Foreign.

Hello, welcome back to the Promoted podcast.

I'm your host, Felicity Furey, co founder and CEO of We Aspire.

And today we have our very special guest back again, Mr.

Michael Furey, Chief research officer and head coach at We Aspire.

Welcome back, Michael.

Thank you.

Good to be here.

Today we are jumping into another juicy topic and I think this one, it's going to be a big call, but probably the biggest game changer for people stepping into leadership.

What do you reckon?

I think so.

I think once you really get this concept, then completely change the game for you.

Agreed.

And it's certainly been a game changer for me.

Something I'm still challenged with, something I'm still looking at, reflecting on how can I do better?

And it is the power of teams.

So not operating as an individual, but actually having a team around you.

Michael, what does this mean to you?

Well, just before we mention that you may hear in the background, we've got some buzzing.

We're sat in beautiful Canberra today on the gorgeous sunshine blaring down on us and there's some beautiful bugs just kind of making our voices heard on this.

They want to be on the podcast.

They're silly.

So bugs of Canberra?

Why not?

So that's the background noise.

We're not just kind of buzzing at you.

That's another sort the.

Ask your question again.

I'm so sorry, I kind of got distracted by the buzzing.

The question was what does the power of teams mean to you and maybe even why has it been such a game changer this year for the people we've worked with?

Yeah, it's a great question.

So I think I'm probably going to say this has been the biggest takeaway for me and what I've seen.

If you can change your view on this, this can make the biggest difference for you.

So I think the power of team is there's probably an underlying message.

There is actually how fallible you are as an individual.

Right.

And this is really comes down to some truth telling.

And that really looks like for me is that there's this great quote.

I'm not sure if it's mine or if I just.

It just really struck me.

But I like, alone we are fallible.

Together we are incredible.

And I really think that if you can start to reflect this year on how great you are as an individual, but also how limited you are as an individual, then there is incredible power in acknowledging that once you find a teammate or someone who's on a team who can kind of help support some of your weaknesses, all Of a sudden, you, or kind of collectively, you can have the opportunity to start to become incredible.

And I see this so much with the people I'm working with, is that most of the people we work with have never had a coach before.

When they start working with me, they're like, I don't even know what to ask you.

That's genuinely what they say.

And I typically say, well, just imagine me, like, on your team, and like, what are you trying to do?

And we start to talk about what they're trying to do, what they feel like, some of the tricky things or the barriers they're facing or how they're feeling, and we start to talk about it, and hey PRESTO, after about 45 minutes, we've just talked about the same thing.

They've been mulling over for a long time, and now they've got access to a whole heap of different ideas and newer approaches.

And I might try that.

Oh, actually, I never thought of that.

And all of a sudden, something which has become a major challenge has become.

Actually, I think that's quite achievable now.

And I think that typifies for me what the power of a team can enable.

And what's tricky about the power of team is you need to find people you can trust.

You need to find people who actually want to be on your team.

And it's tricky because for junior leaders, the ones which we work with, most of the time, they don't have a team, they just have themselves.

And so a team might kind of looks a bit ad hoc or it's kind of a bit of a weird concept.

And often you've mentioned on previous podcasts around this kind of individual contributor level, which is where people often, most of us, start in organizations.

And that's where you just have to be this unbelievable Swiss army knife kind of individual, where you just do everything.

You don't have access to resources, don't have a team ring, you don't have people to help.

It's just.

It's just you.

And.

But as you progress, as the demands, the requirements, the pressure on you increase, trying to do that all alone is.

Is a recipe fair, tightly, ultimately.

Hmm.

It's not kind of the, you know, the first thing people think of as operating like a team.

And I think to your point, where often in the workplace, a team, the automatic for me around that is, do I have direct reports rather than thinking about, oh, I'm working on a project team, or I'm working with a group of people.

So why do you think we are not great.

Particularly people who work in infrastructure and construction or people in workplaces generally.

