Leaders, this one word is killing your team

I was meeting with a CEO I respected. It was an honor to get the meeting, but they repeatedly said a single word that raised a red flag for me.

It’s the shortest word you can conceive, but it hits like a meteor. The seismic impact of this one syllable ripples throughout a company’s culture.

The word?

“I.”

The supporting cast of this egotistical tragedy is usually the same misfits—“mine,” “me” and “my.”

If you enjoy revisionist history TV shows about Adam Neumann, Travis Kalanick, or any other charismatic founder, you may think that this is what it takes—a strong willed leader who can simply will things into existence.

Today, I’m sharing a few reasons this is poppycock.

Remember, great culture ideates from the bottom up

It’s common to think that one person makes a company. Heck, founders get all the credit (another concept to file under “poppycock”). One person can be high impact, but it’s always a team that builds companies that scale. Instead of being charismatic inspirers, the best leaders tend to understand their role is team building.

Jim Collins, who famously combs through data for publicly traded companies and ties it back to leadership traits, noted this about humility and modesty in his findings:

“Throughout our interviews with executives, we were struck by the way they talked about themselves—or rather, didn’t talk about themselves,” Jim said. “They’d go on and on about the company and the contributions of other executives, but they would instinctively deflect discussion about their own role. When pressed to talk about themselves, they’d say things like, ‘I don’t think I can take much credit for what happened. We were blessed with marvelous people.’”

Jim’s book “Good to Great” is a must-read for anyone with a job (probably you?). In fact, I love all of his books. Time and time again, Jim and his team have found that it’s not the charismatic leaders who founded, scaled or saved companies, building them into Goliaths. It’s the ones who are modest, team players who win.

Many people think a leader’s job is to walk around dropping wisdom and solutions on employees as if they’re tossing beads from above at Mardi Gras (and this concept is especially common among bad leaders). You can spot these types of cultures from the onset, simply by listening to how a leader speaks. Did they say “my team” or “our team”? Was it “our idea” or “my idea.” It may sound small, but if they’re taking credit early in a conversation, it’s because they think their job is to tell a team what to do, which is likely not a culture that breeds creativity, growth or innovation.

There are some famous exceptions of times egomaniacs have built great companies, such as Steve Jobs with Apple. I recommend reading “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson to really understand that outlier example. I will also double down on recommending Jim Collins, because instead of saying “it worked for Steve”, Isaacson’s work digs into the data across many companies to find what works best across a wide swath of companies.

If you don’t feel like reading any books to learn about culture that works, you can just read my other recent blog. I wrote about “top down vs. bottom up” in August—find it here.

Ed Catmull’s book is my favorite business book of all time, and taught me more about leadership than any other single book. I read this right before founding GoWild.

Leaders shouldn’t ideate—they should cultivate talent and culture

One of my favorite leaders is Ed Catmull, the cofounder of Pixar.

(OK, “favorite I’ve never met”) 

He has a brilliant book about the history of Pixar and the lessons learned from building it. The book is called “Creativity Inc: Overcoming Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration” and it’s probably my No. 1 business book.

Funny enough, I started writing this blog last week, and have since decided to read/listen to “The Pixar Touch” by David A. Price. It has reminded me all over about how great of a leader Ed Catmull is. Throughout my career, I have probably modeled more of my leadership style after Ed than anyone else.

In direct contrast to leaders who say “I” and take credit for everything, Ed Catmull says this:

Ed and the Pixar cofounders had a dream of making the first digitally animated movie. Years before Toy Story, they fought to build a great team and maintain it, just buying time so their research and the technology could become capable of achieving it. Even when George Lucas was desperately trying to sell Pixar because even he didn’t believe in the Pixar dream, Ed fought to keep his team together. The Star Wars founding father would eventually sell Pixar to Steve Jobs, where the founders took more than 5 years of pressure before landing a deal with Disney to finally do it. They got their shot to make what would become Toy Story.

Looking back, many people have forgotten what an undertaking this movie was. It was 25+ years in the making and is, in my opinion, one of the greatest startup stories of all time.

Leaders who focus on taking credit are standing at the finish line of a marathon, ready to collect the team’s medal. Instead of hogging the glory, focus on being a coach. How are you going to help your team get to the finish line? What can you take off their plate to let them prepare for battle?

If your leader is taking credit for your team’s work, that is a red flag.

If your leader thinks their job is to ideate for you instead of fostering a fertile environment for you, that is a red flag.

If your leader is not focused on facilitating a better working environment, that is a red flag.

In contrast, if when complimented about your company, your leader immediately deflects and credits the team, you may have what Jim Collins calls a Level 5 leader (I’ll save that lesson for either another day, or your first pass through “Good to Great”).

As I did in August, I’ll continue sharing content about building a bottom up culture, but this concept is critical—great leaders must focus on building ecosystems where teams can thrive. And when they do thrive, they have to give the team credit or it will poison the well of talent over time.

3 tips to help leaders play coach not superstar

1) “We” when we win. “I” when you lose.

It’s always the leader’s fault. I’ll once again recommend “Extreme Ownership” by Jocko here, as it’s the best book for explaining this concept. The team doesn’t fail—leadership does.

2) Stop keeping score.

I see a lot of leaders who like to take credit for ideas. Stop it. Ideas aren’t worth anything, and it’s highly unlikely any of these leaders executed alone. Ideas are one step in dozens for building a product, and a lone idea isn’t worth the space it takes in your brain. The team’s execution is all that matters.

3) Find the barriers to success.

Great leaders will have 1:1s often with their team, and find the barriers. Ask these questions: What’s keeping you up at night? What is eating up more of your time than expected? How stressed they you? What would make your day 10% easier? Listen to those answers, and go fix the problems. This is far better than the trite speeches glorified in TV tales of charismatic founders.

What I’m reading: The Pixar Touch

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