AIPIS 130 - Leading Your Team Based on Balancing Your Leadership Capital with Victor Prince, Author of "Lead Inside the Box"

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Welcome to the AIPIS show for accredited income property investment specialists and those who desire to be this is your host Jason Hartman where we we talk about increasing your income, your productivity and just generally having a better life while serving your clients better with America's most historically proven asset class income property. We have a great interview for you today and we will be back with that in less than 60 seconds. It's my pleasure to welcome Victor Prince. He is the author of Lead Inside the How Smart Leaders Guide Their Teams to Exceptional Results Victims. Victor, welcome. How are you?

Good. Thanks for having me Jason.

It's good to have you on. So there are countless books on leadership. I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't know. What is your angle on the subject?

Well, the unique angle that we have is we look at leadership through the lens of this idea of leadership capital, which is leaders have a certain amount of time and energy they can invest in their team members. And too many times people just kind of do it in a way that they don't really think about it strategically. So our book presents a way for people to think about their teams as a portfolio of different tasks, balance and performance patterns that leaders should very thoughtfully invest different amounts of their leadership capital in.

So what you're saying is you have this team of people or even this family or non profit organization, maybe a charitable activity, and you're in a leadership position and do you have to lead differently for each person on the team?

Absolutely. So what we do is the core of the book is this thing we call the leadership matrix and it looks at the different folks on your team by the output that they produce and the input they require from you to produce that output. So when you look at those on kind of the high, low level, you fall out with four different parts of this matrix and then each part of that is kind of two subtypes. So for example, you've got people who produce great results and require little output. Little input from you are what we call the exemplars. And they come in two flavors. So you have folks who are what we call rising stars. And these are people who are on a very fast trajectory in their career. And the way you lead them is very different than someone who might be what we call a domain master, which is someone who's great at their job and just enjoys being great at their job and doesn't really want to get promoted and become a manager, that type of thing. So the book looks at all these different performance patterns and tells you how to lead them differently and tells you also how you might want to dial back your time and energy with some so you can reinvest in some other folks.

Okay, so tell us about all the different types you talked about the category, the positive category. Right. The people that are performing. There are two types of those, I guess you're saying.

Yep. So the folks who are the high input or the low input, you don't have to spend a lot of time and energy on them, but they produce great results. Those are the rising stars and the domain masters. And then counter to bread, you also have some high, some really good producers on your team that we call the high cost producers. So these are folks who produce great results, but they take a lot of your time and energy to do it. And they come in two different forms. So one is what we call steamrollers. So these are the people who produce great results, but step on a lot of toes on the way to do that, and then you as a leader, end up apologizing for them, fixing their masses and that type of thing. So we set out a clear strategy for how you should lead these folks. And then the second type of the high cost producer is what we call squeaky wheels. These are the folks that do the job, but they're always asking you to help them make their decisions and asking for extra resources and that type of thing. So we lay out the strategy for how to make sure they keep producing those great results. But you can kind of wean them off the heavy dependence on you to do that.

Okay, so how many types total in the total panoply of leadership?

So there's four boxes in the matrix, and then each box has two subtypes.

Okay, so eight total.

There's eight total.

All right, go through those eight types a little, just to drill down on that a little bit, because I think it's important first to understand that that seems pretty foundational. And then let's talk about maybe a little bit on how to lead them effectively.

Sure. So we talked about the folks at the top of the matrix, the people who are producing results. And those are your rising stars and your domain masters. Those are the people who are producing great results with little input from you. You've got your steamrollers and squeaky wheels. So these are your high cost producers who produce great results but rely on you for a lot of input to get those. So that's the top of the matrix. The bottom of the matrix is divided into two halves. So one half is what we call your passengers. And these are people who don't produce a lot of results, but they don't take a lot of your time either. And they come in two different flavors. So one is what we call the joy riders. And these are people who love coming to work, have a lot of energy, do a lot of stuff, but they just don't work on the things that you need them to do, so they don't produce the results that you need. And then the second type of passenger are what we call stowaways. These are people who come to work just really to get the paycheck and they keep their head down. They don't produce any results, but they don't cause trouble. So that's the second type of passenger.

