How Teams Learn, Lead, and Celebrate Success with Leo Bottary of Peernovation

Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast, where we explore cutting-edge strategies to keep teams human-centered, drive innovation, and empower you with the tools and insights needed to help your team excel and thrive in today's changing world. Your host is Dane Grenewald, a seasoned expert with over 20 years of experience enhancing team dynamics and innovation. Today, Dane is joined by Leo Bottary. Leo's passion is building highly collaborative environments that make the world a better place. His company, PeerNovation, facilitates intentional conversations that create clarity among leaders and employees to first, assist companies with building higher-performing teams, and second, help CEOs and business leaders maximize their peer advisory group experience. In this episode, they'll explore the often overlooked importance of celebrating the work itself. Too often, teams hit a goal and rush to the next challenge without pausing to reflect on how far they've come. Taking time to look back, to recognize the gains, not just the gaps, builds confidence, connection, and momentum. They'll also discuss why asking for help isn't a sign of weakness. It's what successful people do. It's an act of gratitude that invites others in and strengthens relationships within teams. Throughout the conversation, they unpack what sets high-performing teams apart: their intentionality, their presence, and their commitment to learning, not just from success, but from setbacks too. This conversation offers practical ideas for anyone looking to grow, connect, and create teams where people and their contributions truly matter. So teamwork makes the dream work, and we are here to inspire your next collaborative breakthrough. Gather your team or put on your headphones and let's dive in together.

Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast. My name is Dane Grunewald, CEO of the Huddle3 Group, and today I'm joined by Leo Bottary. Leo is a fellow Californian, but he's been on the road a lot lately and it's his second time joining us here on the Future of Teamwork. So Welcome back to the show, Leo.

Pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

You bet. I'm excited to dive into the second edition of, of Peer Innovation. Obviously, you've got the first book that you wrote and the business by the same name. You've been doing some great works around groups beside teams and, and a lot of what I think we discussed on the last episode around bringing some of those peer CEO group elements into the teams in the company. So there's a lot of cool kind of interfaces that you're getting to play with right now inside and outside of companies. Tell us a little bit more about the second edition and the highlights for you.

So it's kind of interesting. The first edition was written in 2020. I had worked with about 125 groups and teams at the time. And By 2025, that number had eclipsed 800. So obviously you learn a few things along the way, and it gave me a different perspective of how to think about the content. And I remember looking at the first edition of the book thinking that, well, I'm not sure it's spent nearly enough time on the three dynamics that are so critical and so common to hide the, the highest performing groups, you know, and teams. You know, which are largely, when you look at the highest performing groups and teams, they all have a mechanism for continuous improvement. They just really do.

Yeah.

You know, we refer to it in the book as the learning achieving cycle. And we added this idea of celebrating to it, which I think is really important. And maybe we can touch on that a little later as well.

Yeah.

Second is they achieve both intentional and collateral learning. So they take in conferring very directly and intentionally like we all do so often, but They're also highly attuned to what they learn from how they learn. And this is kind of where we really build, I think, and Malin, a lot of like who we become and how we lead and how we go about engaging and interacting with others. And that becomes a, you know, very huge part of it and how teams grow and develop. Third is referred to in the book as the servant leadership triad. And this is where you've got the individual member, the leader, and whether it's a group or the team, all in a triad, kind of having a shared responsibility for whatever result you wanna put in the middle. It could be everything from how productive they are to how much they celebrate, to how much fun they have, to their commitment to one another, their commitment to excellence, all of it that they contribute to one another in that regard. And so much deeper dive into those three common pieces that you'll find, I believe, in every group or team. And then, then when you dive into the 5 factors that make that possible, there's greater clarity about why those 5 factors matter and what they're really designed to accomplish. You know, obviously, again, you learn a lot from working with so many different groups and teams. So there are updates to the content that I felt were really necessary. And also, I wanted to place an even greater emphasis on psychological safety in this book, which is— it's the longest chapter in Chapter 7. And also, I felt to really double down on that, I, you know, somehow thought to myself, well, why don't I just ask the top scholar in the world on psychological safety to see if she'd be willing to write the foreword? And I served on a panel with her in August of 2024 in a conference in Chicago. And so we had met and we'd kept just very little contact actually in between. It's not like I know her particularly well, but I think she became familiar with the work I was doing, you know, at the conference, I think much more acutely. And of course, you know, I've been a fan of her work for a long time. And so when I finally decided to write the second edition and I said, well, I want to make sure that psychological safety is really at this forefront, but what better way to do it I reached out to her and asked her to do it, and I pretty much offered it in two stages. First of all, is this something, number one, are you willing to even entertain? I mean, given her schedule, given all kinds of things, right? And then second was, I wanna make sure that I get you the manuscript in about a month or so, and that you, if you can read through it and then have the comfort level with it that we all feel like, you know, you're good with putting your name to this and that I handle my own work and yours and the whole topic of psychological safety in a way you would you know, prefer, then great. So I referred to this as, if you've seen Top Gun: Maverick, like many have, if you remember, the success of that mission required miracle number 1 and miracle number 2. So miracle number 1 was, yes, she will even entertain the idea of doing this, which I thought was super important in and of its own right because I thought, now I have to turn in a manuscript to the top scholar in the world in psychological safety that has to make the book better, right? I mean, 'cause you're gonna bring your A-game as best you can. And then I figured if I'm gonna, if I do that and it works great, and if it doesn't, I could at least live with the idea that I put my best foot forward, you know? And I think she drove a lot of that, which I was very pleased with. And then of course, you know, she had the manuscript for some time, took the time, obviously read it very thoroughly. And the next thing you know, I get an email with a 1,200-plus-word foreword. And I was just like, wow. And, and of course she, And she's incredibly just gracious and generous, and her level of humility is so— she says, well, here's a draft, let me know what you think. I said, no, I think we're good.

