're actually trying to figure it out together rather than going and putting a piece of paper on the board or a slide up that says, here's the agenda, which is, which is at best a guess at what we should talk about.

Yeah. For us, when we're doing, we're doing a weekly standup, we have like a discussion item section. So as we go fast, everybody gets 1 minute to say what they're working on.

We call that the lightning round.

Yeah. And then we just do put a discussion item and vote. Perfect.

And it's good to give people a lightning, but it's 1 minute.

Yeah, that's called a lightning round. I like that.

Yeah. And then, and then you look at what's on the lightning or what people said and everybody goes, oh wait, that thing she said, we should talk about that as opposed to, oh no, are we going to have to spend time talking about the other 9 things before we get to that? And are we going to have 3 minutes left to talk about that? So that's great.

Yap Gang, one of the biggest challenges of building a business is staying responsive because the best opportunities don't always show up during perfect working hours. A lead calls at night, a customer texts while you're in a meeting, and if nobody responds, that opportunity can disappear. That's why I trust Quo, spelled Q-U-O. Quo is a business phone system that lets your team handle calls, texts, and customer conversations from one shared number on any device. Everything lives in one clean view. Voicemails, contact details, full history. Your team always has the context that they need to get the job done. And I just love how Qo's AI logs the calls and then summarizes conversations automatically so that nothing falls through the cracks. That means your business stays responsive even when you're offline. And now we use Qo very creatively at YAP Media on the social and production side of our agency. We have really busy, super high-profile clients that don't wanna log into Slack. Their team communicates with my team in Slack, but if the high-profile client wants to message our team directly, they can use QWO and my team can monitor that inbox together so they can text at any time.

It's basically like a high-profile client hotline, and that's just one idea. You can use QWO in really creative ways to level up your business no matter what type of business you have. Make the season where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try Qo for free, plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to quo.com/profiting. That's quo.com/profiting. Qo, no missed calls, no missed customers. Yeah, gang, on the show I've sat down with Robert Greene, Seth Godin, Alex Hormozi, Gretchen Rubin, James Clear. So many epic, epic guests. And what do all these guests have in common? Every single one of them has a bestselling book, and every one of those books are on Blinkist. Here's something I've been thinking about. With AI, everybody has access to the same answers, but the people who actually read, who absorb real ideas and think for themselves, they're the ones with the original take in the room. AI can summarize, but it cannot replace the frameworks that you build by reading widely. That's your real edge as an entrepreneur. Blinkist turns the world's best nonfiction into 15-minute reads or listens. Over 9,000 titles covering entrepreneurship, marketing, psychology, habits, all the things we talk about on this show.

I use Blinkist to go through several books a week, pull out the key insights, and then I decide which ones I wanna read fully between meetings, at the gym, whenever I have 15 minutes, I'm listening to Blinkist. In a world where everybody is copying the same AI output, reading is the thing that can make you different. Grab your free trial plus an exclusive 30% discount at blinkist.com/profiting. That's blinkist.com/profiting. Hey, YAP fam, if something unexpected happened to you tomorrow, would the people who depend on you be financially okay? I asked myself that question and honestly, I didn't love my answer, and that's what pushed me to get covered with Fabric by Gerber Life. Fabric by Gerber Life is term life insurance you can get done today. Made for busy parents and entrepreneurs like you, all online, on your schedule, right from your couch if you wanted to. You could be covered in 10 minutes with no health exam required, and the cost is way lower than you'd expect— up to a million dollars in coverage for less than a dollar a day. There's also a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can cancel at any time. So really, what are you waiting for?

When my dad passed away in 2020, he had life insurance, And that was a big help for my mom. I honestly don't know what would've happened if that wasn't the case. So thankfully he was smart enough to get life insurance. Are you smart enough to do the same? Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com/profiting. That's meetfabric.com/profiting. M-E-E-T-Fabric.com/profiting. Policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company. Not available in certain states. Price is subject to underwriting and health questions. So let's talk about—

this is a blast for me.

Oh, thank you.

Yeah, it's been years since I talked about it all together.

Yeah, I wanted to just— I felt like we didn't do an actual interview on all your different work. We always focused on Working Genius, so I was excited about that. But bringing us to Working Genius, so as I was thinking about meetings, one of the things that stuck out to me was how all the different working genius types, so you've got 6 different working genius types, are good for all different kinds of meetings. Like brainstorming meetings.

I love it.

Are great for like inventors and wanderers, but then the tactical meetings are better for tenacity. Talk to us about working genius, the 6 types. And by now you guys should all know about working genius cuz I've talked about it so much on the podcast, but in case they don't, what is working genius and how does it tie together with The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and Death by Meetings.