Can we just, I mean, would please, I do want you to go on, but just to interrupt you for a moment there. Can we just hire only the best types? Is there a way to just eliminate the headache of dealing with the less productive? Wouldn't that be a great idea? Right?

Absolutely. Yeah. In the perfect world, you get a hand, pick everyone that you get on your team, and you pick only these exemplars. But what you find is a lot of times leaders inherit the team that they have. So what the book does is helps you look at the team that you have, help figure out where these folks fall out in this matrix. And then so you can do, you can work with the team. You have to get the best out of them.

Okay, sounds good. So go back to the types. I just want to make sure you cover all of that.

Yep. So then the last type is the folks that we call the detractors. So these are the folks that don't produce results, but they also take a lot of your time. So they come in two flavors. So one is what we call the square pegs. And these are people who just aren't getting the job done because they don't have the skills they need. They may have gotten promoted into a job they weren't ready for, or maybe they don't have the training they need. So that's one Flavor. And then the other flavor of detractors are what we call slackers. And these are people who do have the skills, but they're not producing the results that they should just because they're not motivated, they're not doing the job like they should. So altogether, those are the four big types and then the two subtypes of each.

All right, so what do we do with this information now that we kind of have that outline? So thank you for that. What's next?

So what you do is you. You assess your team. So in the ideal world, you hand pick your team and have all superstars. But if you're taking over a new team, you want to get a sense of how does your team look in this portfolio. So you might have a few of these rising stars, you might have some detractors and others. So once you identify what performance pattern each one of your folks is in, then you can identify the strategy that should help them get to a better place. For example, with the exemplars, they're doing well, so you want to keep them there. So with the domain masters, it's just make sure that they're easy to neglect because they do great work and they're not really bothering you to get promoted. So it's easy to neglect these folks. You just want to make sure you do whatever you can to keep them happy and producing in that role. The other type of these exemplars are what we call the rising stars. And for them, it's actually interesting that you're only going to have them on your team for maybe a year or two because they're going to get promoted, they're going to at some point get recruited away from you. So your challenge with them is to think about how do you help them find the next challenge within your larger organization so you can keep that talent and be seen as a place that develops people like that.

Yeah. Okay, so I mean, should we just plan on having them get hired away? It sounds like we got to resign ourselves to that.

Well, ideally you keep them, but you're very honest with them because they are going to look, it's just the type of place that they're on a career path and what you don't want. The worst thing you could do is if you have a rising star is let them get bored. And if you don't give them growth opportunities, you don't really challenge them, they're going to leave. And if they leave your team, they leave your company. That's a pretty bad thing for you as a manager. To be seen as someone who lost that talent. So you kind of have to face reality and help them grow. And maybe that growth isn't on your team, but maybe it's somewhere else in your larger organization.

Right, right. Okay. Okay, good. So what do you say about all of those other sort of personality or character assessments, whether it be Colby or Myers Briggs? You know, what do you say to that? Does that tie in with what with your ideology, or is that a separate competing ideology?

Yeah, I think there's a lot of great tools out there. I'm a fan of Myers Briggs and all those types of things. What we've done is ours is based more on actual performance. It's a practical guide to this. So my co author and I, we've, over our careers, we've managed dozens and dozens of teams and hundreds of people and been parts of many teams and that type of thing. So these are the performance patterns that we've actually observed from the workplace. And then the framework really captured those in a way that helps us because what we were finding is that I'd have a certain problem with one type of employee and I'd think back and say, you know, that's very similar to the situation I had a bunch of years ago in a different place. And when you start identifying these patterns, you can quickly learn and apply the lessons that you've learned in the past.

Okay, all right. What else should we know? Just in general, a question I haven't asked you.

So I think the leadership matrix itself is pretty useful for a lot of different situations. So it's. If you get a new team, you can get a sense of what your team looks like as a portfolio. If you've just gotten promoted within your team and now you've got to manage folks that were your peers, it's a pretty useful thing. It's also very useful for the larger organization for things like succession planning. So if you want to identify. All right, if we lose this key person over here, how would we backfill that? You can start looking at things like who are the rising stars? And other teams. So it has a lot of great uses for both individual managers, but for larger organizations in general.

