123: How We Could Book Series Part 3: Leadership Tools to Coach Your Team to Accountability

Today's the day. How We Could is officially released, and today we're breaking down part 3 and all of my favorite quotes. Welcome back to another episode of the Reality-Based Leadership Podcast. Today is the day. As I said, How We Could is available everywhere that you buy books, and this is your time to preorder. I'm really going for the ask here. Like, this is the day. If you're listening to this, pull the car over. For me, it's pull over with the kids. We got to stop K-pop. We got to turn off Ninja Turtle stories. We're getting the phone out in a safe place and we are hitting order. We're getting one for all of my team members. We're getting one for one of my family members. That's a lot of drama and say, hey, I like this Alex guy. Maybe you should read the book, whatever it is. Today is order day. Don't miss out. We still got all of our bonuses. We got a bonus chapter. We got Call to Greatness Toolkit, all the tools in this book. book are downloadable. It is interactive. This toolkit is game-changing, and we have the book club discussion guides. So, if you're looking for a way to bring this to life, to have others be introduced to this in a way that's easy, where you're not preaching, you're inviting, this is the moment. So, get your copy, get all your teams involved, pass this along to people. And enough of that. I think I've said what needs to be said about the preorder. It'd mean a ton to the team and I. We spent 3 years on this book. It's packed with case studies, 12 years of doing this, speaking to 100 to 150 companies a year in all industries. I tried to find my best examples, refine the tools as much as I could to help you move anyone from drama into next right action. I'm calling it Checkmate to All Drama in the Workplace. There is a world that exists beyond drama, and this book can get you there. There's 2 ways to go through your workday moving forward after this book. If you're listening to this, it's joy or misery. And at this point, it's our choice because everything you need is in How We Could. And so that's all I'll say about it. Again, get it ordered and then get back on the road and don't be late for where you're going. Or if you're running or walking or whatever you're doing, listening to this, thanks for being here. Thanks for your support. And I hope you've been liking— if you haven't seen it, the other 2 parts of this series where I'm going through the 3 parts of the book. And so the way the book's divided, just as a quick recap, is in part 1 in the table of contents here. It's about what I call loving people up. Part 2 is, we just covered calling people up. And then part 3 is how do you answer the call to greatness? In the book here, the main feature is a new call to greatness framework. It is the 5 steps to move someone from why we can't to how we could. And the book's called How We Could. And that's exciting because no matter who's stuck, who's in front of you, How big the circumstances are and how insurmountable they feel. This gives you a step-by-step to lovingly and respectfully be there for someone and move them to their full potential. And so in the, in the first part of the series, we covered how to actually validate someone's experience and their feelings they're feeling about the drama or the unpreferred reality. When's enough validation of their experience enough? And what does true support and psychological safety and empathy look like? That's actually step 1 of the 5-step framework is I validate your experience and your feelings. And then as we went into the second podcast, part 2, we looked at how do we now clean up your thinking about this problem or the situation? Where are we adding story to the reality and causing more suffering? What are the tools for that? Step 2, we grabbed and looked at my favorite quotes from cleaning up thinking. And then that section, we moved on to step 3. Which is finding your part in the mess this far. What's your part in it? So you might be cleaning your thinking, but you might not accept your part in what's contributed to where we're stuck or what's going on in the larger problem and what's the patterns there. So we have tools for that. We talked about that in the last podcast. Then it was, what is knowing your role so we can solve it, so we can move forward towards better, towards what would great look like? And knowing your role is so important because there's not any more suffering that I see right now than someone at work playing the wrong role for what the situation is. situation merits. So if you missed that podcast, go back, tons of gold there. And now we're going into part 3. And part 3 is answering that call. And why that's so important to answer the call is there's this thing I realized where we can have our experience validated, we can be clean in our thinking what the problem is, we can see our part in it, and then we can know our role in how we're supposed to contribute to a solution. And, and get this thing figured out. And there's still something that holds people back. And I, I, as I was writing this chapter, I was thinking, what is that? Like, what is the most easy way to distill that down and, and just in plain language? And what it came down to was really— I know it sounds so simple, but fear. And it wasn't just fear of what could go wrong or what's ahead or the uncertainty. I realize sometimes it's fear of it being successful, fear of things getting so good. And so this fear idea is really what kicks off why don't people answer the call with all this momentum and clarity to go into next right action? And why does it keep them from step 5, which is now take next right action, like see it through and move forward until— here's the key— the next unpreferred reality. And then you just go back to step 1 and say, given this unpreferred reality, how do I need to evolve