Team Habits: How Small Actions Create Better Teams and Better Work with Charlie Gilkey

Erik Fisher: A lot of productivity is about reducing those tiny points of friction that keep you from doing the thing you already know you need to do. Brain FM can help you with one of those friction points. Getting into a focused work session. You pick the focus mode, you press play, and if you're like me, time moves quickly, the work is getting done and you're not thinking about everything else in the world. Not only that, but you can use it for other modes too, like relaxation, meditation, sleep Some of the best naps I've ever had have been aided by Brain FM. It's really Swiss army knife and you can get 20% off while you try it out by going to beyond the to do list.com brain fm or go to the link in the show notes. Again, go to beyond the to do list.combrainfm um, and get 20% off while you try it out.

Narrator: Ever notice how life's best stories don't happen in your living room? They happen on the open road, out on the water, or parked under the stars. At Progressive, they get that you want to focus on the experience, not worry about the what ifs, and that's why they offer quality insurance designed for your ride, whether That's a boat, RV or motorcycle adventure with confidence. Visit progressive.com and see how easy it is to protect your favorite way to get away. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in dc. Prices vary based on how you buy.

Narrator: Foreign.

Erik Fisher: Hello and welcome back to beyond the To Do List, a podcast about productivity. I'm your host Eric Fisher, and in this episode I am thrilled to revisit a conversation I had with Charlie Gilke. He's the author of Start Finishing how to Go from Idea to Done and founder of Productive Flourishing, a company that helps professional creatives, leaders and change makers take meaningful action on work that matters. This conversation in this conversation, we are revisiting a deep dive conversation we had on his book Team How Small Actions Lead to Extraordinary Results. In this, Charlie shares his insights on the power of teamwork and his fresh perspective on improving team productivity. We talk about team dynamics, overcoming challenges and mistakes and the impact that small issues can have within a team, and highlighting the downstream effects of broken systems on morale and camaraderie and even the impact of adding new team members and needing to focus on improving team habits rather than changing individual team members. It's like micro culture inside of an organization or a company or a business. If you've been looking how to give a shot in the arm to your team at work this conversation with Charlie Gilke is For you. Well, this week it is my privilege to welcome back to the show Charlie Gilke. Charlie, welcome back to beyond the to do list.

Charlie Gilkey: Eric, thanks so much for having me. We've already been having fun in the green room. I think we're just gonna have fun in this conversation as well.

Erik Fisher: I know we will. Uh, you're one of the few people that I think it just makes sense for you to be on the show more. But I definitely knew that I had to have you back. And I knew your new book was coming out before I think I saw anybody else talking about it, which was great. I love feeling kind, uh, of like in the know because I was such a fan of the last book when it came to project management and how that applies to everything, our lives, as well as, like, having multiple projects. So I knew that when you were going to address the topic of personal habits, but on a macro level or a group level, I thought, oh, uh, well, I think there's not really anybody else that I trust with this topic in this way to address it than Charlie. But I got to ask, like, when it comes to, like, personal habits, obviously we're recording us at the end of 2023. The one book that I can kind of think of that everybody kind of addresses when it comes to personal habits is Atomic Habits by James Clear. Back in. And I looked this up. I was kind of surprised. It's been just over five years right now, late 2018. That's a book that a lot of people reference and go to, but this is different from that. And in fact, in a lot of ways, this is about a collective habit building, growing, et cetera. I'm curious, coming from project management now to habits and applying them to teams, what does that thought process look like? And I know it's not a one to one, oh, that book and then this one, but there's a journey in there somewhere. Enlighten us.

Charlie Gilkey: Yeah, there. There is a journey. But first off, thanks for the kind words about, you know, me writing this book and how it would handle the topic. And so, you know, when I started writing Start Finishing, Eric, I knew it was a part of at least a three book arc before I finished Start Finishing. I already knew that. And really Start Finishing. It answers the question of how do we do our best work? And there's a paradox. Most of my work is driven by parent paradoxes. Okay. So the paradox and Start Finishing is why don't we do the things that matter the most to us? I didn't feel like I needed to address mere Procrastination in the way most people don't. Like, we don't do the things we don't want to do because we don't want to do them. Okay. Right. Most of the solutions are then about how do you get enough willpower to do those things you don't want to do? But it was really interesting to explore. All right, so the soul, deep dreams and goals and things that you want to do. Why don't you do those? Okay, so that was what I did in Start Finishing. So it's really how does an individual do their best work? But I knew the next logical book was how do teams do their best work? How do we get together as a team and do the things that matter most to us? So when I started Start Finishing, the code name for what's now team habits was called Start Finishing together.

Erik Fisher: Makes sense. It's logical.

