Book Review: Your Team Loves Mondays… Right? by Kristin Sherry

I started the Bettering Communities Book Club in 2024 with the goal of creating stronger, intentional community with folks who love reading and learning. We reviewed our fifth book of the year this month, Your Team Loves Mondays… Right?

Reactions to the Book

Our group really enjoyed this book and felt that it offered more of a reference manual that we’d flag as leaders than a traditional narrative read. Those who shared that they had listened to the book in audio format noted that they wanted to own a hard copy for future reference. Our group represents a mix of seasoned and newer managers and we all felt that there were relevant takeaways that made us think through our leadership approaches.

We were joined by the author of this book, Kristin Sherry, for the second half of our book club meeting this month! Kristin weighed in on several topics which stuck out to us. You can watch the last 30 minutes of our book club meeting here. Thank you so much for joining us, Kristin!

The 3 C’s: Hiring Character and Caring, Teaching Competency

If character, competency and caring are the 3 C’s of a job candidate - which of those are trainable skills? We are in a labor market where it is rare always find a wide swath of highly qualified candidates. Our group agreed that character and caring have to be the primary evident traits in a candidate, and organizations must be more willing to invest in teaching new hires the necessary competencies for a role. This aligned with the messaging in our previous read, Unreasonable Hospitality, which talked about hiring individuals who are slightly underqualified, because they will be hungry to prove themselves. We discussed how critical it is to ensure that position descriptions and interview questions stress character and caring - not just competency!

Using Assessments in Hiring

Your Team Loves Mondays… RIght? talked at length about using the DISC profile and Clifton Strengths to understand the leadership styles of themselves and their direct reports. We talked about when these assessments were deployed. One organization uses the tool Predictive Index for finalists in hiring. This same organization has employees print out their index summary and display it in their workspace - as a reminder for themselves and colleagues. Another organization pays for Clifton Strengths after individuals are hired and their Human Resources division notifies managers if an individual demonstrates atypical strengths for the role or team.

Kristin is the creator of YouMap® - an assessment tool that blends strengths, values, skills and personality to help individuals and teams have greater self awareness.

Blending Teams with Opposing Strengths

What happens if you bring in a new hire and they don’t blend well with your existing team? What if the new hire has necessary dynamics that the organization needs… such as being an innovator or disruptor in a very stagnant organization? Kristin broke down that organizations are made up of Quitters, Campers, and Climbers. If 20% of your organization are Quitters, 20% are Climbers and 60% are Campers - you need to reach 80% of your organization to move forward. The balance of what percentage are Quitters/Climbers/Campers may vary based on the type of organization you have. (For example: are you in a very stable compliance field? In a disruptive tech startup?).

Kristin recommends that organizations ask interview questions around their values. Hiring for reciprocal values is critical for ensuring that new hires are a good fit to organizations.

Gaining Trust as a Leader

Kristin shared the Trust Framework with our group. This is the idea that in order to fully trust a person there must be five things which are true:

1. S/he is competent. S/he can do what I want him/her to accomplish.

2. S/he is reliable. I can count on him/her. S/he won’t let me down.

3. S/he is fair. I believe s/he will never take advantage of me.

4. S/he is caring. S/he has my best interests at heart.

5. S/he is open. We can talk about anything and I feel safe.

1 and 2 are the task-oriented sides of trust, 3 and 4 are the relationship-oriented sides of trust. 5 is the bridge between the two. This is interestingly very similiar to the Johari Window Model. This idea is that we can use this model to increase the perception others have of us by encouraging feedback on our blind areas, and demonstrating vulnerability on our hidden areas. These help us to gain trust and greater insight from those with whom we work.

The Johari Window Model

Leaders need to UNDERSTAND the priorities of their people

We talked about understanding the priorities of individuals - regardless of which generation they are a part of. It seems that younger generations (especially Gen Z) has a stronger desire for feedback, recognizes the “platinum rule” and this may seem out of touch for more traditional generations in the workplace. Kristin pointed out that each individual has their own priorities - a task-oriented vs. relationship-oriented person may not see the value in team meetings, for example. As leaders, if we understand our audience more intuitively, we can structure our content to speak to their priorities.

As a supervisor, you are not going to please everybody in a group setting, but if you understand your people. Make sure that decisions you make actually add value for employees. Get to know what people value and need from things within your team. Kristin builds trust by asking employees “What is frustrating you?” - their frustrations will reveal what they feel they are not getting.

Other key questions to ask are:

1. What’s going well for you? *with context added, such as “on this team / on this project / in our relationship?” (Start positive)

2. What could be done differently / better / or more of? (Constructive / future-focused)

3. What are the barriers preventing those things from happening?

4. What’s ONE thing you’d like to see change? (Helps put the priority on what that person needs)

5. How can YOU help? What help do you need? (Sometimes that person is the person causing the problem… and they don’t see it)

These five questions will give you a strategic plan to solve any problem. Kristin advises against using “WHY” language - this puts people on the defensive. Tell me about / what / how questions are more solutions-oriented and less threatening.

Applying this approach to teens

We discussed in brief applying this management framework to personal relationships. Kristin shared that she used some of these techniques with her children. Sometimes teens are not open to these approaches, but she suggests opening the door to say “I’m here for you if you need to talk.” Kristin shared that adolescents in particular are bridging the span between childhood and adulthood, and will feel thrusted back into the child role when parents ask a seemingly innocent question like “did you finish your homework?”

Kristin talks more about parenting in her book Maximize 365: A Year of Actionable Tips to Transform Your Life.

In Summary

Our group really enjoyed this book and felt that it offered a lot of direct insights we could use as leaders and managers. You can learn more about author Kristin Sherry, her books and her YouMap® assessment model on her website.