How Strong is Your Bench?

Perry Holley:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holley, a Maxwell Leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:
And I’m Chris Goede, executive vice president with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome. And thank you for joining. Well, today the topic we’re going to talk about is how strong is your bench? And I’m super excited what we’re going to talk about. Matter of fact, we were recently with a client of ours, a longtime listener, has never submitted a question on the forum, but we do need that to happen. And I love where we’re going today because while we were in their office, it was amazing.

Perry Holley:
What did he do?

Chris Goede:
There was a massive UGA, University of Georgia puzzle. And so now the entire office, as well as him and his leadership, are UGA fans. And so I love the fact we’re going to dive into a

Chris Goede:
little bit of a leadership lesson today around college sports. So how strong is your bench? Talk to us a little bit.

Perry Holley:
I think I’m going to see him next week. I have to bring that up. You need to bring that up. Very good. This, I Not, you know, it is a University of Georgia, a little bit of story there, but I was watching, uh, it’s early in the college football season, uh, big teams are playing small teams and scores are being run up. Uh, I’m not sure why we do this, but it—

Chris Goede:
Financial.

Perry Holley:
Financial, yes, for the small teams.

Chris Goede:
For the small guys.

Perry Holley:
Yeah, again, I didn’t know that.

Chris Goede:
I’m still not sure it’s worth it, but—

Perry Holley:
So I managed to stay till the end of Georgia’s, uh, 70-20 victory and I don’t know why TV was still on, but they— the reporter runs out to Kirby Smart, the head coach at the University of Georgia, and says, uh, great win, Coach, what do you think? And Kirby was already hot. And, uh, Kirby, uh, criticized— he said this was— he’s really referencing the 20 points happened very late in the game when the reserves, the, the bench players were in the game. And that got me thinking. He said that, uh, he, he criticized reserve players, that they’re Inability to get off the field on 3rd down and execute basic blocks showed they were not ready for SEC play. He specifically addressed highly recruited players who rely on their status rather than effort, stating that reality checks are necessary for their development. And it— while the big score looked good on paper, I thought it was interesting that the coach, the leader, was He was scouting his bench. He was looking at, we definitely have a good starting group, which most businesses, you have your go-to players.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
But from time to time, things happen. The backups need to be in there.

Chris Goede:
That’s right.

Perry Holley:
And your second team players need to be in there. And this is just not a football problem. This is a leadership problem. And I thought I was really kind of impressed that a lot of coaches would’ve said, yeah, great victory, we killed ’em. Not Kirby. And he went out on the attack. I can’t imagine what practice was like this week. My God.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. What are your thoughts?

Chris Goede:
One of the things I would say is just transitioning from that example into leadership principle. As a leader, you may look at that and you go, well, you have 120 people standing on the sideline. What do you mean you don’t have the backups that are ready to play? So don’t confuse headcount on your team for bench depth because he has the numbers, but he doesn’t have a bench depth To be able to take that next step. And it’s really interesting in today’s day and age of what’s going on in college football is where there’s not a lot of depth. And I think one of the differentiators are for some of the teams that are able to keep some of their talent and develop that bench. So as a leader, one of the things that I take away from that is who is the individual on your team that you plan on promoting next and how do we begin to get them Real-time game experience. What I love about this is, yes, he called him out, but he’s able to call him out because he put him in game experience. So don’t miss the opportunity that he provided for them to be developed in this situation where you hear a lot of, especially in the National Football League, people— no one plays in the preseason and then they open the week and there’s all kinds of mistakes because you can’t get ready just in practice and in scrimmages.

Chris Goede:
Same thing with our team. You are going to have to find opportunities to be able to let them play in the game, whatever that means for their role. I was with an organization yesterday and we were talking about the fact of the difference between not being ready and making a mistake or a fatal flaw to the team or the organization. 2 drastically different things. And that you can overcome inside your organization by letting ’em make mistakes and getting them game ready by giving them game experience and putting them in front of clients in certain situations. Your largest client? Well, maybe not yet. Let’s spend some more time over here. But there’s different things as a leader you can be thinking about doing to get them ready and not just continuing to rely on the starters or to rely on the first team in that position.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. This may be a weird question, but I’m just thinking about in your role. So you have a team that reports to you. You also have a team, a bench of contractor facilitators and coaches that we use extensively across country in the world, knowing that they are game ready. I’m thinking about Kirby again. You put them into a game experience, they put them into a room someplace. Is there an evaluation? I mean, how do we— I’m in this role with you, so we’re trying to grow our bench to make sure that everybody’s game ready. How do you think we’re doing?

Chris Goede:
So let’s talk a little bit about our trainers and our coaches. They are former executives. Different industries, for-profit, nonprofit, public, private organizations, very competent individuals. But as we go through this process, we do a couple of things, and Perry is our master trainer. So everyone that we recruit and we bring on the team, they can practice all they want, but there’s a couple things that really have to happen, and they spend time being trained by Perry. But We’ll bring them in and put them in a live setting. And we don’t do this on purpose, but oftentimes technology goes awry on—

Perry Holley:
Well, it might have been on purpose.

Chris Goede:
How do you handle that? And what does that look like? And then the team evaluates them and we give them feedback, but we put them in a situation of training in front of our team, which is often not the easiest. Right? When they come in, they’re like, oh, these individuals work for Maxwell Leadership and this and that.

Perry Holley:
But Chris Goede’s in the room.

Chris Goede:
Whatever. But we’re really not that intimidating. But my challenge to you is, what does game ready look like in each one of your roles inside your organization? For us, it’s being able to handle technology problems. It’s being able to communicate clearly. It’s being able to engage the room and stir thoughts. And we put them in a situation to be able to do that. And then the other thing we’ve talked about, which is putting them in front of maybe certain clients and then having you in the back of the room to coach and to look at, to evaluate. You have to think about that in every role, as Perry’s talking about with Kirby.

Chris Goede:
He put them in there and they’re going to learn some things. They’re going to be better for it. But you have to do that. Just do it in a way that’s not a fatal flaw. Well,

Perry Holley:
I’m thinking about, and I’m sure this happens a lot with facilitator coaches, but I’ve had a team where we had to go present to a C-suite group and my boss said, Why don’t you send Johnny? And I said, oh, we could never put Johnny in that room.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, that’s right.

Perry Holley:
So, okay, now Johnny, I didn’t think anything about it then, but now as I’m studying this more and thinking about it since I heard Kirby, is that should I have questioned why is Johnny not game ready? Now, Johnny may be young, Johnny may not have the experience, Johnny may be building a toolkit. There may be good reason, and Johnny’s on the path to being able to do that one day. But I think I’m actually recalling back sometimes where I just had people I would never put in that room, and I wasn’t doing anything about getting them, helping them get game ready. And maybe we’ll go back to last week or I think 2 weeks ago when we talked about it. Do they get it, want it, have the capacity for it? Am I— do I need to assess my team? Do I have the right team? So you said, I got this bench, but now are they game ready? You think about, they’re probably had challenge with facilitator. Well, they want a certain facilitator. I can’t put them in that room. Why are they not game ready? Are they not the right person? It’s not a good fit.

Perry Holley:
But you gotta be honest with yourself. Why are they not being able to be put in that room?

Chris Goede:
Yeah. What’s the training regimen? What does that look like? Think about it in the sales world. And how do you onboard salespeople? How do you onboard your operations team? You gotta think about this and put them in situations to be able to learn, but also to be successful down the road as quickly as they possibly can. So what you were talking about just a minute ago, and I happen to be very familiar with the program there, there are what they call in college football, these high-level athletes. They call ’em 5-stars. 1 through 5 is how they rate you coming out of high school. Kirby always jokes around, that doesn’t mean anything to the coaches in college football, just to the media. But that comes with a little bit of a, I’m a 5-star athlete, right? Like, this is what this looks like.

Chris Goede:
And so they lean on that status coming into a situation like this and think because of that status that they’re going to be able to perform and they’re game ready instead of their effort. So in the business world, and as you coach leaders, how does that flesh out and look like?

Perry Holley:
Well, yeah, you definitely have people that rest on their natural talents and ability. Like, I came here, I was highly recruited from another company to come in and join your team. We get this with our facilitators. Like you said, they’re all successful executive-level people that are looking for a way to contribute and give back to others through the teaching of leadership. But I would be very disappointed if I saw one of them, when one of our recruiting of them is, tell me about your daily routine. Tell me about your growth plan. Tell me about your development plan. Tell me what you’re learning right now.

Perry Holley:
And of course, nobody would ever say, well, I’ve already done all the learning. I finished all that in college or whatever. No, I’m looking for people that are continuously on the growth journey and knowing that I’m getting a little bit better every day.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
And again, I mentioned this on another podcast, but Your son, when I ask him about, man, you’re in this locker room at Georgia, you’re at the top of your game, everybody’s good. What’s the difference between the 1%, less than 1% talent differences? And he said, it’s the ones that even though they’re talented, they work hard.

Chris Goede:
That’s right.

Perry Holley:
That’s right. And I think that what Kirby was calling out was you came in here on your status and your status is not going to carry you in this league. You’re going to have to continue to work hard to do that.

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Chris Goede:
What I love about what he did there, and leaders, I want you to take this as an example, is that if you set proper standards and expectations of your team, And of that position and those individuals, a reality check like that, when something happens, it’s not a punishment. It’s information. It’s a way to begin developing them and to make them a little bit better. And that’s what he’s doing. He’s doing it because a lot of people are reading the press clippings and they don’t need to be. They need to be effort and digging in and developing. So if you set that, what it is to To work here, to win here, to achieve here, to fit in the culture here. This is the standards and expectations.

Chris Goede:
And then when you end up having to call it out, it doesn’t come across as much of a punishment or negative feedback. It’s to help them. It’s information to help them and become developed.

Perry Holley:
So how does a leader build this depth or this game-ready bench in the business world especially? Making sure that the fundamentals, that everybody at some point can get in the game.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. Well, listen, it is about development. I want to say this about this example. Exposure to being in the game, to being on a sales call, to being, helping fulfill a contract, to helping being in a room facilitating, exposure to that is not development. You have to follow that up. And I guarantee Kirby has. You got to follow up that exposure of them not performing and delivering and game ready where they’re being developed. Like you talked about, I wonder what practice is like, that there is a lot of very intense development and pushing because of what has come to light.

Chris Goede:
And so one of the things I would encourage you guys as leaders is to look at each one of your positions. And I would say, what does it look like to actually be game ready? And then more importantly, when you think about building a bench for this, is are you cross-training? How many people inside your team know how to do something in another role? Right. Because there are going to be quote unquote injuries. There are going to be people that are out, that are going to be sick, that are going to miss. And so are you cross-training and are you rotating? them. We talk about who’s your number 2. I think you also got to think about, well, who’s next?

Perry Holley:
Next man up.

Chris Goede:
Next man up. And what does that look like? And how are you getting them ready? What do we need to do to get them ready in that role? Because every role is a little bit different, but you need to know how to define that.

Perry Holley:
Well, we did a podcast a couple months ago. I would maybe push people back toward around an individual development plan. Does everybody on the team have an individual development plan? Do they know what they should be working on? Do they know what their next level is? And It doesn’t have to be a next promotional level, but wherever they are, there’s a next level. Are you guiding them toward that? I hear John in my ear saying that growth doesn’t happen by accident. Being game ready will not happen by accident just because, well, I’ve been here 2 years, I’m game ready. No.

Chris Goede:
No.

Perry Holley:
No, you’ve done nothing to develop yourself over 2 years. But I’m going to tell you, the questions you ask determine what’s important to you as a leader. And so if you’re not asking about their growth, if you’re not asking them to see their development plan, it doesn’t have to be, a big complicated thing. Make it simple. And we gave some examples on that podcast, but everybody should have, and you should have an IDP that says, this is what I’m working on. This is what I’m doing to get game ready. And I think that’s going to be the difference.