Well, if this whole podcasting and idea empire doesn't work out for you, you'd be a great consultant. But you got a lot of good stuff going on because you're asking great questions. So every meeting really does focus on different working geniuses. Like the, the quarterly offsite is a big part of W and I and a little bit of D. My wife's a W-I. I know a lot of CEOs and they love to step back and go, let's go. Let's go to that hotel in the mountains and sit there and go, what should our business be? I wonder if there's something else we could do. Ah, where are we in the history of this industry? And there's a place for that. It's really important, but it's not at your weekly tactical.

Yeah.

And so what we think people should do is when they go to a meeting of any kind, even if they're just having a conversation with somebody sitting down, they should say, hey, what are the letters that are really at play here? So I'm an inventor discerner. You know what that means? Every meeting is a strategic conversation, but it's not appropriate. And so when we have our weekly meeting where we're just going through how things are going, I have to kind of put that on hold and go more to G.E.N.T. And when I— and I used to do this all the time, we'd have a meeting about launching a product the next day and I'd be like, hey, I have an idea. And they'd say, no, this isn't an idea meeting. Similarly, You'd have a brainstorming session like, hey, what are we going to do next year with this new product? And you'd go to have a meeting and the ET in the room would go, I don't think we have the budget for that. It's like, no, we're not trying to evaluate the realism of it. We're actually trying to throw things against the wall.

If we don't know what letters are at play, the people that are there don't know when they should lean into their natural letters or maybe when they need to go, oh, I need to put it aside and, and, and be a little more intentional about, about being part of this kind of conversation.

Yeah. As a leader, it's really helped me because I feel like I'm less chaotic and less, um, more organized and clear to my team. Right. Because I have a daily sales meeting. Like my primary responsibility to this day is sales. So I have a daily sales meeting.

It's— how long is it?

It's 30 minutes. It's, it's really tactical.

It's just—

that's the tactical.

Yeah.

It's just going through deals, them like asking me questions and just really tactical. But sometimes I would have ideas. I'm an inventor, so I'd be like, oh, let's do this recruitment campaign, this sales campaign. And the team would just go, go with it. I'm the CEO. They're not gonna debate me about it.

Right.

But now I catch myself and I'm like, okay, I need to have invention meetings where we just talk about new ideas with the same team, but it's just a different angle. It's not me going over deals. So that's been really helpful. I feel like my team feels like things are just more clear, more organized, and that It's not just like shooting out the hip all the time.

Because we generally, we gravitate toward the things we do naturally.

Yeah.

And it's great that you're naturally good at that, but it's good to hold that back until you're at the right forum for that. Yeah. And, you know, if that 30-minute meeting goes to 45 because of the deals, you're like, fine.

Yeah.

Because we're engaged and it matters. It's not like when people go, well, we got out on time, we're efficient. No, you should be, your meeting should be as long as there, interesting, passionate, and they're getting things done.

To be honest, sometimes it just runs as long as we need it. 45 minutes, 50 minutes, whatever it is.

The only one when executive teams get together in the like once a day for, for 5 or 10 minutes just to go, okay, where is everybody today? What are you working on? Administrative stuff. That's the only one where we go, try not to let that one bleed because then people are going to start not wanting to come. But the other ones should be as long as we need to get things done. And you know what, people that change the way they do meetings, find going to meetings is actually the most fun thing they do. I mean, literally, they're like, our meetings are actually, I look forward to them now, cuz it's where we solve problems, eliminate obstacles, and get stuff done. It goes from the worst thing to the best thing. But, um, but you gotta know what you're doing. And there's a very big difference between a tactical meeting and a strategic meeting and a long-term. I don't have W as a genius, which is the highest mo— the wonder one. So I'm like ready to solve a problem right away. And I need people with wonder to go, me too, hey, maybe this isn't the right direction at all.

But if they say that during my tactical meeting, I'm like, no, no, not right now.

Yeah.

So I think it's really good to understand that different meetings correspond to different letters. That doesn't mean people get to opt out based on their letters. It means they arrive knowing what they're supposed to do.

Yeah. So Working Genius is 6 different working types.

Yep.

Everybody has 2 working geniuses that they're really naturally good at.

And it's, and they're naturally good at it cuz it actually gives them joy and energy.

That's the thing. Yeah.

It's not like I'm just good at it, it's just like it fires me up to get to do those things.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So for example, mine is galvanizing an invention. I can do that all day and never get tired. Exactly. It just feels like a dream job. Right. Then there's competencies.