next? Go through it again. And this becomes the cycle of a really fulfilling career. And life, where you get to enjoy the ride and have impact along the way. It's that balance of mystery and mastery. You have the tools to master circumstances as they come your way, but then you're open to the mystery of what may come your way. So you're not trying to control everything. It's just an amazing way to go through your career and see what happens in this journey we call life. So fear, I wrote here and highlighted false events appearing real. If you know our stuff at all, most fear is not from the reality, it's from the story. I add on about the reality, what it means down the road and what it means for my reputation and what is gonna happen next. If I did take that action, this'll get all scary. The fear's from the story more than the reality in most cases. And so that's where that fear is. And one of the things I hit on here that I thought was interesting was talking about overthinking and how when we overthink without a tool, you're not trying to actually solve the problem. You're just trying to eliminate all the risk of it. And a lesson here is there's no decision or movement forward that doesn't have any risk. Otherwise we'd make no decisions. So this is what starts the teams that don't get into next right action and procrastinate. And I know some of us are like, I just need my team to act and be confident and go for it. And I think it's maybe because they don't have these tools that are in this final chapter and they're so practical and they're so empowering as you get into them. And so the 3 tools are ones that many of us that have been in reality-based leadership or been following my work for a long time, we know about, but they're just structured in a way that I think channels them even better. And the 3 tools are one for just an overall kind of Swiss Army knife tool to get us ready for next right action called the SBAR. And then there's the— what's a tool for, yes, I'm clear on all of that first 4 steps, but I want to move forward. But there's circumstances or there's some annoying constraints or there's some limitations we have to think about. Or there's some barriers. Well, that's not why we can't. It's given those barriers, how can we be creative and flexible and find the innovation in that? So we use thinking inside the box for that type of situation. And then the last one is, I want to move forward, but I have some fears, unspoken worries. There's resistance to change. What's the tool for that? And any of these tools Well, that one is negative brainstorming, and I'll link all of these. A lot of you are familiar with these. We've used them in the past almost like whack-a-mole, meaning— and you might actually see the problem as I say this— that's been a challenge. A problem I'm trying to solve is if there's resistance to change, whack-a-mole with the negative brainstorm. That's the main tool here. But keep in mind, I'm at step 5 of the Call to Greatness framework right now in the book. So I just said there's resistance to change. Hit them with a step 5 tool. That means you skip the step 4 tool, the step 3 tool, step 2 tool, and key, the step 1 tool, validating their experience that this change is different. There's some fear there. This is not how you've worked before. There's a new workflow here. I need to validate your experience before I go into like, let's negative brainstorm it and get into next right action. I love that part. That's where we will get. That's where leaders need to get their teams into. Now, what are we going to do about it? But it's just inhumane to not have that moment of holding space to validate someone's experience or a team's experience as they go through a change. Now, we don't want to enable it. We don't want to allow for resistance longer than it needs to be. That is the delta and the opportunity of a highly change-ready team is how long it takes to go from unpreferred reality change disruption into— given that, how do we make it least disruptive to our business? That is the leadership opportunity. This book helps you get there as fast as possible and helps your teams trust that you're lovingly getting there as fast as possible. But that's the 5th step if you go right to the negative brainstorm. So that would be calling someone up without loving them up first and not just calling someone up. It's calling someone up after skipping so many other steps. So can it work? Absolutely. Do I share how it works in the book? Absolutely. But would I say that's the best case? Back to what I said in part 1 of this, the secret sauce is in the full sequence of the 5 steps. So what do I mean by that? Before using any of these tools, although effective on their own, have I validated your experience? Have we maybe cleaned up your thinking, asked a few questions like, what do we know for sure? Have we found your part in it and used some of those tools to take accountability for where we're at? Are we in the right role? And now from that role, let's use these 3 tools to take the best next right action. So I hope that clarifies why they're effective on their own. But if we're out of sequence, it can come across as a little harsh. So with that being said, when to use each of these tools. The SBAR I wrote here is a high-level overview of the unpreferred reality you have been addressing and directs anyone completing it to begin documenting their initial recommendations to start solving the issue. Now, I used to have leaders that say, don't come to me with a problem without a solution. And I'm like, why would I come to you with a problem, like, if I had the solution? Sounds like a waste of 10 minutes. So, the SBAR is— and to give you the acronym— situation, background, analysis, and then your recommendations. So, it's a template, 2 minutes to fill out, that overviews the problem. And it's those initial good next right actions. It's a nice