Dan Martell - April 25, 2022


How to Build a High Performing Team

Hosted by
Dan Martell
Mentioned
Darcy Degala Ryan Michael Gantt Mark
Crypto in 30 seconds #Shorts Dan, am I a leader ？ ~ Full Video Linked In Comments #Shorts

Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

191.59

Word count

2,353

Sentence count

111

Harmful content

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

To the degree that you develop yourself, you will be able to lead and build more people. When I was 21, I learned this from an incredible mentor of mine, who was essentially the technical lead at this oil company called Syncrude Oil up in Fort McMurray.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 To the degree that you develop yourself,
00:00:02.160 you'll be able to lead and build more people.
00:00:18.000 What's up everybody, Dan here.
00:00:19.320 Today I wanna talk about the fact
00:00:21.040 that I believe leaders build people.
00:00:23.700 People always talk about what is leadership?
00:00:25.200 What does it mean to be a leader?
00:00:27.200 And my definition is that person has folks
00:00:31.440 that report to them and those people are developing
00:00:34.140 and growing and you can clearly see
00:00:37.280 that they're becoming better for having worked with you.
00:00:40.220 I know that's been true for me.
00:00:41.600 So I don't know if you have direct reports,
00:00:43.340 maybe you have one and you're nervous
00:00:44.760 and you're hoping that they like ya
00:00:46.760 and that you don't lose them and all these different fears.
00:00:49.160 But the truth is, is you wanna be somebody
00:00:51.360 that they look up to, that they look as somebody
00:00:54.740 that they admire, that you put them in a position
00:00:58.080 to stretch them outside their comfort zone,
00:00:59.800 but give them the support, not leave them hanging.
00:01:03.260 And when I was 21, I learned this
00:01:05.040 from an incredible mentor of mine,
00:01:07.080 this guy named Darcy Degala,
00:01:09.260 who was essentially the technical lead
00:01:11.780 at this oil company called Syncrude Oil
00:01:14.700 up in Fort McMurray, Alberta, okay?
00:01:17.460 And fun little story, when I first met Darcy,
00:01:21.160 it was the day before I was trying
00:01:22.920 to give myself my own little haircut.
00:01:24.960 And I accidentally caught a nick
00:01:26.860 and went too high on the sideburns.
00:01:28.260 Maybe you guys can relate to this.
00:01:30.080 And I ended up going so high that I,
00:01:33.600 there was only one option is to shave my whole head.
00:01:35.820 So I show up at the college
00:01:39.200 because Darcy had put the training that day offsite.
00:01:42.560 First day ever meeting him,
00:01:44.660 shaved head, wearing a plaid red dress shirt,
00:01:49.280 tucked into khaki pants that were way too big for me,
00:01:52.080 wearing dress shoes, because I used to be a skater,
00:01:55.020 and I didn't really want to wear dress pants,
00:01:57.440 but I was trying to put my best foot forward. 0.98
00:01:59.260 And literally, I looked like the most ridiculous person ever. 0.89
00:02:03.080 And I remember Darcy opened the door, 0.97
00:02:05.120 looks at me, looks me up and down,
00:02:07.660 and just kind of gave this like, oh man, kind of scenario.
00:02:11.280 And the reason why is because I was only 21,
00:02:14.660 and I think he thought he hired somebody
00:02:16.020 that was more like 35.
00:02:17.800 And the whole point of me being hired by Syncrude
00:02:21.240 as a consultant back then was to help them build
00:02:23.760 and deploy their enterprise portal software.
00:02:26.360 So what Darcy did is he gave me two weeks
00:02:29.940 to figure this out.
00:02:30.780 I went and I got a library card.
00:02:32.180 I showed up every day.
00:02:33.960 I learned about Gantt charts.
00:02:35.100 I learned about statements of work.
00:02:36.200 I learned about project management.
00:02:37.700 And eventually I became a pretty good project manager
00:02:41.540 and leader of this portal deployment.
00:02:44.340 But what I learned through this process
00:02:46.820 of working with Darcy that I didn't even take notes of
00:02:51.240 Literally, I like look back and realize
