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Lessons - Defining and Finding Impact Players | Liz Wiseman - CEO of The Wiseman Group · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, discover the defining traits of impact players,
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  those stand-out contributors who thrive in ambiguity, take ownership, and amplify team success.
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  Learn how they work differently from ordinary contributors and gain insights
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  on how to embody these behaviors to unlock extraordinary results in your career or organization.
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  I want you to also, so now we've alluded to it, and I think it's very important because you've
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  done the research and you've identified something that I think that everybody who's ever worked
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  in an organization, they can always point to who the impact players are, but it's ultimately very
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  difficult to define them any further than that person is an impact player, that person always
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  seems to be in the right place in the right time in the organization, but what you've done
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  is throughout your research and throughout your career, you define the attributes of that particular
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  person. How do you define an impact player? How can we unpack who that individual is more
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  specifically so we can wrap our minds around it and then through the lens of a business leader
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  or through the lens of an individual that just wants to be that individual because they know
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  the positive results it can have on their career, there's something more tangible to hold on to
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  and to aspire to. How do we actually define or how did you really define impact players? What was
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  the research you did? How did you come to the conclusion? What are the traits the habits that they
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  have? Okay, well, you had me at research and I'll leave nerd out for just nerd as much as you
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  want, nerd as much as you want. And because I think the way that my team and I did this research
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  is important is what we did is, you know, I never in my research got decide like who's a
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  multiplier who's a diminisher or who's an impact player or not. I asked the people who know
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  and then this case are managers. So we went out to nine organizations, all top employers and we
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  interviewed 170 managers inside of those companies and we asked them to identify two types of
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  contributors. One was someone who was smart, capable, hard working and who was doing fine.
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  And we, you know, I call them ordinary contributors. They're not low performers by any stretch.
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  They're not even really average. They're, they're solid, rock solid contributors. And we said,
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  you know, identify one of those and then identify someone who was, you know, equally smart,
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  capable, hard working and perhaps no more smart, capable or hard working who's making a huge
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  impact, delivering work of extraordinary or inordinate kind of value compared to the team. Those
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  are the impact players and then we compared how they think, what they do, the results they have,
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  what they don't do and kind of built this behavior profile and here's what we found. We found,
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  I guess maybe for starters, the impact players, the value that they contribute was quantified by
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  these managers as three and a half times greater than the rock solid contributors.
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  Here's what we learned. And maybe I can express it best by first describing how the managers
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  described the rock solid contributors because they said things like these were people who were,
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  you know, smart, they're capable. They did their job. They did their job well. They, they followed
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  direction. They were focused. They took responsibility. They carried their weight on teams.
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  And as I'm looking at that profile of the 170 ordinary contributors, I'm like, wow, that
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  seems pretty good. That, that seems like desirable. What you would want to hire, maybe the ideal team
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  player. And here's what I began to see as I looked at the contrast to these impact players,
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  is that these ordinary contributors were absolutely stellar employees stellar talent,
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  but they were stellar in ordinary times. And here's the difference when things started to get
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  ambiguous, chaotic, uncertain, messy. The impact players worked in very, very different ways,
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  like where other people would hold back around messy, walk away from messy, leave messy,
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  to the higher ups. This is where the impact players stepped in. It was like their playground
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  and their proving ground in some ways. And there were five of these situations that the impact
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  players handled differently. The first is how they deal with messy problems, where the ordinary
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  contributor does their job, like they do their part. The impact players doing the job that needs
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  to be done. They're like, well, that's not my job. But like, you know, there's like cleanup
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  on aisle 12, like let me go there or who there's this new opportunity, I'm going to go work where
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  there's heat. The second is how they deal with unclear roles, where the ordinary contributors,
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  when roles were unclear, and we find ourselves in these situations all the time,
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  they would wait for direction, like wait for somebody to put them in charge, wait for somebody
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  to clarify roles. Like I hear this all the time, we can't move forward on this because we're waiting
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  for role clarification. Well, while others are waiting for role clarification or waiting for somebody
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  to appoint them, like, okay, no, you're going to leave this. The impact players are just stepping
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  into that space. They step up, they take charge, they offer their leadership, but probably the
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  most important idea is they're not, they're not the kind of leaders who always have to be the leaders.
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  They don't always have to be the boss. They step up and they lead, but when they're done,
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  they fall back and they let other people lead. It works a lot like a block of migrating geese,
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  like they take their turn, leading, but they're willing leaders. The third big differentiators,
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  how they deal with unforeseen obstacles, you know, the kinds of things you can't predict,
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  the kinds of things that are out of your control, and they're bigger than you, and when these
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  obstacles drop in our way, the ordinary contributors you see, they take responsibility,
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  but when things get sort of above their pay grade, they escalate up, they hand off to higher ups,
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  which is what so many large organizations kind of teach people to do, and even small organizations,
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  like, oh yeah, yeah, when it gets really bad, like, that's what the senior leaders are for.