overview tool. As I mentioned, inside the box, is moving forward with the goal clear, and then you just put up in the box the constraints, the limited beliefs, the circumstances. And then the whole idea is instead of going outside the box and wishing for different circumstances before we proceed and take next right action, it's how do we take that next right action given those circumstances? They're there, they're real. I want to acknowledge those. It's not ideal. I wish we had unlimited resources, unlimited staff, but we don't. We have this reality. So let's impact it. That's that tool. And then the other tool, negative brainstorm, which is similar use case, but I like it more for change, or if someone is struggling to take action because of 7 risks they see ahead that they wanna talk about in a group or with their leader. The negative brainstorm helps us progress despite those fears of what lies ahead, or the concerns about how to accomplish a task, or resistance to change or decisions. We're able to list those out. What are our issues or concerns we have? And then what you do is you cross them out and say, thank you for sharing the risks with this change or this place we need to go, this goal. Now, what's the probability each of your concerns will happen? And that's a really good discussion between stakeholders in the room. Is it high, medium, or low? Am I operating from facts? Do I think it's high but it's never happened in 10 years? I'm just thinking it could be scary if it does. Like, what's the true facts on that? And then what's the impact honestly on the business, our customers, our patients, if that risk were to happen? And that's big for the negative brainstorm because as you can imagine going through it, there's a lot of good discussion, fact-finding, good civil dialogue, and eventually a lot of what you're most fearful of that keeps you from action is low probability and low impact. It's like, why would that stop me if it probably won't happen and it probably wouldn't matter if it did? And I find so many people stop from doing courageous things. And when I ask why, when we do this exercise, it is from super low probability, like it probably won't happen, and low impact things if it did happen, meaning it's not a big deal. The tool reveals that. So hopefully you're seeing as you're sizing up just in your head some of the times your team seems stuck and they're procrastinating or not taking action. Which of those next right action tools would be the breakthrough? Hopefully, you're thinking about that. So, as I flip through, I mean, this was more of a practical. You got the momentum going. So, there's not as much one-liners that I grabbed at this section. So, I'll just keep it brief. But what I love about the SBAR, that first tool, is it's probably the one used most. It's the one that most people gravitate towards because it's really simple. Easy to teach, easy to pass along. You can print out a stack. I had one leader I was working with that he's like, all right, I'm tired of making excuses. I have so many drive-bys or hey, do you have a minutes that end up in 35 minutes of just people spinning and bringing up 10 topics. I just made a printout stack from your toolkit of the SBAR and someone would walk by and they say, hey, do you have a minute? I started to say, yes, I do. And I'd go— And he'd grab a piece of paper, set it down and sit with the person. Not preaching, but sit with them and say, for 2 minutes, I want you to write down what you're about to say through this template. And it drives self-reflection. And he said it cleaned up so much drama, 80% of his drama, just by using that printout with the SBAR. And what he was getting at here is the quote I put in the book here. The person who takes the time to mentally process the problem is the one who takes action on it. So he had a habit of answering for someone. Hey, do you have a minute? Give them the answer, fix it. I'll tell you where to find it. And then they would just pop back in his office more and more. So this slowed that down. It resisted that urge because to be honest, he told me, I feel valuable when I do that. I feel like I contributed a bunch. I know all the answers. I feel like, you know, I know where the bodies are buried, so to speak. So he can give those answers, but it wasn't growing his team. And it was making them more dependent on him and it wasn't scalable. So that's where the SBAR really has, and I give some examples of how that's happened for others as well. One of the things that I loved at the end of the SBAR is I wrote, the tool simultaneously invited deeper reflection on next steps while ensuring that team members didn't feel shut down when offering necessary feedback. Once a month when I'm prepping for a client call that loves our stuff, But they're worried about how their team will take when I say venting's not helpful. They say that they've had someone experience RBL somewhere online or at a conference or somewhere, and people say their teams took it as you can't bring any up, any issues. It shuts down all complaints or problems being pointed out, which we've never said ever. The SBAR helps you point out more problems. Without all the drama. Like, it— you bring your SBAR to point out the 4 things you're most concerned about and ideas to fix it alongside your leaders. And so I wanted to put that in the book, that this tool is that healthy back and forth of a boundary and not venting where I fix everything as a leader. But you also have endless access to me as long as it's an SBAR to flag issues, and we'll prioritize which ones are most important. Like, this is so Bringing our teams together, it gets me so excited. It is the tools that bring us through drama towards our potential daily. One of the things I highlighted here is the SBAR is not designed to tell people what to think, but to help shape how they are thinking about a challenging work situation