Today we're heading to a new location for me, at least, Tel Aviv Israel, and meeting up with Team Architect and aidra.ai founder and CEO, Ms. Daria Rudnik. Daria is a fellow systemic team coach, having studied together under the guidance of professors Peter Hawkins and David Clutterbuck. Today, Daria helps ambitious leaders scale their impact by elevating their teams. She does this through team and leadership coaching, organizational consulting, assessment, and her AI assistant.
Through her 15-year career, Daria has helped leaders create high performing work cultures for more than 5000 people, ranging from fast-growing startups to Fortune 500 companies. Here are three examples of results Daria has helped to shape. First, a B2G tech startup established a high-performing distributed sales team across multiple countries and integrated a new CEO, leading to increased sales and a more cohesive team.
Second, a telecom company accomplished a growth multiple of four without expanding its headcount by restructuring organizational processes and bolstering team communication and collaboration. And then finally, a hardware company successfully transitioned to become a market leader in the retail tech space by redesigning its organizational processes and providing leadership coaching for its tech executives.
In our conversation, Daria supports us in addressing the question of what makes a high performance, value-creating remote team and unlocks the power of several tools that she integrates into her own process. Daria and I see a future of team empowerment at the core of successful company strategies.
Through her 15-year career, Daria has helped leaders create high performing work cultures for more than 5000 people, ranging from fast-growing startups to Fortune 500 companies. Here are three examples of results Daria has helped to shape. First, a B2G tech startup established a high-performing distributed sales team across multiple countries and integrated a new CEO, leading to increased sales and a more cohesive team.
Second, a telecom company accomplished a growth multiple of four without expanding its headcount by restructuring organizational processes and bolstering team communication and collaboration. And then finally, a hardware company successfully transitioned to become a market leader in the retail tech space by redesigning its organizational processes and providing leadership coaching for its tech executives.
In our conversation, Daria supports us in addressing the question of what makes a high performance, value-creating remote team and unlocks the power of several tools that she integrates into her own process. Daria and I see a future of team empowerment at the core of successful company strategies.
In this episode, Daria Rudnik, Team Architect and founder of aidra.ai, shares how leaders can build high-performance, value-creating remote teams:
- Scaling impact through teams — why elevating team capability is the fastest way for leaders to grow without burning out.
- What makes remote teams truly high-performing — the role of trust, clear processes, and strong communication.
- Proven transformation results — real-world cases from startups to Fortune 500s, including 4× growth without headcount increases.
- Team empowerment as strategy — why future-ready organizations put empowered, self-sufficient teams at the center of success.
(00:00-00:17) Wayne Brown
My own personal feeling is when we talk about coaching in particular, I see team coaching as the future of the coaching world. And we'll touch on AI, I'm sure, as part of our conversation. But coaching is not...
(00:17-00:32) Daria Rudnik
excluded to the AI introduction. You have a great idea. You start a startup. But what do you need next? Next, you need someone who will actually take your ideas, those crazy unframed ideas,
(00:32-00:58) Daria Rudnik
And create a plan, a strategy, how you can implement them. Create a vision. Yeah, there are teams that you need to have on the team. And game changing can actually help you find those people on the team. Because if you need some resource investigator, that's most probably a playmaker energy, isn't there? Logical optimist. I do believe AI can really make a change, a positive change in the way we work.
(01:04-01:30) Wayne Brown
Welcome team to this week's podcast. We're going to be discussing a really fascinating topic and it's fairly commonplace across the world. Now we're talking about remote teams and the reality that these teams present both, I want to say unique opportunities as well as challenges, particularly for leaders who are probably striving for that high performance value creation.
(01:30-01:59) Wayne Brown
in their teams. So we'll be exploring the power of systemic team coaching as one of the crucial approaches for developing a cohesive, agile, let's say innovative remote team, and how focusing on integrated strategies that elevate team dynamics, as well as collaboration, accountability, and all the other good things, allows the leader to unlock their remote teams for potential.
(02:00-02:16) Wayne Brown
I know it's a lot, but we're fortunate today to have a colleague of mine, actually, a systemic coaching or systemic team coaching colleague here to help us unpack the topic as well. We're going to understand some of the tools and techniques
(02:17-02:44) Wayne Brown
that she's introduced and is using as part of her practice. So with all of that said, let's welcome Miss Daria Rodnik as our guest today, as we delve into some of the methodologies and insights for driving exceptional remote team success. So Daria, welcome to the ET project. Thanks, thanks Wayne. It's great to be here and sharing my passion.
(02:44-03:13) Wayne Brown
Yeah, I apologize that we delayed this recording last week. We had a little family emergency we had to deal with ahead of our recording, so we pushed it back a week. So thank you for making yourself available. As we always do, I wonder if you wouldn't mind just kicking off with a little bit of background and what led you into the field that you're in now? Yeah, well...
(03:14-03:39) Daria Rudnik
My background is in HR, digital development. I was chief people officer for mostly tech and telecom companies. And through my work, I was dealing with mergers and acquisitions, setting up offices in other countries, cultural transformations. And I've noticed one thing that things that unites like all of those transformational projects, when companies grow, when companies go through crisis,
(03:40-04:01) Daria Rudnik
When they have strong teams or those parts of organizations that have strong teams, they keep these employees through their challenging times. They produce greater results and they feel better. Whenever we have a strong team, whether it's an executive team or product team or project team or functional team,
(04:01-04:22) Daria Rudnik
Those parts of organizations are always feeling better, performing better. Since that, I want to create more great teams because I truly believe that teamwork actually makes us better humans, better people. Very nice.
(04:23-04:53) Wayne Brown
My own personal feeling is when we talk about coaching in particular, I see team coaching as the future of the coaching world. And we'll touch on AI, I'm sure, as part of our conversation. But coaching is not excluded to the AI introduction. And I think there will be some point in time where AI sort of moves into the one-on-one coaching, as it already is, but to a larger extent.
(04:53-05:21) Wayne Brown
I think team coaching could be a way off though. It seems to the nature of team coaching is a little bit more intricate and difficult to deal with. And I think it's a little way away before AI could possibly take that on. So let's cross that discussion when we get to it later. But so if I'm correct in understanding, you've been in the industry recently
(05:21-05:51) Wayne Brown
or doing what you're doing for around 15 years, I can imagine you've seen a lot of changes, particularly within leadership and in the way that teams operate today. And your focus, if I'm correct, is primarily in tech and finance sectors. So is there anything that jumps out when you think back over that period that really...
(05:51-06:07) Daria Rudnik
stands out as a significant change or shift in this time? What I see as a significant shift is that people became mindful about how they want to feel at work. Right.
(06:08-06:33) Daria Rudnik
More and more, I hear people saying, I want to do something meaningful. I want to understand how my work creates meaning for the organization. I want to work for the organization that is ethical. I want to make something good in life, not just making money, not just building the career, not just working. I remember the early days of my career, let's just work. We can do that. That was kind of...
(06:33-07:02) Wayne Brown
uh part of competition part of ambition part of just drive of doing things but more and more i hear people saying not just work but meaningful work right yeah yeah i i would concur with that i think there is that that real uh mindset shift and personal aspiration shift to doing more meaningful things to that extent um i see that you're a member of the forbes council and and
(07:02-07:29) Wayne Brown
I read a number of your articles that you write. What inspired you to get involved with the council and how does that help with the work you're doing? There's so many things I want to share. And I'm trying to do that through my LinkedIn profile, like through some videos, through the book I'm writing, but...
(07:30-07:52) Daria Rudnik
I want to kind of structure. I'm a person of structure. I love structure. I want to structure my thoughts. Here is what I think about meetings. Here is what I think about psychological safety. Here is what I think about teams and different aspects of teamwork. Writing those articles every month actually helps me understand
(07:52-08:21) Daria Rudnik
discipline myself in putting my thoughts into a written format so that I can easily share it with my clients, with people who want to read about it. And getting more clarity. When I write, I have more clarity about how do I articulate that? How do I really think about it? How do I really feel about that? So that was the main reason. Yeah. And some of the articles are great, by the way. So well done on that. I personally find also that
(08:22-08:49) Wayne Brown
when I write about situations, I do a lot of case study reflection, as I see in some of your work. And that reflection really helps to galvanize my learning. And then putting it down on paper and in print really crystallizes that takeaway for me, right, which then helps the clients. So, yeah.
(08:49-09:09) Wayne Brown
You mentioned LinkedIn. I see that you have a very nice recognition from LinkedIn, your top leadership development voice on LinkedIn, so congratulations. How did that come about? How much effort did that take to receive that recognition?
(09:12-09:38) Daria Rudnik
Well, that recognition is, to be honest, pretty easy. And I think they discontinued that. But I think LinkedIn is a great platform for me. It's a great platform for collaboration. I know many people use it for different ways. And I tried different. I mean, I did try different things on LinkedIn. But now I've come to the conclusion that that's a place where I can meet interesting people.
