Lead In 30 Podcast

What's Your Vision for Your Team for Next Year?

• Russ Hill

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How are you feeling about the last year? What did we learn as an organization? What emotions are you experiencing as you look back? What about next year? What excites you? How do you think it will be different? What opportunities are you most bullish about? What changes are you making and how will the organization be different and better next year?

Have you shared all of that with your team or company? 

In this episode I dig into why that's important and the best way to do it.

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About the podcast:
The Lead In 30 Podcast with Russ Hill is for leaders of teams who want to grow and accelerate their results. In each episode, Russ Hill shares what he's learned consulting executives. Subscribe to get two new episodes every week. To connect with Russ message him on LinkedIn!



Speaker 1:

How are you feeling about how the team has performed in 2024? And what are your thoughts about what adjustments need to be made or kind of your overall view for next year? Have you communicated that to your team yet? This is the Lead in 30 podcast with Russ Hill. You cannot be serious. Strengthen your ability to lead in less than 30 minutes. You're listening to Lead in 30.

Speaker 1:

There is absolutely nothing. Nothing that successful, driven, ambitious people want more in their leader than someone with vision, someone who's taking us somewhere, someone that's that can rally the troops. Can you imagine, can you even imagine going into, like the pre-game huddle or the halftime locker room and the coach is just like yeah, like okay, like let's just keep doing it, and, um, you know, here's something like no, I want fire, I want passion, I want energy, I want game plan, I want V. I want you to tell us what you see that's wrong and why this game matters and and like, get us fired up. And so your team wants that from you. They want it from every leader. I don't care if you're not the CEO or you're not the business unit president. You don't own the company, you don't sit on the executive team. What does that have to do with anything. I'm talking about what your team wants, the team that reports into you all, five of them, all, 50 of them all, 500, 5,000, 50,000, whatever. It is what they want from you more than anything. That's why we teach in lead in 30, that clarity. Clarity is the first core competency we teach In my first book decide to lead.

Speaker 1:

The very first part I talk about, one of the first chapters, is can you see the destination? Because if you can't see the destination, so the destination is the three-year long-term. Where are we headed as an organization? But I also need that at the end of the year, at the end of a calendar year and I know some of you, your fiscal year is a little different and and so maybe your year wrapped up in July or June or October or whatever it was that that matters, like communicating it going into the new fiscal year. But there's this, there is this human design, this human cycle, right, let's just call it that. You're feeling it right now.

Speaker 1:

If you're listening to this, at the time that I'm recording, this December feels different than any other month. It just does. The days are shorter, it's dark a lot longer, it's cold, it's there's this the holidays and people gathering and, and tradition and nostalgia, and watching all these movies and listening to music from way back whenever and and we're just kind of we're, we're wrapping it up, we're it just we. It's in all of us. We're wrapping up this season, the season, the, the, the period of 2024. At the time I'm recording this and we're excited and, even if we don't spend a lot of time thinking about it, and even if it's subconscious, we know that a new period is coming. 2025 is coming. So my point is your team's going through that, so this is a really unique moment in what you communicate. So let's talk about some thoughts around that, and I want to plant a few thoughts in your mind and get you thinking about a few things that you may or may not have done already, and let's do that in a moment. But first, welcome into the Lead in 30 podcast. In less than 30 minutes, we give you a model, a framework, a best practice, a story and experience, something for you to think about implementing in the way that you lead people. If your ability to lead is not changing, increasing, improving, being upgraded, then you're becoming less valuable in the marketplace.

Speaker 1:

My name is Russ Hill and I host this little corner of the internet. I make my living coaching, consulting senior executive teams. Holy crap, you all are consulting businesses on fire. I was talking to one of my business partners yesterday. I'm like we need to update the spreadsheet on how many organizations in just the last quarter have renewed or expanded or brought us on board for the first time. It's. It is such a blessing you all it is. I just am so grateful for the, for the ability um that I I that I have a part in it, and that our team has to to hopefully make a difference.

