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#Leadership : How To Build A #ProductiveTeam (And Weed Out #ToxicBehavior )…Whitney Johnson’s new book, Build An A-Team, is Based in Understanding where Collaborators are on their Learning Curves.

May 1, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Whitney Johnson isn’t afraid to challenge people to be their best selves. From her books Dare, Dream, Do, to Disrupt Yourself, Johnson puts forth a framework for innovation that starts with empowering the individual to take charge of making change. It’s something she’s learned from personal experience.

Originally a classically trained pianist, Johnson went on to become an equity analyst on Wall Street despite having no financial background. Between speaking engagements, writing, mentoring, and advising startups, Johnson also co founded the Disruptive Innovation Fund with Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen.

In her latest book, Build an A-Team, Johnson discusses her experience and advice for creating the most productive collaborations. Here’s her advice for building an innovative team and weeding out toxic behavior.

Fast Company: What was the most challenging team you’ve ever been on?

Whitney Johnson: I was still working on Wall Street, I had been an award-winning stock analyst for about eight years and effectively at the top of my learning curve. I loved to coach and mentor people, so I went to [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][my boss] and said I wanted to go into the management track. Rather than being supportive, he was dismissive and discouraging, basically saying, ‘We like you right where you are.’ This is a big challenge that plays out in companies all over the world every day. People get to the point where they are ready to disrupt themselves, but the ecosystem makes it impossible, even though they may have a great boss. It’s basically the “innovator’s dilemma” but with people.

FC: How did you resolve the dynamic?

WJ: I left.

FC: Is there such thing as a bad team? Or is it only a matter of getting a good manager/leader who can make it good?

WJ: There is such thing as a bad team. Sometimes you have bad players who are toxic–and we all can be toxic at different times, it’s not that a particular person is toxic in every situation. But often you get people not performing well, and/or they’re in the wrong role. Other times, frequently there is a strong performer who got to the top of their learning curve after four or five years on the job, and they’re bored and they start to underperform. They may feel they paid their dues and are entitled. That impacts everybody on the team.

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What Skill Sets do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

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FC: What’s the best way to deal with that?

WJ: If there is truly a toxic player, you need to weed them out. Otherwise, recognize that every single person is on a learning curve, including you. You build a great team by optimizing those curves. At any given time you have 70% of the people on the steep part of the learning curve, and 15% who are on the low end asking questions like, ‘Why are we doing this?’

The other 15% are people at the high end who aren’t necessarily innovating, but who are willing to set the pace by teaching, training, and collaborating. They know that shortly they will jump to a new curve of learn, leap, repeat, continuing the cycle. You have to constantly have people in a slot either learning a little more, or getting ready to learn again, then you’ve got people who are engaged, happy, and productive.

FC: What do you personally look for in others when collaborating, and how would you advise others to seek the same?

WJ: A lack of entitlement. A lack of either, ‘I’ve paid dues,’ or somehow I am owed for something. A willingness to learn and be humble enough to say I don’t know how to do everything, and I’m willing to learn from every person, not just my betters. To demonstrate domain expertise and excellence around the work they’re doing. A willingness to show up and be all in.

One of the ways you know people are excited to work with you is that they ask you questions about the work, and not about what’s in it for them. One advantage of the gig economy is working on short-term projects with someone. To me, that is the best way to test if they are all in.

FC: How would you hire to build a great team?

WJ: Look for the questions they ask to see if they are invested in the business. Ask them about times in their career or at school that they’ve taken a step back to slingshot forward, or if they were pushed back and what that looked like.

This will show how self-aware they are if they are taking ownership, or if it is someone else’s fault. You will see how agile and nimble they are, which is required for disrupting. Then talk about something that’s not worked and what the return on investment of it was. You’ll be able to see resilience, and how intact their sense of identity is if their failure is an event and not a person.

FC: How would you advise someone who’s contemplating joining a team to make the right decision?

WJ: Bosses are pretty good at telling you what you want to hear about a job, and it all looks really exciting. Ask the manager where the people are who worked for them in the past, and what they are doing today. Ask if there were women or people of color on those teams. Ask if they helped them to get to where they are–even if they moved to another organization–and if they are proud of them. That is the person you want to be working for, because this boss will make it possible for you to jump to a new learning curve.