Everybody has 2 competencies, which means you, you, it doesn't kill you to do 'em. You can sustain yourself as long as you're not doing them all the time. And if your job involves some of that, that's fine.

Mm-hmm.

As long as you're getting to do some of the things in your genius too. So competencies are in the middle.

Yeah. So for me, I think it was, um, discernment. Discernment and tenacity.

Yes.

I'm good at tenacity. I, I get shit done. Yes. But over time, it's not really what I wanna do.

Exactly. And, and you get it done. Because, you know, that's, that's how to activate things. But like finishing things just to finish them doesn't necessarily float your boat. Yeah, there are people in the world who wake up every day and go, I want to finish things. And I love them because I have none of it.

I need a lot of tenacity on my team.

Yeah.

And then the last two are frustrations.

These are so important because this is where you lose energy and joy. And most people aren't good at those things. And so if they have a job that's calling them to do the two activities that they, that frustrate them and drain them, that's a recipe for burnout. There are people whose wounds make them really good at the things that they hate because they're afraid to fail. And that's a real bad recipe because that means they're going to keep doing it. People are going to ask them to do more of it.

Yep.

And yet they are going to get burned out, not because they're working too hard, but they're doing the kind of work that drains and frustrates them.

Yeah. So burnout is really when you have misaligned work. It's not, it's not really about overwork, too many hours. It's really about doing the wrong thing that you're not naturally wired to actually do, which is why Working Genius is so powerful.

You know what's funny? I'm 60 years old. I can't believe I'm saying that. I mean, I mean, not that I'm saying it out loud. I don't care about that. I can't believe I'm 60. But one of the things we talked about, I was like, in the new year, we tell everybody in our company, spend more time in your area of genius. My capacity for work isn't lower now, as long as I'm doing the work that I'm naturally drawn to, which doesn't mean I don't have to do some of the other stuff. But like, as I get older, maybe I get less energy, so I should do the things that feed me.

Yeah, that's true.

When I was in my 20s, I had jobs where I was doing things I hated, which is never a good idea, but I could power through that.

Yeah, that makes sense.

When you're young, find out the things that feed you, find out the things that drain you. And work as much as you can in the area of where you're, where you're.

Yeah. Well, I love the Working Genius assessment. I actually made my whole team take it. Now it's part of our hiring process.

That is a great idea.

So we're actually buying credits for people and saying, take this test before. And Kate was just, uh, you just met Kate, one of my business partners. The, the other day she was like, oh, he's, she's, it's an ET. He's an ET. And I'm like, oh, that's perfect for the role. Right? So it's. It's so helpful to know what people are naturally good at when you're looking at hiring.

Do you know, years ago, a guy came into our office and his team of lawyers, wonderful people, and he was the guy who argued the case to the Texas Supreme Court that made it illegal to use assessments in hiring. Because there was a time where people like, are they biased? Are they really this? And so he was that guy. And we did Working Genius with his team. And then we went around and gave people feedback based on it. Oh, wow, this works. This— all the feedback, he was like, this is really mirroring the things that I get from them. And the key to using it for hiring is to know that nobody wants to get hired in a job they're going to hate.

Yeah.

So when you sit down, the first thing is I hired an assistant 8 months ago and I said, I need somebody with discernment. So she's going to see me and know what I need. I can't— I don't just tell her. And It'd be great if she had tenacity and finished things. It would be great if she had enablement too, which means she's really supportive. She doesn't have that one at all. And so, you know, what I could do is I could hire and say, you're going to be great at the things I need. But there's one thing I need that you're not good at. I'm not going to punish you for that. I'm going to adjust my expectations. And she's doing great. And I'm not disappointed because I know what I was getting.

Yeah, that makes so much sense.

Whereas before, Or I would be, why don't you do this? And it's like, I look at her working jeans, because God didn't make her that way. And so to know what a person is, that's a great act of love. You see them for who they are and put them in a position on the bus, give them the seat on the bus where they're going to be best.

Yeah.

So to me, this is like an assessment that allows you to avoid them being miserable and you having to reject them for reasons that aren't a flaw. It's just who they are.

And one of the best things about it is that it's So affordable, like you made it in a way, I, I remember taking other assessments, they're like $250 or, or something, or at least $60 a seat.

Yeah.

Working Genius is, is like 18. Yeah. 20 bucks, 18 bucks with code Profiting. If you guys wanna use it, workinggenius.com/profiting and you get 20% off, it's less than 20 bucks.

And we, I, when I did this, I had friends go, Pat, you should have charged a lot more for this.

I mean, it's worth a lot more than 20 bucks. Like it really is.