and what next right action could be. I find the ego when really tripped up and not wanting to get into self-reflection, especially visual self-reflection we write down, which gets it out beyond the ego. So it's intentional so we can solve it and it's accountable. Like this is, it's some science I didn't cover earlier, but it's some of the science behind all these tools is back in psychology. It helps to break projections so the person's not confusing the leader and the problem. It's the leader and the person now trying to solve the problem, which is reality, the SBAR, the tool in front of them. Really good dynamics, critical for modern leadership. That's what this gives you. It's It's the science underneath the framework here. It's not telling people what to think, but the ego gets all tripped up. It's like, oh, these tools, like, don't manipulate my mind and make me do a tool. Like, I just want to talk freely out loud. I'm just an out loud thinker. Well, 2 problems there. One, the ego loves verbal dialogue and ambiguity. So you're extroverts, which I am, you're out loud thinkers, you're processors. I get there's elements of that. I'm not denying the science, but that oftentimes is the ego's way to keep it in the playground of complexity and unfigure-outability, if that's even a word, instead of getting it nailed down and possibly solvable with a tool, which the book advocates for. So watch for when someone's like, don't, don't shape how, like, what I think. I'm not doing that. We are bringing in the fundamentals for good mental processes. How do you get rid of waste in an organization? Inefficiency? Good processes. How do you get rid of drama, which is mental and emotional waste? We use good mental processes. And this is just standard. The fight on this, we gotta break through because it's helping you in a healthy way shape how you think so you feel better, more engaged, and are quicker to results. This is good. You know, when I played basketball, you had to learn the fundamentals on how to pivot, on how to jump and land, on how to shoot. On how to play good defense. Like, if you didn't have that how to play the game, you're not going to play the game. You're, you're not going to get good results. You're not going to get put into play. And I think we deny some of this reality of good proven best practices because of some outliers who are able to, you know, go above and beyond and work 100 hours a week and use poor mental processes but still get a lot done and, you know, forego the rest of life. family, hobbies, etc. But these tools give us efficient ways that are proven mental processes that ditch the drama. And that's why it's how we think. It's good ways on how to think, the fundamentals. Thinking inside the box. Again, I will die on this hill that outside-the-box thinking is the worst thing that anybody can do. The worst thing. Because it leads to an argument with reality. That you'll lose, but only 100% of the time. I guess the worst thing besides that that anyone can do would be inviting others to do it, I guess, would be, hey, let's think outside the box. And the book talks about how every time that happens, people think they're giving their opinions, and usually it's pushing against our constraints of reality— our budget, our timing, our investments, our contracts, and our regulations. And they're like, if only we didn't have these limitations, then we'd be successful or we get results. But the reality is we do have those limitations. So what I need is for us to get results given those limitations. That's the innovation we need. So how could we inside the box? And so that is— this whole chapter gives you a bunch of ways that that turn can happen where you use people's frustration with their constraints, their circumstances, others that are difficult. colleagues or external vendors in their day-to-day, and how to say, given that, without enabling, can we adjust our approach, update our skill set, increase our willingness to get towards the goal but in a new way? And that unlocks innovation. So innovation comes from inside-the-box thinking, not outside. You'll learn that, and I'll give you a bunch of case studies, examples, science behind that, and, and live examples like where I will be honest here, some of the examples in this book were some of the toughest moments I faced in my career where we were just struggling. And whether it was clients reaching out to us for help or we were figuring something out. And so, I'm really excited for you to read those or buy the audiobook and listen through them. So, those examples for inside-the-box thinking. I know you're not supposed to have your favorite children. I got 3 little kids, but you're supposed to love them all. And you're not supposed to have your favorite reality-based tool, but I would say between you and I, Listener, viewer here, the inside the box is my favorite right now for how much impact it can have, which leads to maybe the reason why it's become one of my favorites is it's— I got to work on the name for it, but all I could land on is it can actually be like a power tool where in the moment as you use inside the box, you validate someone's experience because you write down all of their concerns or constraints or circumstances. You clarify the goal and then you help them in this moment clean up their thinking. It moves them to their, their place for impact. There's usually a conversation about their part in some of those constraints or their efforts. And then at the end of the tool, if those ideas in the box don't bump up against the constraints, you have them into next right action. Those become your simple instructions so that high-performing teams that I've been able to experience, the most high-performing, Are able to almost bypass, although it's not the best to do so, the sequence matters, of course. They're able to go right from unpreferred reality into bring it on. Let's think