FastCompany.com | May 1, 2018 | Lydia Dishman

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#Leadership : Hiring Remote Workers Made My Entire #Team More Productive…One CEO Explains How Surprised he was to Find the #RemoteTeams he Hired Reshaping his Company’s In-Office #WorkCulture for the Better.

January 14, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

“Want to get lunch?” This is a phrase you’ll rarely hear at our office. It’s not that we don’t eat or spend time together, but it’s physically impossible for our entire team to be in the same place at the same time. Sixty percent of our team works remotely, so for us, grabbing lunch is, “let’s meet on Google Hangout.”

It wasn’t always that way. Originally at Traitify, our entire workforce was based in one Baltimore office. We had a two-floor space and separated teams by department–developers downstairs, business and data upstairs.

Before long we noticed those two teams ended up forming separate cultures; the space literally caused a divide within our company. We tried intermingling the teams, but new floor members took on the same behaviors as those we moved. To cut down this friction we decided to look for a larger space on a single floor. The company was growing–and we didn’t want culture issues to bite us later on.

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Around this time we were also expanding our development team, and kept finding great talent outside our physical geography. We didn’t want to lose excellent talent based on location, so eventually we decided to give remote workers a shot. It was a risk considering the culture issues we were already dealing with onsite, but it paid off–and then some. Here’s how.

REMOTE WORKERS IMPROVED OUR ONSITE CULTURE AND PRODUCTIVITY

We started slow at first, by hiring our first CTO into a remote role. This led to the hiring of another remote developer, and another. Many of our hires came through referrals, so they had ties to the company already. And to our surprise, integrating them was incredibly easy.

In fact, we realized after a few months that hiring remote workers helped lessen our office divide. The remote workers we hired displayed high levels of self-motivation and responsibility, and were generally less antagonistic and better team players. Over time, those traits ended up rubbing off on other team members. (Of course, it doesn’t hurt when you can measure an applicants’ personality before hiring them; we build a product that lets us do exactly that.)

Productivity is a top concern for companies considering remote workers. But we found that they actually made us more productive overall. For starters, we’re forced to use Slack to its maximum potential to make that sure our team members, whether they’re in the office or around the country, feel like they’re sitting next to each other all day.

While Slack can be a distraction, it can lead to fewer interruptions if your whole team uses it properly (i.e. not for every single thing). For instance, we have a policy that if an update requires more than a quick Slack message or email, we get on a video call. Facetime makes it feel similar to being in the same room as your colleagues, but it forces the requestor to think about priority level (Is it urgent? Can it wait until my colleague says she’s free?) and ultimately boosts efficiency.

There are challenges, too. If you’re not sitting across from someone, you can miss nonverbal communication like body language, facial expressions, eye contact, and posture, all of which build camaraderie and trust. But we’ve worked to mitigate that risk by planning team off-sites, work-away trips, and occasional company-wide gatherings, which we hope to make more frequent over time.

THE BENEFITS OF A HYBRID MODEL

For Traitify, the remote workforce concept has been a swinging pendulum. We’ve learned that while some roles, like developers, can work well remotely, there are certain teams–like sales and customer success–that benefit tremendously from being physically together. Still, we’ve chosen to embrace this arrangement that we’d initially just stumbled across.

Having a physical “hub” creates and reinforces the core element of Traitify’s company culture–a place where customers and investors can see “who” your company is and experience the energy firsthand. However, in order to attract the best talent, we also recognized the need to be open to hiring candidates outside our immediate geography.

Some founders insist on an all-or-nothing approach, but we don’t believe that’s the only way to make remote work successful. Instead, we’ve set explicit guidelines to reinforce the benefits of both remote and onsite work so our in-office and far-flung teams can work well in tandem with minimal impediments.

All our staff in our physical headquarters now work on the same floor. And when we hire remote workers, we screen their personalities to make sure they’re self-motivated and responsible, then we train them to use collaborative tools in a way that optimizes their productivity.

I believe companies need to embrace remote workers, but they don’t necessarily have to resort to an exclusively remote workforce. It’s a great model to source talent, but the benefits of a physical hub are hard to overstate, especially when it comes to building a work culture. If our experience is any indicator, you really can–and maybe should–have it both ways.

Dan Sines is co-founder & CEO of Traitify, the company behind image-based personality assessments for employers and personal career growth.

FastCompany.com | January 14, 2018