Summary: In this episode, Dr. Jim and Jill Zimmerman discuss the importance of building a strong foundation of trust, transparency, and clear communication before expecting people to push the envelope and become exceptional leaders. Jill shares her experience in building and inheriting teams and emphasizes the need to understand the business, build relationships across the organization, and provide ongoing feedback. They also discuss the significance of taking a people-centered approach, setting clear expectations, and creating an environment where people feel comfortable giving and receiving feedback.

Key Takeaways:

Building a strong foundation of trust, transparency, and clear communication is essential before expecting people to push the envelope and become exceptional leaders.

To build an exceptional team, leaders need to understand the business, build relationships across the organization, and provide ongoing feedback.

Taking a people-centered approach and understanding individual strengths and preferences is crucial for effective team management.

Setting clear expectations and creating an environment where people feel comfortable giving and receiving feedback is key to building a high-performing team.

Chapters:

00:03:00 Importance of transparency and clear expectations

00:06:00 The value of getting out of your silo and understanding the entire organization

00:12:00 The importance of reciprocity and sharing about oneself

00:14:00 Importance of two-way communication and transparency

00:18:00 Integrating people-centered approach into onboarding process

00:23:00 Recognizing and respecting individual differences and capacities

00:25:00 Understanding individual strengths and work preferences

00:27:00 Pushing people outside their comfort zones

00:29:00 Setting clear expectations and providing feedback

00:32:00 Building a failure culture that fails forward

00:35:00 Leveraging strengths and focusing on outcomes

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Ever start the work of becoming an exceptional leader and building an exceptional team. That's what I think you'll learn from listening to our conversation today with Dr. Z. Jill Zimmerman. Jill is an industrial organizational psychologist with over 40 years of corporate practitioner experience and building talent strategy and driving diversity as key business enablers.

Jill Zimmerman welcome to the show.

Jill Zimmermann: Thank you, Dr. Jim.

Dr. Jim: Before we dive into the main part of the conversation, what I'd like you to do is share with the listeners, anything that you feel is important from a personal or professional background perspective, that's going to.

Add some context to this conversation that we're going to have about building elite teams.

You have to work with what you have. And figure out what you need. And I would say that I followed three things as I've entered organizations, which ultimately have enabled me to build the right team to meet the business goals. The first thing is when you enter a new organization, you really need to understand the business, what they do, where they're going, how they're organized, what their mission is, what the culture is, everything, single thing about it.

The second thing that people skip a lot is that you can't just stay in your own circles. You need to really build relationships across the entire organization at all levels. That allows you to get different perspectives on the business and on the people and on the culture, and then you're ready to build the team and provide the solutions.

And make sure all of that fits the business and where they're going.

Jill Zimmermann: I like threes and the law of threes always works because you can remember I think these were game changing realizations that helped me consistently build a team, whatever it was that I inherited. And it's going to sound really fundamental, but there's a lot of depth.

The depth behind each of these, number one is I think when you come in, one of the things that I think, and I valued, and I've done is I believe in openness and transparency with your team. That's number one, if you're not clear about who you are, and that's everything from getting people getting to know you personally.

Am I going to share that? or not. I've always chosen to treat my team as adults and as peers to me in order for us to achieve our mission and our goals and build the right solutions. I am as transparent as anybody could be, and they know that I'm trusting them to value that information and that transparency.

That's number one. Number two, I think you have to set very clear expectations. So once you know what you're doing, you have to set clear expectations both at the individual level, like what is each individual's role? What are they expected to do? How are they expected to do it? And then I think the thing that's often gets missed with the team is what are the expectations of us as a team?

And when you do the feedback, people are much more comfortable talking about the positive things. But I think it's really essential that you do both talk about the positive things and what could be better.

And one of the things that's turned me away from working at those large organizations is the ones that I've come across always want you to stay in your lane. So it caught my attention that you're actually advocating for people to get out of their silos. So where did that come from and why is that important?

Jill Zimmermann: Where it came from was when I first, when I started my career and I entered a large commercial bank, a financial services institution. And, I was, it was my first real corporate job and I was charged with putting in place human resource solutions and programs across the entire company.

I actually think you have to listen and learn first, and a lot of times people think you have to listen and learn and go right to the top. So let me just listen and learn to what the CEO has to say and what they want. And then I'm going to go do the solution. And to me, I call that managing up, but I don't think, I don't think that's the way to do your role in a company.

You do have to listen and learn to the CEO because ultimately it's, they're the ultimate leader of the company, but if you forget to ask. Everyone else up and down the organization, not just the leaders, what's happening way down, layers down, three, four, five layers down from the very top leader, you are missing incredible information and knowledge because you need all views.

