Leadership Launchpad · 2026-06-02 · 31 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
59 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Keith Ferrazzi, founder and CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight and bestselling author of Never Eat Alone and Leading Without Authority, challenges the value of traditional MBA programs in an era of rapid volatility - arguing that practical experience at places like Y Combinator teaches more relevant skills than Harvard case studies. The conversation centers on how young professionals can develop into leaders without waiting for formal authority: by identifying improvement opportunities in their current work, building relationships that open doors, and adopting specific team practices that create high-performing cultures. Rather than trying to change mindsets, Ferrazzi advocates for changing processes and practices first, letting new behaviors drive new thinking. He introduces the "stress test" practice - a structured format for soliciting challenges, ideas, and support - and explains how leaders can turn cultural aspirations (challenge culture, curiosity, support) into specific team assignments. The episode also unpacks trust as a multidimensional outcome that breaks down into professional trust (competence and worldview alignment) and structural trust, helping listeners understand why vulnerable conversations fail on low-trust teams and what practices build trust progressively.
The MBA was valuable for Ferrazzi as a career reset, but today's extreme volatility means professors can't keep pace with the marketplace, and alternatives like Y Combinator or immersive experience in fast-moving companies teach more relevant skills than case studies.
Identify something in your current work that could be better, create a loose vision, and onboard people to co-create the solution - this is leading without authority and positions you as the Sherpa of change, not the person given authority to change.
It's much easier to change process and practice first; you act your way to a new way of thinking rather than thinking your way to new actions, and practices like stress tests turn cultural values into specific team assignments.
In a stress test, a team member reports progress, struggles, and next steps on an initiative, and every listener commits in advance to answer: What are they missing? What idea could help? Will you help? - the team breaks into groups to write answers, then reports back, turning the desired culture into an assignment.
Trust has three components - professional trust (competence and shared worldview), structural trust (safety from boss decisions), and interpersonal trust - and practices like energy checks (sharing one struggle monthly) build vulnerability and responsibility for each other progressively without overwhelming new teams.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode contains several substantive ideas about trust frameworks (professional/structural/personal), practice-based culture change (stress tests, energy checks), and leading without authority. However, significant portions devolve into promotional material for books and courses, and some claims lack supporting detail or data. The core insights about process over mindset and the three trust types are solid, but repetition of his book titles and programs dilutes density.
Everything you want to achieve in your life will happen with and through other people
You don't think your way to a new way of acting. You act your way to a new way of thinking.
The three-axis trust framework is a useful decomposition, and the practice-based (versus mindset-first) approach to culture change offers some fresh framing. However, the core messages - relationship networks are important, leadership is about enabling others, practices matter - are well-established in contemporary management discourse. The specific practices (stress tests, energy checks) are somewhat original but presented as tactics rather than novel theory.
To get somebody to change their mindset is pretty tough. To get somebody to adopt a new practice is a lot easier.
You turned the kind of culture you want to have into an assignment.
Keith Ferrazzi is a credible operator and practitioner with two decades of hands-on executive coaching, real C-suite experience (CMO roles at Deloitte and Starwood), and published research-backed frameworks. He is not a pure theorist. However, he spends considerable time promoting his own courses and books rather than diving into client war stories or naming specific organizations where his methods drove measurable change, which limits the sense that this is a practitioner sharing battlefield lessons.
I literally was this morning coaching a very prominent top 100 of a major corporation
I've spent 25 years researching high performing teams, doing nothing but coaching high performing teams
The episode provides few named examples, metrics, or dollar figures. Ferrazzi references Amazon and Jamie Dimon's team as adopters of his practices but offers no specific case details, timelines, or business outcomes. The stress test and energy check practices are described with procedural specificity, but the broader claims about team performance, career acceleration, and organizational transformation lack numerical evidence or named client examples beyond vague references.
The kind of practice that the Amazons of the world that achieve disproportionate outcomes use. The kind of practice that Jamie Dimon's team uses
These things are tried and true tested. They're the kind of practices that the Amazons of the world that achieve disproportionate outcomes use.
Matt asks solid setup questions (Is the MBA dead?, How do you scale trust?) and occasionally probes deeper (e.g., the tension between mindset and practice, or trust-building pace for low-trust teams). However, he rarely challenges Ferrazzi's claims, asks for harder evidence, or pushes back on promotional elements. The conversation is warm and aligned, which creates rapport but limits critical friction and depth. Follow-ups are present but tend to affirm rather than interrogate.