00:02:53.320 there was so much opportunity for me to learn even more,
00:02:56.660 but I wasn't even aware of it at the time.
00:02:58.660 And I just want you to know, maybe you work on a team
00:03:00.620 or you are leading somebody and you're not even aware
00:03:03.220 of the impact that you could be having on this person.
00:03:05.980 Cause I know that's true for me.
00:03:07.380 When I think back at Darcy, I've messaged him every year
00:03:09.960 for the last 20 some years and said, thank you.
00:03:13.120 And he laughs, he always smiles.
00:03:14.940 You don't have to say that.
00:03:16.480 Like, I don't know what you think I did.
00:03:17.980 And I'll tell you what he did, man.
00:03:19.740 and he showed me what it meant to lead people.
00:03:21.880 He showed me what it meant to build the people
00:03:24.620 and the people build the business.
00:03:26.140 He showed me what it meant to lead with compassion,
00:03:28.920 to manage expectations, to ask world-class questions,
00:03:33.340 all these things.
00:03:34.380 And I wanna distill the three things
00:03:36.940 that I seen a true leader do and influence a 21-year-old
00:03:42.180 that's become the person who's created multiple companies
00:03:45.500 where I sit today and have the fortune
00:03:48.100 of leading 100 people across all my organizations
00:03:52.260 and I've probably been involved in hiring
00:03:54.520 close to 1,000 people at this point in my career.
00:03:57.580 The first thing is that he made problems my solution, right?
00:04:01.940 And here's what I mean by that.
00:04:03.780 I remember one time there was this problem
00:04:05.500 we were dealing with and Darcy asked me
00:04:08.020 to come into his office and he was asking me
00:04:11.520 about my thoughts around this problem
00:04:13.220 and I was listening to him.
00:04:15.380 And he's so funny the way he did this.
00:04:17.340 Again, it's only in retrospect,
00:04:19.380 like after I look back and I go,
00:04:21.160 oh, that little fricker, this is what he was doing. 0.96
00:04:23.560 He'd be like, Dan, what do you think we should do here?
00:04:26.520 And I was like, oh, he wants my opinion, I would tell him.
00:04:28.860 And then he would jump out of his chair
00:04:31.120 and he would go to the whiteboard
00:04:32.360 and he would start drawing,
00:04:33.720 but he would like put some stuff up there,
00:04:36.100 but it wasn't like actually accurate.
00:04:38.480 And then I'd be like, no, you shouldn't do it like that.
00:04:40.580 You should do it like this.
00:04:41.420 And then he would turn and he would give me the marker.
00:04:45.040 And then I would go to the whiteboard
00:04:46.460 and I would draw some stuff and some ideas.
00:04:48.560 And he'd go, oh, okay, yeah, yeah.
00:04:49.900 So, and then what would you do with this?
00:04:52.200 Well, I'd probably do this.
00:04:53.320 And what would the timeline be?
00:04:54.620 Well, I think if we did this,
00:04:55.700 the timeline could be like that.
00:04:56.800 And who would you need to make it work?
00:04:58.380 And then he'd do this and like, you know,
00:05:00.560 I'd draw some names and he'd go, okay, I like that.
00:05:03.180 So that's what you can do.
00:05:05.060 Like you're committing to that.
00:05:06.520 And I'm like, yeah, I think that's what we should do.
00:05:08.460 And he's like, you're committing to that.
00:05:09.900 I'm like, yeah, I'm committing to that.
00:05:10.820 He's like, awesome, let's do that.
00:05:13.080 In hindsight, the dozen plus times he's made me do this,
00:05:18.320 I realized that what he was doing was getting me
00:05:22.440 to sell him on the vision he already had,
00:05:26.080 but he wanted me to make it my solution.
00:05:28.800 He never told me what to do.
00:05:31.080 He said, here's my big problem.
00:05:33.880 Let's take a blank piece of paper
00:05:35.360 and let's draw a picture together.
00:05:37.320 And he would fumble on his drawing to make me,
00:05:40.560 force me to get up there and clean it up
00:05:43.380 because he wanted to make it my idea.
00:05:45.660 And that idea of making it my solution
00:05:48.860 was such a big thing when I think of like how I lead today
00:05:52.040 where I focus on outcomes, not tasks.
00:05:54.940 I don't tell people what to do.
