‘Best Of’ Finding Mastery – How To Build High Performing Teams

Pete Carroll (0:00)

What is most important is that you figure out how good somebody could be, and then you help them uncover the fact that they are.

Julie Rice (0:08)

I don't know everything, but I'm going to learn how to be a better leader. I'm going to learn how to have the right conversation.

Toto Wolff (0:14)

And that is exactly the mindset you need to have. You need to be able to recognize your own mistakes and your own failure.

Satya Nadella (0:20)

You do need to come together as a collective, where that collective also has an identity.

Toto Wolff (0:27)

Identity.

Michael Gervais (0:37)

Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. And today I'm excited to welcome you to our inaugural Best Of episode. The Finding Mastery podcast has been running for about seven years now. We have over 400 episodes. And as a result, we have gained extraordinary insights and timeless wisdom from some of the top thinkers and doers in the world.

While there is no single golden thread to how the best in the world operate, there are some common themes and skills and insights that many of our guests have utilized on their path of mastery. To that end, in this Best Of series, we'll be compiling insights from some of our favorite episodes organized around a specific topic.

This episode is about what it takes to build high-performing teams. You'll hear from game changers like Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, Toto Wolff, Executive Director and managing partner at Mercedes Formula One, former CEO of J. Crew and Victoria Secret, Jan Singer, and so many more. Though each of these individuals have unique personal philosophies and core values and historical experiences, you'll hear quite a bit of overlap when it comes to their central drivers for success in building high-performing teams. Now, we could have cut this episode a dozen different ways. We've had so many incredible leaders on this podcast, it was nearly impossible to choose which conversations to highlight. So let us know if you like this format and what subjects interest you. There's plenty more to choose from for volume two and three and beyond. And with that, let's jump right into the first installment of our Best of series on high-performing teams. The first guest we'll hear from is an extraordinary leader and someone I was fortunate to work with for many years. Pete Carroll, head coach of the Seattle Seahawks. We had him on the podcast in front of a live audience. So this is a special one for many reasons. In Seattle, we committed to building a high-performance team on the foundation of a relationship-based culture. The approach involves deeply committing to helping individuals discover who they are. What makes them unique? What drives them? How to best communicate to effectively forge a connection so that we can help bring them closer to expressing their unique potential.

When I hear you talk, I don't hear coach.

I hear an animated human that wants others to do well.

Like living with passion, dealing with the hard things, having an idea of what is possible, staying with it day in and day out, even when it's hard, and having deep care for other people. So by profession, you're a coach, but it doesn't seem like there's a limitation in the way that you're thinking about your life, right? So you're not bound by I'm a manager, I'm a coach, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a, there's something larger than that.

Pete Carroll (3:52)

Yeah, well, there's no way.

Let's take another step here. I don't think there's any way that you can be really good at what you're doing unless you have a real clarity and kind of a clear vision of what you're trying to do. And I don't think you can do that unless you have a really good understanding of what you're all about and where you come from, what you stand for, what are your uncompromising principles, what are your beliefs.

Because you're in a coaching aspect or in a leadership aspect, you're exposed. People are looking at you, they're hearing you, they're watching you, you're challenged by the issues and the concerns and the decisions that you make. And if you can't find a consistency and a clarity that you can exhibit of what you stand for and what's important to you, I don't know how you make it. If you're trying to be somebody else, you're going to falter. You're not going to be able to be that somebody else consistently. So there's an understanding and a depth that's really important, and I think it really goes back to the individual. Again, I would say whether you're coaching, whether you're leading, whether you're managing, whether you're running a business, whatever it is, there's people around you that are responding to you and they will respond best when they can clearly understand what you're all about. And so that takes work.