Speaker 1:

Um, with these leaders that we get a chance to work with. It is our passion, like every single call, every single meeting, every single interaction with the team that I that I work with, and they're meaning at all the. You know various different clients. You just want to bring tons of value. You want to help them accelerate the results that they're delivering. You want to help them fine tune their ability to lead and smooth out the rough spots and and achieve their potential. It's just so fun. I, I love what we do. If you haven't heard about our 30 day leadership course, go to leadin30.com.

Speaker 1:

Okay, let's talk about this time of year. So here's the point Um, what are you communicating to your team right now? What have you? Have you taken some time and maybe you did it in a meeting recently, or an offsite or whatever else, but that's okay, do it again. Do it in an email, do it in a meeting, do it in whatever form works best for you. I really like the written word. I like and I did this for our team um, what a week ago, the day before Thanksgiving, and it was hey, here are some adjustments that we're making going into the new year. Here are some changes that are happening. So some of them were structural in our organization. Some of them were branding and how we position things or how we package different things. Some of them had logos, you know, attached to them, new designs or new, different things, and some of them were. And then there were there were several bullet points on things that we're going to be doing differently in 2025. We're adding this and we're adding that, and we're going to do this and we're going to launch that, and and and. So it was this fairly lengthy message for our team. We do it in Slack, right, so I'm messaging everybody in in Slack. It might be teams for you.

Speaker 1:

Email is, man, I don't know about you. I should do a whole episode. In fact, I am going to do a whole episode on this. Like, email should be the place where you're spending the least amount of time. Email should be external, that that is the primary way for you to communicate with clients, right? Well, yeah, actually, I'm going to do a whole episode, the next episode. Actually, as soon as I finish recording this one, I'm going to hit record and we're going to talk about that, and I'm going to talk about the way that you communicate with both clients and internally. And if you're doing it, science and internally. And if you're doing it, if you're doing it the same way you did 10 or 15 years ago, that's insane. So we'll talk about that in a minute and in the next episode. Okay, so, anyway for us.

Speaker 1:

I went into Slack and I left this long message, um, about thoughts about this year, and um, and I I rewrote it multiple times, right, I slept on it. I had other people on our leadership team look at it, and then I sent it out to the team. And you're building, you're summarizing, hey, from my perspective, from where I sit, this is what the last 12 months look like this is what I'm excited about, this is my mood, this is how I'm feeling about it, and then, based on that, here's what we're adjusting for next year, and the belief that you want the team to hold is wow, okay, they've got a plan. This is exciting. It's a good time to be here. The things are being upgraded and adjusted and you've got to be building excitement around where you're taking the team.

Speaker 1:

And, by the way, I mean, tied to this is the fact that the team cannot hear from you. Well, they can hear from you too much. I was going to say they can't hear from you enough, but there are some of you that communicate too much. So, but you're, you're, you're the, you're the exception. So, um, at the end of the year, it's interesting to your team, especially if you've got multiple layers of leadership and you're sitting, uh, up at the top level of that. Oh my gosh, are they interested in what you're seeing and how you're, what, what you, what you think about the year? And, by the way, I mean, this principle applies not just to the year but to the quarter. It can apply to a month, but it's especially true it's it's very pronounced at at the end of the year.

Speaker 1:

And you know, I mean, if you think about your career and you look back on it, you think about, man, what great leaders that I've worked with, great, great ceos, great business unit presidents, great owners, great whatever it was um, you, you will get. I mean, they called a meeting, they, they, they sent out a message, they, they were doing things to really show where the organization was going. You've got to be, you've got to be multiple steps ahead of the team. You've got to and this is, you know, when I talk about altitude as a leader, those of you that struggle with what I'm talking about right now typically what's causing that there?

Speaker 1:

There are two things that typically cause that. When you're like, well, I don't know if I've got much vision, or I don't know if I don't know if I've got a plan, like I don't know, I don't, I don't know about that, or what should I communicate, or whatever else, typically two things are happening that are causing you to not have that, that, um, vision of the future, know how to motivate the team. The first one is you're, you're living in too small of a bubble, like you're not reading enough, you're not listening to enough podcasts, you're not. You're not going to mastermind groups, you're not at conferences, you're not networking with people that are ambitious and successful and going places. And the reason I know that is because that's what motivates you, that's what gets you to think differently.