I would love for you to pull on that, that specific thread a little bit. The difference between mindset and process.
What do you think that balance is of the process of kind of going from zero, like we barely know each other or maybe there is active distrust on the team?
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Most people think leadership starts when someone gives them authority. I don't think that's true. One of the ideas that kept coming up in my conversation with Keith Ferrazzi is that leadership is rarely granted before it's demonstrated. The people who create outsized impact inside organizations aren't waiting for the title, the promotion, or the perfect moment. They're already acting like leaders long before anyone officially calls them one. That matters more today than ever. The pace of change is accelerating. Industries are being reshaped by AI, supply chain volatility, shifting markets, and entirely new ways of working. In that environment, technical expertise alone isn't enough. The people who continue to grow are the ones who know how to learn faster, build stronger relationships, challenge ideas constructively, and bring others with them. Keith has spent decades studying high-performing teams and advising some of the world's largest organizations. What stood out to me most wasn't a complicated leadership framework. It was how much of great leadership comes down to simple, repeatable practices that most teams never adopt.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: Holy shit. What's going on in the marketplace today? No professor is keeping up on it right now.
Speaker B: Is the MBA dead?
Speaker A: Everything you want to achieve in your life will happen with and through other people. But that's productivity learning, like I am right now. Gluttonous. The relationship map that is so crucial to you and your success. Most teams on a scale of 0 to 5 are below 2. We don't challenge each other in the room when it's risky. They don't challenge each other. They don't hold each other accountable. They don't care about each other deeply. They don't give each other energy. They don't lift each other up. They don't have an esprit de court. They don't have a sense of we're gonna go take a hill together. The average leader is mediocre in that way. Start being a leader today. Leading without authority. The Sherpa of change. Most people wait around bullshit. Take responsibility for your own excellence.
Speaker B: Hello and welcome to the Leadership launchpad where we talk about actionable insights for leaders in aerospace, manufacturing, defense and the rest of the hard tech ecosystem. My name is Matt Jertson, the host of this podcast and the founder of Built where we are training the next generation of hard tech leaders how to build high performing teams. I am so excited for the conversation today and absolutely do not want to delay it, so let's dive right into the introduction. Keith Ferrazi is the founder and CEO of Ferrazi Greenlight and a New York Times bestselling author of Never Eat Alone, who's got your back, Leading without authority and Never Lead Alone. Named one of the world's top 50 thinkers by Thinkers50. Keith has spent over two decades as a leading expert in organizational transformation. He advises Fortune 500 executive teams, unicorn companies, and even government leaders on how to drive, uh, collaboration and measurable business outcomes through teamship and co elevation. Keith's methodology equips leaders with practices that rewire how teams operate, shifting organizations from siloed hierarchies to adaptive, peer accountable cultures built for disruption and AI driven change. Before founding Ferrazi Greenlight, Keith served as the youngest CMO of Deloitte and later as CMO of Starwood Hotels and Resorts. His work and ideas have been featured in Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fast Company, Fortune, and just too many places to mention. On a personal note, I have had the amazing fortune to attend several dinners hosted by Keith where he helped me connect to people in ways that led to true friendship and co elevation. I can't tell you the impact that it has had on my life and career. So, Keith, I want to start by saying thank you and welcome to the leadership launchpad.
Speaker A: How are you doing today, Matt, what an amazing intro. Thanks so much. Um, I'm thrilled to be here for so many reasons, personal, but also the audience that we're talking to today is near and dear to my heart. You know, as you know, I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The crash of the U.S. steel industry.
Speaker B: Yes.
Speaker A: And so I feel very strongly about folks that are out there just really making stuff.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: Been something that I've, I focused on for a long time.
Speaker B: Yeah, it's a really exciting time. Uh, I'm blessed to, you know, from SpaceX to other places, I've kind of been caught up in this whole re. Industrialized movement that's happening in the US right now. Um, and I'm here for it. And I can tell you're here for it as well, so it's really exciting.
Speaker A: Yeah. And by the way, congratulations on the, on the SpaceX upcoming.