Charlie Gilkey: It's logical. And then the third book in that arc is what do leaders specifically need to do so that their teams and individuals can do more of their best work? So I knew already it was a part of at least a 3 arc. And there's a fourth one that's really even nerdier, which is something like the physics of finishing, which is what makes some projects and ideas easier to finish and bring about than others. And if we know that when we start thinking about ideas and projects and things we're trying to do, then we can at least bake in more of the factors that make them successful and counter the things that make them not successful. I don't know if that fourth book will ever come to be. So we're on book two in the arc. That's a long way of answering it is a follow on to the larger question of, uh, what does it take to thrive? And the tension and paradox in Team Habits is this. Most of us actually like the people most of the people we work with in our team. So that's 1, 2. Most of us are just evolutionarily wiring. We're inherently goal seeking. That's just part of who we are as people. Another given, we're inherently social creatures and we want to be in good graces with other people. And then sort of the next one in the arc is most of us feel satisfaction from completing a thing which is different than being goal oriented. You can be goal oriented but not receive satisfaction from doing the thing. You can do the thing but not be goal oriented. But most people are both. And then lastly, most of us are doing the best that we can. So if you take all of those Things together. You would imagine that the types of beings that we are would naturally and easily work well with each other. Like we're inherently a cooperative, goal seeking, goal oriented species. And yet teamwork can be very hard. It can be very hard to accomplish goals together. All the things that you would predict from a species or, uh, from a being like us actually don't show up at work, which creates part of the paradox. Why is that? Because we're designed for this and yet we don't. And as you know, you scan the business management leadership space. There's a fundamental flaw in the way people think about this. It comes up time and time again. And that flaw is that they try to change people. They posit that people, individuals are the problem, and if you change the people, the system will work. And I actually think that's the inversion of what's actually going on. If you change the system, people will naturally do the work that they want to do. And so Team Habits is. It's a few things. I'm, um, cloaking quite a few things. Eric, you're familiar with my work and you know how many Trojan horses I'll slide into something. Team Habits is simultaneously a few things. So one thing is it's a book about power. I did not want to write a book about power for all sorts of different reasons. Right. But it's also a systems book. And what I want people to be thinking about when it comes to team habits and getting things done together and finishing together is, hey, let's stop this notion that the people are somehow wrong and need to improve and they're defective and they're the problem in the system when it's actually the system in the way of people doing what they're aligned to do.

Erik Fisher: Yeah, I don't really know what to say when it comes to the system, to be honest. Every organization has a different system, right. And different people. And a lot of times what we hear is, we hear a lot of when we're hiring or when we're doing the opposite of that. We use the word fit thrown around a lot. Not in like throwing fits, but like it's a puzzle piece. Like a person is a puzzle piece. And if they're the right person in the right position, everything will just fl. But that still kind of leans towards what you're saying where it's the onus is on the person, not the system. In other words, we could have great people and we could have a collective of great people. But if the system or the shape of the system and the puzzle pieces it's square peg, round hole all over again. Over and over again, I should say

