US Military Adopt "Red Teaming"

Coming up in today’s edition:

1. One quick win: to overcome feedback phobia

2. One proven system: that intelligence agencies use to make decisions

3. One million-dollar question: to start the feedback culture in your team

(Not a subscriber yet? Sign up for free here)

1. DELIVERING WORLD-CLASS FEEDBACK

Giving “honest” feedback is a positive right?

We hear it all the time in business.

“Feedback is a gift.”

But if you position it wrong as a leader, it can have a disastrous impact on team motivation.

Here is one small change you can make to have a mighty impact:

Switch the feedback positioning from “Brutal Honesty” to “Warm Candour”.

Most employees assume that when you schedule a quick five minutes or to “talk” the session will be negative or corrective.

This is because of the horror stories from their past which have created “feedback phobia” in their psyche and is now a source of anxiety.

Positive employee engagement is closely linked with the ability to give honest feedback in a helpful way.

In a recent Forbes study of 22,719 leaders, if your ability to deliver feedback was ranked by your team in the:

• Bottom 10% = team engagement scores were in the bottom 25%

• Top 10% = team engagement scores were in the 77% percentile

Feedback is a gift.

But your team will only experience it that way when it is delivered well.

If you regularly ask for feedback yourself, you will rank in the 86th percentile in leadership effectiveness by your team, according to a Forbes study of 51,896 leaders.

Be warm, not brutal.

2. THE ARMY’S VITAL DECISION-MAKING ADVANTAGE

Red teaming is a high-performance system developed primarily by the US military and intelligence agencies in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the wars that followed.

The gold standard for critical decision-making actually originated in the early 1800s by the Prussian Army as a way to:

• Expose hidden threats

• Challenge assumptions

• Stress-test plans

• Identify missed opportunities

It has recently been applied to the business world by Dr. Daniel Kahneman to examine business problems from all angles and turn disruptive events to your advantage.

The most successful venture capital firms (Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers) have all developed their own red teaming programmes to integrate this game-changing system into their DNA.

It will force you to think about your business the way your main rivals or new competitors do.

Whenever you are next making an important decision (new product launch, new team, new office location etc.) gather a few people you respect, trust and admire.

Then ask them the following “Red Team” questions:

1. What are you overlooking?

2. What “facts” might be wrong?

3. Which flawed assumptions are you relying on?

4. What critical questions haven’t you asked?

5. What options are you dismissing?

6. What new information or evidence can you gather or create?

Even though this will add time to your decision-making process, the upside is worth it for the important decisions - Type 1, irreversible ones that we discussed in this edition.

Build your Red Team - you won’t regret it!

3. WHAT AM I NOT SAYING THAT NEEDS TO BE SAID?

With the importance of warm candour above, it is important to ask ourselves this question.

Unvoiced thoughts can breed tension, confusion, and missed opportunities.

Actions you could take this week:

• Reflect on recent meetings and interactions. Is there something you've held back?

• Actively ask for feedback from every person in your team this week.

• Pay attention to non-verbal cues and underlying sentiments in conversations.

• Reflect on recurring themes or patterns you notice across team members.

• Schedule time to practise your delivery before having a candid conversation with someone in your team about unaddressed issues.

Honest conversations drive progress.

Say it. Fix it. Grow from it 🚀

MY TOP FINDS OF THE WEEK 🔍

For your performance:

• Sir Alex Ferguson on how to handle big defeats (Link)

For your team:

• Coach K 🗣️ The one thing that is more important than the will to win (Link)

For your health:

• Anthony Joshua’s approach to eating Fish and Chips (Link)

Hope you enjoyed this week’s tactics. I’ll be back next Sunday with a new lineup 👋 - Alex 

P.S. Did you get something useful from this email? Do me a solid by sharing this link with 1 newsletter pal… 🙏

P.P.S. If you want some one-on-one time to apply some of the concepts to specific challenges you are having with your own team, please get in touch.