When They Win, You Win

When They Win, You Win Plot Summary

Introduction

Leading teams effectively is both an art and a science, with enormous consequences for people's lives and company performance. Yet in the global workforce, only about 15% of employees are truly engaged. The disconnect is staggering - managers explain about 70% of employee engagement, yet most have never been taught how to lead properly. Instead of clear guidance, they're bombarded with contradictory advice, leaving them overwhelmed and their teams underserved. This challenge isn't about complex leadership theories or inspirational TED talks. The path to exceptional leadership is surprisingly straightforward: provide your team with three essential elements - Direction, Coaching, and Career development. When managers focus on these core principles, something remarkable happens - teams become both highly engaged and high-performing. It's a simple formula that yields what we might call "happy results" - people doing extraordinary work while being genuinely excited about it. Throughout these pages, you'll discover practical, proven strategies that transform not just how you lead, but the profound impact you can have on your team's success and wellbeing.

Chapter 1: Create a Clear Leadership Vision

Leadership begins with clarity. Before you can guide others effectively, you must first establish what exceptional leadership actually means for your organization. Too often, companies operate with fuzzy expectations around leadership, leaving managers to interpret their roles through guesswork or personal biases. At Qualtrics, where I served as Chief People Officer, we discovered that our highest-performing managers consistently outscored others on twelve specific behaviors. Most notably, they dramatically outperformed on two particular questions: how frequently they solicited feedback from their teams, and how consistently they provided specific praise for good work. These weren't just random behaviors - they were measurable leadership practices directly linked to employee engagement and business results. This insight led us to develop a comprehensive Manager Effectiveness Index, systematically tracking the relationship between leadership behaviors, engagement, and performance. The data revealed a powerful correlation: for every two-point improvement in manager effectiveness, we saw a one-point increase in employee engagement. Even more compelling, a five-point increase in engagement corresponded to approximately thirty points higher quota attainment and five percent better contract renewal rates. Joe's story illustrates this principle perfectly. When he took over a struggling Pittsburgh office for a Fortune 500 company, he found a demoralized team with plummeting sales. Rather than implementing dramatic structural changes, Joe focused on clarifying expectations, engaging in regular coaching, and understanding each team member's career aspirations. Within two years, his approach transformed the office into a top performer across every metric - sales, operations, staffing, retention, and profitability. Creating your leadership vision isn't about vague inspirational quotes or complex theoretical frameworks. It's about defining specific, observable behaviors that measurably drive both engagement and results. Start by documenting the key leadership behaviors you expect, then build systems to measure their impact. Whether you lead five people or five hundred, this clarity forms the foundation upon which all other leadership activities rest. A clear leadership vision serves as an invisible guide, providing direction even in your absence. It aligns expectations, focuses energy, and creates the accountability necessary for consistent performance. Most importantly, it shifts leadership from a personality-based art to a behaviors-based practice that anyone can learn and improve upon.

Chapter 2: Set Direction Through Purpose and Vision

Direction setting represents the first pillar of effective leadership. It's not merely about telling people what to do; it's about creating a shared understanding of why the work matters and where it's heading. When teams lack this clarity, even the most talented individuals struggle to align their efforts or find meaning in their contributions. Consider Daniela's experience leading a service group at a major credit card company. Her team suffered from both poor metrics (an exceedingly high cost per contact) and dismal employee satisfaction (55%, thirty points below company average). Rather than immediately imposing her solutions, Daniela organized listening sessions to understand the problems from her team's perspective. Through this process, she uncovered four critical issues: inadequate technology tools, inconsistent rewards, unclear performance expectations, and limited transparency around career progression. By appointing working groups to address each area and implementing their solutions, within one year her division slashed costs by two-thirds and raised employee satisfaction to 85%. Direction setting operates at four distinct levels, creating a parent-child relationship between long-term aspirations and daily actions. At the foundation lies purpose - why your team exists. Above that sits vision - the clear, compelling future state you're working toward. These long-term elements provide context for quarterly objectives and key results (OKRs), which in turn inform daily and weekly priorities. Each level cascades naturally to the next, creating alignment throughout the organization. Charlie Besecker, Chief Revenue Officer at Route, offers a practical four-step approach to setting clear expectations: first, make sure you know what you expect; second, ensure your people know what you expect; third, establish how to measure it; and finally, manage to those expectations. This deceptively simple framework prevents the common scenario where managers themselves aren't clear on expectations yet feel frustrated when teams fail to meet them. The most effective direction setting is collaborative rather than dictatorial. At Qualtrics, CEO Ryan Smith would gather his global leadership team annually to develop the company's "Big Bets" - North Star goals for the year. While executive staff prepared initial recommendations, the final direction emerged through intense debate and refinement by representatives from across the organization. This approach ensures both higher-quality direction and stronger buy-in from those responsible for execution. Remember Sebastian Junger's insight: "Humans don't mind hardship; in fact, they thrive on it. What they mind is not feeling necessary." Direction setting, when done well, helps people understand exactly how their work contributes to something meaningful. It transforms daily tasks from isolated activities into essential steps toward a compelling future.