Speaker B: Oh, yes. Yeah, it's exciting. Exciting times for sure. Um, well, I wanted to start in a place, given your background, I think you're a good person to kind of ask about the state of leadership within companies. Right. Right now. You know, I mean, and the way I want to frame this is, I think for a long time, you know, the MBA going to, you know, time at GE and going through their leadership development program, it was often seen as kind of, you know, the pinnacle of what we were looking for. We fast forward to today where it's maybe not as exciting or there's certainly certain leaders in particular, certain well known leaders who would say they steer away from MBAs and stuff. And as somebody who got their MBA from Harvard Business School, you seem like the perfect person to ask, is the MBA dead? You know, or is it, is it still alive and thriving?
Speaker A: Okay. I think ultimately for me, at the time of my life, the decision to get an MBA was a great one.
Speaker B: Mhm.
Speaker A: I had been grooming myself and the local political organization in Pennsylvania had been grooming me to be. Go into Congress, et cetera, when I was young. And I made a massive pivot to decide not to want to go into politics, but to want to go into business. And you know, the two years was a wonderful refresh for me. Ah, to step back, uh, build a great network, think about and understand a broad landscape of business. I had gone to Yale undergrad, which was far from a business school, so I had never even studied accounting. Right. Yeah. Uh, so it was a nice refresh for me that said, holy shit, with what's going on in the marketplace today. I did a book that you didn't mention called Competing in the New World of Work.
Speaker B: That's right.
Speaker A: And during the pandemic, uh, during the pandemic, there was so much volatility going on that we were looking at how do you run an organization that is radically adaptable? And it came out of the pandemic. I mean, who would have known that we would have been in as much volatility coming out of the pandemic supply chain wars AI as we were during. What leadership is, is the ability to guide an organization through whatever comes at you. Right. And so whether or not you choose to sit out right now in this two year period and go to business school, I don't know. I mean, I guarantee you, if you were to throw yourself into a Y Combinator program in San Francisco, you would learn more in two years that is relevant than you would sitting through a bunch of Harvard Business School case studies right now. No question. But I'm not judging the institution nor the idea of an mba, but there's so much volatility. No professor is keeping up on it right now.
Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that's true outside the MBA as well, is you have, you know, I have lots of people asking me, saying, like, you know, the traditional route of I'm going to go back and get my Masters or I'm going to get a PhD and I just kind of always ask, like, in that span of time, where are you going or, uh, where are you likely to learn more? Going to a university or just staying in the thick of it and kind of going, going after everything.
Speaker A: I'm sitting here looking around. I wrote a book that I never published. I'm just looking to see if I can find the manuscript. And it was called the University of you. And the idea is that every one of us needs to be constantly getting our PhD in whatever it is we dream to achieve in our life. And the way I would recommend, if you're a young person watching this, ask yourself, three to five years from now, where do you think you might want to be? You don't have to be. Right. It's just m. Amusing. Right. And then ask yourself, who do you want to learn from between now and then in the process of getting there?
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: Because who you want to learn from will be the people who will open doors of opportunity for you. This very much goes back to a book I wrote 20 years ago called Never Eat alone right there. And never eat alone teaches you that everything you want to achieve in your life will happen with and through other people.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: Who will co create with you, who will open doors for you, et cetera. So how do you navigate those relationships? And I even have an eight week program that we call Connected Success. Yeah. And you can see it@connected success.com. but it teaches you how do I build the network that I need to crush it in life?
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: And that has to do with productivity. These days you want to get something done in an organization, you've got to figure out how do you navigate building relationships inside of your company to get the stuff done you want to get done. I, uh, literally was, uh, this morning coaching a very prominent top 100 of a major corporation and I was teaching every one of them to identify who are the three most important people that your relationships are weak with today inside of the company, that if they were stronger, you'd be more successful. And then I was teaching them how to navigate moving those either strained or absent relationships into something that I call a, uh, co elevating relationship. And that's the stuff we teach at Connected Success. But that's productivity learning. Like I, um, right now, gluttonous. I mentioned Y Combinator. It happens to be an incubator out here in the, in the Bay Area.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: I am spending time at Y Combinator getting to know kids. Yeah. Who are building brand new companies because they're blowing my mind. What they're doing and how they're thinking with AI et cetera. You need to be doing that. Right. You're not going to learn that from your bosses in big old traditional tech companies. Yeah. So whether it's your learning path, whether it's even just getting shit done, it's the relationship map that is so crucial to you and your success.
