Building High Performing Teams
A Conversation with Clarence Otis
CEO
Darden Restaurants
Key Takeaways for Leaders
- When building teams, cast a wide net to get the best talent and then leverage their diversity of viewpoints.
- Your job as leader of a team is to help establish the direction and reinforce how the team will work together, what each individual role is and how each individual contribution will affect if the teams wins or loses.
- Leaders need to continually stay in touch with all members of the team using both formal (e.g. - engagement survey) and informal (e.g. - walking around) ways. It is also important to ask questions of all team members to ensure you get diversity of thinking.
- Good leaders know they don’t have all the answers. They will count on their teams to provide diverse perspectives and ensure they are aware of their own personal biases so they can really listen to what their team members have to say.
Interview Recap
Q: Why is diversity, especially gender diversity, important to building high performing teams?
C. Otis: Building any high performing team is all about getting the most talented people available. To do so, you need to cast a wide net. The reason the U.S. has the most successful global economy is in part due to the fact that we maximize diversity, especially gender diversity, better than many other countries.
Q: How does diversity help create effective teams?
C. Otis: Diverse teams will see opportunities and challenges from a wide range of perspectives. They will develop better plans to respond and successfully execute those plans. In addition, they provide more opportunity for individual growth by everyone understanding how others view the world.
Q: How did your upbringing and early career play a role in developing you as a leader?
C. Otis: Growing up in Watts, I knew I didn’t have a lot but socially I was privileged. All my siblings were high academic achievers because my parents had a high value for it. They wanted to make their future and our future more successful. My mother had a very clear vision of the future…she was an upper middle class person living in a working poor neighborhood. She became a community leader and encouraged us to develop relationships with those in the community who could help elevate us and grow our experiences.
I also worked early on in my career for leaders that wanted me to develop and do my best. I really appreciated one boss who sat down and truly helped me develop my work product. I also realized early on that in the workplace there are “sponsors”. These are people you may not work directly with or directly for but that you can impress along the way. In fact, I got a job offer from someone who had noticed me at another company but who I did not have any true direct contact with.
Q: What is your leadership style?
C. Otis: My job as a leader is to help establish the direction and reinforce how we will work together. Everyone needs to know their role and how they will affect if we win or lose. Also, as a leader, I provide the collective assessment of reality and resources and then based upon that help the team to think through the options to win.
Q: How do you stay connected to the less senior people on the team?
C. Otis: I use informal ways like just walking around and engaging with people at every level or going out and doing restaurant visits. This helps me engage with people in a very personal way. I also use more formal ways like listening tools (engagement surveys, focus groups, etc.). The most important thing is to ask a lot of questions and really listen to the diversity of perspectives.
Q: What advice do you have for leaders to take their teams from good to great?
C. Otis: It all starts with a clear-eyed assessment. Engage your team to help answer the following questions:
- What made us good?
- What things should we maintain or enhance?
- Which things should we move away from?
- What has limited us from being even better?
- Which of those shortcomings have to be addressed and which should we just let go and leave in the past?
You need to gather a collective sense of the reality. Be sure and listen to individual viewpoints and make sure you see the diversity in perspectives.
Q: What do you take from other experiences (being on a board of directors, working with non-profits, etc.) to build successful teams?
C. Otis: I have seen that the critical success factors to a successful team are ones that have leaders with a shared vision and a shared understanding of reality. Diversity is important to ensure you have diverse perspectives on the present and the future. Getting a glimpse into other companies provides you with a perspective on what are common things across all companies, regardless of industry.
Q: What is the most important lesson in team building?
C. Otis: No one has all the answers. We all have biases. But good leaders are aware of their own personal biases and how it affects their decision making. Having this knowledge helps them to try and put aside their own biases and really listen to others’ perspectives.