(09:38-10:08) Daria Rudnik
get connected on like conversations, online conversations, virtual meetings, like have some meaningful connections through LinkedIn, because these are the people who, who want this connection. I mean, there's no, you are on LinkedIn because you want to be connected to other people. So you kind of have this mutual motivation helps to connect and yeah. Yeah. No, very good. Very good. Well, let's jump into systemic coaching for a moment because
(10:09-10:38) Wayne Brown
A lot of people listening will have no idea what I'm referring to as systemic team coaching. And maybe we can set it up by saying a similar word as systems thinking or when you talk about the whole systems approach, systemic is a similar concept to that. How did you first come to be interested in systemic coaching and what's your exposure or experience so far?
(10:39-11:05) Daria Rudnik
in this field a great question um i didn't have no idea i was systemic team coaching and when i joined in the course i i joined the course for team coaching which is something that i was really interested in like like you said like i'm leadership coaching and coaching is a good great amazing thing but the future is with team coaching when we create strong teams that drive organizational growth
(11:05-11:32) Daria Rudnik
So I joined this course on team coaching, which was led by two amazing team coaches, Peter Hawkins and David Clutterberg. And they both are great. They have slightly different approach. Systemic team coaching resonated the most with me because it kind of broadens the perspective. It makes you think outside of what you have right now. And that's what I see when I coach leaders.
(11:32-11:57) Daria Rudnik
They talk about their challenges and they talk about like things they need to accomplish and their goals. But what I see is a broader organizational context that they cannot influence or maybe cannot influence yet. And by working on the systemic level with stakeholders, multiple stakeholders and multiple levels of stakeholders, we can actually create a big impact. We're not only thinking about my employees,
(11:57-12:27) Daria Rudnik
But I'm thinking about my managers and the managers of my managers and even our clients. Even if we are far away from clients, we need to think about them and create this connection. And it works both with leadership coaching and obviously team coaching as well. Yeah. It was my first introduction to this whole concept as well. I don't know if I'm a good student or a quick study, but I
(12:28-12:50) Wayne Brown
I can't stop using the whole concept now. So our consulting practice is entirely built around, we start with looking at the holistic picture, the whole ecosystem, and we sort of zoom out before we then zoom back in. So I'm,
(12:50-13:18) Wayne Brown
I'm a disciple now of systemic team coaching. And I, I really believe it is a, it's a great practice. And as you say, Peter Hawkins, David Clutterbuck, two fantastic mentors to have take us through this program. I went the same path as you and did the systemic coaching with, with Peter. But, you know, in the early stages with David as well. And,
(13:18-13:40) Wayne Brown
David's been on the show, by the way. So, you know, he's shared some of his wisdom. So, yeah, look, really fantastic. One day we'll have the opportunity and we'll do a co-coaching together, I'm sure. Have you done much practice with co-coaching under this systemic approach?
(13:41-14:08) Daria Rudnik
Well, whenever I can, I do try to coach with a co-coach, with a partner coach. And like, as you know, and it's a great thing to do to work with a coach because, I mean, they can see things that like you don't see alone because it's a group and there's certain dynamics happens in the groups. When you focus on one thing, the co-coach and partner can focus on other things. And it's also a great example of teamwork. Like we joining together a team, showing an example of teamwork.
(14:08-14:37) Wayne Brown
of listening and collaboration, which sets the, be like a role model for the team, how to be a great team. Yeah. I think it's one of the, for me in my practice, I think it's one of the greatest findings I've had in the last few years when somebody else is there. It's like that catch-all, right? So you're focused on doing what you have to do as a coach, but having somebody else present as well
(14:38-15:08) Wayne Brown
really takes some of the pressure off you to be better at doing what you're doing I find so yeah very similar impression let's speak a little bit directly now to the whole concept of working remotely we'll nudge our way into this topic but so not only focusing on the team aspect but the whole remote concept which of course is commonplace now but
(15:08-15:34) Wayne Brown
You have an article or a caption on one of your sites, which I love, and it's an article or almost like an image showing the CEO from Goldman Sachs and the statement that he ordered his entire workforce back to the office and only 50% turned up. And I think that is just so true to what I'm hearing. I'm wondering...
(15:35-15:48) Wayne Brown
From your perspective, is that still the general response you're seeing from people that you're engaging with in business, that there's a real reluctance to return to the way it was prior to COVID?
(15:52-16:12) Daria Rudnik
I mean, I'd say it's different. Well, obviously, depending on the market, people might not want to go back to their office, but if the market is tough, they will. Some people say, I want to go to the office. Or I want to be in the office two or three days a week, but I want to be able to work from home two or three days a week.
(16:12-16:37) Daria Rudnik
And for me, it's not about remote. It's about being flexible and being able to choose when you work and how you work. Because the most important thing is how you deliver value, how you create this impact for the organization, for the team. And once you, I mean, if you can do it remotely, do it remotely. If you want to go to the office, go to the office. But making people...
(16:37-17:06) Daria Rudnik
forcing people commute, forcing people, sacrifice the flexibility. I mean, it might work for some period of time when the market is tough, but no, when there are other options, people will choose other options. It's almost like they've opened Pandora's box or they've taken the lid off the genie bottle and it's hard now to get everyone back to the way it was and
(17:07-17:36) Wayne Brown
Yeah, I can see both sides and the value of being in the office sometimes, but I can also understand, you know, what it's like to have that, let's say, freedom to be more relaxed and work in an environment that you feel more comfortable in. So, yeah, it's still an interesting observation point from looking from afar to see where it will end up, I think. We'll see it all soon.
(17:36-18:06) Wayne Brown
Yeah. Let's go a step deeper then and start to look at some of the unique challenges perhaps as well as the opportunities when it now comes to those virtual or remote teams. And I know this is what you do a lot of your work around. Let's start with some of the perhaps more common issues that you're coming across in helping organisations
(18:07-18:37) Daria Rudnik
deal with remote or virtual teams? I think it's no surprise that the most common challenge is communication. Communication and relationship building. Things like, I feel like I'm isolated. I don't feel my team members. I don't know what they're doing. Lots of things that speak that people don't have that feeling of connection that they used to have in the office.
(18:37-18:52) Daria Rudnik
The reason is that it's not the remote team is not working. It's not that you cannot have those connections. It means that you need to reactively build those connections in a bit different way than you would be doing that in the office.
(18:53-19:20) Daria Rudnik
It's the whole new way of thinking about work dynamics and workplace when it's remote or hybrid rather than when it's offsite. And all those practices that we used to have in the office and just taking them, moving them into Zoom, it's not going to work. I mean, the whole work process needs to be reshaped with asynchronous communication. Yeah.
(19:20-19:49) Daria Rudnik
specific meetings and all these parts of the meeting for social connection, like proactively, consistently building those social connections with team members, connecting people with each other, not just manage a team member, so that manager is not a bottleneck for the team operations, they communicate with each other. So this kind of thing, it's all about like how we structure communication and how we structure work processes in remote settings.
(19:50-20:19) Wayne Brown
I can hear some undertones within what you're saying there, and one of them was trust. I think for many leaders, it's still difficult to not have somebody in an office in an environment where I can walk down the corridor and I can see the person. Are they working? Are they looking at their computer? Are they doing something they shouldn't be? And now all of a sudden, I don't have that access to them constantly.
(20:20-20:50) Wayne Brown
And being able to let go of that, I think, initially was very, very hard for many leaders. You've developed a number of great tools, let's say, that can aid leaders in addressing many of the issues that they're facing. And I'd like to dive into a few of them, but just to name a couple that I came across. You have a 90-day program, and in that program,
(20:50-21:19) Wayne Brown
you have this CLIC, which is an acronym, five-letter acronym framework that really provides an opportunity for teams to function much more effectively. So I'd like to go into that. But you also developed a thing that I saw called the virtual team canvas. So, you know, leveraging the marketing canvas concept, et cetera,
(21:20-21:45) Wayne Brown
And they work together, of course. It's the same thing, but in different formats. And then you also use a thing called the Game Changer Index. So maybe we can look at each one of those in turn. But if we start with the Qlik framework, if you don't mind, could you provide somewhat of an overview of what it is and how you use it? Yeah, thanks.
(21:47-22:13) Daria Rudnik
CLIC is actually, I mean, it's something that helps leaders remember about the main pillars of great teams. And CLIC stands for clarity of goals, linking relationships, integrated ways of working together, collaborative decision making, knowledge sharing and feedback. And when teams have all of that, they'll form a high performing team.
(22:13-22:32) Daria Rudnik
Well, clarity of goals is pretty clear. We all know how important the purpose is, mission and understanding why the team exists because a team is defined by its purpose, not by the members. But when there is no purpose, there is no shared purpose, there is no team. So the first thing is this clarity of goals.
(22:32-22:49) Daria Rudnik
And then linking relationship is something connected with the systemic perspective that we talked about before, because it's linking relationship within the team, but also relationship with the stakeholders and their stakeholders and how team is connected to the stakeholders, not just through the manager.
