I came across this phenomenal discussion on leadership between Toto Wolff and Vinod Kumar. Some superbly instructive advice on driving high performance teams while maintaining innovation. I took notes on several key sections, see below.

Wolff:

“…being happy and cheering when you win is the easy bit.  There are certain values that you need to respect on the bad days.  And in my opinion, you can look right into the soul of somebody, how he reacts on a bad day, whether he’s capable of understanding what has happened and keeping it in context.”

Kumar:

“I think in leadership or in business, you cannot be emotional.  On the other hand, leadership is all about emotions. And you’re dealing with people, you’re not dealing with cardboard boxes right, and people have hearts and minds and you’ve got to work both of those equally.  I do want to understand people, understand what their personal motivations are…you have senior teams I feel that the only way to keep them motivated in a sustained basis is by actually making sure their personal purpose marries and matches the professional purpose. No amount of money can get that level of engagement and support.”

Wolff:

“…only in an environment of confidence where people are empowered and trust you, you can extract the best performance of them and you can only do that if they feel safe.”

Wolff:

“…what we try to achieve is rather than going into combat mode and therefore closing up, is approaching the other person with respect, being curious about understanding why somebody might have a different view, and then being brutally honest in the conversations you’re having about it.”

Wolff:

“You need to be able to provide a safe environment, and we created a motto within the team in order to discover all our weaknesses, that is “see it, say it, fix it”. We encourage juniors to report upwards and report about problems or areas we can improve.”

Wolff/Kumar:

“You mustn’t blame the person, you blame the problem.”

“That’s really powerful, and if you can do that and have people consistently do it on a day to day basis, that would be such a catalyst for innovation in any business.”

Wolff:

“…you might achieve to extract the best performance from certain individuals by giving them an environment, or setting them a set of targets that is different to yours, that is maybe giving them enough creativity, giving them enough time to come up with solutions rather than being on a constant pursuit of the next objective…”

Wolff/Kumar:

“…you use the terminology of being “in Beta”, what does that mean?”

“Beta means that the work product has not really finished and that you’re still seeking that perfection or seeking that extra edge in order to remain relevant to your customers…most importantly to fulfil every need and to keep looking for – is there a latent need or an unmet need that you can fulfil?  It’s not about making people or ourselves feel bad about what’s being produced, but to say that it can be better, therefore to always be in that mode…so you don’t get complacent”