I think you nailed it.

I think she nailed it. Um, so, and, and, you know, just one other addition to that is, if I hadn't asked her for enough already, when I recorded the audiobook, um, I'm thinking to myself, because I go to the studio on the first day and I'm like, 'Cause I'm looking at the foreword and it would've felt silly almost for me to read it, but obviously it was important to have as part of the text. So I'm talking to the sound engineers and I'm like, what do you think if I asked Amy if she would be willing to do it? And they said, I think that would be awesome if we could have her do that. So sure enough, I reached out to her, she got back to me like right away and said, I would love to record it. And she did. And so as part of the audiobook, at least you'll get the benefit of actually, Hearing Amy Edmondson voice it, which is something that, you know, makes the audiobook really special as well.

That's awesome. Well, congrats on that. And it's exciting. I think it also speaks to the value of kind of this ecosystem thinking that if you can connect in with the great thought leaders, the practitioners, the leaders that, you know, serve the right examples and are the right role models that, you can actually create a lot more community awareness and weight behind these important pieces of work.

It is also a reminder too, and this was, you know, a subject of my second book, really what anyone can do, where I interviewed 50 really successful people from various walks of life. And I asked everyone, did you become successful all by yourself? And they all laughed at the idea. Of course not, it's insane. Like, you know, they relied on countless people to help them get to where they were. They'll never be able to thank them all. So they want to pay it forward. And I think it's a good reminder sometimes to, first of all, that you learn quickly that successful people, they ask for help. Successful people don't regard asking for help as a sign of weakness. They see it as an act of resourcefulness.

Yeah.

And I think once we can adopt that mindset and we can take, you know, the attitude that with preparation and with some thoughtfulness that it doesn't hurt to ask, then you'd be surprised at how often someone will want to pay it forward to someone else. And I think that, so for anyone listening, you know, I think that, think about that from the perspective of, because the worst thing that's going to happen is they're going to say no. And by the way, even if they say no, it may not have anything to do with your quality of your request or you or anything like that. They may not just be able to deliver for you in the way they would like, but you would hate to be thinking at some point down the road, what if, what if I asked, what if, you know? So I think it's always good to ask.

Yeah, I love that. And it's powerful. And there's so many good stories about how asking for help actually builds bonds in teams and communities. I know we had Chris Shambra on the show a while back, the gratitude guru. And he was like, it's actually a great way to show gratitude for someone. It's a gift if you ask them for help. Hey, I'm going through this. I'd love to get your opinion, your perspective. How might you handle it if you're in my shoes? That's really honoring that other person too, which, which I think going back to some conversations we were having pre-show on just how divisive a world we're living in right now, I think we could all benefit from asking each other a little more often for a little bit of help.

And but, you know, the way you framed it starts to become really important because the difference between seeing asking for help as a sign of weakness might be saying, I need your help.

Yes.

The way you asked it was, I am inviting your help. I am, as you said, complimenting that other person, bringing them and say, this, whatever it is I'm doing, is going to be better if you're involved.

Oh, I love that part.

So I think that, that, you know, what you raised there, I think, is a key language in terms of how we frame that. And language matters, um, for sure, you know, with all of this. And, um, Yeah, so love that.

