#95: Building Your Best Team Ever with David Burkus

Lead the People

One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David’s forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are changing how companies approach leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. A skilled researcher and inspiring communicator, Dr. David Burkus is the best-selling author of five books about business and leadership. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into dozens of languages. Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world’s top business thought leaders. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and CBS This Morning. A former business school professor, David now works with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe, and NASA.

Top 3 Takeaways

1. Empathize early and often. Develop a sincere appreciation for others’ working styles and how they’re similar to or different from your own. Don’t expect others to conform to your preferences.
2. Build the foundation. Psychological safety and trust are essential for proper teamwork. Putting in the early effort upfront will pay dividends when you need it later.
3. Pause and ask. When a team member brings you a problem, don’t take the bait. Rather than jump to solution mode, honor their vulnerability then ask questions to uncover the deeper source of the problem.

From Our Sponsor

The Predictive Index (PI) is an award-winning talent optimization platform that aligns business strategy with people strategy for optimal business results. More than 60 years of proven science, software, and a curriculum of insightful management workshops make PI the solution for any company looking to design great teams and culture, make objective hiring decisions, foster engagement, and inspire greatness in their people anywhere in the world. More than 10,000 clients and 480+ partners use PI—including Nissan, Citizens Bank, Subway, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Omni Hotels—across 90+ countries. Learn more at predictiveindex.com.

From the Source

“All of the easy problems have been solved, and so, yes, we are dealing with information overload when we're talking about one brain, but all that really means is all of our work now requires teamwork and interdependence which is a good thing.”

“Most of the time when you have a cross functional team, we speed way too fast into trying to work and not enough time talking about how we're going to work.”

“Your high performers want to know what their expectations are, and they want to be held accountable to them, because you can't exceed expectations if you don't know what they are.”

“We've all been in those situations where we got really excited to share a crazy idea, and it was shot down immediately. What happened? Well, we didn't share our crazy ideas anymore.”

“What you see when you have that sense of prosocial purpose is not only increased with individual motivation, but an increase in people's willingness to put their own agendas aside… Their egos, agendas, they tend to put that aside much more often and put what I like to say, put we over me, take their own agendas and put them subservient to the needs in the agendas of the team.”

“Easiest, simplest, fastest thing you can do to hit all three right as a leader is the next time your person is sharing something with you—and you sense that it takes any amount of vulnerability to share that—just say to yourself as they're talking, pause and ask, pause and ask. And then when they're finished talking, don't jump into what you wanted to say. Pause and ask them a follow up question based on what you heard.”

Connect with David

Website: https://davidburkus.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidburkus

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidburkus