The Perfect Team Size For High Performance

✍️ Coming up in today’s edition:

1. One quick win: The unspoken impact of your facial expressions

2. One proven system: Why the military and surgical teams focus on reducing their “communication overhead”

3. One million-dollar question: A powerful reframe when hiring for your culture

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1. BEYOND WORDS: THE UNSPOKEN IMPACT OF YOUR FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

As a leader, your demeanour sets the tone for your team.

But did you know how much impact your facial expressions have on your team 👇

Positive expressions create a supportive and motivating environment.

Negative expressions create tension or anxiety.

Even without speaking, your facial expressions provide immediate feedback. Your team will often look to you for cues on how to react in various situations.

Signals from your eyes, brows and forehead are perceived as more genuine than the lower part of your face which can be easily faked (research from Dane Archer - a UC Santa Cruz psychologist)

Next time you are on a zoom call or in a meeting with your team… be mindful of your facial expressions.

Do they align with your intended message and the atmosphere you want to create within your team?

To understand each of the 16 universal facial expressions from Dr. Paul Ekman’s research, dive into the full list here.

When in doubt… smile!

Fun Fact: A recent photo analysis of baseball players from the 1952 register revealed that players with genuine smiles lived to an average of 80 years, while non-smilers only lived to 73 on average.

When you smile, you not only live longer but you trigger others to smile back.

Imagine the ripple effect of smiling more across work environments around the world 🙂

2. A SYSTEM TO REDUCE THE BURDEN OF “COMMUNICATION OVERHEAD”

There’s a reason why high-performing surgical teams, military units and sports teams tend to be small and focused.

Too much time spent communicating and coordinating can kill a team’s effectiveness.

This is why the concept of your “Communication Overhead” is so important!

In leyman’s terms, it is the time spent communicating with your team vs. time spent doing the work.

The more team members you have, the more you have to communicate with them to coordinate action.

After a certain point, each additional team member reduces the capacity of the group to do anything other than communicate.

This is why large corporates get overtaken by the young upstart as their communication overhead is huge. For any decision, you need to get input and approval from dozens of people across the business, reducing your ability to react to market changes.

If you’re leading a group of more than 8 people, 80% of your job will be communicating: objectives, plans, ideas and 1on1s.

If any of the below 8 symptoms from Derek Sheane’s book “Beyond Bureaucracy” resonate with you, then you’ll benefit from the system below 👇

The system is simple but not easy 👇

1. Make your team as small as possible.

Studies of effective teamwork from the book Peopleware recommend working in groups of three to eight people, referencing them as “elite and surgical”.

Create a system that notifies you as soon as a team grows to seven people so that you can assess ways to splinter people off for effectiveness.

2. Give your people as much autonomy as you can.

Next time someone from your team asks for your opinion, ask them to watch this video on the 1-3-1 method:

hustlers_office

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Create a habit with your team that instead of bringing you a problem, they always come to you with the 1:3:1 method 👇

• 1: specific problem defined well

• 3: viable options

• 1: recommendation from them

If you want your team to perform at its peak, make them as small and autonomous as possible.

3. WILL THIS HIRE FIT CONTRIBUTE TO THE EXISTING CULTURE?

“Culture Fit” has been the accepted guideline for employee recruitment for decades.

The consensus is that it creates a safe environment where employees get on with each other better.

We also have a natural bias to hire people who resemble us.

But this method is fast becoming outdated.

People who fit into group norms and styles don’t always add the most value.

If you have a high density of similar employees in a monoculture, creativity and out-of-the-box thinking get suppressed.

Soon your team can become susceptible to “groupthink”, with less challenges to existing ideas and processes that are needed to tackle the changes in the market and competitors.

Instead, try this 👇

Hire for “culture contribution”. 

This small reframe ensures your teams start looking for hires that will add and improve the existing culture. Making room for diverse backgrounds and skill sets that have historically been overlooked can be the difference between winning and losing.

The England football team know this better than anyone:

Stop hiring for culture “fit” and focus on culture “contribution”.

And you just might win the next Euros 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

MY FAVOURITE FINDS 🔗

For your performance:

• Jim Kwik’s “SUAVE” method to remember anyone’s name (Insta)

• Mark Cavendish holds the record for the most Tour De France stage wins (35) but little did we know, this mental tactic (inspired by his 2-year-old daughter) is the secret behind his success👇

For your team:

• The High-Performing Surgical Team: A Guide to Best Practise (Downloadable)

• Why team diversity has been so important for the England football team to reach the European Cup Final ⚽️ (Linkedin)

For your health:

• Coach Prime (Deion Saunders) had me in tears this week when he opened up about his mental health (TikTok) - PLEASE check on at least 1x friend today!

• Why smiling makes you a more efficient runner according to the greatest marathon runner in the world (Research)

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