And we said, but this is a mission. And remember, we go back to my dad and I was like, we, we, one of our, one of our strategic anchors is mission over money. And that is we want somebody to go, I have 3 kids. We have a student version for high school and college students. We don't want them to go, oh, how much does this cost? We don't want somebody whose, whose company doesn't have a lot of money to think, oh, we can't afford this. And so we gave off some of the profits, but, but I, it, it, ultimately comes around to benefit people. One of the things we're doing is we're creating a movement of people in the world who are using this in their own work.

Yeah.

So we've had over 5,000 people get certified. We do a certification program for people, and in 2 days on a Zoom call, they learn all about it, and then they go out and use it in their own practice. So we've decided, let's make it affordable and let's empower other people to use it out there. And that's good for everybody. We will do fine. But more importantly, it's going to change the world because when we started, we said we want work to be fulfilling and anything that prevents people from experiencing that is not.

Well, it just makes it a no-brainer. Yes, it makes it a no-brainer. Like my whole team's taken it. My charity project that I have that has like 12 people in it, I'm making them take it. It just makes it a no-brainer to, to use it. So I love it.

We are so glad that more people— we've— we're— I think this year we'll get at least 2 million people to have used it. In, in just a few years.

So yeah, it's, it's incredible. So great job working on that.

Thank you.

Um, okay, so my last couple questions to you. What is one truth about entrepreneurship that most people learn far too late?

Oh, okay, I think I have two answers to this.

Okay.

The good one is there's a lot of people that don't do it because it seems scary. I, I grew up not with a family profile of entrepreneurship. My dad had one job essentially my whole childhood, and it was about We were relatively poor. And so he was, it was like, get benefits, stability matters. And that was his Myers-Briggs and working genius and all that stuff. And so I never thought I would, should do this when I went out and did my own thing. And, and by the way, people say, how do, how do I do what you do? And it's like, oh, the first thing we did, we enjoyed. If we had just been this little consulting firm regionally working with small companies in our area, we'd have loved that. So, but being in charge of yourself and having a little bit more responsibility and risk, but actually being in control of that is wonderful. So there's a lot of people who don't become an entrepreneur because they think it's too crazy. And actually, there's— it's to me, it's more peaceful than when I worked in a big company. I was dependent on a bunch of people doing things that I didn't even know.

And I would go, oh, God, help us make our revenue. I don't even know how to help. So I like being an entrepreneur. So for some people, I would they need to learn that earlier in life. The other thing is, know that there is a certain amount of loneliness that goes in of not having a boss, because a lot of people start their own business and they go, oh yeah, where's that person that I'm supposed to go to and say, did I do a good job today? And it's like, oh, that's me. And so there is this sense we get used to. We like having coaches and tutors and mentors and parents and teachers. And then you get to a place where it's you. And that's why it's good to have consultants and mentors that can help you and relationships, because sometimes it's late in life and you go, gosh, I've been carrying this by myself for too long. So that's what I would say. Know that it can be lonely, do stuff about that, but know the risk of it is not as bad as people think it is, because there's something about saying, I can work harder to affect the outcome, and I like that.

So those would be the two things about entrepreneurship.

I love it. Yeah. This is going to be an awesome question, I think, moving forward. Um, yeah, yeah. And what is one actionable thing our Young Improviters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? One actionable thing.

You know, I just think it's so interesting. I mean, there's this, I can think of many things, but I am surprised at how people that aren't too close to your business will have insights that you can't see.

Hmm.

And I know that as a consultant over the years, whenever I worked with CEOs, I was never an expert in their business, and that was a benefit. And I was willing to ask dumb questions. And I'd go in and go, have you guys thought about this? And probably if I did it 10 times, 4 of them were dumb because I didn't know their business. 4 of them were like, yeah, we thought about that. And 2 of them, they were like, wait a minute. They would look at each other and go, how come we didn't think about that? And the answer was because they're too close to it. So what I would say is, look for advice and answers and solutions outside of the knowledge base within your own organization. Go to people that do other things, tell them enough about your business and say, what would you do? And for every 10 answers, there's going to be 2 that it's going to be like, we would have never thought of that had we not asked the baker down the street or the doctor how to run this business. And 4 are going to be dumb.

4 are going to be like, yeah, we thought of that. But look for answers outside of your normal domain.

Yeah.

Because there's something about having that naive insight that can really— and, and they're usually pretty like fundamental changes.

Yeah. I think it's really important for entrepreneurs to be in other entrepreneurship groups.

Yes. And not in the same industry.

Mm-hmm.

I've learned so much from people in different businesses.

Yeah. So interesting. Okay. Last one. What is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond financial and business.

