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Speaker Bio
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwasil/
https://www.extremenetworks.com/
everybody welcome back to squad five teams in tech very very excited to introduce my guest here today. Merrick would you like to introduce yourself? Yes hi good morning my name is Merrick Wassalewski currently I live in Dallas Texas with my wife and two pets and vice president of service sales for a company called Extreme Networks good to be here and thank you. Awesome thank you and for folks who don't know I introduce myself everybody I'm Jeremy from squad five team productivity accelerator teams like Salesforce, Sanofi and the love squad five because they achieve 10% increase in productivity 11% growth in team engagement 13% up to performance here over a year 60% improvement happiness over work and can work with a squad five coach to improve track and improve team productivity month of a month. All right so let's dive right into it. Merrick could you tell us a little bit more about your responsibilities and your roles and your team's responsibilities extreme networks? Yeah I think as the easiest way to look at it is obviously if you look at the technology sector there's obviously the product side of it and then there's the service delivery side of it. I absolutely look after this the service delivery side across the whole of the Americas so that means that my team typically looks after what we call the renewal side of the business i.e making sure that the contractual both agreements and obligations from both the customers and our delivery point of view are up to date so as the customer has the proper coverage on the SLAs associated with a particular solution but there's also an element of new business which means that any professional services associated with a solution is properly sculpt, designed, delivered, maintained and then renewed obviously at the most appropriate time so I think that's the easiest way most probably to discuss or to describe service delivery. Yeah I would probably say this most probably the easiest way. Got it got it and how big is your team and how are they structured? So the team apparently is about 40 people and they spread throughout the Americas so typically Canada North America and then Latin America so I look after the whole of the Americas. The structure is fairly simple what we've decided to do that made most sense for us is that we dissected the teams into verticals i.e. the type of business that they're engaging from our point of view the biggest part of the contingent database if you like or the customer base is actually a public sector so we've got a team specifically looking after the public sector and we've got another team that looks after what we call majors or named accounts and the third team that looks after a majority of our base which is the enterprise part of it right so and then at the same time there's a separate team because of the demographics as well as the unique need of it that focuses exclusively on Latin America. Wow got it got it and I'm curious given that the the clients that you work with are spread across North America is your team also remote or hybrid or or in different locations. It's a great question. Yeah I mean obviously the world has changed as we know it right so I think previously there was a big demand and a big drive to make sure that people were in their locations so work work was really more of a location as less so of an of an activity you know since since the Covid days and the new norm came around companies become a lot more lenient and you know we've we've actually realized a lot more we have a better interest in productivity too because now we truly honestly see the the the work element of it has been an activity so my entire team is spread throughout the North America's continent and you know we we practice what we preach we're networking companies so that means that you know any device any location and any activity you choose is really what we would we deliver. Very interesting I think that makes a ton of sense especially given how much communication and also face-to-face trust building working in a building networking relationship is so important but I'm curious how would you say does that impact how you lead the team how the team works and collaborates together do you notice differences you know pre-covin post-covin and maybe even challenges that you face coming out of Covid because everybody was all figuring this out out you know for the first time yeah and and we'd love to hear any stories that you might have around yeah without a shadow of a doubt there's a big difference right I think the the biggest component is that if you look at the overall communication people a huge component of it is obviously body language right so it's difficult to read the entire body if you like on a 16 by 9 screen so and what we say the tonality and how we say it has become a lot more important than previously right so the engagement on a one-to-one basis the ability to actually be able to be in front of somebody and coach them and mentor them and train them has now really come down to screen time and so there are huge changes from a leadership point of view the other element obviously to which is extremely important to remember is that you know I remember the days where you would walk into a office and you the the hum of the business if you like the coffee bean made the the water the water content chatter and all of that that has that doesn't exist anymore means that a lot of us are you know sitting in our own home and on majority of the time um you are left to your own devices so trust in your in your team becomes a lot more important when you are removed out of the equation than ever before previously you had the visibility of the team being in and you knew people would come into the office and and so on and so forth so now the new way of leadership has really been a you got to make sure that you engage with somebody more frequently than ever before but this is the I think the the element of trust and making sure that people get on with what they were supposed to be doing is a lot more prevalent now than ever before um what are your processes or strategies to overcome that now given those challenges you know what i'm i'm gonna go back to a framework that I