(22:49-23:13) Daria Rudnik
or team leader, but they all can reach out to their respective stakeholders and have these communications individually. And they all understand their stakeholders and build relationships with them. The next one is integrated ways of working together is when team agree on team norms, how they communicate, how they work together, like how they handle their meetings, how they onboard new hires.
(23:15-23:39) Daria Rudnik
Somehow teams don't do that, but once you agree on how you want to work together, it becomes so much easier. Like this example where a team leader suddenly realized that one of the team members just freaks out when he calls on the phone and said, why? I mean, I don't know. I just kind of natural reaction. I have no idea. I just feel that something's wrong and I become nervous.
(23:39-23:54) Daria Rudnik
And so I said, okay, I mean, how can I help that? She said, just text me that you're going to call me on this and this. There's nothing urgent, nothing's broken, and I'll be prepared. And it worked. It's just so easy to talk about how you want to communicate with each other.
(23:55-24:11) Daria Rudnik
And then the other point is collaborative decision-making when teams agree, like how do they make decisions? Is it leader who makes all the decisions and everyone is okay with it? Like what kind of decisions they make together? Where do they need consensus? Where do they need voting?
(24:11-24:40) Daria Rudnik
How do they move forward in their decision-making? And finally, knowledge sharing and feedback, how team collects this feedback from their stakeholders, how they give feedback to each other and how they mutually learn and support each other in team growth. So that's the framework. And I was visualizing Peter Hawkins smiling as you were talking to him because there's a lot of his teaching wrapped up in how you've structured that and
(24:40-24:58) Wayne Brown
Yeah, very, very nice. When you go to apply this, like how does the application of the Qlik framework provide a result of accelerated performance? Like what's the secret behind it?
(25:02-25:22) Daria Rudnik
If a team wants to use it on their own, they have this canvas, which they can go through, fill it in, discuss it as a team, usually through several meetings when they talk about all those things. When I join a team and we start this conversation, we obviously start with discussing their goals and what they want to achieve.
(25:22-25:39) Daria Rudnik
But then we don't necessarily go through each of those areas. We kind of focus, okay, where is the pain and where is the challenge and start with the challenge. And once they have figured out, then they can see this great improvement. Like there was a...
(25:39-25:59) Daria Rudnik
And they can change in different ways. I mean, for example, there was a team, it was a VC fund and they, I mean, they had grown and they started to see those functional silos when like head of marketing is not talking to head of sales, this head of finances, like you figured out, I don't care. Right.
(26:00-26:18) Daria Rudnik
They had this kind of blame, it's not a blame culture, but they started to blame each other for failures. And the founders really wanted to step up, to step out and not like doing any operational work anymore. So that what the team did is they actually decided that they need a CEO.
(26:18-26:48) Daria Rudnik
And they mutually agree that they, okay, we need a CEO, uh, founders have selected a CEO, and then they worked in a different setting. So when team decides what to do next, they, I mean, they accept the changes and then they can grow together. Yeah. Yeah. Very nice. And I, I particularly liked the last point, which is the knowledge sharing element of this, this model. I think it's an area that many teams
(26:49-27:18) Wayne Brown
They may achieve what they think they need to achieve, but then they disbanded just as quickly as they came together and they missed the opportunity for so much sharing. Now, because of the systemic nature, I'm guessing of your approach, it's not a one-off knowledge sharing. It's a continuum. And so, you know, at frequent points or at different moments during a project or a
(27:18-27:29) Wayne Brown
the team being together, I'm guessing they're sharing their learnings, they're, you know, talking about things that are happening. Is that what you encourage?
(27:31-28:00) Daria Rudnik
And with one team, they went even further. They started sharing with the organization and they became the subject matter experts for the organization because they started sharing this knowledge within the team. They had very different expertise on the team and they started to like discuss and talk about it. And they really enjoyed that. They started to invite people in and then they started doing that for the whole organization and they sharing the project management practices for the whole company.
(28:01-28:30) Wayne Brown
Very nice. Yeah. So anyone listening, I think this is a key tip for all leaders is to make sure that there is this framework in place for you to learn as much as you can from the exercise. I mean, you're always going to go through some degree of pain in working together as a group. It's just human nature. We're unique. We're individual. But if we don't learn from the exercise, then there's so much wastage there.
(28:31-28:57) Wayne Brown
You have another relationship, at least, with this game changer index. And I didn't know anything about it until I was doing some preparation for our conversation. So I wonder if you could also introduce that a little bit for us, please. And just how would I use it myself as a leader, as a team member? What's the application?
(29:00-29:25) Daria Rudnik
I like this tool. I mean, it's ergonometric. It's an assessment where once taking the assessment, you can see the energy for impact in the organization. And it's not a psychometric. So it's not about your personality. You can be extroverted, introverted. You can be a driver within the DISC framework or whatever else. The thing is how you create impact in the organization.
(29:25-29:35) Daria Rudnik
And there are five proclivities of how you can implement the most. I mean, how you can impact the most, which is the game changer. It's the people who...
(29:36-29:55) Daria Rudnik
obsessive with new ideas like doing something different is what really really drives them find something new and okay forget about this let's do something else they're very creative very um uh i wouldn't say in like it's not so much as an innovative but it kind of next step and next step and next step right
(29:55-30:18) Daria Rudnik
But then, and same comes with the startup. You have a great idea, you start a startup. But what do you need next? Next, you need someone who will actually take your ideas, those crazy, unframed ideas, and create a plan, a strategy, how you can implement them. Create a vision. Here is what we want to achieve, and here are the steps how we can get there. So these are the strategies.
(30:20-30:41) Daria Rudnik
And then you need some people who are very action-oriented, who just get things done. And you can hear those people by saying, stop talking. Let's just do stuff already. Let's just stop those conversations. We need to start doing something. So they take this strategy and start implementing it and doing. And then you need polishes. Those are the people who...
(30:41-31:01) Daria Rudnik
obsessed with like, let's do it even better and I can do it even better. And innovation is here. Continuous improvement is here. And sometimes perfectionist is also here, but I mean, these are the people who make it better and even better and ask for feedback from the customers and use it to make the product better.
(31:01-31:27) Daria Rudnik
And there is the fifth one, which is the playmakers. And the playmakers are those who connect people together and they just feel so good when they manage to connect with someone or when they connect game-changing strategist, playmaker and implementer. All those people working together as a team, that's what drives the playmaker. And when you look at your organization, your team or project,
(31:27-31:47) Daria Rudnik
a different path of organization or different stages of the project, you might need different type of energy. Like setting up a transformation. What do you need to start with? Probably you want to start with some, let's think of what we can do. And you invite game changers. Or maybe let's talk to our stakeholders and like find out their needs.
(31:47-32:03) Daria Rudnik
And you invite playmakers. So depending on what your organization is doing and what you want to do next, you need different energy and you can invite different people. And when you look at the team perspective, for example, you have a product team.
(32:03-32:32) Daria Rudnik
And there are a lot of game changers there on the product team. And they constantly think of something, okay, here is this great feature and we can also do this. And I mean, no wonder they do not release on time because they're constantly thinking of some new ideas, but the implementers are not heard. I mean, there are some implementers on the team, but they're just not heard and they do not deliver on time. So as a leader, when you see the dynamics of the team and you see all the different things
(32:32-33:00) Wayne Brown
voices and energies on the team make sure all the voices are heard and when you have too much game changes make sure you implement us are talking and kind of manage this team dynamics and when you do the the questionnaire the assessment um does it highlight more than just your dominant self like does it give you maybe a secondary or another perspective of
(33:00-33:07) Wayne Brown
When I'm not the game changer, I often fall into this role. Does it provide that type of feedback?
(33:08-33:36) Daria Rudnik
So it basically shows your score on each five of those. And there are two main proclivities that actually define most of your decisions and how you create the impact. But you see the score for all of those. And you kind of see where you're low at and where you might need support from your team members. And then think of how you can leverage your strengths to support your low energy areas. Right.
(33:36-34:00) Wayne Brown
So I'm visualizing, I don't know if you ever used the Belbin team model, an old tool from the 80s, but in the Belbin model, they create a matrix for a team. And I'm visualizing there would be something similar for a team that participates in the Game Changer study as well.
(34:02-34:30) Daria Rudnik
Like in the Melbourne, yeah, there are teams that you need to have on the team. And game changer can actually help you find those people on the team because if you need some resource investigator, that's most probably a playmaker energy, isn't it? So you kind of can match the energy to the role. Right, right. Yeah. Fascinating. I'll have to do some more research on it for sure. I'll introduce you to them. I'm sure. Yeah.
(34:31-34:41) Wayne Brown
Do you combine the two? Do you combine the CLIC framework as well as the GCI in your program or in the work that you're doing?