Chris Goede:
How do you coach leaders that need to have these conversations? Because we all do, and they need to be had with us as well. How do you coach them to deliver this type of feedback? information more than punishment in a way that is building them up, not necessarily tearing them down. Now you got to tell ’em the truth, right? Especially ones that are new and learning and are growing. But you also don’t want to blow out the candle so early in their professional career. How do you encourage those that you’re coaching to be able to communicate that?

Perry Holley:
Well, you gave a minute ago about standards and expectations. The way we do things here, our standard is This is our minimum. This is what we do. This is the standard we have. And my expectation of you is this. But I’m a big fan of high-challenge, high-support environments where my people will know that I have high expectations of you, but I believe you can accomplish them, and I’m here to help you do that. And so you make it almost a pride point about— and that’s, I think, what Kirby does so well is that you want to be a Georgia Bulldog. You want to be on that team.

Perry Holley:
If you’re at Auburn, you want to be an Auburn Tiger. You want to be in that— environment because they have a standard and this is what we’re trying for, excellence. We want to do these things and I want to hold up my end of that deal. And so you’re building a bit of a pride piece, coaching people, having high expectations, high challenge, but high support. I’m here to help you. What do you need? We’ll get you some game experience. We’re going to put you and give you some trial. We’re going to let you lead the team.

Perry Holley:
We’re going to let you present to the board. Whatever it is, we’re going to help you get there. But we have a high standard here.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. And the way you deliver it, right, with what I would say your tone, your body language of the message is so important because, yeah, as a leader, you’re going to be frustrated. You’re going to be juiced up a little bit. You’re like, let’s go. What are we doing? But you got to make sure that you deliver it with tone. We talk a lot about consistency as a leader, and there is a lot of power to increasing your influence and others’ performance with the right motive by being able to deliver good or bad feedback consistently across the board so that they don’t take it as a personal attack and that you are for them. The other thing is that I think if we say sometimes how we do some things is how we do everything.

Perry Holley:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
And so In this example, if this leader is calling out the group that was out there, they’re also going to be calling out the first group when they’re not delivering. And so that second group’s going, oh man, it’s not personal. It’s not just me. It’s like, I’m seeing this as consistent across the board inside our organization. This really means something to us. This is our standards here.

Perry Holley:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
As I wrap up, I was thinking about this. I was thinking, Speaking of coaches, I heard Coach Saban say one time in a book or a podcast, or maybe just even an interview where he said, starters win games, the first team, but programs win seasons and championships. Really what he’s saying is exactly what we’re talking about right here.

Perry Holley:
Right.

Chris Goede:
And so you gotta look at your team and your organization, look at the complete program and the depth of it, not just those that are producing whatever the production means. At the top of the level. So as we wrap up, one of the things that we want to leave you with is we talked about the who’s next map. So I wrote down a couple of things for you, 4 different categories. When you think about who’s next and the map that you could build for them, look at your team, look at your role and lay this out. Number 1, who’s ready right now to step into that role? If something were to happen, So Perry, who’s ready to step in and sit down and help with this podcast or me right now? What does that look like? They could step in tomorrow. That’s one. Tier 2 would be, okay, who’s ready soon? They may need a couple months of very intentional development, targeted development for what we need, but they’re close.

Chris Goede:
Number 3, they have future potential. They’re a ways off. They need some experience. They need to be developed a little bit more. They eventually could handle it, And then number 4 is you don’t have anybody. There’s no successor. And if you went through and you looked at the different roles in your organization, it’d be interesting. And I know some of you’re going, well, I don’t have the ability to have multiple people getting ready for that role and sit back there.

Chris Goede:
That’s what we were talking earlier about, the cross-training and making sure that there’s some essentials of that role that other people inside the organization could step in and help. And so, Hopefully that gives you a mindset of thinking about that and thinking about your bench to be able to prepare the team.

Perry Holley:
Fantastic. Put me in, Coach. I’m ready.

Chris Goede:
Let’s do it.

Perry Holley:
Thank you for joining us. Real great to have you here. If you want more information on this podcast, the learner guide is available for you, as well as other information about our offerings at MaxwellLeadership.com/Executivepodcast. You can also leave a comment or a question. You know we love to hear from you. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.

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