Ep 403: Working together when the goals are different for each person.

a great question. It can it can rear its head in terms of just you know, kind of individual day to day things that can cause people going off in different directions, or this can be you know, kind of larger goals that inform a compensation or bonus strategy. So I think it's important to be on the same page with the with your teams and your peers and your coworkers.

But there's no way to completely eliminate this concept of having different goals for different people, because there are different positions in organizations that you might have you know, competing, So this is it's an interesting question. I think it's a lot of a lot of time pack here.

responsible for, like leading a team. I had worked in other retail before, like MAM and pop music stores and things like that, and I had given like keyholder duties and you know, make sure that these tasks got completed, not like responsible for a team working together. And you transfer, you transported me back there because I remember like thinking, well, how do I get them to work together? Because I've got somebody that does like high end recording equipment. I've

got somebody that does like the keyboards. I've got somebody who does the DJ gear. I've got somebody who does like the microphones. I've got someone that does kind of the table top digital recorders at that time. So I've got all these specialists and people that have different things that they're good at, different things that they're responsible for growing from not just a business standpoint, but like their own personal paycheck standpoint. And the path that I took was,

let me bring them all together. You know, we were doing these trainings on Sunday mornings where we would bring the team together, we talk about what was the upcoming sales goals, what were some of the things that that we wanted to make sure we were aware of, and some of the promotions and whatnot. And I decided to bring in some of the vendors and say, you know, let's do vendor trading. Let's bring in people here to talk about the equipment in the gear. Let's do it

together as a team. Let's spend some time there. But more importantly, as we help customers, how can we better leverage each other. So, and I use myself as the example. If somebody comes in and says, hey, I want to buy this really expensive mixing board for live music, I knew that I knew something about it, but that that Blake, he was the guy who really was the professional and understanding mixing consoles and would have had all this experience,

but sometimes he didn't work every single day. So we kind of had this thing where we worked it out to say, well, hey, if Blake's not here, I'll kind of take this lead. I will get the information, I'll answer the questions that I can, and I'll have the customer come back and speak with him the next day that he's working. And so by doing that, you know, I would get a small percentage if they bought something,

and then vice versa. If Blake is working the day and somebody walks in they want to buy DJ gear, and I'm not working or available at that moment, Blake would answer questions, Blake would get them going, and then I would be able to come in and have the vast majority of the conversation and be able to sell them the thing. And then Blake, we get a small

percentage of that. And we talk through this. And I know that it's like it's a monetary way of building a team and having teamwork, but I think it makes sense even in spaces where maybe you're not working on commission, where you really have to take the time to bring the team together talk about how we're going to support one another, talk about the fact that it's okay that we all have individual goals, that we have things that we're trying to do, that we may even have them

very personal because it might be our paychecks, but like talk about the things that we're looking to accomplish and then talk about how collectively we can make sure that we get these things done because we all want to succeed, and we all may have to step into different spaces to help each other be successful. And it might not be our main job that we have, but there may be some time we can dedicate to help that person

accomplish that thing. And if we do this collectively, we have a much better chance of moving things together and having success as a team. And I think that's that would be the first thing that kind of came across my mind in the space, is like really taking the time to bring people together and share what those goals are, share what those objectives are, and share the fact that we all want to be successful and by doing that we have to work together.

as many employees as possible. But if at the end of the day, the goal is the overall profitability, then both of those leaders need to be cognizant of what things impact the other leaders, so they're all working towards the same goal. It doesn't mean that you can say, oh, my goal is more important than your goal, because then what you'll have is just leaders who feel like they're always in competition with each other and not working together

as a team. It is more likely that both leaders will fail to meet their goals if that's the mindset

they're taking towards it. But even if the goals from a monetary or bonus standpoint are different from role to role, because let's let's be real here, in an organization, you might not have any control over what the bonus structure is or or or you know or compensation structure is or or the you know what ins whether or not your review is written well or not, you might not have any control over that, but you do have control

over the communication you have with your peers. You do have control over the relationships that you have with your peers and how you can work together to ensure that nobody is thinking only for themselves and that everybody is thinking about the business as a whole, because it is very likely that you will win together or lose together.

And the more that you focus on just your one particular goal, because that's the one you think matters the most for your review or your bonus or whatever that is. If you focus solely on that, you're not gonna be there all the rest of the time, and you have to rely on the other peers of yours that you have to help you get to your goals, which means

you have helped them get to theirs too. And so having that open dialogue in that communication that says we're all going to work together and I'm not going to prioritize my one personal goal over what it looks like to have us all succeed together, it's very very important to do, not just from a succeed succeeding standpoint, but from a relationship standpoint. You don't want to have animosity or or you know, negative energy between you and your

your peers. You want to make sure that it's all positive and that you, uh, you feel like you have each other's backs when in the absence of whoever is not there that day.

uh cause some tension in elements of that. But I think a lot of it can be solved when you're when you're willing to have that open dialogue, when you're when you're you have some healthy debates, when when you're saying, hey, we if we are at team, we have to move as a team, and we have to talk about things as a team, and that means that you know, objective number one is making sure that we can all accomplish

the things that we're focused on. And then the next meeting might not be so easy after you start that, because you might find out that like, well, in fact, maybe somebody wasn't helping their peer when they could have. Maybe somebody still doing the habits of prioritizing their work. And you have to work through those types of things.