What are they observing? What's working? What's not working? by the way, best source to learn about a function or a part of the business, because they are. Hands on in the business, you can learn the most, the higher up you go to learn about a business, you're going to get the higher up view.

But if you really want to deeply understand it. You need to go all the way down and all the way up and probably back and forth a few times to validate what you learn. So that's the vertical. I think people also say, I'm in this team, this is my job. I'm going to just put blinders on and forget about the people on my sides and all the different things going on in the company.

Via phone, you can go and visit. And when you go to visit, you need to talk to everyone and you need to understand all the different geographies, all the different lines of business. How do they work together? What are their missions and goals? It's listening and learning. And that's what it is. And with that foundation.

You end up with, you're not staying in your lane, you're not saying this is my job. This is my team. This is maybe my organizational entity. Where does that fit in the bigger picture? How do I connect the dots?

Dr. Jim: What I really like about what you just explained I liked all of it, but the connection that I drew was about the impact element that you're pointing to and also connecting the dots, because when you think about it. Most of the work is done at the middle management and individual contributor level.

Managing up, managing down and managing across and having that curiosity and learning orientation really helps you connect the dots for your people. So I love how you pull that together. I want to dig a little bit deeper into the conversation that we're having. And you mentioned it earlier that when you're talking about transparency, setting expectations and having two way feedback.

We hear that stuff all the time. What I'd like you to do is walk us through some of the foundational things that you need to be doing across those three things. That map out. How do you get to that point? How do you get to the point where you can be transparent? How do you get to the point where you can easily set clear expectations?

Jill Zimmermann: So if you want to think of concentric circles, if you will in the middle of the circle is me as a person, you as a person and then around that is, is a lot of other circles, right? Me and my job in the context of this team in the context of the organization, et cetera.

I think the piece that people skip over Is hot. Do I even understand you as an individual? Do I even know anything about you? By the way, these strategies I'm talking about inside an organization. But to be honest, if you even think about it from a business development or a sales perspective, it's the relationships that you're building and getting to know people on a personal level matter tremendously in everything that we're doing.

So even, so just going back to what this is and creating that environment I have to just say, tell me about yourself, tell me who you are, tell me about your background, not just all your professional accomplishments, but where are you from? Where did you grow up? What kind of life experiences did you have?

Because I think when you approach someone like that, they feel, and it's authentic. There's nothing inauthentic about it that you're taking. A true interest in them as a first and foremost, a person, it all starts with us as individuals and it has to be reciprocated from the leader. If you're going to ask all these things, but by the way, you need to also share who you are.

That forms a true relationship. It's not a superficial relationship, but that begins the circles.

Given what you said and given what your skills are and what you like to do, it's not just what your skills are, but what do you like? What do you hate thing? I don't think that's the right role for you. And on top of it, I don't think we need that. I think the stuff you're doing is not a priority for the business.

That's a transparent statement, right? That's I'm creating an open dialogue. That's my view. What do you think? And you have to ask not just tell you have to ask. So that's what I observe. You're gonna, obviously, if they ask the person first, tell me what you do, tell me how it works, tell me what's worked here, tells me what wasn't said, the second circle.

First, it's you as the individual, then it's you in your role and then you create literally a dialogue. And it takes time. I think it takes a lot of time and people are feeling as if I don't have that kind of time. And I've had teams of 50 people, and I could tell you everything about all 50 people on my team.

There's a lot of formal things you can do around, style. This is my style. This is your style. This is how I like to get updates. This is what is it that you want to make sure, so you can do your job better. It's too, everything about what I'm saying are.

are examples of two way communication. And now that just starts to build that relationship and based on that relationship and people really feeling like you know them, you then can begin to say, Okay. My style is, this is now getting into the next concentric circle is I'm going to be really transparent with you.

To figure out how to sell it. I can't do it by myself. We're a team, and that is like the true definition of a team. So I know I'm talking about it in terms of what you say and what you do with your team, but it's very deliberate and it takes a lot of time and people skip over that. Those steps and you're missing this, the engagement of the team people work for people.

Dr. Jim: Every bit of what you just said is dead on. I think the part that I want to emphasize is that if we're looking at the fundamental, like the core of what you just said, it's a people centric approach. And the reason why I'm calling that out is that oftentimes what you'll see, especially with new managers, is They ignore the people side.

You even called it out and said, Hey, a lot of managers will like skip through this because it takes too long . But the reality of it is that if you're not focused on those things first. You shouldn't be in the job because that's the job.

Jill Zimmermann: You have to take time to save time and you often think I'm going to skip that cause I gotta get to the deliverable. The truth of the matter is you're going to go slow in the beginning. You are going to go so much faster and so much steeper if you've built that foundation.

Dr. Jim: I talk about this all the time. Slow down to speed up. Focus on ruthless execution on the fundamentals, which will set you up for success down the road. There's one interesting bit about what you just described, and I'd like to get your take on it.