Charlie Gilkey: over and over and again and again. The thing is, if it were just changing people, one would predict if you add a person to the team that the team would change and things would operate differently. In reality, what happens is you add a new person to the team and most of the time the outcomes and behaviors of the team stay the same. Right? Because it's that system, it's the team's habits. Now when you talk about systems, things can get gnarly and get away from us. And so in team habits, what I really pull it down to is I say, okay, let's first talk about who your team actually is. And in the book, I address it as the four to eight people that you spend 80% of your working life with. So for the rest of this conversation, I'll assume Eric and I are on a team because it's going to make sense, right? In that team, it's, yes, we're a team, we're this sort of anonymous unit, but honestly, it's Charlie and Eric and Taylor and, and, and Harry. That's the team. Five individuals who actually, most of the time at least don't dislike each other. But most of the time we actually like each other. We know about each other, we know our musical tastes, we know family life, we talk. We're human beings, we're going to do that. And in that little team, we have a lot of autonomy, we have a lot of influence, we have a lot of co creative capabilities. We can do a lot. So if Eric and I show up to a meeting, that sucks. And neither of us are team leaders, we don't have to be like, well, Ann's the team leader, she should fix this meeting. We can look at each other and be like, like that was. And it's me and Eric, or it's me, Eric, Ann and Taylor. And like, we can go through there and we can say, look, we don't like how that went, let's change it. And we don't need a boss, we don't need anyone else to tell us that. We can just look at each other honestly as the human beings that we are and be like, we don't want to do that again. But we don't. And part of it is this flaw that people have about thinking. And so I mentioned Team Habits as a book about power. In case you're curious. Why didn't I write the book about power? Well, because then it ends up in that meta conversation about who has the Power. Who doesn't have the power? Like, what are we doing? And at the same time, we're still showing up to meetings that suck. And I'm like, I want to sidestep that. Right? Uh, when we look at it, there are three dimensions of power at work. And most of the conversations about work and about productivity focus on two of those. So I'll start with the two dominant ones. The first dimension that we know a lot, that we talked about a lot, is personal power. This is what Charlie or Eric can do by virtue of their expertise, knowledge, know how, competency, you know, capacity. Like we can just make something happen on our own with our own personal power. Okay, so think of personal power as power, too. And then on the other end of the spectrum, we have institutional power. This is power over. This is the power that Charlie or Eric has by virtue of their role, by virtue of their responsibilities in the organization. So we have power over people or projects or resources or budgets or. Or stuff, or whatever. Okay? Power two, which is personal power, power over, which is institutional power. So when we think about fixing the things that are broken in our teams, we're stuck. Because if Eric shows up to a meeting with Charlie and it sucks, Eric can't fix that by himself because it's a collaborative team thing. But Eric may not be Charlie's boss. So what do we do? Well, maybe Ann, our team leader, can fix that. We'll invoke her to do something, and, uh, she has power over the situation, so she can change it. But we miss that middle dimension of power, interpersonal power. This is power with. This is the power that Charlie and Eric have with each other. What we can do together that we can't do by ourselves. And that's really all we need to fix so much of what's wrong in our team level. We don't like the meeting. Charlie and Eric can come together and say, hey, that didn't work. And even if it's our full team meeting of six people, Charlie and Eric can give each other and be like, yeah, no, that wasn't it. Come together. And then we talk to another person. And then we talk to another person and come up and say, hey, let's change that. And Ann, our team leader, is also part of the team at the team atomic level. And so instead of being like, hey, Ann, you need to fix this problem. We could say, hey, Ann, I think we have. Or we think we have this problem. We would like to fix it. And here's how are you okay with that? And Ann being the busy Manager that she probably is likely going to be is going to be like, great, cool. Do your thing right. Let me know what happens. Or we got to do this thing. Cool. We co create that with Ann and include her as a member of the interpersonal power squad and not the institutional power squad, which would be saying, like, hey, Ann, our meeting suck. Fix it. Like, how? What, what's wrong? Like, why do I have to fix it by myself? And, oh, by the way, I got this other stack of things that are way more pressing to me. And, you know, when we look at it that way, when we look at it from the perspective of interpersonal power, we can start to break down this system of behaviors that we have. And, you know, uh, I talk about eight types of team habits that every team has, and they're the eight universal ones. So whether it's your belonging team habits, whether it's your goal setting and prioritization team habits, whether it's your communication team habits, whether it's, you know, your planning, we can go down the list. Coordination, meetings. I, uh, pick on meetings because meetings are easy to pick on. Right? Our meeting stock. Let's just focus on specific things about the way we do meetings and improve it a little bit at a time and change that bad team habit that frustrates us to a better team habit. And so while the concept of team habit is pretty simple, I'm going to still explain what it is. It's like personal habits, the unconscious, repetitive habits that you do and behaviors that you do. But your team also has a usually unconscious implicit agreement about how they do things. Those are your team habits. So your meetings might suck, but really what's happening is the specific behaviors that your team has decided to do don't work and frustrate you. So you can change that. So, for instance, let's pretend, if I were, you know, mayor of work for the day, a few rules. We're not allowed to do this anymore. One of those rules would be no agenda, no meeting. No agenda, no meeting. Very simple team habit. We can all agree that Eric and Taylor, Harry, we can agree what we're not going to do to each other anymore is plop a meeting and steal time from each other and get together and figure out and spend the first 15 to 20 minutes figuring out why we're here and who needed to be here, and then maybe only having 20, 30 minutes of actual conversation and then sliding into the next thing. They got popped on the cloud, we're done. Like, we can't change that the CEO group or the executive team Plops these meetings on our calendar, we may not be able to change that. But Eric, Charlie and Taylor and Harry can agree with each other that we're not going to do that to each other anymore. Let's reclaim our time again. That's one thing you can do.

Erik Fisher: Starting something new has a way of waking up every possible what if in your brain. When I started podcasting, there was plenty of excitement, but there was also that other voice. What if this goes nowhere? What if I'm building something nobody wants? And that's why tools that remove friction matter so much. If you're building a business, Shopify gives you a, uh, real head start. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from brands just getting started to names people already know. With hundreds of ready use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style. You can also create email and social media campaigns and manage inventory, payments, analytics, and more all in one place. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at, uh, shopify.com beyond go to shopify.com beyond. That's shopify.com beyond workplace chaos is real. Deadlines slip, inboxes multiply. Somehow the one person who can fix it is also the one who just gave notice when you need the right hire. This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Job. Had to hire a new editor for this podcast. I wouldn't just say must edit audio. I'd want someone who understands conversational podcasts, knows the workflow can handle chaos. And lucky for me, Indeed Sponsored Jobs can cover all of that. And sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed are 95% more likely to report a uh, higher than non sponsored jobs. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who will check all your boxes with less stress, less time, but more results when you need the right person person to cut through the chaos. This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Listeners of this show will get a 75 sponsored job credit to help you get your job the premium status it deserves@ Indeed.com podcast just go to Indeed.com podcast right now. Support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com podcast terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored Jobs. I've been in that scenario where I had a standing meeting. This was over 10 years ago and it was just a standing weekly meeting. It's About a half hour I had to get up physically and go into that manager's office. And most of the time it was a pointless, useless. There was no new information. Everything had already been dealt with. I'd already shot the email off and asked the questions and fixed the things and done the stuff. And I felt powerless in that institutional way. So it got to the point where me and my manager could do nothing about that meeting because he had to show that he did it. His hands were tied. So were mine then, also. But what we both decided was, well, the door shut. They don't know what we're talking about. So we would just talk about other stuff. So it was kind of a nice, like we said, look, our hands are tied, but that doesn't mean I can't come in and we can't just like catch up for half an hour and just have fun and talk about family stuff or whatever. And that's what happened. And it was. Once we kind of realized we, uh, had a certain amount of agency and wiggle room in there and we knew where the ceiling and the boundaries were, we ran with it. Now, ideally, that's not how it would be. We both lost out on a half an hour that was wasted time that we could have been doing something else. But I don't want to go down too far of a rabbit hole, but I was already outperforming in that cubicle anyway, so I would have been sitting in my cubicle doing Internet surfing or doing human interaction. And you know what? I know which one's more important to a certain extent.