(34:43-35:11) Daria Rudnik
I like to start when it's possible. I like to start with assessment, like leaders assessment, and then we do the team workshop. It kind of opens up the conversation people when people see something visual and they see those different energies and different types of people they have on the team. And that reveals the challenges that they want to overcome. And then we kind of start with this assessment and team workshop, and then move forward with the Qlik framework as a way to build a great team. Very nice.
(35:12-35:39) Wayne Brown
I know it's impossible to give a concrete timeline, but what's your experience in working with teams? Does it normally take six months, 12 months? Is there a standard or an average you've experienced in taking a team that's performing at an average level and creating that high-performing value creation team?
(35:42-36:10) Daria Rudnik
Well, I can't say that there's a check mark. Okay, now you are a high performing value creation team. There's always like opportunities for growth. But usually the work takes like, it's definitely not less than four months because otherwise you just cannot digest the changes and implement something and see some results. In most cases, it's around like six months. Some teams I've been working with for nine months and I don't think I worked with any team for more than nine months.
(36:10-36:38) Wayne Brown
Because I really want them to be able to operate on their own and learn to self-develop as a team. Again, Peter is smiling at you, right? That's our role is to actually work ourselves out of a job and let the organization start to self-manage themselves. What's the future looking like? So if we now look at
(36:39-37:01) Wayne Brown
AI as an example, and the progress with AI, what's the impact you see it having within the coaching arena, within consulting, if you look broader than just the coaching? I'm a technological optimist. I do believe AI can really...
(37:02-37:26) Daria Rudnik
make a change, a positive change in the way we work. And I see the huge benefit of it might be when we can analyze the skills people have, and we can analyze the skills organization needs, and we can match people to skills or develop people like in terms of skills, not in terms of roles. Like you can have any type of role, but I mean,
(37:26-37:51) Daria Rudnik
that requires different types of skills, but maybe you don't need to feed one person into this role, kind of trying to push them. You can feed people into skills and just let them do what they can be good at and not make them do stuff that they don't have energy to do. And AI can actually do that analysis and understanding of matching people to organization, to skills.
(37:51-38:19) Daria Rudnik
And the other thing is learning. I mean, I know a company that does great things about coaching and training with AI when someone works with an AI coach, for example, in presentation skills, doing a presentation, get some feedback from AI, trains, practice again. And then this comes to a human coach or a human facilitator that gives, kind of analyzes AI responses and gives human to human feedback.
(38:19-38:49) Daria Rudnik
And this is a great collaboration. I don't see AI eliminating people's jobs. I mean, some, yes, but mostly it's enhancing and making us more productive and helping us do more meaningful work or achieving results faster. Right. Yeah. We try and marry the two as well. So, you know, it's part of the future. We want to stay modern and offer our clients...
(38:50-39:19) Wayne Brown
the AI, if they have an interest in that, as well as then marry that with the human coaching. And, you know, the feedback we're getting at the moment is that they like that flexibility. They like the opportunity if they need support in that moment, not having to wait for the human coach, but then having the backup of the human coach to come in and, you know, have that interaction is still something that
(39:20-39:49) Wayne Brown
we're finding people enjoy. So I can see it happening the way you suggest that. Hey, one thing just occurred to me, how do we define high performing teams or high performing cultures within an organization? If I come and I start talking to a leader and I say, well, let's look at your team. Let's start to look at how we can make their performance, you know, even better.
(39:50-40:17) Daria Rudnik
How do you frame that for the leader or how does the leader start to frame that? I mean, when I talk to leaders, there are two scenarios. One is I see that something's wrong. I mean, it could be conflict. It could be I have a feeling that something is wrong, but I cannot articulate that. And the other one, I believe we can be better.
(40:17-40:38) Daria Rudnik
Or I want us to be better. Or we have a goal that we need to achieve. I mean, there was a leader who said, I want to be a number one in the region. I want my team to be number one in the region. I have ambitious goals. I believe we can create, like we can do great work. I believe we can serve our customers. Like we provide great service to our customers. I want to be number one.
(40:38-41:05) Daria Rudnik
and we're not there yet how can we be that how we can reach that goal so like being a high performing team is not a goal in itself right what is that you want to create what is the purpose of your team and how you fulfill that purpose and I guess the same could be applied to value creation so how do we then identify that the team is actually at that point of
(41:05-41:34) Wayne Brown
be recognised by the stakeholder as value-creating in the purpose of what they're working as a team for. So it could be the same answer, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What haven't we spoken about so far in this? It's such a huge topic and we've just scratched the surface, I know, but when you think about the work you are doing and some of the situations you've experienced,
(41:35-41:55) Daria Rudnik
Anything that we haven't touched on that you think is relevant or important that we should talk about before we wrap up? I really want to share one thing, and I came to the realization of that quite recently, is that there is a problem of good leaders.
(41:56-42:16) Daria Rudnik
and the problem, the good leaders are facing this problem more often than not so good, bad leaders, is when they're trying to build relationship with their team members and they're having all those one-to-one conversations, they're supporting them, they're asking what they need and they're there for them, which is great and it is amazing.
(42:16-42:42) Daria Rudnik
The problem is when you have, I don't know, five, 10 people on the team and you pay attention to each of those people. And you also have something that your stakeholders expect from you in terms of strategy and innovation and other things. And you have no time for that. And that leads to burnout. And I have seen leaders like, what do I do? I cannot. I mean, I need to support my people, but I cannot do that. And
(42:42-43:04) Daria Rudnik
The answer is, okay, don't support your people, support your team and create connection between those individual team members so that they first reach to each other and get support from each other rather from you. And it's good for them because instead of one person that can support them, they have five, 10 people that can support them, not just you as a leader.
(43:05-43:33) Daria Rudnik
And that's like remote work kind of showed that it's harder for managers to connect team members with each other. And that's what they need to focus on. How do you connect your team members with each other so that they reach to themselves for help and then to you as a leader? Yeah, that's a wonderful observation, actually. And I also imagine, you know, that leader is most likely
(43:33-44:03) Wayne Brown
a team member of a larger team as well or another team. And so the ecosystem continues and the burnout is real. The stress is real. And your point is excellent that you need to create that environment where the team is collaborating and not reliant on that hierarchical structure that we used to have and that we no longer have that opportunity for in many cases, right? So,
(44:04-44:32) Wayne Brown
It's now more of a nucleus or a network that needs to be self-sufficient, not just expecting that one person. So great observation. You just made me realise something else, but I've now forgotten it. So we'll let that go. But, oh, I don't remember what it was, sorry. One of the things that we see a lot is the...
(44:33-44:55) Wayne Brown
global team challenges and largely because of language culture time differences and then you have somebody who's appointed as the leader who may not have that exposure themselves to dealing with a global environment do you come across that very often
(44:58-45:13) Daria Rudnik
I do work with some global teams. And the question they ask is, how do you approach different cultures? And I mean, to be honest, I say, I mean, don't approach different cultures, approach different people.
(45:13-45:42) Daria Rudnik
I mean, within a team, we don't need to be, like, to have deep knowledge about how Asian culture is different from the Western culture. Like, look at the, you have different people with different preferences, different personalities in each region, in each culture, and you have no idea what this person, how this person grew up. So look at the individuals. I mean, it's okay to look at five, 10 individuals and adjust your leadership style to them rather than to the whole culture.
(45:43-46:12) Wayne Brown
I love that. Great, great advice. So, because I know a lot of people ask this question and I love that answer. I think, you know, treat the team as people to start with, get to learn and know the people. It's going to solve a large number of the issues. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not solve every issue, but it'll solve a large number. So, so tell me, what are you, uh,
(46:12-46:38) Daria Rudnik
What are you doing at the moment? Are you working on anything? Got any books in the pipeline perhaps? I decided to write a book in 2020, I think. I tried once, stopped, dropped it. Then I took it on again in 2022, didn't finish it. Now in 2024, I promise you,
(46:39-47:00) Daria Rudnik
that I will finish and publish it next year. Today is a great milestone for me. I finished my first draft. I know there's lots of work to do. There's lots of opportunities for improvement, for kind of wanting to drop it and stop working on it. But I won't. I will keep working on it and I will publish it next year.
(47:01-47:17) Daria Rudnik
And obviously it's a book about teams. Yeah. I was just going to say, are we allowed to know what it's about? So it's about teams. Yeah. It's about how high-performing teams, how great teams can support organizational growth. And it's mostly about...
(47:17-47:47) Daria Rudnik
Examples from my work with companies that rapidly grew from, I know, 200 up to 700, 900 people. And they start seeing changes with like broken communications, functional sailors, like some culture is being changed. Culture is changing and they're not as fast as they used to be. So how great team works can actually support organizational growth and not stop it. Yeah.
(47:48-48:10) Wayne Brown
So I'm going to hold you to that. I'm going to check in and make sure the draft is moving closer to release. We may have to come back together once it's about to release and have another discussion. So I look forward to that. Where can people go and learn more about what you're doing, engage with you?