00:05:56.040 I said, this is the problem we're trying to solve.
00:05:58.320 How would you solve it?
00:05:59.820 What are your thoughts?
00:06:00.760 What do you think that would work?
00:06:01.980 What would the timeline be?
00:06:02.820 So leading through questions, super important idea.
00:06:05.500 The other one, the second thing is to have fun.
00:06:09.180 You know, like as I shoot these videos with Sam, okay?
00:06:12.740 Sam's in the studio right now
00:06:14.240 and he's watching me shoot these videos.
00:06:16.040 We have some fun.
00:06:17.480 We tell some jokes.
00:06:19.040 We laugh.
00:06:20.740 We tell stories.
00:06:21.960 We, you know, get caught up on each other's lives.
00:06:24.800 It's not just about the work
00:06:26.480 because what Darcy knew that I didn't appreciate
00:06:29.260 back then as a 21 year old
00:06:31.120 is that people want to work on teams
00:06:34.560 where they feel like it's fun and exciting.
00:06:38.400 And it's not just about, yes, I have to feel like
00:06:41.340 I'm building towards something bigger.
00:06:43.320 But the truth is, are these people kind?
00:06:45.980 Do they make me laugh?
00:06:47.200 I have this guy, Michael, on my team.
00:06:49.080 He makes me laugh.
00:06:50.480 He like, one day we were doing this exercise
00:06:52.220 and I said, the person with the longest hair goes first.
00:06:54.360 And he goes, hair, hair, or facial hair?
00:06:57.860 Which is just a funny thing because he's got a big beard.
00:07:00.260 I like that.
00:07:01.420 I like my buddy, Ryan, who's always cracking jokes.
00:07:05.380 I mean, we jump on board meetings
00:07:06.920 and the first thing he's doing is he's blasting ACDC.
00:07:10.260 Or before you notice, you turn around
00:07:12.580 and he's changed his profile image
00:07:14.480 to somebody else's on the meetings,
00:07:16.360 like image of them working out over the weekend
00:07:18.360 with their face all sweaty that they posted on Facebook.
00:07:21.140 And like, he just changes it.
00:07:22.800 And then everybody's like staring at it, laughing,
00:07:25.380 going, is that Mark?
00:07:26.960 Like, is that, what is Ryan doing?
00:07:28.720 And it's just funny.
00:07:29.740 It's stuff like that.
00:07:30.520 It's like, I really think when I was starting off in business,
00:07:33.660 I was so serious and I was so focused on outcomes.
00:07:36.920 and you could argue today that I'm still like this,
00:07:39.800 but I also realize you gotta have some fun,
00:07:42.760 you gotta tell some jokes, you gotta keep it light,
00:07:45.420 you gotta remember that there's real people
00:07:47.560 on the other end and if they don't enjoy coming to work
00:07:49.700 and working with the people that they interact with,
00:07:52.640 that they're not gonna enjoy it.
00:07:54.440 When I work with my lawyers and my finance team
00:07:56.980 or other vendors and contractors, I always remind myself,
00:08:00.440 I'm one of a dozen of their clients
00:08:02.060 and I want them to have the most fun on our meetings
00:08:04.480 and if they have the most fun on our meetings
00:08:06.700 that they're gonna think about my problems
00:08:08.820 when they're working out at the gym
00:08:10.700 or driving to work or whatever they're doing
00:08:12.960 because I'm the top of their like ideas of like,
00:08:18.180 they're like, oh, I like this person.
00:08:19.700 I wanna see them do well.
00:08:20.940 I think that's a really cool idea.
00:08:22.180 So having fun, Darcy definitely showed me
00:08:24.080 because he was always cracking jokes,
00:08:25.560 making fun of people, you know,
00:08:27.260 celebrating birthdays, et cetera, having fun.
00:08:29.580 And then the third thing is, you know,
00:08:32.100 learning how to solve problems.
00:08:34.360 This is the thing that even to today,
00:08:37.440 I was just on a call with somebody on my team
00:08:39.980 trying to deconstruct the challenge they were facing
00:08:43.520 and how to fix it.
00:08:45.520 And one of the things Darcy that was big on
00:08:48.100 was essentially like corporate training
00:08:50.960 and learning and development inside of his teams.
00:08:54.280 And he hired this company called Kempner Trago