Why do you think we're not great and having that automatic association with team?

I think we have to acknowledge the historical context or the kind of the traditional training that we've all received.

And that is straight back with the school system.

If you look at the schooling system, if you're sat next to someone who does know the answer and you glance over to their page and you look at it and go, ah, the answer is 16.

And then you write 16 and the teacher catches you, that's called cheating in a work context.

If your colleague knows the answer and you see the answer 16 and you copy it and you write it down, you're called smart.

Because actually going to people who know the answer better than you is a smart way of doing things.

In fact, struggling through life not knowing the answer, trying to figure all out yourself, that's a not necessarily dumb approach, but it's a very slow approach.

And so if you look at school, we are educated not just in terms of the means, so we're trained in English, but we're also trained, you know, educated in an approach.

And the approach is individualization, right?

Operate as an individual.

In fact, corporations kind of like it when you operate as an individual because they can push you around.

And if you think about, I had this most recently in someone who is negotiating a pay rise.

And if you think about when you're negotiating with someone, you often think you're just negotiating with someone from hr.

Reality is you're not.

You're actually negotiating with the HR team who then have access to bountiful kind of resources.

They've got access to managers, they've got access to far more experienced people than you.

They've got people who've done high level negotiations maybe for their whole career.

So all of a sudden you're just negotiating against one person.

Not, not just, not just Sally from hr, you're actually negotiating from Sally.

Hr, the whole team, all the experience, they've got all the different resources they've got to, you know, to help that.

So all of a sudden, if you start to realize corporations are big teams and when you're negotiating anything, you're negotiating as a team.

And that's why going into a pay negotiator can be so scary, is because it's like playing rugby against the All Blacks when you're on your own and they've got all those big burly guys who are about to murder you, you know, Whereas all of a sudden, if you can build a team where you've got a bunch of big burly people on your team?

Well, all blacks are not looking so scary all of a sudden.

Maybe you could send big burly guy and come tackle other big burly guy.

Hmm.

It's a great point.

And you reminded me of many years ago actually, when I was leading Power of Engineering and we needed a team and we didn't have one.

You know, a group of volunteers.

We don't have a lot of funding and one of the key things that I knew would make a difference would be around media and communication.

So often what we would do is we'd partner with companies and we'd go speak to, we'd ask to speak to their communications team, which is a bit out of field for the people we work with and mainly work with engineers or leaders within a company wanting to inspire students about engineering.

And so we'd work with them because we didn't have the funding to pay someone to write blog articles or write PR media releases.

So I'd actually approach their comms team and say, hey, would you be able to support us by helping us write this article?

Of course.

It puts that company in a great position because they're getting to mention their organization and then they're.

It's a win.

It's a win, win because they're getting to get into media and outlets that they wouldn't necessarily get in without paying for those spots because they're talking about this promotion of a charity.

So for first time leaders, this could be a tricky thing if you've never done this before.

And I think in that example it showed that we were thinking about what's important for the other person, what's something that they're going to want, how can we help them do that job better and really leveraging those influence skills.

So for the people that you work with, Michael, because you work exclusively with first time leaders, what do you see as some of the strategies or ways that people can almost build the team without building the team?

I think there's multiple.

One of the first things to do is understand what, what are the biggest weaknesses that you've got.

Right.

And the other side of that is then what are your strengths?

Right.

People often can quickly identify their weaknesses.

It's sometimes very, very hard to understand what your strengths are because sometimes your strengths are so obvious to you.

You think everyone's like that.

So I'd say first and foremost, having someone you can kind of talk to about strengths and weaknesses is something very helpful.

That could be a friend that could be.

Basically, you want someone who's going to tell you the truth, even when it's a bit tricky to tell you the truth.

Right?

So someone who's going to have the courage to say, you know what one of your weaknesses is?

You just eat too much chocolate, even though it might upset you initially or something for that.