Charlie Gilkey: So, yeah, well, and I love that you give that as an example because sometimes other elements of the organization will tie your hands that way, right? And so, perfect example. What I would say in that scenario is like, okay, because of the powers that be, we're going to have to check this block that we're going to be in this room for 30 minutes. To your point, right? We want to have a belonging meeting, which is our bonding meeting, which is what you actually ended up having, right? Or how about we come together and we commit with each other. And especially if you have a manager that trusts you, you've got good rapport with. It's like, here's what we're going to do. We're going to come together and we're each going to do the freaking emails we don't want to do, right? We're just going to use it as buddy times. You got some you got to send. I got some, we got to send. We're just Going to use it as a co working session just to get through this stuff, embody double with each other. Right?

Erik Fisher: See, And I wish, like co working in that kind of scenario. And even body doubling is a term that I had not heard up until pretty recently. And I was like, wait, what does that mean? Am I cloning myself? I wish, but this is kind of another version of that. I mean, I heard somebody talking about and they said, it's not that you've got somebody working on something with you. It's literally the co working that my friend and I used to do. You know, pre pandemic and even now post, we would go and do almost a productivity pub crawl. In fact, we have an episode on this where we would take a Saturday or like a Friday or something and we would start at one place, like a co working space, and we'd start with like light breakfast, get a thing or two done that we designated for that chunk of time. Then we'd get up, move, we'd switch environments, but we would be together, working separate stuff, but together. And it was that camaraderie, it was that moment, it was sharing momentum. It was like, oh, man, I'm done. Yeah, me too. I already finished my thing. Cool, well then nothing's stopping us from just moving on to the next location or going and having a break now. It's just that it was water cooler work. Working with the water cooler, in a way.

Charlie Gilkey: And what's great about that is so many sectors of work today is creative knowledge working. So we might be building a thing and know that one, it might not ever come to be. Or even if it does come to be, it's like six, nine months down the road, right? Uh, you don't know what it feels like. And so we don't have those normal dopamine hits that you get when you're like building a thing. You can see a thing, and so on and so forth. So sometimes body doubling in this way, what it does is mirror the feedback that you would get if you're building tangible things and having that kind of whatnot, getting that social approval, but not just jumping to Instagram or whatever social media site's gonna like clog up your attention. And so again, back to kind of what we're talking about with the team habit side. Like, sure, you might have to have that 30 minute of face to face time. Might not be able to do much about it. And how can you better use that time that works for you and your team, all sorts of things you can do in that session that actually say, you know, as much as I beat up on meeting, I have to be very clear about this. I am not an anti meeting guy. There are plenty of them. Meetings are terrible. Avoid them at all costs, blah, blah, blah. I'm not that guy. I'm an anti bad meeting guy. You're right. However, I love, love, love when teammates like you and your manager are, uh, like, you know what, let's do the body doubling thing so that you look forward to that 30 minutes that you might spend together. Cause you can be like, oh, I got this turd of an email I need to send. I can stress about it all week, or I can say, you know what, during next week's meeting, I'm just gonna sit down and get that thing done. It's gonna be great. And it has a home and I have a partner. You can look forward to that. What would it be like if we at the interpersonal team level really leaned into the agency that we can say, we can look forward to this time that we spend with each other and it's on us to make it that way? It's not on Ann. It's not on corporate. We can do it. We just have to talk about it. And, you know, part of really fixing team habits is having the courage as a teen to call out the absurdities of the status quo. Not from a place of just complaining and griping about it, but just be like, this has been broken for a long time. I talk about the. The broken printer, which is probably a useful segue here, right? Open the book with it. And, uh, you know, here's the thing about the broken printer. In every organization I've coached or consulted it, there's at least one broken printer that everyone knows about, right? Sometimes it's been there so long that it's got an employee number. It's like employee number four, right? That won't ever go away or ste. We name it. And it's not that the printer itself is the problem. It's the downstream effects of the printer. Like, because the printer's broken and we don't do anything about it, we don't print out agendas for our meetings. We instead look at our laptops and computers, in which case we're getting pinged and we're getting all sorts of things and we're fighting over technology that doesn't work and not really focusing and spending time well with each other because the printer's broken, right? I can go down the list of all the different ways that that can happen. And most of us are familiar with a broken printer. But it doesn't have to be a real printer. It can be the CC thread from hell. It can be something like a, ah, mandatory manager meeting every Monday morning that you like. Everybody knows it's broken, but we don't do anything about it. And at a certain point, the reason employee number 47 stays on the team is because we just sort of broke wash out the absurdity of it. It's just part of the normal. We'll stub our toe over it, the big boss comes in and we have a report and we'll hit print and it goes to employee number 47. And employee number 47 screws it up like it always does. And then we're scrambling and frustrating and we're just like, ah, what, what are we going to do about it? We could fix the printer or wait for it to kick us in the butt again. So at the team level, what I want us to do is actually say, no, that thing is broken and it's been broken for a long time. But it's not Eric or Charlie's job to fix it and it's not Anne's job to fix it. It's Eric and Charlie's and Ann's job to come together and figure out how to solve that. Because it's affecting all of us. And the beauty of really focusing on changing your team's habits is that if they truly are the five to 10 people, sorry, four to eight people, I sometimes use different numbers, but same basic concept that you spend 80% of your time working with. If you make that better, you have made the interactions with 80% of the people that you spend time with most days better. And I know it's going to sound like a tautology, but better is better. You don't have to fix the whole thing. You don't have to have a whole overhaul of, you know, you don't have to overhaul capitalism and org dynamics and compensation and institutional racism. You don't have to do all of that to fix these little things that you can in your team and be cool, that better is better. And if you really take care of these people, the Eric, the Anns, the Taylors, the Harris and think, I'm going to be working with them for the next six to nine months. Like we're going to be doing this thing together. Why not make it better together than just have employee number 47 screw us over at least multiple times a week? Because no one of us is willing to say it needs to go, it needs to be fired or we need to figure out something else.