(48:12-48:42) Daria Rudnik
I think the best place is still LinkedIn. I'm pretty active. I open to conversations, to connections. Obviously, you can check out my website, which is darierutnik.com and you can chat with my AI coach, Aydra. But if you really want to connect, LinkedIn is the best place. Okay. All right. We'll put the links in the notes. Daria, great conversation. We've only scratched the surface as expected, but
(48:43-49:10) Wayne Brown
Hopefully, it's given people a flavor of some of the things that you're doing and some of the possibilities of what team coaching is able to bring to the table. So I think it's really valuable for everybody. Team coaching, creating teams that are higher performing, value creating, for me, is the future. Teams have been around a long, long time.
(49:11-49:40) Wayne Brown
Now, more so than ever, with the remote team environment, being able to bring that effectiveness to the bottom line is something that probably isn't going to happen just by chance. And I think leveraging the work that you're doing and others are doing will certainly make a big impact. So thank you for that. And thank you for being on the ET project.
(49:41-50:09) Wayne Brown
great conversation. Thank you, Ben. It was a great pleasure. I love the questions. I mean, they made me think. Thank you so much. Yeah. I appreciate that. So from one coach to another, thank you for sharing that. So, all right, all the best and we'll keep in touch. So what are you waiting for? Hit the subscribe button below and click on the bell icon so I can pop up in your feed occasionally with a great tip for your ultimate growth.
My own personal feeling is when we talk about coaching in particular, I see team coaching as the future of the coaching world. And we'll touch on AI, I'm sure, as part of our conversation. But coaching is not...
(00:17-00:32) Daria Rudnik
excluded to the AI introduction. You have a great idea. You start a startup. But what do you need next? Next, you need someone who will actually take your ideas, those crazy unframed ideas,
(00:32-00:58) Daria Rudnik
And create a plan, a strategy, how you can implement them. Create a vision. Yeah, there are teams that you need to have on the team. And game changing can actually help you find those people on the team. Because if you need some resource investigator, that's most probably a playmaker energy, isn't there? Logical optimist. I do believe AI can really make a change, a positive change in the way we work.
(01:04-01:30) Wayne Brown
Welcome team to this week's podcast. We're going to be discussing a really fascinating topic and it's fairly commonplace across the world. Now we're talking about remote teams and the reality that these teams present both, I want to say unique opportunities as well as challenges, particularly for leaders who are probably striving for that high performance value creation.
(01:30-01:59) Wayne Brown
in their teams. So we'll be exploring the power of systemic team coaching as one of the crucial approaches for developing a cohesive, agile, let's say innovative remote team, and how focusing on integrated strategies that elevate team dynamics, as well as collaboration, accountability, and all the other good things, allows the leader to unlock their remote teams for potential.
(02:00-02:16) Wayne Brown
I know it's a lot, but we're fortunate today to have a colleague of mine, actually, a systemic coaching or systemic team coaching colleague here to help us unpack the topic as well. We're going to understand some of the tools and techniques
(02:17-02:44) Wayne Brown
that she's introduced and is using as part of her practice. So with all of that said, let's welcome Miss Daria Rodnik as our guest today, as we delve into some of the methodologies and insights for driving exceptional remote team success. So Daria, welcome to the ET project. Thanks, thanks Wayne. It's great to be here and sharing my passion.
(02:44-03:13) Wayne Brown
Yeah, I apologize that we delayed this recording last week. We had a little family emergency we had to deal with ahead of our recording, so we pushed it back a week. So thank you for making yourself available. As we always do, I wonder if you wouldn't mind just kicking off with a little bit of background and what led you into the field that you're in now? Yeah, well...
(03:14-03:39) Daria Rudnik
My background is in HR, digital development. I was chief people officer for mostly tech and telecom companies. And through my work, I was dealing with mergers and acquisitions, setting up offices in other countries, cultural transformations. And I've noticed one thing that things that unites like all of those transformational projects, when companies grow, when companies go through crisis,
(03:40-04:01) Daria Rudnik
When they have strong teams or those parts of organizations that have strong teams, they keep these employees through their challenging times. They produce greater results and they feel better. Whenever we have a strong team, whether it's an executive team or product team or project team or functional team,
(04:01-04:22) Daria Rudnik
Those parts of organizations are always feeling better, performing better. Since that, I want to create more great teams because I truly believe that teamwork actually makes us better humans, better people. Very nice.
(04:23-04:53) Wayne Brown
My own personal feeling is when we talk about coaching in particular, I see team coaching as the future of the coaching world. And we'll touch on AI, I'm sure, as part of our conversation. But coaching is not excluded to the AI introduction. And I think there will be some point in time where AI sort of moves into the one-on-one coaching, as it already is, but to a larger extent.
(04:53-05:21) Wayne Brown
I think team coaching could be a way off though. It seems to the nature of team coaching is a little bit more intricate and difficult to deal with. And I think it's a little way away before AI could possibly take that on. So let's cross that discussion when we get to it later. But so if I'm correct in understanding, you've been in the industry recently
(05:21-05:51) Wayne Brown
or doing what you're doing for around 15 years, I can imagine you've seen a lot of changes, particularly within leadership and in the way that teams operate today. And your focus, if I'm correct, is primarily in tech and finance sectors. So is there anything that jumps out when you think back over that period that really...
(05:51-06:07) Daria Rudnik
stands out as a significant change or shift in this time? What I see as a significant shift is that people became mindful about how they want to feel at work. Right.
(06:08-06:33) Daria Rudnik
More and more, I hear people saying, I want to do something meaningful. I want to understand how my work creates meaning for the organization. I want to work for the organization that is ethical. I want to make something good in life, not just making money, not just building the career, not just working. I remember the early days of my career, let's just work. We can do that. That was kind of...
(06:33-07:02) Wayne Brown
uh part of competition part of ambition part of just drive of doing things but more and more i hear people saying not just work but meaningful work right yeah yeah i i would concur with that i think there is that that real uh mindset shift and personal aspiration shift to doing more meaningful things to that extent um i see that you're a member of the forbes council and and
(07:02-07:29) Wayne Brown
I read a number of your articles that you write. What inspired you to get involved with the council and how does that help with the work you're doing? There's so many things I want to share. And I'm trying to do that through my LinkedIn profile, like through some videos, through the book I'm writing, but...
(07:30-07:52) Daria Rudnik
I want to kind of structure. I'm a person of structure. I love structure. I want to structure my thoughts. Here is what I think about meetings. Here is what I think about psychological safety. Here is what I think about teams and different aspects of teamwork. Writing those articles every month actually helps me understand
(07:52-08:21) Daria Rudnik
discipline myself in putting my thoughts into a written format so that I can easily share it with my clients, with people who want to read about it. And getting more clarity. When I write, I have more clarity about how do I articulate that? How do I really think about it? How do I really feel about that? So that was the main reason. Yeah. And some of the articles are great, by the way. So well done on that. I personally find also that
(08:22-08:49) Wayne Brown
when I write about situations, I do a lot of case study reflection, as I see in some of your work. And that reflection really helps to galvanize my learning. And then putting it down on paper and in print really crystallizes that takeaway for me, right, which then helps the clients. So, yeah.
(08:49-09:09) Wayne Brown
You mentioned LinkedIn. I see that you have a very nice recognition from LinkedIn, your top leadership development voice on LinkedIn, so congratulations. How did that come about? How much effort did that take to receive that recognition?
(09:12-09:38) Daria Rudnik
Well, that recognition is, to be honest, pretty easy. And I think they discontinued that. But I think LinkedIn is a great platform for me. It's a great platform for collaboration. I know many people use it for different ways. And I tried different. I mean, I did try different things on LinkedIn. But now I've come to the conclusion that that's a place where I can meet interesting people.
(09:38-10:08) Daria Rudnik
get connected on like conversations, online conversations, virtual meetings, like have some meaningful connections through LinkedIn, because these are the people who, who want this connection. I mean, there's no, you are on LinkedIn because you want to be connected to other people. So you kind of have this mutual motivation helps to connect and yeah. Yeah. No, very good. Very good. Well, let's jump into systemic coaching for a moment because
(10:09-10:38) Wayne Brown
A lot of people listening will have no idea what I'm referring to as systemic team coaching. And maybe we can set it up by saying a similar word as systems thinking or when you talk about the whole systems approach, systemic is a similar concept to that. How did you first come to be interested in systemic coaching and what's your exposure or experience so far?
(10:39-11:05) Daria Rudnik
in this field a great question um i didn't have no idea i was systemic team coaching and when i joined in the course i i joined the course for team coaching which is something that i was really interested in like like you said like i'm leadership coaching and coaching is a good great amazing thing but the future is with team coaching when we create strong teams that drive organizational growth
(11:05-11:32) Daria Rudnik
So I joined this course on team coaching, which was led by two amazing team coaches, Peter Hawkins and David Clutterberg. And they both are great. They have slightly different approach. Systemic team coaching resonated the most with me because it kind of broadens the perspective. It makes you think outside of what you have right now. And that's what I see when I coach leaders.