Chapter 3: Deliver Impactful Coaching

Coaching represents the most powerful, accessible, and cost-effective tool managers have to enable team success. Great coaching isn't about having all the answers - it's about helping others discover their own path to excellence through a consistent practice of both praise and constructive feedback. The story of my Little League Phillies team illustrates this principle beautifully. Before coaching, I attended a Positive Coaching Alliance seminar that forever changed my approach. They recommended a five-to-one praise-to-criticism ratio, emphasizing that children do far more right than wrong, and need clear signals about what behaviors to continue. Taking this to heart, I created "the Book" - a notebook where I documented specific positive behaviors I observed during practice. Players would eagerly ask, "Coach Russ, can we do some Book?!" as they craved the specific recognition of their efforts and improvements. One player, James, even began pressuring his parents to arrive earlier for practice so he wouldn't miss the chance to be recognized for timeliness. This simple practice drove behavior more effectively than anything I'd seen in twenty-eight years of managing people. Effective coaching comes in two distinct forms: continue coaching (praise) and improve coaching (constructive feedback). While most managers focus heavily on improvement opportunities, they undervalue the tremendous power of well-delivered praise. At Qualtrics, our highest-performing managers dramatically outscored others on the question: "How consistently does your manager provide you with specific praise for good work?" This wasn't accidental - these managers understood that people primarily succeed through amplifying their strengths. When delivering constructive feedback, understanding brain physiology becomes crucial. The limbic system (our emotional brain) and prefrontal cortex (our logical brain) don't work simultaneously. When we perceive a threat - including criticism - our limbic system floods with chemicals that actively inhibit rational thinking. This explains why defensiveness is our natural first reaction to feedback. The solution isn't to avoid tough conversations, but to structure them effectively using frameworks like SBI (Situation-Behavior-Impact) or SWI (Situation-Work-Impact). Coaching must be timely to be effective. Imagine a gymnastics coach waiting six months to tell an athlete about a technical error observed during practice. The absurdity is obvious, yet in business, we routinely delay feedback until formal reviews. Coach in the moment, with specificity about observable behaviors or work products, while maintaining a clear focus on helping the person succeed. Perhaps most importantly, create an environment where feedback flows in all directions. Dick Costolo, former Twitter CEO, deliberately scheduled "walk-around time" specifically to gather unfiltered perspectives from across the organization. When I once corrected his understanding of a business metric, he made it clear that honest feedback was expected and valued, never punished. This stance created a culture where truth-seeking trumped ego protection, enabling faster learning and better decisions.

Chapter 4: Guide Your Team's Career Development

Career development represents the most overlooked yet profoundly impactful element of effective leadership. When managers invest in understanding and supporting their team members' long-term aspirations, something remarkable happens - employee engagement soars, retention improves, and performance accelerates. This approach is captured in the Career Conversations model, a structured three-part process that transforms how managers support their people's growth. When Heather Carpenter at Qualtrics wanted to quantify its impact, the data revealed something remarkable: managers who completed full Career Action Plans with their reports scored 19 percentage points higher on overall effectiveness, and a stunning 23 points higher specifically on supporting growth and development. Most tellingly, 74% of employees who experienced these conversations found them genuinely helpful, and rated their managers 36 points higher in effectiveness and 48 points higher in supporting development. Antonio's experience exemplifies this impact. After implementing Career Conversations with his team, he wrote: "We spoke on the phone for thirty minutes about career conversations, and I'm still deeply grateful for your generosity and the bond that those conversations created between my team and me." Similarly, Adam, a manager I'd worked with a decade earlier, shared that he'd been using the framework for ten years and was now teaching it to all thousand managers across his company. The model begins with the Life Story Conversation, where managers seek to understand what truly motivates each person by exploring their past decisions and transitions. One participant, Stella, revealed during this conversation that she'd switched from cheerleading to swimming in high school. When asked why, she paused and said, "I don't know. I never really thought about that." After reflection, she realized that what drove her was seeing tangible outcomes from her hard work - a pattern that had shaped her entire career without her conscious awareness. The second conversation focuses on dreams, helping people articulate their long-term career vision. Larry, a talented manager struggling with career direction, revealed his dream of becoming a CEO. Through careful questioning about what specifically appealed to him about that role, what industry he preferred, and what size company he envisioned, we refined his vision to "CEO of a midsize consumer tech company, possibly focused on video." This clarity transformed his perspective from frustration to focused determination. Finally, the Career Action Plan connects this long-term vision to present-day actions. Using a four-part framework - making changes to current role, developing skills formally, identifying the next job, and activating networks - managers help employees take concrete steps toward their dreams. Most importantly, this approach shifts career development from an exclusive focus on promotions to meaningful growth aligned with personal aspirations.