And it seems like a silly example, but if you're really overweight and actually that's one of your weaknesses, then guess what?

You need someone who can tell you the truth.

So that might be a coach, that might be a counselor, that might be a friend, that might be a parent.

It might be just someone at work.

Right.

I think the second part then is, okay, once you start to get a clearer picture about your weaknesses and weaknesses also relative, right?

So let's say you want to be a really good leader in your organization, but you're 30, it's your first time you've been in a leadership role.

Something like that.

Okay, well then maybe one of your relative weaknesses is actually you've just got no experience.

And you can't have experience because you're 30.

You can't exactly, like, fast forward 10 years and just get experience.

Okay, then the question is, well, how do you get the benefit of experience without having experience?

That's where your expertise around accessing mentors is incredibly powerful.

I think some of your episodes on how to source mentors is amazing.

Like, I don't know anyone who can source mentors.

Get people on board like you can.

Like, you're unbelievable that as a skill.

And I think if you can understand that sometimes it can feel like mentors are a super busy and that they.

Why would they want to spend time or with little old you?

The reality is it's probably a myth that they're actually really busy.

A lot of senior people I know are not at the opposite.

They're deliberately not because they had time to reflect.

The job of a leader is to think.

So a lot of the time they're thinking, that's right.

And so you gotta be really careful about projecting without checking.

So if you think that everyone who's.

Everyone who's more senior than you is really busy, well, it's just not necessarily true.

The second part then is what's in it for them.

A lot of senior people, I come across that when they reach a certain level of success in their career, they actually go, I could keep climbing a ladder.

But it's a bit unfulfilling because I've kind of done that now I really want to just Give back to the next generation.

And nine out of 10 times, maybe that's a too high, maybe seven out of 10 times, you'll find that people are incredibly receptive and actually they're dying.

They would love the opportunity to contribute to an aspiring go getter, someone who's actively seeking out input and advice.

So I'm not sure if we have to google those stats firstly, but I think that would be my take on it.

Yeah, I think mentors really want to give back and they want to leave that legacy.

And it's actually been through mentors that I discovered, I think my, my biggest strength and it was such an interesting exercise.

It was asking people what are my strengths, what am I good at, what are my weaknesses, what do people go to me for and what do people know about me?

They were quite interesting questions and that was through one of the self development programs that you, you and I have both done.

And I started asking mentor, I asked a friend and I asked a colleague, I think it was.

And they all said the same thing and it was a strength that I'd never heard of or would never think of.

And it's exactly what you said, Michael.

Getting, creating a vision and getting people involved with an idea.

And I was like, is that a strength?

Is that even helpful?

What are you talking about?

What do you mean?

I just go, I just go talk to people and share ideas and they kind of seem to want to get involved.

And I've realized absolutely, that is definitely a strength of mine.

And it was really funny too.

The, even the weakness part, I think mine was that I get distract.

I, I feel like they felt like I was distracted in conversations and at the time I was so in my own head about worrying what people would think of me.

And it was fascinating that showed up in multiple areas.

So, so I absolutely recommend that to people.

In fact, if you're listening to this, wondering, I have no idea what my strengths are.

Not thought about it before going and asking people in your life is really, really powerful and insightful.

The other tip I would have would be doing the Clifton strengths.

There's 34 different strengths that they talk about and actually there's a lot of research behind what they've done.

It's what we use in our first time leader programs when we do strengths back based assessments is looking at you know what.

Yeah, you do the quiz and you find out.

And for me that was incredibly helpful because again it highlighted things that I kind of knew about myself, wasn't really sure about, but actually they're really really powerful strengths.

And I think I was reading this book recently, actually around again, applying the 8020 rule, but to your strengths.

Was it.

What is that?

The stuff that you are.

That you're really, really good at, the 80% that you're really good at and the 20% that you should.

You should ditch the stuff that you should absolutely not do and kind of refining for that and continuing that process.