(11:32-11:57) Daria Rudnik
They talk about their challenges and they talk about like things they need to accomplish and their goals. But what I see is a broader organizational context that they cannot influence or maybe cannot influence yet. And by working on the systemic level with stakeholders, multiple stakeholders and multiple levels of stakeholders, we can actually create a big impact. We're not only thinking about my employees,
(11:57-12:27) Daria Rudnik
But I'm thinking about my managers and the managers of my managers and even our clients. Even if we are far away from clients, we need to think about them and create this connection. And it works both with leadership coaching and obviously team coaching as well. Yeah. It was my first introduction to this whole concept as well. I don't know if I'm a good student or a quick study, but I
(12:28-12:50) Wayne Brown
I can't stop using the whole concept now. So our consulting practice is entirely built around, we start with looking at the holistic picture, the whole ecosystem, and we sort of zoom out before we then zoom back in. So I'm,
(12:50-13:18) Wayne Brown
I'm a disciple now of systemic team coaching. And I, I really believe it is a, it's a great practice. And as you say, Peter Hawkins, David Clutterbuck, two fantastic mentors to have take us through this program. I went the same path as you and did the systemic coaching with, with Peter. But, you know, in the early stages with David as well. And,
(13:18-13:40) Wayne Brown
David's been on the show, by the way. So, you know, he's shared some of his wisdom. So, yeah, look, really fantastic. One day we'll have the opportunity and we'll do a co-coaching together, I'm sure. Have you done much practice with co-coaching under this systemic approach?
(13:41-14:08) Daria Rudnik
Well, whenever I can, I do try to coach with a co-coach, with a partner coach. And like, as you know, and it's a great thing to do to work with a coach because, I mean, they can see things that like you don't see alone because it's a group and there's certain dynamics happens in the groups. When you focus on one thing, the co-coach and partner can focus on other things. And it's also a great example of teamwork. Like we joining together a team, showing an example of teamwork.
(14:08-14:37) Wayne Brown
of listening and collaboration, which sets the, be like a role model for the team, how to be a great team. Yeah. I think it's one of the, for me in my practice, I think it's one of the greatest findings I've had in the last few years when somebody else is there. It's like that catch-all, right? So you're focused on doing what you have to do as a coach, but having somebody else present as well
(14:38-15:08) Wayne Brown
really takes some of the pressure off you to be better at doing what you're doing I find so yeah very similar impression let's speak a little bit directly now to the whole concept of working remotely we'll nudge our way into this topic but so not only focusing on the team aspect but the whole remote concept which of course is commonplace now but
(15:08-15:34) Wayne Brown
You have an article or a caption on one of your sites, which I love, and it's an article or almost like an image showing the CEO from Goldman Sachs and the statement that he ordered his entire workforce back to the office and only 50% turned up. And I think that is just so true to what I'm hearing. I'm wondering...
(15:35-15:48) Wayne Brown
From your perspective, is that still the general response you're seeing from people that you're engaging with in business, that there's a real reluctance to return to the way it was prior to COVID?
(15:52-16:12) Daria Rudnik
I mean, I'd say it's different. Well, obviously, depending on the market, people might not want to go back to their office, but if the market is tough, they will. Some people say, I want to go to the office. Or I want to be in the office two or three days a week, but I want to be able to work from home two or three days a week.
(16:12-16:37) Daria Rudnik
And for me, it's not about remote. It's about being flexible and being able to choose when you work and how you work. Because the most important thing is how you deliver value, how you create this impact for the organization, for the team. And once you, I mean, if you can do it remotely, do it remotely. If you want to go to the office, go to the office. But making people...
(16:37-17:06) Daria Rudnik
forcing people commute, forcing people, sacrifice the flexibility. I mean, it might work for some period of time when the market is tough, but no, when there are other options, people will choose other options. It's almost like they've opened Pandora's box or they've taken the lid off the genie bottle and it's hard now to get everyone back to the way it was and
(17:07-17:36) Wayne Brown
Yeah, I can see both sides and the value of being in the office sometimes, but I can also understand, you know, what it's like to have that, let's say, freedom to be more relaxed and work in an environment that you feel more comfortable in. So, yeah, it's still an interesting observation point from looking from afar to see where it will end up, I think. We'll see it all soon.
(17:36-18:06) Wayne Brown
Yeah. Let's go a step deeper then and start to look at some of the unique challenges perhaps as well as the opportunities when it now comes to those virtual or remote teams. And I know this is what you do a lot of your work around. Let's start with some of the perhaps more common issues that you're coming across in helping organisations
(18:07-18:37) Daria Rudnik
deal with remote or virtual teams? I think it's no surprise that the most common challenge is communication. Communication and relationship building. Things like, I feel like I'm isolated. I don't feel my team members. I don't know what they're doing. Lots of things that speak that people don't have that feeling of connection that they used to have in the office.
(18:37-18:52) Daria Rudnik
The reason is that it's not the remote team is not working. It's not that you cannot have those connections. It means that you need to reactively build those connections in a bit different way than you would be doing that in the office.
(18:53-19:20) Daria Rudnik
It's the whole new way of thinking about work dynamics and workplace when it's remote or hybrid rather than when it's offsite. And all those practices that we used to have in the office and just taking them, moving them into Zoom, it's not going to work. I mean, the whole work process needs to be reshaped with asynchronous communication. Yeah.
(19:20-19:49) Daria Rudnik
specific meetings and all these parts of the meeting for social connection, like proactively, consistently building those social connections with team members, connecting people with each other, not just manage a team member, so that manager is not a bottleneck for the team operations, they communicate with each other. So this kind of thing, it's all about like how we structure communication and how we structure work processes in remote settings.
(19:50-20:19) Wayne Brown
I can hear some undertones within what you're saying there, and one of them was trust. I think for many leaders, it's still difficult to not have somebody in an office in an environment where I can walk down the corridor and I can see the person. Are they working? Are they looking at their computer? Are they doing something they shouldn't be? And now all of a sudden, I don't have that access to them constantly.
(20:20-20:50) Wayne Brown
And being able to let go of that, I think, initially was very, very hard for many leaders. You've developed a number of great tools, let's say, that can aid leaders in addressing many of the issues that they're facing. And I'd like to dive into a few of them, but just to name a couple that I came across. You have a 90-day program, and in that program,
(20:50-21:19) Wayne Brown
you have this CLIC, which is an acronym, five-letter acronym framework that really provides an opportunity for teams to function much more effectively. So I'd like to go into that. But you also developed a thing that I saw called the virtual team canvas. So, you know, leveraging the marketing canvas concept, et cetera,
(21:20-21:45) Wayne Brown
And they work together, of course. It's the same thing, but in different formats. And then you also use a thing called the Game Changer Index. So maybe we can look at each one of those in turn. But if we start with the Qlik framework, if you don't mind, could you provide somewhat of an overview of what it is and how you use it? Yeah, thanks.
(21:47-22:13) Daria Rudnik
CLIC is actually, I mean, it's something that helps leaders remember about the main pillars of great teams. And CLIC stands for clarity of goals, linking relationships, integrated ways of working together, collaborative decision making, knowledge sharing and feedback. And when teams have all of that, they'll form a high performing team.
(22:13-22:32) Daria Rudnik
Well, clarity of goals is pretty clear. We all know how important the purpose is, mission and understanding why the team exists because a team is defined by its purpose, not by the members. But when there is no purpose, there is no shared purpose, there is no team. So the first thing is this clarity of goals.
(22:32-22:49) Daria Rudnik
And then linking relationship is something connected with the systemic perspective that we talked about before, because it's linking relationship within the team, but also relationship with the stakeholders and their stakeholders and how team is connected to the stakeholders, not just through the manager.
(22:49-23:13) Daria Rudnik
or team leader, but they all can reach out to their respective stakeholders and have these communications individually. And they all understand their stakeholders and build relationships with them. The next one is integrated ways of working together is when team agree on team norms, how they communicate, how they work together, like how they handle their meetings, how they onboard new hires.
(23:15-23:39) Daria Rudnik
Somehow teams don't do that, but once you agree on how you want to work together, it becomes so much easier. Like this example where a team leader suddenly realized that one of the team members just freaks out when he calls on the phone and said, why? I mean, I don't know. I just kind of natural reaction. I have no idea. I just feel that something's wrong and I become nervous.
(23:39-23:54) Daria Rudnik
And so I said, okay, I mean, how can I help that? She said, just text me that you're going to call me on this and this. There's nothing urgent, nothing's broken, and I'll be prepared. And it worked. It's just so easy to talk about how you want to communicate with each other.
(23:55-24:11) Daria Rudnik
And then the other point is collaborative decision-making when teams agree, like how do they make decisions? Is it leader who makes all the decisions and everyone is okay with it? Like what kind of decisions they make together? Where do they need consensus? Where do they need voting?