Speaker B: I find it really interesting because, you know, you just mentioned you were coaching somebody who was a top 100 in the organization, so obviously pretty successful.
Speaker A: Actually, you know, this was all of the top 100. Okay. The whole. Okay.
Speaker B: Excellent, excellent. So, yeah. So even better, even to the point proves the point even more. It's amazing that, you know, people can be really successful and they move forward and kind of everywhere I go, whether it is kind of the networking side of it from never, uh, eat alone, or even the leadership side of it of never lead alone. Kind of both of those kinds of skills. Often I think in a lot of people's minds, especially in engineering, minds take a backseat to the hard skills of like, oh, I Got to get better at. Why is that you think we've had
Speaker A: this problem for decades. I remember when I was back at Deloitte and it was so ironic that the skill sets that made some young person be successful to move from a senior consultant to a manager, from a manager to a senior manager, had nothing to do with the skill set that they needed to become a partner.
Speaker B: Exactly. Yes.
Speaker A: Because right now at your career, people want you as a functionary. They want you to plug in and do the thing you do. But you're not going to become a leader until you start to lead. And so if you wait to become a leader until somebody gives you leadership, you will never be a leader. Yeah, you. I, uh, wrote. I, uh, wrote a book called Leading Without Authority. You need to become a leader now. And my recommendation for you. And again, we teach this beyond connections. I recommend two things for you right now. One of them is start being a leader today. And the way you do that is you identify something in the area that you're currently working in that you see could be better. And then you create a loose vision of what you think could be better. And you start to onboard people who you could co create making that happen. So wherever you are, you see a vision for what could be better, and you start to onboard people to say, hey, we can do this better. We can make this better. And you take a leading without authority mindset.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: That makes you. I call it the Sherpa of change. Not the person who's been given authority to change, but the Sherpa of change. Getting a group of people collectively up the hill. Right?
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: And that actually was taught in the book Leading Without Authority.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: The second thing I recommend you do right now is read my new book, Never Lead Alone. And it's really all about once you have a group of folks that you're working with, how do you make that group of folks high performing in a way that'll be better than any other leader around? Most leaders are leading mediocre teams today, and you probably sit on a team. Let me explain to you what I mean by that. If you sit on a team and I were to ask the whole team the following question. Do we challenge each other in the room when it's most risky to do? So most teams, on a scale of 0 to 5, are below 2. We don't challenge each other in the room when it's risky, when the boss doesn't want to hear it, when somebody feels like if you challenge them, we'd be throwing them under the bus. In front of the boss, et cetera. The social contract, what I call culture is a social contract. It's how we agree to treat each other. And you need to start treating people better than the average leader does. Let me phrase that differently. You need to start getting the people that you work with to act better as a high performing team than the average leader gets a team to do. The average leader leads a mediocre team. They don't challenge each other, they don't hold each other accountable, they don't care about each other deeply, they don't give each other energy, they don't lift each other up, they don't have an esprit de cord, they don't, they don't have a sense of we're going to go take a hill together. The average leader is mediocre in that way. You can learn, and that's what we have the new book we launched called Never Lead Alone. You can learn how simple process and practice can change a team. Yeah. And it doesn't require you to change mindset. You just change process and practice, which I'm sure we can get into.
Speaker B: I, I would love for you to pull on that, that specific thread a little bit. The difference between mindset and process. Uh, I talk a lot about and listen to a, uh, guy named Alex Hermosi a lot. And he in his. So he came from like the gym world and grew up kind of in the fitness space and started a big business and now runs a company called acquisition.com. and he was constantly talking about this idea that he kind of doesn't care about why. He just cares about what it's like, what are we doing? Like what are the pract. Because there is some debate there. Like, you know, you start with why, you start with the culture, you start with the mindset.
Speaker A: So pull that apart a little bit. So Simon Sinek's a good buddy of mine and I get the power of why.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: If I have a strong why already. Right. Then it's going to be very easy for me to drive a set of behaviors that are moving toward that. Why? Because I'm passionate about them.
Speaker B: Why?