For me, and I was going through this today talking to a counselor, it's sitting in silence with God and knowing that I am loved. And that's taken me many years to understand this, because sometimes my wounds have been superpowers. The things that were hard for me, I thought, oh, look at me, I'm wounded by this. I'm gonna try harder than everybody else. And when in the place I am right now, not because I'm getting older, but because I needed to do it like the last 5 years, I've really leaned into thinking, I don't have to prove myself all the time. I used to always think it's never enough. And when you start with this place of like, God loves me and he made me to do this, then I don't feel like I'm coming from a place of fear, but a place of joy. So profiting is working from a place of joy and excitement, not from fear and worry.

Yeah.

So that would be mine.

I feel like you talk a lot about wounds lately.

Yeah.

Talk to us about what we need to look out for or how wounds show up in business and, and you know, just some of your new thought around wounds.

So many successful business people, so many of the CEOs I worked with, so many are successful. And part of it is because they have this desire to succeed and a fear of failure. And over time, they start to realize, like I was just talking about yesterday, maybe it's never going to be enough. Am I ever going to get to that place where it's enough? And they think— and athletes are like this and, and stars or, you know, celebrities are like this. What propels them to be the GOAT is that they're never enough. They never stop. And, and so what I've tried to help them with is to realize your success is not predicated on being afraid of failing. It's coming to terms with the fact that you want to have peace. And so address those wounds. They're not your superpower. Your superpower is your ability that you, the God-given talents you have, and you don't need that running away from failure to do that. So I guess what I'm trying to say is a lot of successful people secretly, when I talk to them, feel like it's never gonna be enough, and I'm, I'm terrified of failure.

Many of them will say, every time I succeed, it's more of a relief that I didn't fail as opposed to the joy that something worked out.

Mm-hmm.

So I, I just am surprised at how many leaders, and I went through that myself, are operating from that place that my wounds are my superpower. And you can be successful and have more peace and success when you get over that.

Yeah. So good. Pat, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do? Where do you want to point people to?

Well, I think this podcast is probably the place to start because this was fantastic.

Thank you.

Really holistic. I love it. But The Table Group is my company, tablegroup.com. And there's— we love what we do for our clients and wonderful people there. And then Working Genius is its own thing, although it's part of The Table Group and workinggenius.com. Is where you can go buy the assessments and learn more about Working Genius. And then I guess there's stuff on YouTube if you just Google my stuff and then Instagram.

And you have a podcast too?

Yes, I have a podcast called At the Table. And then we do have a Working Genius podcast where we all we do is for people that love to nerd out around Working Genius. And it's really grown because there's a lot of people that love to talk about it. So we alternate it once a week on each. At the Table, which is more about just business in the world of work, and then we're Working Genius, which is going deep into that.

Amazing. So we'll stick all those links in the show notes. Pat, it is always such a pleasure. You are so great.

Thank you so much. It is my pleasure. Thank you.

Yeah, fam, Patrick just handed us the operating system for a team that actually wins. No more excuses for running a dysfunctional team. So here's what I want you to take back to your business starting today: healthy teams beat smart teams every time. If your people are smiling in meetings, but venting in private, that's artificial harmony and it's quietly killing your execution. Great leaders make it safe to disagree out loud, debate it out openly, and still leave room for the aligned. Next, fix your meetings. Most meetings fail because we mix everything together: brainstorming, strategy, updates, decision. It becomes meeting soup. Patrick's solution is simple. Run quick daily check-ins for alignment. Hold weekly tactical meetings to solve immediate problems. And schedule separate strategic sessions for the big complex conversations. When everybody knows the purpose of the meeting, people show up focused and decisions actually get made. And don't sleep on working genius. When you put people in roles that energize them, they don't just perform better, they stop burning out. That's how you create a team that people actually wanna be a part of. Now go build something worth being proud of. All right, young and profits, as always, thank you for showing up and investing in yourself tuning into this conversation today.

If this episode hit home, share it with a leader or entrepreneur who needs to hear it. And if you're loving the show, drop us a 5-star review on Apple, Spotify, Castbox, wherever you listen to the show. It means the world to me. And every single one of you who have taken time to leave a review are the heartbeat of this community and the reason that we keep going. And by the way, we're bringing so much more in-person content just like this conversation with Patrick. So if you're not yet subscribed to YouTube, Just search Young and Profiting, find us on YouTube. You can also find us on Spotify Video. You can also find me hanging out on Instagram @YapWithHala or LinkedIn by searching my name, Hala Taha. Until next time, this is your host, Hala Taha, AKA the Podcast Princess, signing off.