And that's really helped me see you're not gonna.

You're not gonna ditch everything.

It's the.

It's the stuff that really matters to keep focusing in on and keep refining that.

And that can be tricky, I think, when you are in a.

In a set role, with a set role description, in a set company, to be able to do that.

But there's certainly ways that you can tweak and improve.

What have been some other ways, Michael, that you're seeing people have added expertise into their team?

Because it could be.

I know when I first hear this, I go, oh, is it going to cost me lots of money?

I don't have money to get a coach.

Or how can I do this with my current role?

It's so structured or so specific.

I'm a site engineer or I'm a project engineer.

This, I mean, quality.

My role has these set boundaries.

What would you say to people who.

I'm not sure about that part.

I think when you start on this journey, it's gonna feel probably a little bit weird in reality.

Right.

Because the nature of the engagements are going to be completely unofficial.

Right.

If you're super early, you might not be able to afford a coach.

You might not be able to have access to anyone necessarily.

And someone.

You might even feel awkward saying to someone, hey, do you want to be my mentor?

Or something like that?

So I would use these kind of titles really loosely initially.

And just look at it like, if you've got more people working on a specific challenge, then you're going to come up with more ideas than you would if you were just working on it on your own.

Simple as that.

So if you think about the challenge in this context or the problem you're trying to solve, or maybe the thing you're looking at is your career and your progress or maybe your work situation.

So if you can start to bring people in to reflect on that or challenge your thinking on that, and this is where I think a lot of people stumble with, well, what if I, okay, I get the idea of having a team would be helpful, great.

What the hell do I ask them?

And I think genuinely Asking the question.

I don't know what to ask you, but I'm curious, what would be your perspective if you were in my shoes?

What would you do?

What would you be thinking about something like that.

So again, a lot of the time when people turn up to a coaching call with me, I have no problem if you say I don't know what to ask you or I don't even know what these calls are about.

I'd never had a mentor before.

What do I say?

Because the reality is that is actually a really powerful acknowledgment and I guess ultimately that is what will enable you to build a team, is that you start to understand you're it's okay not to know, but it's not okay to just keep going, not knowing.

In fact, your job is to start to find out the answer or find people who have answers to certain things.

And remember this career journey.

You know, life is a very weird and wonderful thing that it feels so unique to us.

Right.

It feels like you're the special one.

You've going through all these new kind of exciting things, especially early in your career.

The reality is it's a well trodden path for many different people.

And face with all kind of done the same thing.

And so getting someone who's just a few years ahead maybe and sitting down saying hey what I'm curious, what's your take on this?

And getting diversity of your thought.

They may not even, you might not even call them a mentor.

But just saying, you know, big stealing and borrow perhaps early on is a powerful way to do it.

Yeah.

And I would say I have mentors that I never met.

Yeah.

How could that be?

Yeah, I watch a lot of YouTube and there are some amazing people from all over the world.

And I mean it sounds like such a simple thing to go go watch some YouTube.

But there's people who have marketing expertise, business expertise that I don't have the opportunity to meet, but I can watch a lot of stuff on YouTube about them and it's been a fantastic teacher.

So there can be mentors, there can be people that you learn from that you've never met before.

Equally, you could even have a peer, someone who's at the same level as you that you can learn from.

I know a lot of executives I speak to, they love reverse mentoring.

They actually get mentored by younger people or people with less experience from them because they love the fresh perspectives and the fresh ideas.

So it doesn't have to be the CEO or this leader in an organization.

It could be your peer and they just have a different situational context or they've applied something in a slightly different way that could be really helpful for you to learn from as well and to actually get them on your team.

I think there's also something to have a look more broadly, like we're doing some work with, with the.

What was the wriq.

I forget the specific.

The Waste Institute Resources Queensland.

Yeah, thank you.

And they've got funding next year.

Waste and Recycling is Waste and Recycling Institute of Queensland.