Speaker A: Yeah, if I, if we as a group have a fuzzy why, we're not clear on our why, we haven't designed the mission. The practices will actually be, should be the folk place we focus in transformation. To try to get somebody to change their mindset is pretty tough.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: To get somebody to adopt a new practice is a lot easier. There's a phrase that I use, you don't think your way To a new way of acting.
Speaker B: Mhm.
Speaker A: You act your way to a new way of thinking.
Speaker B: I love it. Yes.
Speaker A: Let's say we all agree that a better team is a team that is willing to challenge each other. Mhm. Okay. I could come in and teach you all about courageous conversations and then you would go back to doing the same thing with your team.
Speaker B: Yes.
Speaker A: Because the context, the people's relationships, the social, all of that stuff would fall back into old behavior very quickly.
Speaker B: Yes.
Speaker A: On the other hand, if I said, hey, we've got this initiative, this launch of a new product, that's that we've been working on, I want us to make sure that we all agree we can't let this fail. Let's do something called a stress test. So the person running the initiative shows up in the team and instead of doing a report out where they go through 20 pages and, uh, everybody just sort of nods and a couple people comment, we move on. We're going to do a stress test, which means we agree in advance, we're not going to let this initiative fail. As a result, every person who's listening to the report out is prepared to answer three questions. What is this person missing? What idea do you have that could help them? And are you willing to help them in some way? So the person then has to give a report, but we also change the way that they're giving the report to do it. Almost like an agile sprint, they say, hey, on this initiative, here's what we've achieved so far. Here's where we're struggling. The person has to report where they're struggling and they have to say, and this is what we plan to do next.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: Then everybody in the room goes into groups two or three and they open up a shared document and they start writing their conversation of, okay, what is this person missing? Write it down. What's an idea that could help them write it down? Are you willing to help them write it down? Then we come back after the breakout room, we present that information and we give them the document. Here's the power of what we just did. We just turned the kind of culture you want to have into an assignment. You want a challenge culture, You've just assigned everybody to write down their challenges. You want a curious culture, you've assigned everybody to give new ideas. You want a supportive culture, you've assigned people to say where they'd be willing to help. Turning process into a mindset happens by simply changing the way we collaborate. So what we've done in the book, never lead alone. Is we have 32 very distinct practices in the book like that one that are game changing to your teams. Now you might be thinking, how do I get my team that I'm sitting on to adopt new practices if I'm not the leader? Read the book and you could then um, pick an initiative that you're working on and you could say to your boss, hey, I read this book, I want to come and have it stress tested. I want to come and have something I'm working on stress tested. Wouldn't it be amazing? You'd be showing the courage of asking the team to give you input, to challenge you because you want to get it right.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: You're now setting a precedent. You're leading without authority. You're setting a precedent for the culture of this team. So like if you read that book, never lead alone. You'll be able to use very simple practices to change the social contract, uh, with the people that you work with.
Speaker B: Yeah, I, I, I want to definitely foot stomp that idea of, of reading this book. It's, it's not that thick of a book for 32 practices. And you know, it's almost kind of startling as you start to read it because it is so just line by line, like here's some, here's a tactic, here's a tactic, here's a tactic. And I think, you know, kind of to the point that you just made about, you know, this difference between the why and the what. You know, when you, when you do have a clear mission, the what can be a little bit fuzzier, I find. And you'll figure it out like the team has buy in and they'll figure it out versus if you're starting with the practices. I do think that makes it more important to be crystal clear about the practices. And that's why the book is so great because as uh, you know, clearly, you know, that stress test, it's a very systematic approach approach that you can go after these things.
Speaker A: If I think about the whole book in 32 practices, I love them. We curated them over 20 years for a living. I coach executive teams. That's what I make my money from. And coaching executive teams. I've learned and adapted and adopted these practices and then tested them for statistical validity of do they move the needle on a diagnostic tool? Do they move the needle on business results?
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: So these things are tried and true tested. They're the kind of practices that the Amazons of the world that achieve disproportionate outcomes use. The kind of practice that Jamie Dimon's team uses et cetera. And it's interesting. That one I just gave you, stress test, is one of the most powerful. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And so even if you go through, there's 32 of them. I could have written a much shorter book with maybe five practices.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: That crush it.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: For you. Yeah. The energy check is another one which you've experienced at dinners.
Speaker B: Yes.