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  In these same cases, the impact players, they just hold on to responsibility
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  all the way to the end, and it's not like they go it alone. It's that they stay responsible for
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  something. And so instead of like handing to the senior VP or to the founder, they're like,
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  hey, founder or senior VP, like, I need your help clearing this obstacle, but they don't let go
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  of the ownership of that. They finish, and they're going to push that person to finish it or
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  take care of it, and they're going to follow up when they haven't heard back from that person
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  in a couple of days, right? I know exactly what you're talking about, because I've dealt with people
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  that are not dealt with. That's the wrong word. Work with people, at the luxury of working with
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  people that are like this, and something gets passed up to me, and if I don't action it, right?
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  They're on my ass, like, they're like, they're like, hey, boss, you know what? And it's,
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  and here's the thing that I've learned. So I want to interject in this. We've got two more of
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  these practices. I want to inject one of the things I've learned, studying these impact players,
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  and then also asking managers, like, what is it that people do that you love? And what is it people
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  that, too, on your team that you kind of hate, that you resent, that makes your job hard? And
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  you know, here's the thing I've learned. Bosses don't want to be bossy if like managers hate
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  managing people. And when they find someone who is self-managing, even to the point of slightly
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  annoying, as you said, kind of like, they're on my tail, like, but you know, you know that, you know
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  that you actually value it. And the moment you're like, oh my god, I have a thousand other things
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  to do. But realistically, it's like, thank you for making me, for making me aware of all the things
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  that I really do have to do, and for not letting me sleep on stuff that's so, that's so important.
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  They can need to value those people, because if not, then as a manager, you get overwhelmed with tasks.
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  And you need somebody to hold everybody and somebody to hold them accountable always.
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  Yeah. So these people, like the management job, you know, in its nag version of the management
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  job, like, okay, let me give people work. Let me follow up. Make sure it gets done. You know,
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  check things off. Like, that's a terrible job. Most people don't want that job of professional
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  high paid nag. Like managers want to lead. And here's the thing is like, nobody really wants to
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  be managed anymore. People want a self-direct. And that's essentially what impact players are
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  doing. They're self-managing and self-directing. But it's like, they're working independently of
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  their boss, but they're not working on an independent agenda. So like magic happens when
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  A you understand the agenda of the organization. Hey, what's important? What's hot here?
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  Well, you know, what's valued? And I work on that agenda, but I do it independently.
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  Well, these are dreams. Like, these are people like, yeah, how do I get a whole team of people
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  who can self-direct and self-manage and do it in a way that doesn't like leave broken glass
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  in their way? Well, where's some of the items on that list you mentioned? You just mentioned a list
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  of things that managers like to see. And I think that there was a few items on that list. And I
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  want to actually just put those on the record. Okay, I'm opening up the book. It's in a
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  cult in the index of the book. And there's there's 15 on each. I won't share all 15, but
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  do you want to start with what managers hate or with what managers love? Let's do what they hate
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  first and then we'll finish off on a positive. Sure. So these are, I consider these like
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  credibility killers. Like these are a surefire way to infuriate your leaders and to reduce your
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  credibility and reduce your influence. These are influence killers. Number one, give your boss
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  problems without solutions. And of course, you know, sometimes you have to go to your boss and say,
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  okay, I have a big problem here and I don't know how to fix it. But if that's every conversation,
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  it's a credibility killer. Number two, wait for your boss to tell you what to do. Number three,
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  make your boss chase you down and remind you what to do. Number four, don't worry about the big
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  picture. Just do your piece. Number five, ask your boss about long. Oh, ask your boss about
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  the next promotion or raise number six and long meandering emails and the list continues. But those
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  are kind of, those are relatively annoying. I mean, like sometimes like some of those things,
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  do you have a place in the workplace, but I could see I like non-stop about asking about what to
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  do next and not taking initiative and always asking you about the next raise. Like those are,
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  those are very stressful things to deal with as a boss. And you have again, the thousand other
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  things you're trying to deal with on a day to day. It's a time and place for those conversations.
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  But they're all two standard workplace behavior. And, you know, so much of what
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  organization bureaucracy and culture gets created to incent people, encourage people
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  to work this way or to normal. I guess what I'm seeing is I think a lot of organizations have
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  normalized this behavior either through bureaucracy or through diminishing leaders who are like,
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  oh no, no, no, you know what, you just stay in your box.