(24:11-24:40) Daria Rudnik
How do they move forward in their decision-making? And finally, knowledge sharing and feedback, how team collects this feedback from their stakeholders, how they give feedback to each other and how they mutually learn and support each other in team growth. So that's the framework. And I was visualizing Peter Hawkins smiling as you were talking to him because there's a lot of his teaching wrapped up in how you've structured that and
(24:40-24:58) Wayne Brown
Yeah, very, very nice. When you go to apply this, like how does the application of the Qlik framework provide a result of accelerated performance? Like what's the secret behind it?
(25:02-25:22) Daria Rudnik
If a team wants to use it on their own, they have this canvas, which they can go through, fill it in, discuss it as a team, usually through several meetings when they talk about all those things. When I join a team and we start this conversation, we obviously start with discussing their goals and what they want to achieve.
(25:22-25:39) Daria Rudnik
But then we don't necessarily go through each of those areas. We kind of focus, okay, where is the pain and where is the challenge and start with the challenge. And once they have figured out, then they can see this great improvement. Like there was a...
(25:39-25:59) Daria Rudnik
And they can change in different ways. I mean, for example, there was a team, it was a VC fund and they, I mean, they had grown and they started to see those functional silos when like head of marketing is not talking to head of sales, this head of finances, like you figured out, I don't care. Right.
(26:00-26:18) Daria Rudnik
They had this kind of blame, it's not a blame culture, but they started to blame each other for failures. And the founders really wanted to step up, to step out and not like doing any operational work anymore. So that what the team did is they actually decided that they need a CEO.
(26:18-26:48) Daria Rudnik
And they mutually agree that they, okay, we need a CEO, uh, founders have selected a CEO, and then they worked in a different setting. So when team decides what to do next, they, I mean, they accept the changes and then they can grow together. Yeah. Yeah. Very nice. And I, I particularly liked the last point, which is the knowledge sharing element of this, this model. I think it's an area that many teams
(26:49-27:18) Wayne Brown
They may achieve what they think they need to achieve, but then they disbanded just as quickly as they came together and they missed the opportunity for so much sharing. Now, because of the systemic nature, I'm guessing of your approach, it's not a one-off knowledge sharing. It's a continuum. And so, you know, at frequent points or at different moments during a project or a
(27:18-27:29) Wayne Brown
the team being together, I'm guessing they're sharing their learnings, they're, you know, talking about things that are happening. Is that what you encourage?
(27:31-28:00) Daria Rudnik
And with one team, they went even further. They started sharing with the organization and they became the subject matter experts for the organization because they started sharing this knowledge within the team. They had very different expertise on the team and they started to like discuss and talk about it. And they really enjoyed that. They started to invite people in and then they started doing that for the whole organization and they sharing the project management practices for the whole company.
(28:01-28:30) Wayne Brown
Very nice. Yeah. So anyone listening, I think this is a key tip for all leaders is to make sure that there is this framework in place for you to learn as much as you can from the exercise. I mean, you're always going to go through some degree of pain in working together as a group. It's just human nature. We're unique. We're individual. But if we don't learn from the exercise, then there's so much wastage there.
(28:31-28:57) Wayne Brown
You have another relationship, at least, with this game changer index. And I didn't know anything about it until I was doing some preparation for our conversation. So I wonder if you could also introduce that a little bit for us, please. And just how would I use it myself as a leader, as a team member? What's the application?
(29:00-29:25) Daria Rudnik
I like this tool. I mean, it's ergonometric. It's an assessment where once taking the assessment, you can see the energy for impact in the organization. And it's not a psychometric. So it's not about your personality. You can be extroverted, introverted. You can be a driver within the DISC framework or whatever else. The thing is how you create impact in the organization.
(29:25-29:35) Daria Rudnik
And there are five proclivities of how you can implement the most. I mean, how you can impact the most, which is the game changer. It's the people who...
(29:36-29:55) Daria Rudnik
obsessive with new ideas like doing something different is what really really drives them find something new and okay forget about this let's do something else they're very creative very um uh i wouldn't say in like it's not so much as an innovative but it kind of next step and next step and next step right
(29:55-30:18) Daria Rudnik
But then, and same comes with the startup. You have a great idea, you start a startup. But what do you need next? Next, you need someone who will actually take your ideas, those crazy, unframed ideas, and create a plan, a strategy, how you can implement them. Create a vision. Here is what we want to achieve, and here are the steps how we can get there. So these are the strategies.
(30:20-30:41) Daria Rudnik
And then you need some people who are very action-oriented, who just get things done. And you can hear those people by saying, stop talking. Let's just do stuff already. Let's just stop those conversations. We need to start doing something. So they take this strategy and start implementing it and doing. And then you need polishes. Those are the people who...
(30:41-31:01) Daria Rudnik
obsessed with like, let's do it even better and I can do it even better. And innovation is here. Continuous improvement is here. And sometimes perfectionist is also here, but I mean, these are the people who make it better and even better and ask for feedback from the customers and use it to make the product better.
(31:01-31:27) Daria Rudnik
And there is the fifth one, which is the playmakers. And the playmakers are those who connect people together and they just feel so good when they manage to connect with someone or when they connect game-changing strategist, playmaker and implementer. All those people working together as a team, that's what drives the playmaker. And when you look at your organization, your team or project,
(31:27-31:47) Daria Rudnik
a different path of organization or different stages of the project, you might need different type of energy. Like setting up a transformation. What do you need to start with? Probably you want to start with some, let's think of what we can do. And you invite game changers. Or maybe let's talk to our stakeholders and like find out their needs.
(31:47-32:03) Daria Rudnik
And you invite playmakers. So depending on what your organization is doing and what you want to do next, you need different energy and you can invite different people. And when you look at the team perspective, for example, you have a product team.
(32:03-32:32) Daria Rudnik
And there are a lot of game changers there on the product team. And they constantly think of something, okay, here is this great feature and we can also do this. And I mean, no wonder they do not release on time because they're constantly thinking of some new ideas, but the implementers are not heard. I mean, there are some implementers on the team, but they're just not heard and they do not deliver on time. So as a leader, when you see the dynamics of the team and you see all the different things
(32:32-33:00) Wayne Brown
voices and energies on the team make sure all the voices are heard and when you have too much game changes make sure you implement us are talking and kind of manage this team dynamics and when you do the the questionnaire the assessment um does it highlight more than just your dominant self like does it give you maybe a secondary or another perspective of
(33:00-33:07) Wayne Brown
When I'm not the game changer, I often fall into this role. Does it provide that type of feedback?
(33:08-33:36) Daria Rudnik
So it basically shows your score on each five of those. And there are two main proclivities that actually define most of your decisions and how you create the impact. But you see the score for all of those. And you kind of see where you're low at and where you might need support from your team members. And then think of how you can leverage your strengths to support your low energy areas. Right.
(33:36-34:00) Wayne Brown
So I'm visualizing, I don't know if you ever used the Belbin team model, an old tool from the 80s, but in the Belbin model, they create a matrix for a team. And I'm visualizing there would be something similar for a team that participates in the Game Changer study as well.
(34:02-34:30) Daria Rudnik
Like in the Melbourne, yeah, there are teams that you need to have on the team. And game changer can actually help you find those people on the team because if you need some resource investigator, that's most probably a playmaker energy, isn't it? So you kind of can match the energy to the role. Right, right. Yeah. Fascinating. I'll have to do some more research on it for sure. I'll introduce you to them. I'm sure. Yeah.
(34:31-34:41) Wayne Brown
Do you combine the two? Do you combine the CLIC framework as well as the GCI in your program or in the work that you're doing?
(34:43-35:11) Daria Rudnik
I like to start when it's possible. I like to start with assessment, like leaders assessment, and then we do the team workshop. It kind of opens up the conversation people when people see something visual and they see those different energies and different types of people they have on the team. And that reveals the challenges that they want to overcome. And then we kind of start with this assessment and team workshop, and then move forward with the Qlik framework as a way to build a great team. Very nice.
(35:12-35:39) Wayne Brown
I know it's impossible to give a concrete timeline, but what's your experience in working with teams? Does it normally take six months, 12 months? Is there a standard or an average you've experienced in taking a team that's performing at an average level and creating that high-performing value creation team?
(35:42-36:10) Daria Rudnik
Well, I can't say that there's a check mark. Okay, now you are a high performing value creation team. There's always like opportunities for growth. But usually the work takes like, it's definitely not less than four months because otherwise you just cannot digest the changes and implement something and see some results. In most cases, it's around like six months. Some teams I've been working with for nine months and I don't think I worked with any team for more than nine months.
(36:10-36:38) Wayne Brown
Because I really want them to be able to operate on their own and learn to self-develop as a team. Again, Peter is smiling at you, right? That's our role is to actually work ourselves out of a job and let the organization start to self-manage themselves. What's the future looking like? So if we now look at
(36:39-37:01) Wayne Brown
AI as an example, and the progress with AI, what's the impact you see it having within the coaching arena, within consulting, if you look broader than just the coaching? I'm a technological optimist. I do believe AI can really...
