How to Build a High Performing Team

About this video

Martell defines leadership as building people: direct reports should visibly grow from working with you. He traces the lesson to mentor Darcy at Syncrude Oil in Fort McMurray, Alberta, who hired him at 21 as a consultant to help deploy enterprise portal software and gave him two weeks to learn project management fundamentals. Martell distils three practices he observed. First, make the problem the person’s own solution — Darcy would ask questions at a whiteboard, sketch imperfectly to prompt correction, hand over the marker, and secure commitment to the timeline and resources the junior proposed, leading through questions and outcomes rather than tasks. Second, have fun: jokes, celebrations and light moments make teams and even vendors/contractors enjoy working with you and keep your problems top of mind. Third, teach problem-solving itself, not just answers — Darcy brought in Kepner-Tregoe training on Root Cause Analysis and invested in formal methodology so the team could isolate variables, run experiments and avoid whack-a-mole fixes. He links this to the law of the lid: your capacity to lead grows as you develop yourself.

Key takeaways

• Measure leadership by whether your direct reports are developing and growing from working with you.
• Lead through questions: present the problem, co-draw the solution, and let the person own and commit to their plan.
• Intentionally make work fun to build loyalty and keep collaborators engaged with your problems.
• Teach a formal problem-solving process, such as Root Cause Analysis, rather than only solving the immediate problem.
• Apply the law of the lid — develop yourself to raise your capacity to build more people.

Episode details: published April 25, 2022 · 12:23 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dan Martell’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

← Previous: How to Create Video Ads for Your Business · Next: Grow Your Business Using Virtual Summits →

All Dan Martell videos · Dan Martell profile · Dan Martell (official site)