inside the box. What's next right action in the short term, midterm, long term? Done. That just becomes the way they solve things. Super powerful. So that leaves us with negative brainstorming. The last tool that is a possibility, more focused maybe when there's People struggling to take next right action during change or decisions they weren't consulted on or new strategies, which is so many groups right now. So I think this tool is gold for all those that are leading through those transformations, modernization, tech updates, all of that. And generational groups, different generations coming along to the things we need is it creates a venue for valid concerns and input. That need consideration to come to surface, and then we can all talk through them on how to intentionally move forward and prioritize. The key thing is you'll get a huge list of negative things that could happen with this decision, but it doesn't mean all of those are probable that they're going to happen and that they'll have big impact. So this tool helps us refine and take a moment to get intentional before we just run around like chickens with their head cut off, as they say. It gives us that, that tool to— surface unspoken worries, possible why we can't energy from those that maybe are the most resistant. I've found that the truth is, I wrote it here, that most people do not want to resist change at work or wish to hinder their ability to innovate when faced with an unpreferred reality. It took me a while to get to that. 12 years of doing this, I'd say the first 4 or 5, 6 years, if I heard any pushback about a change, as long as it's not illegal, immoral, unethical, Unfortunately, my ego would be like, oh, there's the resistors in the meeting. And I know some of you are like, oh, Alex, but you don't know Jeff on my team. And you're like, he's always resistor. But I've had multiple groups, and one of the examples— I didn't, it didn't make it to this book— but where they told me before going into a session where I was going to use this tool, they're like, just want you to be aware. Like, it was a 20-minute call to get me ready for, let's just say, Dr. Smith. That wasn't his last name. And I remember we got to that moment. I didn't really know actually, because the name was a name like they said it quick and I didn't get it written down correctly. And then my Rolodex for virtual was all over the place. There was like 70 people on the call, so I didn't see him. But I started the negative brainstorm, this tool for a change, and said, what are the issues with it? Like, why can't we say yes to this and execute it? And what are the issues you're seeing? And all of a sudden this one voice gets going and it hits me that this is probably Dr. Smith. And it was like a good 10 minutes of just ripping off why this is a bad decision, why we should have been consulted, all this stuff. And I was grabbing those ideas and they weren't thoughtless. They were, they were, they were pretty specific ideas. And I put them in the tool, listed them, and then I said, does anybody else want to share? And everybody else was kind of silent and looking at me like, See, there's Dr. Smith doing his thing. And then I remember with the tool, you'll see you cross out issues and say, thank you for sharing the risks, you know, Dr. Smith and anybody else who wants to add to those. These are just the risks with this decision. So, that assumes the close that we're not going back on it. We're going into given that how we could. And I kid you not, the breakthrough was Dr. Smith didn't disengage. I found him more engaged than ever. People came to me after, they're like, What magic did you just work there? I go, I think what everybody was missing out of a little bit of fear of his tone and his approach and credentials is he's really bought in. He just really needs a space to put out his expertise and unspoken worries from his 25 years of experience without being labeled as the naysayer because he surfaced— there was of those 10 items he brought up, 5 of them were pretty high probability That they would happen and high-impact issues on their patients if it did happen. So these were really important things to then figure out ideas to move beyond, like risk mitigate or get ahead of. So they had always confused his resistance to next right action with not a tool, a safe place to land for that resistance. And so that's negative brainstorming there for you. And I've talked too much on it, gets me fired up. But that's, that's the 3 tools for next right action. So. Any of them can work. Again, it's picking the best one. You'll get a feel for it on which move to use in which situation, and it'll become kind of second nature after a while. And then that leads us to our conclusion, which I'll leave for all of you. But that's the end of part 3. Conclusion finishes it out and your call to greatness. But that's how we could part 3. Again, today's the day of the launch. I'm getting a lot of celebration, We've had boxes going out for the last month or so for those that want to be advanced readers, winning giveaways. So excited, so honoured. It is surreal, the support for this book. We got Mel Robbins, who's got like the most downloads per episode on her podcast about improving our mindset and things. Love Mel Robbins, so grateful for her support. She said, stop making excuses, start creating results. This book shows you how. What else do we want out there? And so grateful for you, listener of this podcast, viewer of this podcast. Please share this with your teams. If you're ready for work to be just a little bit easier or to get the same results but not the hard way, How We Could is the book for you and your teams. Grateful if you grab it, follow the preorder link, and thanks for following along with all this. I'll see you on the next episode. Let's keep loving people up. But as you know, We gotta call people up to greatness. Take care.