So we interviewed Yasmeen Duncan, who's a CHRO of Magnolia bakery. And she was one of our earlier episodes. And one of the things that she did. Was she took all of the things that you were talking about and integrated it into the onboarding process to set the tone for building that communication culture up front.

Jill Zimmermann: I love that she did that. I think it's brilliant. And it is part of the onboarding process. And one of the things that we've put out, and I've always done this at all of my companies to help managers, not just me and my team, but to help our leaders and managers in the company is we give them a pretty simple onboarding checklist.

And you would think, okay, onboarding checklist it's the tactical stuff there are logistical things that are important or tactical things for onboarding, but we add to the onboarding checklist, just these exact items, get to know your team.

Understand their history, set clear expectations with them ask them how they want to get feedback. Like we, we literally put this on the onboarding checklist and what I, what we also do, and that's why I love her idea. And this is a way of training people. We keep it super simple.

So somebody's got to do it. Sometimes the manager will do it, but sometimes the manager doesn't do it. So in that case, the employee can do it. And we say to the employee, this is, we're sharing it because your manager should be doing this. If not, you go have the conversation.

Dr. Jim: This again ties back to your two way communication and setting the tone piece of it, because that's what Yasmeen does too, is that they call it, provide the pip up front. Why leave it up to chance or why wait six months, eight months, nine months for people to figure it out?

Why not be clear with the expectations up front, both? Quantitative expectations, but also all that other stuff about how you like to be managed, how what your strengths and weaknesses are, set that out on the table as part of your onboarding process and have it something that both manager and employee is accountable for them to move forward in the process.

When you take a look at all of these things that we're talking about, and we spent a lot of time talking about being, taking a people centered approach focusing on first principles and foundational things that you need to do to set the tone. How is that? Position you to really stretch your employees when the chips are down.

Jill Zimmermann: People are not really used to their leader or manager being transparent in this way. So at first it feels curious and different to them. Also a lot of people are very private about their. who they are and they don't want to talk about it. So you have to respect that, but you have to see it's not a cookie cutter thing.

And I've had people say to me, I did not get you in the beginning at all. Cause I didn't know why you were doing this. No one's ever asked me these questions before. No one has ever taken such an interest in me personally in a work environment. And at first I liked, I found it. It was a distrusting feeling cause it was uncomfortable, but I actually totally get it because eventually they learn to value and trust what they're hearing and they learn and they know that you value and respect and use basically what they're saying.

Why are you changing it? You have to explain that, but you can't explain that if you haven't taken the time to build the trust. But in the beginning, there are people that just do not get it. And it's a little awkward, I would say. And Over time is the thing here, they find the value in it and they learn to trust and value that information, is what I would say.

Dr. Jim: There's an element of what you just said that I'd like you to map out a little bit better. I like the part where you said you spent a lot of time in. Helping teams understand where you're coming from and laying that foundation of trust. I do very similar things when I'm building out a team.

Jill Zimmermann: I think what you have to recognize and it goes back to individual differences. And I think you have to respect those because everyone is a different amount of capacity. Some people can juggle 20 things at the same time. Other people can only do one. They're linear. Some people get stressed if there's too many things.

Other people can't love it. You have to really know the people because if somebody likes to go slow and methodical and think things through, then you need to give them time to do that. And you need to assign the work accordingly. On various different teams, I've had people that are Like excessively impressive on a process, like building out a process.

So they're much more like tactical and they're not strategic at all. They're not conceptual at all. They're just, but if you say, figure out how we're going to get from here to there. They're unbelievable. So you gotta, you, to me, this is go to the strengths model.

You just have to understand this person is good at the process. This person is better at the conceptual stuff and they're going to be a bigger thinker about tying the things together. You have to just identify. How fast people want to work, how much they can take on. Some people are, give me more.

And other people are like, I can only do one thing at a time. Sometimes you have to put two people on a project because you say you build the process and you figure out this, the strategic framework for it and we'll do it together.

You need to know that and if they're a good performer at what they do, you need to respect that. And you work to assign the work to their strengths. There's got to be someone on your team that likes to go fast. If you need to go fast, give it to that person. If you can't put a round peg in a square hole, but there are people that, that are round pegs that want to become, they want to add their edges.

Dr. Jim: One of the interesting things about a lot of the leadership. And management advice that's out there is that oftentimes we say things. And we say things so often that they become cliches where you can't really even figure out what do I do with that?

How do I make that real? And what you just described is the execution steps that you need to take to quote unquote meet people where they are. That's something that we hear all the time. And the big thing that I drew out of your answer is that you can't cookie cutter your way. To make this work to any large degree.