designed and developed um I would say about 2015 or so and and everybody's got their own different approaches in terms of how they do things um I have been fortunate enough that over the last 25 years or so um I've lived in at least three different continents and worked in at least five which meant that majority of the time I was um some I was remote to somebody somewhere and that means that when you're running a global team you watched you might be face to face with somebody there's always an a part of the team that you are remote to find and about 10 years ago I am relocated to to the US and this was I think maybe move number three or four for us and I realized that what I needed was a framework as some sort of a repeatable framework that would allow me to ensure that I maintain a high level of culture based on creation um and then create an environment of of success ultimately because you cannot have a high performance sales team without creating this environment of success and solid safety ultimately right and as I sat down and I thought about it um in about 2015 or so um I sort of established a little framework a four acronym framework called TEAM right and as I looked at as I looked at it it it has evolved by the way over the over the last few years since 2015 and and and I continuously to sort of look at it how how to better perfect it but the bottom line is is that it consists of four pillars and and I'll and I'll talk you through those the four pillars are then surrounded by three key principles and those three key principles are consistency simplicity and focus and I'm and I am a true believer that if you have consistency simplicity and focus and you apply that to the the sort of the four pillars of the framework um things start to change and I have seen the change above over the last few teams so do you want me to talk you through it yes please all right so let's break up the acronym of TEAM the first one is TALK right TALK comes down to what I call the the cornerstone of effective leadership and it's all about the art of communication and it's extremely important to ensure that not only I as as the leader of a team but my leadership team and the rest of the team master the art of communication being able to communicate in a succinct way and to to understand what is required a and b also what is the overall sort of the the culture that you're working across but but you've got to make sure that you've got the ability to convey the plan the message the intent of what it is that you are trying to achieve ultimately so I put T as the top there because as I said it's communication is the cornerstone I would prefer to over communicate at times than under communicate because it it allows it allows people to have a better understanding of what it is than that I'm trying to achieve there are a number of studies that have been conducted in terms of you know how communication also forms a strong and lasting bond with the team and the customers and so on and so so that's the first one see the second one is evaluate or E right and my I remember way back then one of my mentors actually said you've got to inspect what you expect and there's a key component to this right because leadership requires a keen understanding of the outcome that you are trying to ultimately to generate and if you can substantiate the outcome with with data-driven knowledge it definitely provides a clearer perspective in terms of where it is that you go in and what choices you have to ultimately make which then leads in turn to the communication which is the T and so now you're going to see that each each letter of the acronym actually ties itself back to the other one so there's a continuous string that goes on and data can be an extremely powerful ally to leaders right because you're no longer just talking for the sake of talking you actually have got information which is substantiated to be able then to make a decision so that's that's the E the third one A is action and I know it sounds like a trivial thing but the reality of it all is that without action any any plan is just a it's just a dream so you got to have a proactive actionable plan to ensure that you can actually achieve the outcome ultimately that you're trying to get to and there are a number of things that you can go through there are leg measures and lead measures that you know give you the perspective by being the data driven individual so once again take an action measure the action you have the backup of the data which is the evaluate and then you communicate so once again time the three and then the last one for me is most probably the closest one to me and to my heart is the M which is mentorship teaching and developing future leaders investing in the so-called long-term sustainable future is absolutely essential you've got a foster environment of continuous learning mentorship can create a legacy of leadership and excellence as leaders of today become mentors of tomorrow ultimate right so I remember and and these this this has drastically changed ultimately if you think about it right because mentorship today can be a word that is just thrown around oh yeah I've got a mentor I've got a coach well they're first of all coaching and mentorship is there are big differences between the two but I think more importantly is you've got to understand that the more time investing actually mentoring the individual and mentoring your leadership and your team it will provide the return on investment that is required so you've got the mentorship which then ensures that that your team overall has is in sync with your outcome right so your let's go back your communication style which is the T they understand how to evaluate and inspect what you expect they also then know what actionable items are important to get the outcome to you know the overall goal and then they in turn also provide the relevant mentorship to they you know their relevant team so it's a vicious circle right and I know I've talked a lot and I apologize but I think the last bit that I just want to sort of cover because right in the very beginning I did say that it is it is all embraced by three key elements and that is consistency simplicity and focus right so that talk that evaluation that mentorship you've got to make sure that there's consistency behind it right don't do it once in