Erik Fisher: I can't help but think people think of habits. They think of them as very. And um, we said it earlier, the term personal habits. People think of habits as a very personal thing. And in fact some people may pick up the book thinking, how do I use this book to change my teammates? Because I like them 80% of the time, but that other 20%, it's like I just want to tweak them here or there and make them more like I want them to be. And that's not exactly what this book is. But I couldn't help but think that in a way the book is almost uh, like that Pixar movie which they saw that they're coming out with a second in the series now called Inside out, where the team is the girl, but inside of the girl there's what, five different people. So it's perfect number, it fits right into your number scheme here. And they all come together. Each of them has their own kind of spin. But like they come together as the team inside of the girl to make decisions. And it's not a one to one metaphor by any means, but it kind of helps you get there a little bit closer and get a little bit clearer head about. This isn't about changing any one person and it's not even about changing the entire team at an individual level. It's about everybody coming together and changing. Not just the way the team does things, but optimizing the team in terms of what it can possibly do. I mean again, in the same way that we talk about habits in productivity and how if you can habitualize these activities and be on autopilot without having to think about it, then you're going to be able to do this, that and the other and your potential again. It's the whole power of it. When you're talking about that book Atomic, it's atomic power. It's this tiny little thing, great big power, which I know just sounded almost like Aladdin. We live in space. Anyways, point being that's what you're doing here, but it's on a team level and it's more of um, a chemistry soup that is, you know, mixing together to have volatile for good reactions.

Charlie Gilkey: Yeah, I love that. Here's the reality. Most of us don't show up to work and like I am incredibly open to someone else's change. For me today, that's not really like what it is. Like most people don't want to be changed by other people. And that's part of the Problem with traditional management paradigms where you're like, I'm trying to change that person. Well, does that person want the change that you're proposing to them? And if not, you're gonna be fighting because, one, they don't wanna be changed, and they don't wanna be changed by somebody else's thing. However, if in my team, I happen to know that Eric wants to become, let's say, a better writer, and I know he's focusing on that side of things, if I show up and start changing team habits and proposing team habits that actually help him become a better writer, all of a sudden, I'm not in this change tug of war with Eric. I'm on Eric's side, and I'm doing the best I can with what I see to help him get to his goal. And if we choose the wrong thing, that's fine. Like, we're going to choose the wrong ways of getting there. However, how we do things matter, and that we're trying to do things in this concerted way matters a lot. And so there's a big difference between I, uh, want to change that person's 20%. And most of the time, I want to ask people, like, how receptive are you about being changed that 20% of time magnified across all your different teammates? You're like, I don't want to change so much. I want them to change. And it's like, okay, uh, let's focus on the team habits here, because it depersonalizes it. Like, here's what really wants to happen. Like, Charlie and Eric are having some tension and some friction because Charlie always forgets to change the damn privileges on the Google Docs that he sends. And so Eric, like, four or five times a week is going to be like, charlie, like, come on, bro. Right? And while it seems to be about Charlie needing to change, it's actually a very specific behavior Eric wants me to change. Right? Just what do we got to do to do that? Like, do we just put it in a folder that's got privileges set automatically, and all you have to do is put it in that folder? Okay, That's a very small thing. But that very small thing, like the broken printer, means that Eric is not pissed at Charlie four or five times a week because Charlie did the damn thing that he does all the time. I would imagine that if we looked at those specific bumps that we have with each other and we just work on those, we might be like, you know what? Eric's pretty dope, actually, or Charlie's pretty dope. I don't like, he's a cool dude. We're human, we all have our problems. But like, I'm not trying to change Charlie anymore because I don't need to. It's not frustrating. He like just put it in the folder, it works and we move along and we can do the daps, we can hang out and body double, we can do all the things. But you know, Teresa Amabile in the Progress Principle wrote that it's the small setbacks that happen fairly frequently that have an outsized impact on our, uh, morale and sort of, well, being in a team. Right. And so Eric and Charlie most of the time could jam together and rock with each other. But just the fact that Charlie and the damn permissions thing three to five times a week is just frustrating. Eric can corrode and have an outsize weight on how Eric feels about working with Charlie. And we didn't need to change each other. Let's just fix that one thing and we're cool. We can rock.