Jill Zimmermann: One of the best compliments I think you, I think, or that I've received as a leader manager is when somebody says to me, you've pushed me outside my comfort zone. That's, that to me is a massive compliment. Men and they're comfortable with it, obviously. So how do you get them to go beyond their limits?

If you don't know the people and you don't know their strengths and you don't know their gaps, you don't know their motivation, it's very hard to do this. It takes a lot of time. to figure it out. And it's a little bit iterative. I've given projects to people over the years on my team that I think I thought they could do it.

If every work product you get from the person is poor, it's a performance issue, but if the, if you push them outside of their comfort zone and the work product is poor, you might've pushed the wrong thing to the wrong person.

You have to take accountability for it as a manager and a leader. It isn't just the person, but obviously there's a bigger context there, but it's not a one size. fits all approach. So I, so you have to iterate on it, learn it and try it. And then if it succeeds, you go to the next thing. And if it doesn't succeed, you figure out why.

When I'm making an assignment and it's pushing somebody out of their comfort zone, the very first thing I do is ask them. I say, I would like you to do this. I know you've never done this before. Do you want to do this? I think you can because you have X, Y, and Z, but I know you don't know A, B, and C.

Here's the result. Here's what we got to achieve. You're going to figure out how we get there, but this is what it should look like. So it's very clear. The third thing is I'll say we're going to check in because I want to give you feedback along the way.

So you tell me, this is the part I need you to do first. How much time do you need? Can you get it back to me next week? I don't want you to do a finished product. I just want to see where you are, but how much time do you need to come back to me? And obviously I know what the ultimate timeframe is, but so it's got to be within that timeframe, but like you tell me what you need and they'll say, I need about a week.

They're super happy about it. And they walk in and it's missed the mark completely because you didn't bother to. To check in along the way or give them help or help develop them or give them a resource or a suggestion. And there is nothing more crushing to somebody when you gave them a new project.

It's a stretch thing. And they go spend X amount of time, call it four weeks and come back and they're beaming with pride and you look at it and you go, you missed the mark completely. . That is not it. That's a horrible feeling. And it's frustrating because now you lost four weeks. It's frustrating you as the manager.

And by the way, that person is feeling really bad about what they did. And believe me, they tried. So you want to set them up for success by setting clear expectations upfront, checking in. I call it the check in along the way. And the check in means feedback. This is right. This is off. This is great. Keep going, whatever you're going to say.

Like they move the needle, their growth, just, they just grew. They just did something they never did before, or they learned something new or they took something on and they feel really good about it. But you set them up for success.

Dr. Jim: There's a couple of things about that answer that I really like and it goes back to breaking down some of the cliches that exists within the business world and the leadership world, everybody talks about, you want to fail, fast, fail forward.

You just mapped out how you actually build a culture that allows for that because you're not just leaving things a chance. There's a process in place that actually allows you to fail forward because you're taking iterative steps towards the big outcome. So for those who have listened and have taken that in, that's your road map.

What should they have at top of mind that they should start work on first to build to this type of organization that has space for failure, that has space for development, and that has space for a high degree of trust in how they do things.

Maybe different than the prior leader or people's prior leaders. So you need to know the people on your team, what they like, what they're good at, what their history is, what their strengths are, et cetera. I would also say you need to know the people in the organization because that is what forms the culture of the organization.

And that's going to also inform you about making your whole team effective because the people are really an essential. piece of this. But really know them. That's going to help you know who can do what type of thing. And that also speaks to the focus that we talked about with respect to strengths.

And I'm going to add another concept that we didn't quite dig into here, but I think is super important. You can think of all of this as a change management exercise in a way. And so what helps people to change?

In order for people to change, there's really three fundamental elements. Number one, they need to know why are we doing what we're doing? What is the business reason for this? And that is something that you can cover in your transparency. Why is your role here? Why are we doing these projects?

Why is this going to impact the business? Why do we exist? Why are roles here? Why is our team here? What's the business context? What are we trying to achieve this? The second thing is, where do we want to take it all? What are the outcomes? And I think outcomes are really key. Every business is focused on outcomes and every team in a business needs to be focused on outcomes.

Dr. Jim: Jill. If people want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Jill Zimmermann: You can find me on LinkedIn Jill Zimmerman,

Dr. Jim: Jill, thanks for hanging out with us. Learned a lot during this conversation. There's a few things that stand out about the discussion that we had. One of the things that stands out to me is that if you're an individual contributor or manager. The first thing that you need to do within any organization is take the time to listen and learn, and listening and learning exercise needs to be done at all levels of the organization.

This is not something that you can shortcut and fast forward through. So Jill, appreciate you hanging out with us and sharing those insights. For those of you who have listened to this conversation, leave us a review, let us know what you think. And then tune in next time where we'll have another great leader joining us to share the game changing realizations that they've had that helped them build high performing teams.