Awesome. I also saw a post that you put out there, Leo, the other day, which was talking about great teams. And you were talking about this kind of apply-achieve cycle being iterative. But what I loved about the post is it said it's not the championship that's the goal. The championship's the reward for setting that goal, for making that commitment to excellence and growth and development. And that's so often not the way that teams will approach strategy and goal setting. So tell me a little bit more about that post and how it ties into your work.

Yeah, I, so I spoke to a group in Reno, Nevada a little over a year ago. I was in a hotel casino and I kind of put it in poker terms, right? As you might imagine you would, you know, in that setting. And I said, look, if I had a small pile of chips and I wanted that to become a large pile of chips. And if I stare at the chips, what do you think's gonna happen? I'm gonna watch it disappear is what's gonna happen. Yeah. I have to pay attention to the cards. I have to pay attention to the other players. I have to do all of the little things that's required in order to make that pile of chips grow. And yet all too often we can stare at our Excel spreadsheets and we can fixate on big goals and we're not doing and thinking about all of what's required and all of what's necessary in order to make that possible. And so I think shifting the focus there from something not being your goal but being your reward or so. Sir Dave Brailsford, you know, obviously with Team Sky and all of these other things that he's done very famously with the INEOS 159 Challenge and all that, thinks of it in terms of targets versus dreams. It's all the same idea. You know, it's this idea that let's do every single day. Let's focus on our craft. Let's focus on one another. Let's commit to the level of excellence that's required each and every day in order to be able to perform in our best when it matters most. And so that becomes, you know, hugely, hugely important. And that learning achieving cycle is really, again, it's that mechanism for that continuous improvement. It's that recognition that we learn better when we learn together. That, but we're not a book club probably, right? We're, we're, we're not coming together just so we can discuss content, understand it more deeply, and then leave feeling great about ourselves and all of that. We actually, and I hope, are giving one another that confidence, that courage and encouragement to apply things that we've learned. And even if there's some trial and error, once we achieve, you know, some success there, and then we actually celebrate that win. And that's the addition to the learning achieving cycle that was made in the second edition of Peer Innovation because I had always considered celebrating part of the achieving stage. But as you probably well know, guess what? When I'm visiting companies and I'm seeing how much celebrating going on, how much you think is happening there? Almost zero. I mean, it is really rather remarkable. And, you know, it's, you know, so many people's nature, I think, to be thinking, okay, I just hit my goal. What's next? I mean, we just hit that goal. What's next? And they don't take the time to recognize you know, how far they've come, you know, to look every once in a while and say, hey, look where we were a year ago. Look where we were 2 years ago. Look where we are today. Right?

Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's really rather extraordinary. So, you know, all of that I think becomes essential to giving your people and your team the fuel and the confidence to know that regardless of the challenge, whatever comes our way, it is who we are that we were able to deal with it so effectively.

So the, the point that you make there, Leo, on celebrating the achievement versus celebrating the application is a really interesting one. I know one of my coaches introduced me to the gap versus the gain concept where we, we so often are focused on the gap that's in front of us and we so rarely look back and reflect on the gain that we've made to get to this point in time. And what I love about that too is he'll ask me to, you know, share some gratitude for how we achieve some of those gains. So you, and it was in your post too, you begin to love the process. You begin to love the fact that, hey, we came together as a team and we got really clear on how we were gonna solve this problem. That didn't mean that we made the major sale. It didn't mean that we, you know, won an industry award, but as a team, we came together and we achieved something. Just through the application of our work. And I think that's, it's those elements that need more celebrating in day-to-day business and work life.

Yeah, I think there's a couple things around that. One of them was, you know, I speak in the book about a company that I worked for, MullenLowe Advertising Agency, today headquartered outta London. When I was there, it was Mullen and Joe Grimaldi was the CEO and extraordinary, CEO. And one of the things that we were always really good at at Mullen, and I'd like to think that I did this also with my agency that I had much earlier in my career, although much smaller scale, of course, was, as you may know, there's an unbelievable amount of work that goes to pitching like a new client when it comes to a big PR piece of business or advertising agency. You know, I mean, these 4-hour massive presentations that require just hundreds of hours of work from countless people. Yeah. One of the things we were really good at was we would deliver the presentation and you would often be a few days before you ever heard like whether you won or not or anything like that. But we also recognized that you can deliver the greatest presentation in the whole world. In fact, you can deliver the best presentation out of all of the agencies and sometimes I'll, I'll even, a client will admit that you guys did the best job, but we picked them, you know, so What we were really careful about doing was making sure that before we ever heard anything in terms of response from the client, we celebrated the work. We celebrated the time that the team worked together on what we did and the quality and excellence that, yeah, was achieved, you know, by that team. And then the idea would be, well, if the client calls us and we get the business, guess what? We get to celebrate twice.