Narrator: Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why customers have enjoyed Progressive's name your price tool for years now. With the name your price tool, you tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit progressive.com find a rate that works for you with the name your price tool. Progressive Casualty Insurance company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law

Speaker E: M When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want.

Speaker F: Like all the way.

Speaker E: Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your cha chings from every channel right in one spot and turn real time reporting into big time opportunities. Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to Shopify. Start your free trial today.

Erik Fisher: Well, and it's not even what you said is perfect. It was very much about the relationship for sure. However, if I'm not, I mean, I'm going to go with the Google Doc thing because there's a perfect example here. It's not even just about that. It's about the lost hours of time. If I am being good, I'm going to throw you under the bus in this example.

Charlie Gilkey: Throw me under the bus. That's why I did it, Eric. So you can throw me under the bus and then you can like that Charlie guy. Let's never bring him back again.

Erik Fisher: Yes, I think Charlie is employee number whatever. Yes, I have a designated time that I'm going to go into that doc and I'm going to do that work and I come to that time and I can't get in. Well, now it's like, what am I doing? How am I going to do Like I was set to do this thing at this time. And yes, I could be very much Charlie, not again. And email you and I could even click the ask for permission thing, but who knows when I, uh, mean, I can pull my phone out or some other, you know, slack or you know, messaging system we've got in place. I can do the polite one where it's like, hey, just wanted to. I mean probably it's a, uh, ask for it and then say, hey, can you give it to me? But who knows if they're going to see their email right away and. Or go to the message thing. You send it the nice way in the not emergency channel. And then it gets down to the point where, well, now it's an hour later and I don't have access and I text you or I'm going to really annoy you. I can like actually try and call you. People are so adverse to actual phone calls. I'm still old school. If it's appropriate, I like it. But whatever. I say all that to blow a cloud of smoke, to say it's a roadblock. It's those micro blocks of just derailment that especially for people like me, where it's like, I had that time set up. I had to determine that that type of work was the best thing for me to do at that time of day. And now I can't do it. So we definitely need to do some fixing.

Charlie Gilkey: That's exactly. I love the way that you did that because that again, shows the downstream effects of the broken printer. Because there could be like, Charlie could just be like, look, it's just a link. It's not that big. It was like, no, bro, that was the only focus block I had this week that I dedicated to work on that thing and you were out. And so now, uh, like, I'm gonna have to take that work home or figure out something else that's going on. So I get that it's just a link to you, but like, dude, I was set up to do that and we can talk about it. But again, that's where you can flip it and say like, it's not about the technology, right? So much. It's about how we set up a way that we can trust each other. Because, uh, underneath this, it's about trust. Because that moment in which Eric trusted me to have that ready to go for him and I didn't do it by the link thing. Now we got to do some repair. Like, Eric is frustrated and I don't want to pay attention to that. Like, because at the team level, so much of that exasperation that we don't say comes from the hurt that we trusted someone and was let down. Like, if you knew it was going to be screwed up, you wouldn't have planned for it. But it's like, I thought you had me and you didn't. And now I'm scrambling and it's going to mess something else up. And if we're really paying attention, there's going to be this sort of team corporate loop that next week I'm going to fumble the ball either on you or on somebody else that comes back to this link. Right. And you're going to be frustrated at me. But it was about the link. And we get into that sort of like, who was the first fumble sort of scenario that led us there. Or we could just sort of pause and say, you know what, look, we're doing the best we can.

Erik Fisher: We can go back to the game tape and we can review the game tape.

Charlie Gilkey: But it's just like, look, I'm sorry. And that's another thing we need to learn to say more as a teammate. Yes. Look, bro, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to defend it. I'm sorry I screwed that up. Right. I can give you a bunch of reasons why that is. I'm sorry. I'm working on it. I'm stuck with it and here's why. I fall down with it so on and so forth. But like to not even lean into that interpersonal, uh, relationship setting. Like, look, I know why you're frustrated. I get it. I let you down and I'm sorry. That would go a long way.

Erik Fisher: Yeah, it does go a long way. And I think the thing that I noticed as I was going through all of this was the way that I'm gonna go back to that inside out example, because I think that's appropriate the way that we work with others who don't have all their stuff together all the time, much like us, that all of us interactively, interchangeably working together as a unit, as that relates to then back to just ourselves, our own self sabotage when it comes to productivity. And you kind of see where I'm going with this and what I'm saying is it's like trusting yourself. It's why habits and changing those habits and putting them, you know, changing the behavior and course, correcting it and keeping it on the correct course in terms of habitualizing the things. I mean, we may not eliminate procrastination or the not wanting to do it part of procrastination, but we'll still get the thing done appropriately in the right time without letting ourselves down, without losing trust in ourself. Much like in this scenario with the teammates and the domino effect.