a balloon you know set up proper rigorous sort of a reoccurring monthly monthly means whatever it is to provide all of that you've got to you've got to provide it in a simple way because if it isn't simple and simple to understand and simple to grasp and simple to handle to communicate it's going to get lost somewhere in the in the process and my favorite most probably is the focus more doesn't necessarily mean better right the narrower the focus the quicker you can achieve the goal it in turn generates a positive atmosphere of achievement if you like and then in itself and drives momentum going forward so you asked how what's the process it's the process I thank you so much Frank you explained it very very beautifully and very very all encompassing encompassing as well it's really interesting because as you were explaining teams and the the three principles I drew a lot of similarities back to Esquatify we call it the three C's it's clarity you mentioned talk climate the environment is it can you know can do so to being productive and collaboration and competence to the individual team members have the right culture and the right support to voice their feedback and opinions and communicate and help each other and it's it's yeah I absolutely love you know yeah the the framework that you've built and and she was plugged to our audience here so Esquatify helps to assess that on your team and you know with our coach provide recommendations and help you improve those each of those key factors month over month but so I want to jump back to something you said earlier that I found extremely interesting I want to move forward after that you mentioned that you know post-COVID body language it was something very important for you to you know understand and sort of within your communication and you mentioned that in the scenario of mentoring somebody so I'm you know I think most of us were familiar with the tone and facial expressions and but can you because because it was interesting because you know I can think of oh from a sales standpoint you can understand why body language is important right oh this information is or is not relevant oh this person trusts or does not trust me yet right stuff like that but how does this apply to to mentorship and why why is important for you body language well I think it's body languages as I said it's highly important during the mentorship process or during the coaching but even in a day-to-day communication right I mean if you stand in front of somebody you can typically assess whether it's a it's a good receptive environment whether it's an hostile environment and you can you've got what you know you could define as a gut feeling in terms of what situation you want right yeah I think it's also extremely important when it comes to establishing trust and you're fostering that communication and then ultimately maximizing the impact of the relationship going forward right and I'm not saying that verbal communication is not essential it absolutely is but I do believe that that non-verbal cues and significantly influence how the messages receive them interpret so that means that when you you know I call it relegated to a 16 by 9 screen because we have right the majority of us are now sitting on as you and I are talking at the moment on on on on screen and on live video and audio it's it's the same thing but as you talk into to somebody you will often find that they'll either their eyes will start to wonder or the you'll see visual cues as to is the person actually looking at me and are they paying attention or are they reading something else or are they being distracted by a phone call and that's the reason why I say the body cues if you like the body language is so important is because the single device like a phone can ultimately have a massive impact and disruption on that element of trust or that element of a conversation that you are trying to to foster between yourself and the person on the other side and that happens too too frequently the reality of it all is is you know Jeremy as we as we look through this there has become an almost an impossible and maybe an unrealistic expectation from a lot of organizations that you should be having meetings back to back every hour on an hour no matter what happens the reality is that we've never we will never build this way you know after the first 20 or 30 minutes we lose track and we lose focus and imagine doing this now for eight consecutive time repetitive times or a period of an hour the reality of it all is that by the by the time you get into the second meeting but a lot less productive than you were in the first one so the reason why I said this visual communication or the body language is so important is because I do believe that if you shorten the meetings to 20 minutes or whatever it may be and you absolutely remove all of the distractions out of your way you can foster that element of trust and you can foster the element of a deeper partnership between yourself and the individual and the other side because the minutes as I said that you start to wave and wonder and you start to look at other things it becomes extremely visible even on the screen um a lot less maybe so than if you were they put you know face to face but nonetheless it's it's still visible God I got it well Merrick I had a few more questions but we're at a time and and I wish I could keep you know picking your brain about all these uh you know your wisdom and your experiences um but the last last question here is um Merrick who should reach out to you and what's the best way to reach you? Well I'm always open to any recommendations or any suggestions any dialogue whatsoever right I mean it's important as I said you know you can't turn around and say well you know um you foster communication and partnership I think the best the easiest person uh or the the easiest easiest way to reach out is I am on LinkedIn I'm very active on LinkedIn um connect follow um you know send send me a message if I can help I will um I don't have an interest in any franchises so please don't send me any more doesn't send me any more of those but all jokes aside yeah I mean I think the easiest way to reach me is most probably on LinkedIn awesome thank you so much and everybody thank you for listening to another episode we'll see you all next time thank you