Yeah.

The problem is if you wait and you find out you lose, nobody wants to celebrate. I mean, of course, everyone, they're hating it and they're just like so disappointed. And so, I mean, it's just so the choice always becomes never miss an opportunity to celebrate the work. And then if you get to celebrate the win, hey, all great. But you don't want to lose that opportunity to acknowledge level of excellence that people brought to the table. And I also think that to illustrate your, you know, gap in the gain point, you know, I tell a story about when my girls were 11 or 12 years old, we, they asked me about climbing a mountain. They're like, Dad, we want to climb a peak, right? We're in Crested Butte, Colorado at the time. They want to climb a mountain. We were there for the whole summer. And I said, look, tell you what, gave them a couple of weeks worth of some rigorous hikes to do and things like that.

Yeah.

And let them know that, okay, There's Mount Baldy near us, 12,805 feet. Not easy, but doable for first-time climbers. Gave them some prep again. I said, okay, we'll leave on Saturday morning. Weather looks good. We'll leave about 6 a.m. because if you know, of course, Colorado, the last place you want to be in afternoon thunderstorms is on top of a large rock, you know. So you want to be up and off that mountain before noon. So anyway, 6 a.m., they could not have been more excited, right? We get to the trailhead, off we go. We're about 75 minutes in and, you know, the climb gets a little steeper, the air gets a little thinner, right? You start seeing a little bit of exhaustion going on. Have you ever climbed a mountain like that?

Not as a climb. I do a lot of skiing though, so I know what it's like when you're climbing up a hill to ski down a mountain and it just wears you down.

So, and so, but, but here's something you'll be able to relate to. So here are the girls who are climbing. They look at the peak, they climb for 10 or 15 minutes. They look at the peak again. What does it look like? Same as last time they checked. And this was not sitting well. They were not emotionally prepared for this. So next thing you know, I got my oldest who stops and says, um, hey, I think the view looks pretty good from here. And I said, really? Right? Then, um, you know, uh, her sister starts saying, hey, sees a little puff of white cloud near the peak. Says, Dad, is that weather we need to be worried about? I said, no, I think we're okay. So now They continue to climb. Their eyes are darting back and forth. They're thinking, dad's not catching the idea here that we're done. We're, we're, this is, we're gonna call the timeout here. So anyway, finally my eldest stops, Kristen says, um, hey dad, all right, we realized we asked for this, but there's no way we're making it all the way up there. And I said, okay. I said, I get it. You know, I said, but tell you what, we are here. So why don't you gimme 15 more minutes? And if we climb for 15 more minutes and you guys are done, After that, 15 more minutes, then no questions asked, we're off the mountain. They go, okay, deal. All right. So just before we leave though, we happen to be at the base of this huge rock that was kind of jutting out of the mountain and there was a big bush kind of coming out of the side of it. And I said, okay, off we go. I kind of noted where we were. They weren't really paying attention to where I was doing that. We climb our 15 minutes, of course, to the second. They're like, eh, okay, 15 minutes, time's up. First thing they do is point to the peak and say, look, That peak is no closer than it was 15 minutes ago. I said, look behind you, right? Showing the gain, not just looking at the gap, showing the gain. Now they look behind them and they see that rock and that bush look like the tiniest little dot in the landscape. And they're like, whoa, we can't believe how far we went. Next thing you know, they're climbing another 10, they're climbing another 15. We summited that day. That's awesome. Which I share that story because that was thrilling and fun and they couldn't have been more proud of themselves. And it was a really cool thing to obviously get to do together. But the reason I share the story in the book is because they're both leaders in their companies today. What they recognize is that every time they have that project, like that 2-year thing, right? You know, they recognize that this whole keep your eye on the prize thing, not always the best advice when you get like a 2-year project. So what do they do? After 3 months, they bring their people in together and say, hey, look where we were 3 months ago. Look where we are now. Look where we were 6 months ago. Look who we are today. Right. And they say, by the way, and also it's actually a really positive context to bring a team together because maybe at the 6-month mark you've made a lot of progress, but you're kind of behind where you want to be. So now you get to in a very positive setting, kind of, hey, hey, what do you think we can do to kind of get us where we want to be when we're back here 3 months from now and we're looking back and saying, what adjustments, what things do we got to do? How do we have to make sure that we stay on track and do what we can do? And the— it's just the positive nature of it. The more that you recognize what it is we've done, the more it fuels our confidence that there isn't anything in front of us that we can't do also. And so these things become, you know, I think hugely valuable. And again, it kind of speaks to a little bit of what we talked about before about language. You know, it's about language. It's about reframing. It's about seeing and looking at the world in ways that If we can help one another do that together and keep things positive, it makes all the difference in terms of what we're going to be capable of.