Exactly what I said.

So they've got resources next year where they're implementing a mentoring program.

And I think it's something like that.

So you don't try not to be limited by.

Again, I don't have the money or I'm not sure where to go.

Is there.

There is actually.

Other people understand the value of this.

From what I understand a lot of these associations, whether it's NARWIC or a range of different ones, they actually have people who are kind of banging down the door to mentor.

Often they're over to scratch.

We hear this all the time.

There's more mentors than participants.

So reaching out to an association party or something like that, or even reaching out to your employer and saying, hey, I'm looking for.

Or a range of mentors.

Getting mentors, just a quick note, outside of your organization can be incredibly powerful because it avoids this kind of potential conflict of interest so they, you know, trying to retain you or kind of.

Sometimes it can be such a blinkered view if it ends inside the company equally.

That can be completely false, what I've just said.

Sometimes getting internal mentors, if you really like the company, can be an incredibly, you know, great way to accelerate because actually you can find advocates for you.

We have programs where they get paired up with executive mentors who are in the executive team and we see, you know, that's an incredibly powerful thing.

If you can get an executive to come on board as an advocate for your career, they can work wonders behind the scenes.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I think to summarize, in the power of team, it makes a difference.

Understanding what your strengths are to figure out what are those gaps that you know or weaknesses to plug.

And that could be from a, you know, skill level.

It can also be from an experience level and it can be for a perspective level.

So those things can be done by finding immediate team members, but also reaching out to mentors and things like that.

And I'm going to do a bit of the shameless plug here, Michael.

We do have Uplift coming up next year on the 8th of February and it's our way of showcasing some of the best things that we do completely free for our community.

So it's in Brisbane on February 8.

There's information on the We Aspire website.

If you search for We Aspire education, you'll find it.

And we actually have set this up to help people find their team, help people find that cohort around them of people to keep them accountable.

And we've had this previously as an evening event.

It's going to be all day.

And from previous events, it's been extraordinary to see over the years people actually finding accountability buddies at these events to help them achieve their goals.

And we even had one of our brilliant partners that we work with talk about wanting to be a general manager and then going away and having a conversation.

So it's powerful to see once you get together, full of amazing people in a room who want to be leaders, who want to step out and be different.

We want to build their teams, what can really be possible.

So 8th of February, we hope to see you there and I think it'll be a great way for people to build their team as we've talked about today.

Michael.

Yeah, absolutely.

And great plug.

I think it's the, I think one of the biggest steps I see in terms of people's development is that when you start to realize that it's a, okay to have weaknesses, secondly, it's okay to actually not have to do everything.

When you get those two kind of huge acknowledgments, far out.

Your ability to succeed or accelerate in terms of your career can really amplify and accelerate it.

It's really phenomenal if you can understand that.

No one makes it on their own.

Yeah, I promise no one makes it on their own.

Like if you look at any high performing people who were behind you, behind, behind me, we've got heaps of different people who've helped contribute it, guide us.

You know, we access heaps of different coaches, spoilers, mentors, like it's, it's just nonsense that people make it on their own.

And so if you can get that, if you can understand that's actually how it works and then you start to, you know, build, get people around, you start to think about that and start to socialize what you're working on.

Yeah, and uplift is a great way to do that because we built a lot of the mentor networks which you might want to tap into.

We've got coaches, we've got support, we've got a whole bunch of people around, which you can straight off the bat.

And I hope that should be a relief to people.

I know it certainly was for me.

Like, oh, I don't have to do it on my own.

Oh my gosh.

Like, for me, oh, I don't have to be good at detail.

That's fantastic, because I really don't like doing that.

It's such a relief.

And it's way more fun when you get to work with the team.

Right.

I agree.

Awesome.

Thanks for being here, Michael.

I've loved picking your brains on 2024, and hopefully this has been some helpful reflections for you as you head into 2025.

We'll see you in the next episode.