Charlie Gilkey: Precisely. And in a really high trust, high belonging, high performance team. The reason you don't see so much procrastination is one you don't have as much system chicanery that everyone has to work through every time they try to do things. Like you could just do the thing. You know, so much of what makes teamwork hard for many teams, especially the more toxic side of things, is you never know where you stand with people. You never really know what you're supposed to be working on. You never really know that like what's a good job look like? And if you do a good job, is somebody going to tell you and see that and if you fumble, are they going to tell you and see that until it's too late? It's just so anxiety making. And it doesn't have to be that way at your team level. Like you can develop radical, candorous, compassionate ways that uh, when someone falls down you can say, look, that wasn't quite the standard. Uh, it's cool. What do we need to do to fix that? But like that way, Eric, I'm going to pick on you this time. Eric knows like if he does a good job, Charlie's gonna be like, dope, great job. Appreciate that. If he doesn't do a great job, Charlie's gonna be like, we're cool and we gotta fix that thing. Like it wasn't the standard. And that gives Eric the positive feedback that he needs to make it standard so he can ship it, move on to the next thing versus what happens in so many teams. Ship the thing and then like have that sneaking anxiety over the next two or three days of like, is it good? Is it not good? So I'm trying to pull down that load. And we do that via team habits. Really, it's really what it boils down to. And there comes a way in these types of teams where teammate falls down sort of spontaneously, the rest of the team picks them up in the way that works for them and things just go there's not a conversation. There's not like a meta, I'm not good enough conversation. It's the best way to say is like, it's your turn. Like, we're going to fall down. We're human, we are going to slip up, we are going to make a mistake, we are going to get sick, we're going to have Murphy show up on us. Right. We're going to do whatever those types of things. And at some point in a team, it's going to be your turn. How your team works around when it's each other's turn and doesn't make it a competitive thing, doesn't make it a one upmanship thing, doesn't make it a thing. It's like, oh, today was Charlie's day.

Narrator: Cool.

Charlie Gilkey: We got it. Four days later, it might be Eric or Anne's day. We got him. It's cool, right? And so I know I have an army background, so it's. This may not work, but there's a way in which, like when your buddy falls, like when you're doing something, you just pick him up and move him on, or you redistribute the gear or you, you know, you do whatever you need to do, you shuffle some things around. Got you. We move on, pick them up, move on. At the end of the day, you know, you might give that knowing nod of, uh, like, thanks for being there for me. You may or may not talk about it, but in that moment, it was their turn. And you know, at some other moment when it's your turn, they're going to pick you up.

Erik Fisher: Yeah, ideally, that's how it's going to work. And that's why the building of the trust and the doing what you can with what you can when you can, regardless of the institution. Man, I just wish that I had had any kind of concept of the body doubling or co working back in that meeting. I would have gotten even more done during that time instead of having to work through the thoughts and feelings and beating head against the wall for so long, because for a while there it was like just going through the motions. And then we have, you know, ultimately it started to come to head where we're like, oh, wait a second, we have some leeway here. Let's figure out how to use this. And we could have taken it further, but again, we were just two people.

Charlie Gilkey: So just two people. And it's kind of, you know, what I love about things like that is I think in terms of like going to the gym with a buddy and I know this is ableist. And I realize that some people, like, this may not fit. I get that. But, like, if I go to a gym with a buddy and we're both sitting there looking at it, it's like, we're already here. Like, most of the hard part's done. Like, what do we. What's the best thing we can do together? What's. Like, how do we need to train today? Because we're already here, right? And I love thinking about that when it comes to work and team habits, because you're already there. You are already there. And while it is true that a lot of us are tired, I get that. Uh, but it's been a rough few years at work, bro. I get that. And you're already there. So even if you can't do the hard charging, change everything, like, all that kind of whatnot, you could at least say, you know what, my practice at the team level, I'm going to start with, you know, communication habits. The one thing I'm going to work on with my team, because the number one rule of being a great teammate is be the teammate you want your teammates to be, right? Just for the month, I'm going to work on one thing. It's. It's a lot going on. I am just going to work on being clear about what I'm asking for and when I need it. That's it. That's the one habit I, as an individual, is going to work at. Because I know if I do that, it's going to work with the team. And maybe I'll go with Eric and say, hey, Eric, I'm working on this. Like, I'm not saying you got to work on it. I'm just saying as a communication habit, I'm taking this on myself to do that. But hear how you can help and be a partner with me on this. Like, I'm already going to be asking Eric for things anyways. I'm already going to be tasking him or delegating or, like, requesting things. So why not do it a little bit better? Why not do it in a way that makes all of our collective anxiety and suffering just a little bit better? And I don't need to wait for Eric to be the person to do that. I don't need to wait for Ann to come up with some sort of protocol about how we do it. I don't need to wait until I read the next book. I can just say, I know with what I'm working on and what I'm struggling with and what I need from My teammates is clearer communication around these things. So I'm going to model that I'm going to do it myself and see if they're willing to do it with me if it's made work better.