00:08:58.620 to teach us root cause analysis.
00:09:00.920 RCA is the industry term.
00:09:02.780 we're an oil company, safety standards
00:09:05.160 and gauges and switches, and they had this like
00:09:08.900 very methodal, you know, like process-driven training
00:09:12.820 for root cause analysis,
00:09:13.900 because when you're dealing with oil and reactors
00:09:16.260 and separations and chemical processes,
00:09:18.220 like you kinda gotta figure out some really like
00:09:21.420 obscure things that are happening
00:09:23.100 inside these like complex processes.
00:09:26.260 And so he had access, and he would send us on this training
00:09:28.740 and spend thousands of dollars.
00:09:30.780 And what he taught me that I didn't know
00:09:33.340 as a 21, 22 year old was the idea of how to solve problems,
00:09:37.520 of being able to isolate constants,
00:09:41.140 of running experiments, of troubleshooting,
00:09:45.640 and like making sure that you're not playing
00:09:47.660 a game of whack-a-mole.
00:09:48.900 And it's not necessarily about, you know,
00:09:51.340 was Kempner Trago the right training?
00:09:53.280 It was awesome.
00:09:55.280 The big idea is I think any leader
00:09:59.440 that can teach their team how to solve problems,
00:10:02.520 not just solve the problem, but teach them the process,
00:10:06.640 the thinking, the best practices,
00:10:08.680 the methodology around solving problems,
00:10:12.260 to essentially teach their team to fish,
00:10:15.000 that is one of the most beautiful things
00:10:17.580 that I think you could pass along to anybody
00:10:20.520 that you have the privilege to lead.
00:10:22.580 And that will always stand out for me,
00:10:24.880 is that if you ask me like,
00:10:28.160 Dan, what's the thing I should be teaching my team?
00:10:30.840 It's teach them how you solve problems,
00:10:32.500 because I guarantee there's something you do
00:10:35.600 that's unique, not even I would probably do,
00:10:37.880 that's a process or approach to how you think
00:10:39.980 about solving problems that you just take for granted.
00:10:43.100 And I love that Darcy taught me.
00:10:44.740 He's like, no, we're gonna formalize this.
00:10:47.160 I'm gonna hire somebody that I respect,
00:10:49.060 that I've trained with, that I trust,
00:10:51.140 and I'm gonna have them teach my team,
00:10:54.380 obviously selfishly so that we could all be better for him,
00:10:56.960 But the truth is that he also knew for the rest of life,
00:11:00.640 these people exposed to this process
00:11:03.520 are gonna be better at their job,
00:11:05.320 they're gonna be better for their teams,
00:11:06.580 they're gonna be better at whatever company
00:11:08.060 they end up working for.
00:11:09.560 And to me, that is the sign of a leader,
00:11:12.980 is teaching the principles behind an outcome,
00:11:16.180 not just teaching the thing that you need them to do.
00:11:19.380 So those are the big ideas that I give a lot of gratitude,
00:11:22.680 or I have a lot of gratitude for Darcy
00:11:24.120 around making it my solution, you know,
00:11:27.100 teaching me how to whiteboard
00:11:28.540 and come up with the solution
00:11:29.920 and then getting me to own it
00:11:31.320 and having fun along the journey
00:11:33.480 and having, doing the birthday celebration
00:11:36.500 and the dress up for Halloween
00:11:39.340 and just all these fun little quirky things
00:11:42.020 that they, he would do.
00:11:43.300 And finally teaching me an invaluable skill
00:11:46.620 like solving problems that's applied
00:11:48.240 to my personal life and my professional life
00:11:50.380 and nonprofits I'm involved in.
00:11:52.680 There's still literally things that I teach today
00:11:55.080 to all of you, and I just think that that idea
00:11:58.140 of leaders build people, and then there's this philosophy
00:12:02.660 called the law of the lid, and to the degree
00:12:04.240 that you develop yourself, you'll be able to lead
00:12:06.920 and build more people.
00:12:08.340 So that's the big idea.
00:12:09.340 I hope you found it useful, and as per usual,
00:12:11.700 I wanna challenge you to live a bigger life
00:12:14.420 and a bigger business, and I'll see you next Monday.