Chapter 5: Implement the Big 3 Leadership Strategy

Implementing the Big 3 leadership strategy requires more than intellectual understanding - it demands consistent practice, organizational support, and systematic measurement. The transformation begins with both individual manager commitment and organizational systems designed to reinforce these leadership behaviors. At Qualtrics, we codified this approach in the CARES model, developed by colleagues Will Adams and Dave Dequeljoe. Managers whose teams demonstrated highest engagement and performance systematically: Create a Culture of Candor, Actively Prioritize, Respond to Ideas and Concerns, Establish Explicit Expectations, and Support Growth and Development. This simple acronym made the leadership standard easily remembered and applied across the organization. For individual managers, implementation often starts with small but significant changes. Larry's story illustrates this perfectly. After clarifying his vision to become "CEO of a midsize consumer tech company focused on video," we mapped out the key competencies he'd need to develop. By evaluating his current capabilities in areas like product management, strategy, operations and sales, we identified his two most critical development areas. For operations, we expanded his current role to include more global responsibilities. For product management, we connected him with a senior leader in that field who became a mentor. Over the next several years, Larry successfully transitioned into product management at YouTube, steadily moving closer to his dream role. For organizations, implementation requires a comprehensive STAC approach: Select, Teach, Assess, and Coach. First, companies must select managers based on disposition and skills aligned with the leadership standard, not just technical expertise or tenure. Second, they must formally teach these expectations, ensuring every manager understands what behaviors are required. Third, organizations must assess managers against this standard, primarily through their employees' experience. Finally, they must provide ongoing coaching to help managers close gaps between knowledge and application. The journey isn't always smooth. When we implemented Manager Effectiveness measurement at Qualtrics, we discovered one leader with particularly low scores. Rather than using this punitively, we partnered with his senior executive to understand context. The issue was primarily span of control - he was managing a complex region without adequate support structure. With this insight, we developed a six-month improvement plan focused on organizational design while providing coaching on immediate leadership practices. Another manager, Sylvie, initially responded defensively to her low scores. By approaching her with partnership rather than punishment, we helped her identify specific improvements. Her turnaround was remarkable - within one quarter, she transformed from one of the lowest-scoring managers to one of the highest, and her team became recognized as a high-performing unit deployed on critical challenges. What makes this approach powerful is its simplicity and measurability. By focusing on just three key elements - Direction, Coaching, and Career - managers create an environment where people understand what's expected, receive the support they need to succeed, and feel invested in as whole human beings with aspirations beyond their current role.

Summary

The fundamental premise throughout these pages is deceptively simple yet profoundly powerful: managers hold the keys to both employee engagement and business results. When they provide clear Direction, consistent Coaching, and meaningful Career development, teams naturally become both highly engaged and high-performing. This isn't just theoretical - it's backed by data showing measurable connections between specific leadership behaviors and concrete outcomes like quota attainment, employee retention, and customer renewals. As Dick Costolo wisely noted, "The platform is burning, but for too many, the fire is invisible." With global employee engagement hovering around 15%, we face a massive opportunity to transform work for billions of people while simultaneously driving better business results. The solution isn't complex leadership theories or inspirational speeches - it's consistent application of fundamental leadership practices that genuinely enable people's success. As the book concludes, "When they win—and only when they win—you win." Your journey starts with a simple action: choose one element of the Big 3 to implement immediately. Perhaps begin with the Life Story Conversation to deepen your understanding of what drives your team members. Or establish a fifteen-minute daily standup to clarify priorities. Or commit to the five-to-one praise-to-criticism ratio that transforms team cultures. Whatever you choose, remember that leadership isn't about your own brilliance or charisma - it's about creating an environment where others can do extraordinary work and be genuinely excited while doing it.

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Russ Laraway

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