Speaker 1:

Do you know how many videos I watch? Do you know how many podcasts I listen to? Do you know how many articles I read? Do you know how many books I'm in? And a big reason and how many lunches and breakfasts and meetings and different things that I'm taking? And that's in addition to all the interaction with the clients. So naturally built into our business is interacting with all those clients.

Speaker 1:

By the way, that will affect you too, If you're so insular in your organization. So 90%, 95% of your meetings are internal, not with the client, not with the customer, not out in the market, not, they're at your home office, they're in your office, in the bill, like if that's your life. Then how in the world do you have vision? How in the world do you have new ideas? How in the world are you communicating? You're not out there. You gotta be out there, you got to be out there.

Speaker 1:

So, number one, if you don't have those things and you're struggling with it, it's because you, you've made your world, your bubble, too small. Get out of your office. Stop listening to political talk shows only. Stop watching just TV. That's mindless stuff. Like you, you've got to be feeding that brain and you've got to be around people that just are crazy successful, and that that caused you to think, wow, I wish I thought more like her. I wish I was as successful as they are. I wish I was as wealthy as that person. I wish I had the track record. Like you want people, you gotta be doing that. And so started, start doing that. Okay, so that's number one, if you're struggling with it.

Speaker 1:

The second reason why people lack vision or motivation, you know, being able to inspire the team or really communicate a great vision. The second reason is because their altitude is too low. They're so caught up in the weeds that they're, and it's meeting after meeting, after meeting, after meeting, after meeting, after meeting, after meeting, and there's no time anywhere in the day or in the week or in the month to think, to ponder, to get out a notebook or sheet of paper or to stand at the whiteboard in your office or whatever it is for you where you're just doodling, you're drawing, you're writing ideas on the whiteboard and then erasing them and like you need that creative time and there's no way in the world you're going to be able to do that as a leader If you're just constantly putting out fires and you're constantly in meetings and you're constantly like all of us are in more meetings than we want to be. I'm not telling you oh, cancel all the meat. That's stupid. What I'm saying is that you don't have any time built in your schedule. Did you know that my workout is on my work calendar every day there, and this works for some of you. It won't work for others, but and and and it should work for most of you. I mean, there's an hour to hour and a half block, and for me it's during the workday. Some of you that doesn't work for various circumstances. I would push you on that, um, but they're they're odd and doesn't have to be.

Speaker 1:

For me, a workout is it's, it's a place where I can think, gets me out of the office when I come back into my home office, which is where I work, except for the days that I'm with clients, right, which is a lot when I'm on the road, but when I'm in my office, if I'm here for hour after hour after hour after hour after hour. It makes me less effective. You interact with me, you're not getting me, not getting my best. So I need time to get out, and if it's a lunch, that's fine, but for me a work, let that workout, it's there and I come back on fire. I come back so much more valuable because I got out of the office and I'm thinking about oh, that, and I'm, and I'm making half the time I'm at the gym, I'm on the phone with people on our team or with clients, and so I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm checking on this, I'm checking on it, and then I walk out and now I'm feeling refreshed and I've gotten fresh air and whatever else, and I come back and I'm on fire, and so that makes me stronger.

Speaker 1:

So, there, there, if you're struggling with that, it's and and a lot of times the reason why we've got no wiggle room in our schedule, no time for me to stand at the whiteboard or get out a piece of paper and write out ideas, or strategize, or make a couple of phone calls, or whatever it might be, or read a few articles. The reason you don't have time in your schedule to do that is because you're doing everything, your hands are in everything. You've got so much going on and you don't have a strong enough team. Either you don't have a strong enough team to delegate to or you haven't developed the ability to delegate and you can't let go. And the more things that you're holding onto, the more you're, more weight you're putting on that plane and you're dragging it down and you're becoming a crop duster. And when you're a crop duster you can't communicate vision because you can't see the horizon. You're flying so low to the ground that you can see the here and now, but you can't see a mile ahead. You can't see a mile ahead. You can't see three miles ahead. You can't see the mountaintop because it's so dusty. Down here there's so many things happening, so one of those two things is happening, or both of them are happening.