Absolutely. No, it does. And what I really like about that, I love the story of the girls summiting. I'm going to have to work on that with my kids for some hikes this summer. But what I love about the cycle that you shared that they're now using in their leadership roles is the world's got a little bit too hell-bent on agile. And I've had limited experience with Agile, but my experience with it, particularly in software development, is that it's a little bit grueling, it's a bit relentless, and sometimes the increments are so close together that you can get lost in what was achieved in the work and where are we going as far as outputs. But that 3-month cycle, there's something that I've seen in teams before that works really well. If you can do a quarterly review cycle and actually see, like you shared on that 15-minute climb, just how small some of those bigger rocks and problems look now that you look back rather than you're on every other week. So I don't know if you see that in the teams that you're working with.

I do, and it also reminds me of, so Amy Edmondson's latest book actually is The Right Kind of Rock. And she talks about how we look at failure and how we see especially intelligent failure. And the more that we can recognize the fact that intelligent failure is a really important part of the any— whether it's scientific process, technological process, anything that we're trying to figure out how to do something differently, better, meeting our needs for the future, whatever it happens to be, that every one of those, quote, failures are, you know, speak to what my— what I love that Sekou Andrews says, you win some, you learn some. You know?

Yes.

And if we consider those learning, those are positive outcomes. Now we know what not to do. We know why this won't work. We, we don't have to chase that down anymore. We can go in a different direction now and we are informed in a way that we weren't 3 months ago, 6 months ago or whatever. And those, those failures are all part of the process.

Yeah. That win some, learn some is, is so powerful too. I need that t-shirt.

Yeah. Saker is, uh, pretty much good. He always talks about how, um, he, he loves to play on the, the Aristotle quote too about being greater than the sum of our smarts, which I love.

That's so good. That's so good. That win some, learn some ties really well into your second key dynamic there on intentional and collaborative learning, collateral learning, sorry, I believe it was. Tell me a little bit more about that because when you touched on it at the beginning of the show, I loved that you kind of were shining a light on how we learn and how we take confidence in the way that we learn creates energy. So I'd like to learn more there.

Yeah, so groups engage and the groups do it in different ways. Vistage has something called issue processing. You know, you could look at RefGlobal and they do a lot of work around cases, but there are specific protocols for how they go about helping CEOs and business leaders work through either making decisions about challenges they're having, opportunities that are in front of them, you know, things like that. And usually in that process, in all cases, it asks something of you that basically says, I've got to be really present. Like if someone's presenting something of real consequence to their business or personal life or whatever, I've got to be locked in. I've got to be really present in that conversation. I have to listen very carefully. Yeah, I learn the more I participate in this process how to ask more precise questions. And maybe the biggest learning we get of all, because, you know, every one of us can have a tendency. We hear things from people all the time. What do we do at some level? Our brain either rushes to some assumptions, we jump to conclusions, or we make some judgment about certain things. I don't know if I, you know, that kind of thing.

Yeah.

What this process teaches you is to take a breath Don't do any of those 3 things and lean into your curiosity. How do I ask questions? How do I listen for understanding? And 9 times out of 10, when I do that, I will learn something. I'll go, aha, now I understand that better. Now I understand. So I think about it very, very differently in that regard. That's a really great example of collateral learning because people not only get better at that among one another in a group setting, but they will tend to start modeling those behaviors as leaders in their companies as well. And for CEOs in particular that have done this for a long time, they'll tell you, and now so do my direct reports. Yes. They are better listeners, better question askers, more curious than they've ever been. All of these kinds of things and how that feeds into the relationship they have with their people, you know, becomes really, really important. So that's a pretty good example of like how what we learn from how we learn really impacts a lot of who we are, not just what we know.

Yeah.

Absolutely. That's what, that's what makes that, that learning so much more valuable in many respects.