Speaker A: Where I go around and I've asked people, okay, what we're going to do at this dinner is everyone's going to go around. We're just going to share one thing you're struggling with, that we might be able to get some help from the table. Mhm. It's so simple. But teams don't do that. That would be so powerful. If a team once a month went around and said, what are you struggling with? We might be able to get some help from the team. And it could be personal. And the thing that you might want for help is not even help. It might just be understanding. You know, I'm struggling with my son right now who's in recovery. Yeah. And it's a challenge for me and stress. And he wants to keep dropping out of the recovery. And so anyway, so I, my team knows this and as a result, when I might be distracted, when I might tell them, hey, I need to take a day, they get it. Right.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: So a, uh, team having a sense of responsibility for each other's energy is a very powerful team.
Speaker B: Yeah. I would love to get your thoughts on that exact point that you just mentioned because. So when I work with teams and talk to new managers, the first thing I always talk about is building trust and giving them some techniques about building trust on their team. One of the things that I always stress you have to be careful of is trying to build trust too quickly because that's going to destroy trust, you know, and, and I think, you know, if you're listening on a team that has low trust, or at least I'll just speak to my experience. If I started with a new team where we weren't used to having these conversations and asked the question, what's something you're struggling with? It might be too much too fast. Where people wouldn't feel willing to be vulnerable. What do you think that balances of the process of kind of going to zero from zero, like we barely know each other or maybe there is active data distrust on the team to a world where we do feel comfortable having these more powerful conversations.
Speaker A: So first of all, let's go, let's talk about the word trust.
Speaker B: Yes.
Speaker A: Trust is an outcome that needs to be broken down into at least three different areas. You m have professional trust, which means, can I trust that you're going to get the job done that you need to get done? Mhm. Right. The other kind of professional trust is do we see the world in the same way? Hm. You know, a finance person might not have the same professional opinion as a marketing person. You know, the old adage of finance people think that marketing people or salespeople are wasting money and marketing people think that finance people just don't get it and they're constraining growth. That breaks down professional trust.
Speaker B: Mhm.
Speaker A: Okay. Then there's structural trust. You know, how much do you trust your boss based on the fact that that person decides your bonus or that person decides your promotion?
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: So there's a sense of being weary or leery of that person. Or sometimes there's jobs like finance or like HR where some people are like, oh, we can't say that HR is in the room, you know, whatever. Right. So there's structural trust breakdowns or even just silos, you know, manufacturing and product development. There's structural trust breakdowns between these silos. Then the third is personal trust. And that's, I think, what you might have been alluding to. But I want to make sure you break down all three forms of forms of trust. Because the reality is having strong personal trust actually helps you overcome breakdowns of structural and professional 100%.
Speaker B: Yes.
Speaker A: If you and I are friends and we've grown up in the organization, we've gone through shit together, you know, about my son, you know, I, I feel bad about X, Y and Z that happened in your life and we've been there and blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden I'm disagreeing with you. I don't vilify you.
Speaker B: Yes.
Speaker A: I'm curious. I'm like, you've always delivered. I care for you. You disagree with me, tell me more. As opposed to, I don't know you. I don't care for you and you disagree for me. I'm like, you got your head up your ass. Yeah.
Speaker B: I see you as a person and not just a coworker.
Speaker A: Ah. So each of those three areas I have, uh, practices in the book to build trust. Yeah. There's several chapters around how do you build better relationships? You do. There's a whole chapter around celebrating. Celebration is a massive way to build better relationships. There's a whole chapter around, um, bonding. What you experience when we share empathy and like when you were growing up, what happened to you when you were growing up that really impacts who you are today. Sharing stories, those kind of things. Yeah. Then there's, there's a whole chapter around resilience. Do we care about each other's energy? Do we, do we think we have responsibility for keeping each other on track and caring about each other? There's three chapters in the relationship layer. Then of course, professionally, how do we hold each other accountable? Openly? If I think you're failing to do your best and I keep it inside, you never get a chance to tell me why you're doing what you're doing and you never hear the data that I have for you that could make you do what you're doing better. Most teams, conflict avoidance erode professional trust. But if you bring it out and you do regular stress testing on a regular basis, we will start to have more empathy for why you're doing what you're doing, what's going on, etc, building professional trust. So you know, structural trust is the breakdown that happens through silos and other, um, things. And once again there uh, are practices in the book and how to break down those silos. There's a whole chapter around working more inclusively across silos and how do you make that work better, et cetera. So the answer is not as simple as how do you build trust, how do you personal trust, how do you build structural trust, how do you build professional trust?