Erik Fisher: You've done the thing that I usually do, which is near the end of a conversation, I ask somebody to say, okay, we've talked about this concept. What's the first step in towards starting to do it? You know, and usually it's an individual basis. It's an individual thing. And even though this is team related, that is very individualized. It's like, no, you want to have awareness. It does start there to a certain extent and then also extends into the team. Other than what you just outlined with your example, what would be maybe the next step?

Charlie Gilkey: Yeah, so, you know, listed, uh, the eight different team habits that you can go through. And so if you really want to look at it from a team perspective and start with yourself, think about those and say which of those feel like the broken printer of the categories, like M. It's really, we have a lot of pain, there's. And then go with a teammate. And again, the way I'm talking about a teammate, see if they agree that's your one thing. Like, do you agree that this is where this is really sticky and painful for both of us? And if they do, then you can start to say, hey, how might we change that together? But usually someone has to call out the absurdity of the status quo for people to start changing it. Right. And I've said this throughout today's conversation and listener, I hope it's not too repetitive, but I've learned by talking about this that I have to continually bring it back to the team, the four to eight people, the Eric, the Taylor, the Ann. Because a lot of times when people start thinking about this, they depersonalize it, they anonymize it, they make it about the organization, they make it about the culture and what they can't do and forget. It's those four to eight people, it's the Eric, the Anns, the Taylors, lean into that relationship. You know, no disrespect to Mark Manson, but I think so many more of us need to really start caring about our teammates, their lives and our lives and how we work with each other. And so if you approach it from that perspective, and not so much changing individuals and making them work the way you want them to work, but changing the system that's in the way of how you would like to work with each other, you get more purchase and you make your work better together.

Erik Fisher: Love it. I can't wait to see the impact that this book has as it's been out there longer. It's been out for a little while right now, but I think it's something that as we're winding down the year and, you know, naturally kicking off a new one and everybody in the business slash productivity space is talking, thinking that way. This is one of the best, if not the best thing you could be thinking, doing something about right away now, which is how you work in your team, how your team works together, how you can get out of each other's way, how you can help each other get out of each other's way, how you can pick each other up, how you can say, oh, it's their time now, and next it'll be mine, and so on. Like, I think it's gotta have a great impact. I think this is one of those books that, you know, need to be bought in bulk and handed out. And I know that's what you want. So anyway, let's push people to where they can find out all the different things you're doing. Not just this book, but also the last book, as well as all of Productive Flourishing.

Charlie Gilkey: Thanks for that. And then thanks for the praise and in kind words about the book and for having me on the podcast, Eric. So if you're interested in learning more about team habits and you know how to make your team work better together, you can go to betterteamhabits. Com. But as Eric mentioned, my broader body of work around productivity, some, um, of entrepreneurship as well, is@productiveflourishing.com if you go to either one of those sites, you're going to find the other, because I'm fairly decent about interlinking in that way, but sort of pick your lane if you want to work on your team aspect of things. Better team habits. If you're really looking at doing your own best work, that's where you go to Productive flourishing. Com Perfect.

Erik Fisher: Charlie, thank you so much for being here. And again, we'll have to do this sooner rather than later. I mean, I think that honestly, doing a tech geekout setup session like we were doing before in the green room, I think would be a perfect, just fun episode to drop maybe after the first quarter of the year or something, you know, once all the dust has settled and we've been able to like, see where we're at with things, because there's a lot of stuff we're both thinking about and trying and doing when it comes to that.

Charlie Gilkey: So Look, I'm with it. I'm just saying, like, so you're on first with that. Whenever you send the email, we'll get it figured out.

Erik Fisher: I will do it. We will make it happen. So thanks for being here and we'll see you again soon. Well, that's another episode crossed off your podcast Listening to Do list. I hope that you're walking away with some insight as to how to improve the habits of your team and how small actions can lead to extraordinary results for you and your team in your business or your workspace. Make sure to grab Charlie's book. I'll link to it in the Show Notes which you can find at BeyondTheToDolist.com or click the link in the Show Notes in the podcast player app of choice where you're listening to this and if you want, send the this, um, on over to some member of your team. Working together will yield better results. So think of your team or team members, your whole team even, and send this on over to them. Hit that share button or again, hit the share button over at the Show Notes at Beyond the to do list dot com. Thank you so much for sharing. Thank you for listening and I'll see you next episode.

Charlie Gilkey: Sam

Speaker F: Foreign

Narrator: M. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cashback. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates national average 12 month savings of $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary.

Speaker F: My name is Shannon Maldonado. I'm the founder of Yaoi, a gift shop from the lens, uh, of artists and handmade objects. I chose Shopify because when I was testing other platforms it was definitely one of the most user friendly. It was important to me to think about where we would be in the future and all of the tools for reading your sales, like planning inventory, they're just right there on your dashboard. For anyone starting a small business, the biggest thing I can tell you, it doesn't have to be perfect. Shopify can help you build upon it. Start your free trial on shopify.com.