Yeah, I agree. And particularly when a business is going through a lot of change, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of growth, whatever that might be, I can see where that fits in. I actually had a, let's call it a fortunate encounter with that type of learning last night. I was coaching the rugby team and I normally coach the under-14s, but last season I coached under-16s as well. And last night I pulled the 18s, the 16s, and the 14s all together. So when you're running a drill for 3 very different levels of player in terms of capability, experience, maturity, it's difficult as a coach, same as it is a manager in a team. But I didn't kind of dumb it down or elevate it. I just picked a middle ground position and said, let's start with this drill. And I saw the senior guys really nailing it. And I said, what could you do differently in this drill to help these junior guys? And they took the drill over, and it was really cool because you saw this, like, all of a sudden this connection. And the younger guys like, oh wow, that under-18s player is helping me do this. And as a coach, I'm learning, hey, that's the way these guys like to, to do that, rather than my way, which is 20-something years old. So, uh, it was, it was just a really cool experience that I think it is good evidence of that collateral learning.

Yeah. And they like to learn from one another. They like to be recognized by one another. You know, just think about when I have, whether it's in companies or groups and they talk about whatever recognition programs or reward programs or award programs they have, it's one thing to have the kind of top-down program and it's another one peers are recognizing one another for what they do and how they do it. And, There's a gentleman out of, in Tech Canada who basically purchased this replica of an Academy Award. And at the end, and at the end of every meeting, whichever member was kind of best performance of the values of this group over the course of the day, and the person who won it last time is allowed to present the award to someone who brought their full self that day in a way that was rather extraordinary. And it's just a reminder to everyone about, How can we be more intentional? You know, there's probably one of the big key concepts in the book in many respects is intentionality. You know, it's so easy for us. So there were people to, you know, you'll read whether it's my book, whether it's a whole bunch of books, right? And you'll come across things. You're like, well, okay, I knew that. And I did, you know, you might know that, but are you doing that? Are you intentional about that? Are you keeping that at the forefront in a way that I think is always a good reminder for us that, You know, so you, you've been, I know you've had the peer group experience.

Yes.

And so what always is funny, I had a gentleman one time pretty recently and we were talking about core values and behaviors of a group or, you know, what are the things you expect of yourself and others? And, you know, someone brought up confidentiality, which of course you would add to the list. Well, one of the members challenged that member and say, that's a given that we don't have to be worried. Well, I don't know why we're adding that to the list. That's just like one of those things. Now, interestingly enough, it was a little later in the morning. So during the break, I had— he was talking about his wife and, you know, their relationship and some things like that in a very positive way. And I'll—

yeah.

And so when he had brought that up, I said, you know, I said, I couldn't help but overhear. I know during the break you were having a nice conversation about your wife. And, you know, I says, so I'm sure you love her very much, don't you? And he goes, oh, absolutely. I said, well, that's good. So now you don't have to tell her anymore. You don't have to show her or anything like that, right? And he goes, All right, fine.

That's awesome.

But that's kind of what it is, right? I mean, the moment we think, okay, we can just check off the box and move on and we're not paying attention to that anymore, that'll be the day you start to worrying about it. That begins its demise right there.

Yeah. That intentionality is huge. I found that actually more recently, we had the new baby, and so that changed my—

Congrats on that, by the way. Fantastic.

Thank you. But it definitely changed my schedule a bit, and I've always been a wake up early, hit the sauna, stretch, surf kind of routine, and then go to work. But that wasn't happening because I was waking up in the middle of the night feeding the baby, and then I was like, I'll surf later in the afternoon. And like, everything fell apart. Like, everything. I started getting hurt. I started saying, oh, I'm not going to go surfing now because it doesn't look as good as it normally does in the morning. My kids would wake up and they'd be like, hey, you can't leave now because we're all here and we want to play or we want you to stay for breakfast. And it just threw my whole program. So, that intentionality about waking up, doing the sauna, doing the stretch just creates way better results just in my surfing, let alone how we work together in teams.

It's funny how those tiny little babies have a way of being very incredibly disruptive, aren't they? Yeah.

They give you some inspiration and some perspective at the same time.

We're, we're doing some grandparenting in that regard too. Our, our third grandchild now is just, will be a year old on, on July 6th. And we've had her for like 4 or 5 nights in a row and fun, lovely. We have a ball. My wife and I enjoy it. But it's also, you realize it's like, man, that just took a lot out of us for 5 days for sure. Yeah. But it's super, but it's super fun.

You know, it is super fun. It is super fun. So if you're, um, playing out that, uh, intentionality and then tying it into your, um, servant leadership triad, like, so you've got the leader, the team member, the group, or the team, are there ways that you're seeing, Leo, that are becoming more, more formal or more documented by way of like, how does that team, how does that leader, how does that individual seeing more team member kind of commit to their ways of working? Are you seeing more written work agreements? Are you seeing more structured meetings at given cadences? What's helping these teams to really live out that peer innovation?