Tell us a little bit about how we can hire for this. Is there stuff that we can literally say in an online posting that will. Will sort these people, help them? I mean, you know the problem nowadays nobody reads a post. They just reply with their resume. You know, if we were drafting a help wanted ad, is there something we should say in it? Some thought, I'm sure There is, by the way, but you know, I'm just asking it that way in terms of certain types of people for certain roles, maybe expand on that idea a little bit.

So I think a very useful thing for the book is each chapter is basically about one of these performance patterns, these archetypes. And then so we lay out, here's what it looks like, here's what a person performing like this looks like, and then we give a real case example. So with those, you can actually say whether you're interviewing people. You could say, you know what, you can tailor your questions to get a sense of if you suspect someone, for example, might be a good producer, but they've got this tendency to be a steamroller, you can ask questions to try to elicit that out. So it's very useful that way. Once you get a picture of here's what really the rising stars and these domain masters look like. When you get a picture of that, you can also do your interviewing questions. You can do your job descriptions and other things to say, here's what we're looking for and then here's the watch outs that we're trying to keep away from that we might want to see if we can get out in an.

Interview in terms of interview questions and interview format. What advice do you have there? How do we know who we're talking to?

Yeah, that's a great question. So I love the idea of really getting people to give you examples, right? So everyone can talk about themselves and flowery language and that type of thing. But ask them to give. And I usually ask them to give more than one example if I ask for a behavior or something. So if I go through the questions, then I kind of get, if a flag goes up for me that maybe this person is someone who just shows up at work and doesn't really focus on results, then I'll dig in and ask them for kind of what are the achievements that you've done? Not just experience that you've had, but tell me the biggest results that you're proud of and that type of thing. So I look for that concrete examples to kind of really get to know who these people are.

But how do the different types, I mean, there are four categories and eight types. How do they answer those questions? Are there any examples you want to share on that?

That's a good question.

What's the question? What's the answer going to be? And then how do you know who that is? I don't mean to put you on the spot with that, but I think it'd be helpful.

Yeah, I love doing the, you know, I've kind of done job interview over many of those, over the years. And so one of the. I always start off a job interview by just saying, you know, tell me about yourself in a minute or less. In a nutshell, tell me about yourself. And then the question is less around having them tell me about themselves. It's more around to see did they listen to the question and can they be concise and have a point in like a minute or less? So that's always a really interesting question because I think one or two of the funniest interview stories I've had was I've asked that question and then 30 minutes later the person's still rambling on and then we kind of let the interview conclude because it's kind of a big watch out for me if they don't listen and they can't really communicate. Well.

Right. It might be that way in the office on the job, you ask a question about something and you got to listen to a 30 minute answer.

Yeah. And they don't even remember what it's about. And then my favorite part on that one story. So the guy talked for 30 minutes and then he, then we said, okay, thanks for your time. And he's like, well, any questions? Do you have any questions for me or do you want me to tell you anything more? It was pretty funny.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so other questions, do you have like a list of questions or anything like that that is in the book or anything on your website to help identify who you're talking to?

Yeah, I do have, I've done a blog specifically on the specific interview questions I've done. So if you go to my victorprince.com website, there's a link to my blog there. So I'll give you a couple of those. So one, one that I love asking that's kind of, that's pretty insightful is I ask people to review their last boss. So it's turning the tables around and not asking them, you know, how did your last boss, what rating did you get? But having them review their last boss. Because what that question isn't really about their last boss at all. It's about how they work with their manager. So if someone talks about someone who really talks about their boss was always, you know, was micromanaging me or always on my case or things like that. Those kind of give you things that you can ask for to see. All right, how are they going to be if I'm managing them? So That's a pretty unique, insightful question that I found very helpful over the years.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right. Anything else?

That whole idea of just giving people airspace to see if they can communicate that. And I like to ask the idea of really what are the three concrete accomplishments or results that they've done through their resume. So people can talk about years of experience and all that kind of stuff. But I try to hone in on, well, what have you actually gotten done? What are you proud of? And that says a pretty big insight because some people talk about the process or the certification or things like that, but they don't really talk about the business result that they got. And that's always interesting to me as well.