And then you run at those situations where well, you know, some of this work or this time of the year or this project, you know, these things require less of somebody's time and effort right now and more of somebody else's. And then how much do you help that person? How much can you afford to step out of your main responsibility to help support somebody else on their main responsibility. Like, these are real things that will happen in those conversations

and in those meetings. But I think that I think that you have to do that. You have to create

the space to have those things. You have to be able to be willing to address those issues as they come up, and you have to really commit and pour in your time as the leader to believe that that working through those situations, working through those you know, those debates slash arguments, and helping have a team learn how to lift each other up in the in the shorter term will have a long term payoff and it will create a great cohesive team that is really focused on

understanding that like we we we are the collective of our individual efforts, but when we win together, nothing feels better than that.

If you are one of those people themselves who are in a situation where you feel like a coworker or a peer has a competing agenda and you want to make sure that you are aligned, then talk to them. Then it's on you, in the absence of your leader, that you share with this other person facilitating the conversation.

For you to do that, and how that looks best is to you for you to go to them and say, hey, I can see based on where the numbers are that you're falling short of your bonus or whatever it is because of this number. What can I do to support you? What can I do to help you? It starts out by reaching out to that person to make sure that they know that when you come in to do your job,

you're not just looking at what your job is. You're looking at the collective jobs of all the people that have to work together for the success of the big business.

And if you happen to, unfortunately be in a situation where your organization has it set up to where you have competing agendas that could lead to this kind of butting of heads or animosity, that you have all the control in the world to compete against that, you have all the control in the world to not let that be the situation, even if on paper it looks like that's what it is. And that is done by having

those conversations. It's done by proactively talking to your peers or your coworkers to make sure that they know that you have their back, and that will be met almost universally with the exact same reciprocation from them when it comes time to they have the opportunity to do it for you they need to, but if they see it coming from you first, they will feel almost if they're a good person, almost obligated to do the exact same

thing for you. And you'll be surprised how quickly both of your results rise when you're both working together as opposed to thinking about, you know, how can I just help myself?

to do. If you're a leader of leaders, it is your job to make sure that the people reporting up through you on your team, who may have individualized goals, that they are well versed in knowing what the individualized goals are of their coworkers and their peers, so that they can pick up the slack for each other when needed, and so that they are informed intimately on how each of those individualized goals impact the overall team goal as a whole, Because even though each of them might have

different disciplines or different rules or responsibilities as far as insurance success on one item or one measure or metric or scorecard. If they all have individualized ones, what your organization is saying is that all of these things matter, and it's really difficult to you know the old adage, when it's everybody's job, it's nobody's job. That's a that's a real thing. And so organizations can have a tendency

to assign individualized jobs to individualized people. But that's from an accountability standpoint and a responsibility standpoint to make sure that you can go to a person the other where does the buck stop? Who do I talk to about making sure that this thing is done? That's why those goals might be individualized, but that doesn't mean that the

other things are not the responsibility of each other. It just means that at some point there is a person who it's their responsibility to ensure this thing gets done. And as a leader of leaders, you need to make sure that all of your people know how to speak to all of those things, because all of those goals are important and they all inform the overall success of

the team. If each of your people can't speak intimately to that or how they can do things to positively impact not just their own goals, but the goals of their team members. Then you need to spend some work there because they need to be able to speak to it.

Almost like if a person was watching from the outside, they wouldn't be able to tell which of your people was responsible for which thing, because they all talk about all of those things in a way that implies they all feel personal ownership towards them and they're all working towards the same goal.

measure the accomplishment day by day. Then that makes it a little bit easier to kind of bring that team together and have the common goal of well, before today wraps up, all these things have to be done regardless of who's here or what's going on, So like we're

gonna work together to accomplish this. It becomes much more difficult when you have longer term deadlines, bigger, larger projects, things that will take time and follow up and checks where people are very much immersed in their responsibilities for weeks, if not months, Like, there's definitely more difficulty there because you can't find those shorter term kind of celebration points of like, look, see we did it together as a team,

didn net feel great, Let's do it again tomorrow. Look at that way we did it as a team, like you kind of like you really have to make sure that as a leader that you are make sure you're checking in on those milestones and then celebrating those milestones that are happening, especially when you see their right behavior, when you see the team starting to work together, when you see somebody flexing into another space to help them with that thing, you have to be able to call

that out and keep that top of mind to make sure that you're adding fuel to that strategy around feeling really great about you know, when the collective team has a big win, right.

sure that thing got done. So it's a it's an individualized recognition combined with a team recognition because at some point Lorenzo's responsible for this goal, and so the recognition that it got done is there. But maybe the work that Lorenzo did on that goal wasn't direct work on it. Maybe the work that Lorenzo did on the goal was relationship work amongst his peers to ensure that they were all aligned and on the same page. So he had people kind of working on his behalf all the time,

even when he wasn't there. That work is could arguably be more important than the direct work Lorenzo could have done on that goal, you know, himself. And so recognition for the job being done can't just stop at what the metric was and that it was accomplished. It needs to go deeper into the how it was done. You know,

congratulations to Lorenzo for getting this done. I know that you've worked really hard over the last three or four months to make sure that you have that your peers are informed on what it takes to hit these goals. And I've seen the efforts out of them working on your behalf to get this done, and I've seen you do it for them too. That kind of process is just as important as the fact that you got the

goal to begin with. So as a leader, it's your job to make sure that you're recognizing not just the right things, but recognizing them publicly in a way that clarifies this is what is important to you. And what's important to you is not just that you get the goal accomplished, but how you got it done, because the behaviors that got you there are going to be the ones that are replicable even in times when the numbers might be harder to meet.