Speaker B: Yeah. Of those, where do you see the most common breakdowns happening amongst those three? Is it different for every organization?
Speaker A: Well, look, I think that most leaders don't realize that they have responsibility to get their teams to trust each other.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: That's the first thing.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: And they don't have the tools.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: I've spent 25 years researching high performing teams, doing nothing but coaching high performing teams, Watching the practices of high performing teams changing, transforming teams from low performing, medium performing to high performing. Uh, God bless you. But just most leaders don't have the tools to realize how easy it is to build trust.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: And it's about adopting simple practices. Yes. I'm so shocked that the world of business hasn't adopted this yet. Which is why I spend so much time on platforms like this. Yeah. Now here's the thing for you. You know, the audience is a younger audience or at least a newer audience to leadership. This is your opportunity to leap forward in your organization. I promise you most people in your company are mediocre leaders in this high performing status. If you start to adopt these high performing practices and Start introducing them. Holy cow, you're going to accelerate your career. So the two books you should read are, uh, never lead Alone. These practices, start introducing them and then the second is leading without authority. So you start gaining the courage to realize that you are and can be a leader today.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: And as a result, I promise you with this one podcast is going to put a booster rocket on your career in a big way.
Speaker B: Yeah, 100% I think. I, uh, couldn't agree with you more on that idea. You know that the bar is pretty low for being a great manager right now in, in the world today. And I think it's because in the leadership realm we tend to use really big phrases, executive presence, we talk about these big ideas and it obfuscates or gets in the way of just doing the work, just doing the simple practices that make people feel better every single day.
Speaker A: I want you as a leader to adopt a new threshold of wanting to be effing extraordinary.
Speaker B: Mhm.
Speaker A: So that's the first thing. If you become a seeker, I want you to decide for yourself. Every damn year I'm going to be 30% better than the year before. I'm going to learn how, learn new tools, learn new technologies. I'm going to be better. I'm going to ask more curious questions. I'm going to study great leaders, I'm going to get to know great leaders. I'm going to hang out with amazing people that inspire others. If you do that, then you'll consistently grow and accelerate in your careers. Yeah, most people wait around and they just accept what's happening, what's people's giving them the leaders they have. Bullshit. Yeah. Take responsibility for your own excellence.
Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And just to the listeners, you know, especially in the, in the hard tech world that I most often, you know, interact with and talk to, like I can't emphasize enough the books that Keith has written that you have written because it's so primed for the world that we live in today where it's a fast moving community, there's tons of growth, it's a really connected community, uh, where like talent is moving between organizations, you know, really, really quickly. And it's a community, an industry that needs and prizes people who take things upon themselves, you know, who step forward before they have the title and lead without authority like that. That's what they want. And so it's these practices that are really going, really going to enable you. So couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker A: And I would say join us in our eight week course.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: The consumer Name is called Beyond Connections and it's Connected Success dot com. But you know, in your age, look, I'm, I'm almost 60, so um, this year I'm 60. So in your age, you should have a peer group around you that won't let you fail. Yeah, there's a lot of, uh, organizations out there that you can join like young presidents organization, etc. Might, might not be accessible to you. You need to create a peer to peer group that's going to push each other, question each other, enthuse each other, lift each other up. Uh, right. And that's what we give you in this eight week course. We give you a peer to peer coaching group while you're doing it, but you could be doing that independent of a course that we're offering. You need to do it for yourself. Go get that posse that is going to commit to lifting each other up. And I call that co. Elevating.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: Right. Committing to each other's success. I hope each of you find that group of four that inspire you. You meet once a month, you talk about what you've achieved that last month where you're struggling, that month, last month where you're going, that the next month, in a sense, I'm offering you stress testing for your career with a peer group on a monthly basis. You'll be so much more successful than if you don't do that.
Speaker B: Absolutely. I love it. Well, we'll definitely link to the group in uh, the show notes. So anybody look below this video or the audio that you're listening, you can check it out. Keith, the time has flown by. I'm so glad we got to reconnect. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker A: Thanks Matt. Thanks so much for inviting me and exposing this great audience to me and my work. Thank you.
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