Leadership Lessons from Ted Lasso — Episode 3 What’s Her Story?

Why Great Leaders Know the People Behind the PositionsYour team has a life before they walk through your door.

And that life comes to work with them.

When Ted Lasso first sees the women’s team he’s been hired to coach, something immediately catches his attention.

The goalkeeper isn’t wearing gloves.

For a goalie, gloves are hardly optional. They’re a critical piece of equipment, protecting the hands from a soccer ball that can be coming at 100 MPH.

A typical coach might immediately ask:

“Why isn’t she wearing gloves?”

Ted doesn’t.

He turns to his assistant and asks:

“What’s her story?”

That difference tells us a lot about Ted Lasso as a leader.

He sees the same problem everyone else sees.

But before judging the behavior, he wants to understand the person.

Dentists should be very good at this.

After all, we’re diagnosticians.

When something doesn’t look right, we don’t—or at least shouldn’t—simply treat what we see.

A painful tooth may not be the source of the pain. A fractured restoration may be the consequence of an occlusal problem somewhere else.

Bleeding is a finding.

Mobility is a finding.

Pain is a symptom.

Our job is to ask:

What’s causing it?

Yet something strange can happen when we leave the operatory and become practice owners.

A team member becomes unusually quiet.

“She has an attitude.”

Someone starts making mistakes.

“He doesn’t care.”

A hygienist pushes back on a new system.

“She’s resistant to change.”

Maybe.

Or maybe we’re looking at the equivalent of a goalkeeper without gloves—confusing what we can see with the reason it’s happening.

There’s More to Your Team Than Their Job

I’m a huge advocate of what I call the Morning Opportunity Meeting, or MOM.

Most practices call it the huddle.

In many ways, it’s the equivalent of the goalie’s gloves. It prepares the team for what’s about to be thrown at them.

I have a template I prefer, although most offices eventually modify it to fit their own personalities and needs.

Recently, I visited a client’s practice and watched their MOM.

They did something I hadn’t included in my template.

At the end of the meeting, the twelve team members went around the circle and each shared something positive that had happened in their life the day before.

Nothing profound.

Nothing forced.

Just something good.

One person talked about family.

Another shared something that happened at dinner.

Someone else mentioned something completely unrelated to work.

Around the circle they went.

Of the twelve people standing there, only two of the positive stories had anything to do with the dental office.

I found that uplifting.

And revealing.

Because we tend to think of the people in our practices by their positions.

My hygienist.

My assistant.

My receptionist.

My treatment coordinator.

Even the possessive pronoun is interesting.

But those aren’t primarily who they are.

Those are jobs they perform for several hours each day.

Before they arrive at our office, they’re spouses, parents, children, siblings, friends, caregivers, coaches, volunteers, neighbors and a hundred other things we may know very little about.

Then at 7:40 in the morning, they walk through our door.

And all those other lives walk in with them.

What Happened Before They Got Here?

That’s where Ted’s question becomes important.

What’s her story?

Maybe the employee who seems distracted was up half the night with a sick child.

Maybe the person who appears irritable is worried about an aging parent.

Maybe someone just received wonderful news and is bursting to tell somebody.

Maybe someone else is carrying something they don’t want to tell anyone.

A leader doesn’t need—or have the right—to know every intimate detail of an employee’s life.

That’s not the point.

The point is remembering that there is a story.

And that story may help explain what you’re seeing.

Understanding that doesn’t eliminate accountability.

The phones still have to be answered.

Patients still deserve exceptional care.

People still need to arrive on time and do their jobs.

Ted still expects his goalkeeper to play goalkeeper.

But understanding the person changes how a leader approaches the problem.

There’s a tremendous difference between:

“What’s wrong with her?”

and

“I wonder what’s going on with her?”

One begins with judgment.

The other with curiosity.

The Stories We Invent

There’s another consequence when we don’t know someone’s story.

We tend to make one up.

“She doesn’t appreciate what I do.”

“He only cares about the paycheck.”

“She’s lazy.”

“He’s never going to change.”

Then confirmation bias takes over.

Every mistake becomes proof.

Every disagreement becomes evidence.

Every bad morning confirms what we’ve already decided.

Eventually, we’re no longer leading the person standing in front of us.

We’re leading the character we’ve created in our own head.

Ted leaves room for another explanation.

That doesn’t mean the explanation always excuses the behavior.

Sometimes someone really is performing poorly.

Sometimes coaching doesn’t work.

Sometimes the person and the practice simply aren’t a good fit.

But a good leader diagnoses before treating.

Dentists should understand that better than anyone.

Maybe MOM Should Be About More Than the Schedule

In my MOM template, the first order of business is a check-in:

How’s everyone feeling?

We tend to assume everyone walked through the door at 100%.

But what if someone is only at 80%?

Wouldn’t it be useful to know?

Then the team can compensate.

Of course, the Morning Opportunity Meeting has practical purposes.

Who’s coming in?

Who needs special attention?

Where are the opportunities?

Where might the schedule become difficult?

What does the team need to know before the day begins?

All important.

But watching that team go around the circle reminded me that the huddle has another purpose.

It gives us an opportunity to see one another.

Not merely as the hygienist in Operatory Three or the person answering Line Two.

As people.

Twelve people shared something positive.

Ten of those twelve stories had nothing to do with dentistry.

Yet those ten stories may have told me more about the culture of that practice than any production report ever could.

People who know something about each other are more likely to understand each other.

People who understand each other are more likely to extend grace when it’s needed.

They communicate differently.

They work differently.

They stop being employees working beside one another.

They begin becoming a team.

That’s the lesson Ted keeps teaching.

Leadership isn’t only knowing who should be playing goalkeeper.

It’s noticing that she isn’t wearing gloves.

And before shouting instructions from the sideline, being curious enough to ask:

What’s her story?

Maybe that’s a question every practice owner should ask a little more often.

Because behind every title on your organizational chart is a human being.

And every human being comes with a story.