So I think number one, given that you mentioned the triad, it's first of all having everyone recognize what their commitment really is, you know, that it's, I am committed as a member of this group or team. And by the way, you may not be the leader of your group or team, but chances are good you're going to be a leader in your group or team, right? And, you know, at any given time where people are looking to you, whether it's your subject matter expertise or timing or whatever it may happen to be, that you have to step up and, and, and be that and be that leader in many respects. And that as a group and as a leader, that, that you are together committed to one another about what you expect of yourselves and what you expect of others. How do we keep that front and center? And so yes, oftentimes it, it can be about just having it in writing in front, in front of them. It can be about taking maybe values and behaviors that you agreed upon and, and molding it into a purpose statement. And so for groups, I think this works particularly well because you know, the group will come up with a purpose statement. It'll begin every meeting by, okay, here's our purpose statement. Let's buckle up. Let's get ready to play. We're in this for today and let's get ready to go. At the end of the meeting, it's easy to say, how well did we keep our promise to one another today? Right? Yeah. And then you look at the values and behaviors that we agreed upon. And now someone says, you know, we could have been a little more this today or a little more that, or we could have brought a little more of ourselves in this other particular area. And then come next meeting, you, you know, you show up and say, okay, here's what we're— here's our purpose statement today. If you can remember last time, we could have been a little more attentive to these things. So let's be especially mindful of those things today and let's move forward. Yeah. And, and you just keep driving that and keeping it. And there are teams that do this for some of their larger meetings, you know, some of their regular larger meetings where they're just keeping that level of intentionality and purpose around it. So the people Show up prepared and ready to play. And, and, and they're just there to make sure that we've maximized this time that we've committed to one another here. And, and, and people like that. And, and people, again, when they're intentional about it, you know, and it becomes part of their, it's part of how they roll. Again, it becomes, it, it moves from something in terms of what they do to becoming like who they are, who we are.

As you just—

this is how we roll.

I love that. So not what, but who. So there's a real, like, attachment to, um, there's belonging there, but there's mattering, there's, there's, um, identity, um, as a team. It's very interesting.

And the mattering part is huge.

Yeah.

I mean, um, you know, you remind groups and teams together that, you know, people will miss meetings, people will you know, whatever, right? And they, they don't always recognize that. Will the meeting go on without them? Yes. Will it be the same meeting? Absolutely not.

Yeah.

Not gonna happen. I, I always look at groups, great groups and teams like this. They're like jazz ensembles. You can't remove instruments and expect it to perform and sound the same way. It's just not gonna happen. So once you recognize that when you miss a meeting, you're not the only one who loses. In fact, everybody else loses because your ideas, perspective, way of thinking and being are lost from that experience. Then we start at least owning the gifts that we bring to the table and the impact they can have on everyone else and on the team in general. So, yeah, I think this whole notion of, you know, how much we matter is something that we really want to you know, embrace for sure.

That's very cool. And, and for our listeners, I've actually done quite a bit of discussion and work on mattering this year, but the way I define, or the way I've seen it defined, on the difference between mattering and belonging is belonging is that you're accepted, you feel, you know, appreciated for being a human there, and mattering is that the work that you do is deemed to be important to the people that you work with. So it's very work-centric.

Yeah, no, I get that. Yeah. Yeah.

Cool. When you've got those meetings going on, I love that example you shared, Leo, around, hey, let's have our purpose statement. Let's start the meeting. Let's check in at the end. How well did we do? What we work on the next time? In a Vistage CEO group environment, which I'm familiar with as a U, often it's the chair of the Vistage group that will bring that structure. When you're working with teams within companies, Is that a role that you, you know, distribute through different meetings or is it a role that one person will more typically hold kind of as a chair of the meeting on a regular basis? What have you seen work well there?

I think that one person will typically hold that responsibility of asking the question upfront. But again, go back to our triad. Everyone's involved for paying attention and noticing and participating in all of that. So, So, you know, these things become simple too. So I'll use your example when you talk about being in a Vistage meeting. So the chair's got a lot of things, a lot of things they're thinking about. You're in a group that day and you recognize that there's a member who's being particularly quiet. They're just not being as forthcoming. It's okay for you in the context of a conversation to not have to call that out to the chair or anything and basically say, hey, I'd love to hear from you on this issue or whatever. And just invite them into the conversation in a way that's not, saying, hey, you haven't talked all day, you know, but just invite them into the dialogue. And that can be really important. And so that's for everyone to notice that we're not getting, we're not feel at least at the moment that we're getting 100% of you today. So invite that 100% and don't complain at the end of the meeting that someone didn't. Yeah, sorry, they didn't bring it today. Well, say something. If you notice it, then, and then it's easy to just kind of I think make that invitation and spark that participation.