Speaker 1:

If you're struggling coming up with vision or community, or communicating to the team where we're headed, and you're like how in the world am I supposed to know that one? You, you're, you're not, you're not feeding the brain enough, and so you want, you don't have ideas. You don't know what's going on out in the marketplace. You don't know what your competitors are up against. You're not, you're not up on innovative ideas and new market strategies and different things to do, and you're, you're, you're just living in status quo. So you got to get out of that bubble. You got to make the world bigger. If you're spending most of your time interacting let me say that differently If you're spending all of your time interacting with only people inside your organization and some customers, then your value in the marketplace is going down. You've got to get out. You've got to expand that world. Right. It makes you so much more valuable to your organization. Your identity is way too attached to just your company and you're not bringing enough value.

Speaker 1:

You don't think these coaches in football are watching what other teams are doing? You don't think that they're having lunch or breakfast in the offseason with other coaches? You don't think that they're. I mean, the network is insane. That new play and that new thing and that technique and whatever else right? You got to have that in order to bring value to your team.

Speaker 1:

So you're either doing that or you're flying too low and your altitude. You got to have that in order to bring value to your team. So you're either doing that or you're flying too low and your altitude. You got to get that plane up. Man, you got to pull back on that. What do you call that? Throttle? Not really the throttle, what the crap I don't know what it's called that gets the plane up, but you need to. You know what I'm saying, anyway.

Speaker 1:

So you do those things and now you start to have some energy and you start to see your organization from not only the inside but from the outside, looking in. With me, by the way, that's the value of a consultant or a coach or mastermind group or whatever it is is you're out there and you're you're asking people for their perspective. Looking in. That's a huge part of what our clients pay us for. What do we look like to you on the outside? That's going around to other organizations. So in your industry whoever that is or whatever that looks like, you want that outside perspective constantly. You want people challenging you, you want them pushing you. You want them pushing, you want them bringing you best practices and ideas and different things to to cause you just to think and evaluate what you're doing from a different perspective anyway.

Speaker 1:

So at this time of year, at the time I'm recording this, how you feeling about the last year? What's the good, bad and the ugly. What do we learn from it? What do you? How you feeling? And then moving ahead what are you changing? What's adjusting what? What excites you? What are you bullish about? What's going to be different? Where are you taking us? And? And just get that message succinct and deliver it on stage, deliver it in all hands, deliver it in a zoom or a team's meeting, deliver it in an email, deliver it in slack whatever you need to do and and get it out to the team and let them know.

Speaker 1:

And again, I'm not talking about something it was a great year, everybody really excited about next year. Go team like that's crap. I'm not talking about some meaningless. No, let me into your mind a little bit. Let me see what you see what, and then make some adjustments. I want my phone to upgrade. I want new features. I want my computer, my new laptop, to be better, faster, slimmer, different, have new functionality. I want that website to have upgrades. I want this organization to be adjusted and innovating and differences. I want you, as my leader, to be upgraded. Different, new ideas. That's what I want. So, and that generates energy and excitement and enthusiasm and gets me going. So, as a leader, make sure you're doing it All right. Have I given you some things to think about? I hope so Passionate about these topics.

Speaker 1:

The power of a good leader I mean the the impact, the influence of a good, strong, effective leader is enormous in an organization, in the lives of people that are on your team and in the company or in the organization. The impact on results is unbelievable and the impact of a ho-hum leader, someone who's just kind of there, and status quo is enormous too. They weigh down the organization. Do not be that person. Okay, that's what I'm trying to challenge you with. Okay, next episode, I'm talking about technology and how you communicate to the team and all those sorts of things, because some of the stuff that's going on out there some of you got to update this stuff. Okay, let's talk about that in the next episode of the Lead in 30 podcast, lead in 30. Share this episode with a colleague, your team or a friend of the Lead in 30 podcast.