(37:02-37:26) Daria Rudnik
make a change, a positive change in the way we work. And I see the huge benefit of it might be when we can analyze the skills people have, and we can analyze the skills organization needs, and we can match people to skills or develop people like in terms of skills, not in terms of roles. Like you can have any type of role, but I mean,
(37:26-37:51) Daria Rudnik
that requires different types of skills, but maybe you don't need to feed one person into this role, kind of trying to push them. You can feed people into skills and just let them do what they can be good at and not make them do stuff that they don't have energy to do. And AI can actually do that analysis and understanding of matching people to organization, to skills.
(37:51-38:19) Daria Rudnik
And the other thing is learning. I mean, I know a company that does great things about coaching and training with AI when someone works with an AI coach, for example, in presentation skills, doing a presentation, get some feedback from AI, trains, practice again. And then this comes to a human coach or a human facilitator that gives, kind of analyzes AI responses and gives human to human feedback.
(38:19-38:49) Daria Rudnik
And this is a great collaboration. I don't see AI eliminating people's jobs. I mean, some, yes, but mostly it's enhancing and making us more productive and helping us do more meaningful work or achieving results faster. Right. Yeah. We try and marry the two as well. So, you know, it's part of the future. We want to stay modern and offer our clients...
(38:50-39:19) Wayne Brown
the AI, if they have an interest in that, as well as then marry that with the human coaching. And, you know, the feedback we're getting at the moment is that they like that flexibility. They like the opportunity if they need support in that moment, not having to wait for the human coach, but then having the backup of the human coach to come in and, you know, have that interaction is still something that
(39:20-39:49) Wayne Brown
we're finding people enjoy. So I can see it happening the way you suggest that. Hey, one thing just occurred to me, how do we define high performing teams or high performing cultures within an organization? If I come and I start talking to a leader and I say, well, let's look at your team. Let's start to look at how we can make their performance, you know, even better.
(39:50-40:17) Daria Rudnik
How do you frame that for the leader or how does the leader start to frame that? I mean, when I talk to leaders, there are two scenarios. One is I see that something's wrong. I mean, it could be conflict. It could be I have a feeling that something is wrong, but I cannot articulate that. And the other one, I believe we can be better.
(40:17-40:38) Daria Rudnik
Or I want us to be better. Or we have a goal that we need to achieve. I mean, there was a leader who said, I want to be a number one in the region. I want my team to be number one in the region. I have ambitious goals. I believe we can create, like we can do great work. I believe we can serve our customers. Like we provide great service to our customers. I want to be number one.
(40:38-41:05) Daria Rudnik
and we're not there yet how can we be that how we can reach that goal so like being a high performing team is not a goal in itself right what is that you want to create what is the purpose of your team and how you fulfill that purpose and I guess the same could be applied to value creation so how do we then identify that the team is actually at that point of
(41:05-41:34) Wayne Brown
be recognised by the stakeholder as value-creating in the purpose of what they're working as a team for. So it could be the same answer, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What haven't we spoken about so far in this? It's such a huge topic and we've just scratched the surface, I know, but when you think about the work you are doing and some of the situations you've experienced,
(41:35-41:55) Daria Rudnik
Anything that we haven't touched on that you think is relevant or important that we should talk about before we wrap up? I really want to share one thing, and I came to the realization of that quite recently, is that there is a problem of good leaders.
(41:56-42:16) Daria Rudnik
and the problem, the good leaders are facing this problem more often than not so good, bad leaders, is when they're trying to build relationship with their team members and they're having all those one-to-one conversations, they're supporting them, they're asking what they need and they're there for them, which is great and it is amazing.
(42:16-42:42) Daria Rudnik
The problem is when you have, I don't know, five, 10 people on the team and you pay attention to each of those people. And you also have something that your stakeholders expect from you in terms of strategy and innovation and other things. And you have no time for that. And that leads to burnout. And I have seen leaders like, what do I do? I cannot. I mean, I need to support my people, but I cannot do that. And
(42:42-43:04) Daria Rudnik
The answer is, okay, don't support your people, support your team and create connection between those individual team members so that they first reach to each other and get support from each other rather from you. And it's good for them because instead of one person that can support them, they have five, 10 people that can support them, not just you as a leader.
(43:05-43:33) Daria Rudnik
And that's like remote work kind of showed that it's harder for managers to connect team members with each other. And that's what they need to focus on. How do you connect your team members with each other so that they reach to themselves for help and then to you as a leader? Yeah, that's a wonderful observation, actually. And I also imagine, you know, that leader is most likely
(43:33-44:03) Wayne Brown
a team member of a larger team as well or another team. And so the ecosystem continues and the burnout is real. The stress is real. And your point is excellent that you need to create that environment where the team is collaborating and not reliant on that hierarchical structure that we used to have and that we no longer have that opportunity for in many cases, right? So,
(44:04-44:32) Wayne Brown
It's now more of a nucleus or a network that needs to be self-sufficient, not just expecting that one person. So great observation. You just made me realise something else, but I've now forgotten it. So we'll let that go. But, oh, I don't remember what it was, sorry. One of the things that we see a lot is the...
(44:33-44:55) Wayne Brown
global team challenges and largely because of language culture time differences and then you have somebody who's appointed as the leader who may not have that exposure themselves to dealing with a global environment do you come across that very often
(44:58-45:13) Daria Rudnik
I do work with some global teams. And the question they ask is, how do you approach different cultures? And I mean, to be honest, I say, I mean, don't approach different cultures, approach different people.
(45:13-45:42) Daria Rudnik
I mean, within a team, we don't need to be, like, to have deep knowledge about how Asian culture is different from the Western culture. Like, look at the, you have different people with different preferences, different personalities in each region, in each culture, and you have no idea what this person, how this person grew up. So look at the individuals. I mean, it's okay to look at five, 10 individuals and adjust your leadership style to them rather than to the whole culture.
(45:43-46:12) Wayne Brown
I love that. Great, great advice. So, because I know a lot of people ask this question and I love that answer. I think, you know, treat the team as people to start with, get to learn and know the people. It's going to solve a large number of the issues. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not solve every issue, but it'll solve a large number. So, so tell me, what are you, uh,
(46:12-46:38) Daria Rudnik
What are you doing at the moment? Are you working on anything? Got any books in the pipeline perhaps? I decided to write a book in 2020, I think. I tried once, stopped, dropped it. Then I took it on again in 2022, didn't finish it. Now in 2024, I promise you,
(46:39-47:00) Daria Rudnik
that I will finish and publish it next year. Today is a great milestone for me. I finished my first draft. I know there's lots of work to do. There's lots of opportunities for improvement, for kind of wanting to drop it and stop working on it. But I won't. I will keep working on it and I will publish it next year.
(47:01-47:17) Daria Rudnik
And obviously it's a book about teams. Yeah. I was just going to say, are we allowed to know what it's about? So it's about teams. Yeah. It's about how high-performing teams, how great teams can support organizational growth. And it's mostly about...
(47:17-47:47) Daria Rudnik
Examples from my work with companies that rapidly grew from, I know, 200 up to 700, 900 people. And they start seeing changes with like broken communications, functional sailors, like some culture is being changed. Culture is changing and they're not as fast as they used to be. So how great team works can actually support organizational growth and not stop it. Yeah.
(47:48-48:10) Wayne Brown
So I'm going to hold you to that. I'm going to check in and make sure the draft is moving closer to release. We may have to come back together once it's about to release and have another discussion. So I look forward to that. Where can people go and learn more about what you're doing, engage with you?
(48:12-48:42) Daria Rudnik
I think the best place is still LinkedIn. I'm pretty active. I open to conversations, to connections. Obviously, you can check out my website, which is darierutnik.com and you can chat with my AI coach, Aydra. But if you really want to connect, LinkedIn is the best place. Okay. All right. We'll put the links in the notes. Daria, great conversation. We've only scratched the surface as expected, but
(48:43-49:10) Wayne Brown
Hopefully, it's given people a flavor of some of the things that you're doing and some of the possibilities of what team coaching is able to bring to the table. So I think it's really valuable for everybody. Team coaching, creating teams that are higher performing, value creating, for me, is the future. Teams have been around a long, long time.
(49:11-49:40) Wayne Brown
Now, more so than ever, with the remote team environment, being able to bring that effectiveness to the bottom line is something that probably isn't going to happen just by chance. And I think leveraging the work that you're doing and others are doing will certainly make a big impact. So thank you for that. And thank you for being on the ET project.
(49:41-50:09) Wayne Brown
great conversation. Thank you, Ben. It was a great pleasure. I love the questions. I mean, they made me think. Thank you so much. Yeah. I appreciate that. So from one coach to another, thank you for sharing that. So, all right, all the best and we'll keep in touch. So what are you waiting for? Hit the subscribe button below and click on the bell icon so I can pop up in your feed occasionally with a great tip for your ultimate growth.