For sure, for sure. It actually primes a thought in my mind, which is when you're running a meeting and you've got someone who's observing, that's great, whether it's in-person or virtual. But what about these async meetings? 'Cause they're popping up everywhere. People are using tools like Loom where they're sending videos out and saying, hey, come back and contribute, here's a Word doc and you guys can all jump in, or a Google Doc, you can jump in and throw your comments and edits. That seems to kind of leave itself a little bit open in my mind to, you know, some people going quietly by. Have you seen any tips, tricks, or approaches for making async work better?

Well, it, so first of all, I think a lot of asynchronous meetings can work really well. Yeah, I think that it's the participation requirement though, however, shouldn't change, you know, so that the idea if someone is not participating, not contributing, not, you know, then I think it's okay to let this person know that we need more of you in these asynchronous meetings. And that I think people want to be at least be, you know, if you matter, then you, it will be noticed when you're not playing.

Yes. That's a good, but that's a really good statement. That's another t-shirt there, Leo.

There you go. There you go. We should get in the t-shirt business, man.

We should.

But yeah, so that, that's, that starts to become an issue. So for me, it isn't an issue of, of asynchronicity so much as it is much more about are we paying attention? Are we being intentional? Is it, does it matter? Is it important to us that people get equal time?

Yes. So. No, I think that's a great call out. And then there's another point that comes to mind, which is, you know, results-only work environments kind of had its day come and gone. I know some companies are still approaching it, but I am seeing particularly with AI, a lot more teams are saying, I'm really only interested in your output. So how you do your work, when you do your work, we're remote, we're hybrid, you've got different access to different tools now. As long as you're getting it done, I'm happy. That outcome-based approach, it must leave some exposure for not being able to actually do the look back and the reflection on how we've been applying ourselves, what we've achieved just through the the body of the work because everyone's doing their work differently and delivering outputs on different timeframes. Are there any particular teams where you've seen that creeping in or you've had to come in and actually address that kind of phenomenon?

I will say this, that a lot of times what I find is teams focusing on outcomes and not focusing nearly enough on the outputs. Where sometimes if you embark on a strategy, for example, and you don't know whether there was the strategy was bad or was just poorly implemented or poorly executed, that becomes very difficult if you're not paying attention to the, to the outputs.

Yeah.

By the same token, we want to make sure that we understand the outputs because, you know, we want to make sure that we're doing whatever we're supposed to be doing or it's required or what's effective in order to make achieving the outcomes possible. Because obviously outcomes matter.

Yeah.

So I think they really work hand in hand. You know, I don't think you look at one without the other. I think there's a real focus on, again, mattering, contributing, and doing so in a way that I think speaks to my unique gifts and skills and all those things, which I think is really important. But by the same token, what can we be doing better or differently or whatever to make sure that we are realizing the outcomes that we want? Because, you know, that becomes obviously really essential as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, it's been a great conversation. Time's flown by as it did the last time, Leo. Congrats on the second edition. And for any of our listeners out there, it's available both in hard copy and the audiobook with Amy Edmondson reading out.

And ebook as well.

And ebook. So you can get it in any which way. There were some cool points that we touched on today. I really love the way that you've added in the celebration and that kind of reflection on the gain and not just the gap ahead. I thought it was fascinating the way that we started to dive into mattering there at the end. And particularly just being more intentional about what we're committing to as a group in how we do the work, how we learn together. I think that that's very accessible for any team in any industry. And it's clearly going to bring energy to all team members. And I would expect better productivity, better outcomes too.

You bet. Well, hey, thank you so much for having me today. I really enjoyed it. And, you know, as always, so thank you. You bet.

For any of our listeners that want to go and find you, I know you've got a good website out there. Where should they be looking?

Yeah, they can go to pearinnovation.biz. Please connect with me on LinkedIn. You know, always available there. Message me or just, just go ahead and, and connect. I would love to hear from you. And if you have questions or anything comes up, just Reach out.

Awesome. Well, thanks again for your time today, Leo.

You bet. Thank you.

Thank you for joining us. Remember that by embracing vulnerability, trusting our intuition, and approaching challenges with compassion, we not only strengthen our teams, but also pave the way for a future where collaboration thrives. If you're hungry for more insights, strategies, and research on collaboration, head over to thefutureofteamwork.com. There, you can join our mailing list to stay updated with the latest episodes and get access to exclusive content tailored to make your team thrive. Together, we can build the future of teamwork. Until next time.