Sure it is. Sure it is. I mean, do you want in the two that you started off with, the two in the positive category, the exemplars? I guess those are, right.

Yep.

And two types of them. I mean, do you want everybody in your organization to be like that or. Definitely not.

Well, you'd love it, but, you know, that's not the perfect world. But what you want to do is you want everyone to be at least on. You want to try to move everyone up, at least to the top of the box so that they're producing the results that you expect of them. So ideally, they're exemplars. So they're producing results and they don't take a ton of your time and energy. But even high cost producers, you need these folks because they're, they're the ones who are getting the stuff done with the detractors and passengers. You just want to help them get to. You got to get them out of those boxes because not only are they not producing what you need and what you're paying them to do, they're filling a hole in your team that could be filled by someone who does a better job. And also just for their own career development. I think people want to be good at what they're at. And if they're in these boxes where they're not producing what they're at, they're probably not happy. And. And it's your job as a leader to help them either be successful in what they're doing or maybe find somewhere else where they can be successful.

Yeah, yeah. They're going to be an onboard terrorist if they're not successful and happy in your organization.

Yeah. And it's even beyond. So it's beyond just having them produce from their own role. But if you're a leader and you've got people out there who Are passengers just kind of stowing away and getting a paycheck. You know, the rest of the team notices that and they may not be vocal about it, but it really drags down the rest of your team in a quiet way and, and deflates the morale. So if a leader can go out and actually take those things head on and engage the stowaways and these other folks, it has a bigger impact than just that person has an impact on the overall team morale.

Yeah, yeah, it definitely does. What else should I ask you? Just anything else you want to share on this topic?

Yeah, I think what I like about the leadership matrix is we're getting really great feedback from readers and others. And probably the neatest one I got was people said this is kind of a foundational thing and in some ways it reminds people of that matrix that talks. Talks about cash cows and other stuff from the old days. So it's just like that. Told corporate executives how to spend their cash, invest it in more fast growing businesses and take it away from some of the more profitable but slow growing businesses. This is kind of a unique way to do that with people because that cash cow, the stars and dogs and all that was very popular, but it never talked about people. So I think people are. Readers out there are seeing this as something that, that kind of fills the gap that great model didn't cover.

Excellent, excellent stuff. Victor, where are you located?

I live in Washington, D.C. in Capitol Hill.

Oh, you're right there in the belly of the beast.

That's right.

Any comments on leadership in the political arena and government?

I get that question a lot, so it's probably more the lack of leadership that I noticed. But I tell you what, I've gotten asked who's a good example of a leader? And I think we've got one here, right in D.C. that the chief of police is a woman named Kathy Lanier. She's been there about eight years through three different mayors. And she's just. Whenever I'm asked to say who's a good leader, her name just keeps popping up because she's done a great job in the city here.

Unfortunately, though, most people don't know her because that's a pretty localized thing. Do you care to comment on the past couple of presidents or anything like that? What type is Obama? What type was Bush? What type was Clinton? You know? Any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I haven't really.

Are they all the same type? Maybe they're all. Maybe they all fit into one of those four quadrants. Maybe the same quadrant because you got to be that, to be president.

Yeah. You know, maybe the way I would think about it is more they were leaders of the team. Right. Leaders of a cabinet in the country and all that. Maybe that would be an interesting topic to think about. Who, how did they manage their passengers and stowaways? Did they, did they manage their high cost producers because they had teams who fell in the, their team members fell in these different buckets. That would be an interesting topic that I haven't thought through. But that could be pretty interesting way to apply the matrix.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, there's a good blog post or maybe even your next book.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

Yeah, good stuff. Give out your website one more time.

So the book's website is leadinsidethebox.com where you can find both the overview of the book, but there's also a free online tool there where people can take a quiz and see where their own team out in the, in the matrix itself. And then for my blog and other things, you can go to VictorPrince.com to see all my business, my blog and other pieces there that might be interesting.

Fantastic. Victor Prince, thanks so much for joining us.

You bet. Thank you, Jason.

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