Teammate of the Quarter Award?! with Tyson Murtux

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

Are you a law firm owner that is looking for ways to show appreciation to your staff? In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, Tyson delves into the positive impacts of the "Teammate of the Quarter" award at his law firm. 

Tyson shares some highlights of the award and what makes it such a great aspect of the law firm. Since law firms are such busy environments, it can be difficult to stop, reflect and recognize the hard work of those who work at the firm. What this award does is cultivate a culture of appreciation for those that contribute to its success. Having a positive work environment is crucial to any successful law firm, and awards like the Teammate of the Quarter help achieve that goal.

The Teammate of the Quarter award contributes to better collaboration and engagement amongst a team. The award allows for team members to get to know each other on a personal level and it can lead to better collaboration when working on tasks and projects. Tools like Zoho and Google Meets Polls can be utilized to create surveys for staff to provide their input on who the Teammate of the Quarter should be!

Listen in to learn how to integrate this award within your firm!

Episode Highlights:

• 00:24 The benefits of the Teammate of the Quarter Award
• 3:16 How the award drives a positive work environment
• 10:28 The success of the award process

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Transcripts: Teammate of the Quarter Award?! with Tyson Murtux 

Tyson (00:01.112)
Hey everybody, welcome back to another Saturday episode of the Maximum Lawyer podcast. I hope everyone has had a wonderful beginning of the year. I know that ours has been extremely busy. I'm hoping that all of yours has been extremely busy, but that you've had plenty of opportunity to relax because we got to work hard, but you got to have fun at the same time. So.

Today, I want to talk about something that we did at our recent quarterly meeting, something we've been doing for quite a while, but it had me thinking about it. And so I wanted to talk about it. And that is our teammate of the quarter award that we give to a teammate. And so I'm going to get into some of the details of that and how that looks in just a moment. But before I do, we are still, still…

I don't know how much longer this is going to last, giving away stage one of maximum lawyer and minimum time, absolutely free to our listeners. We give this to stages one, two, and three. We give that to guild members. But if you're not in the guild, we will give it to you for free. Stage one for free. You don't get stage twos and two and three. You only get those if you're in the guild. But if you're a listener, you can get stage one.

All you have to do is text stage one to 314 -501 -9260. That's 314 -501 -9260. And it will be sent out to you via text right away. So hopefully you'll check that out. Something that Jim and I have put together. It's the roadmap to building the law firm of your dreams. We think it'll help you along your journey. All right, so let's get into teammate of the quarter. And…

This is something, you know, honestly, we should have done it, started doing it a long time ago, but I don't even know where we picked it up. We might've gotten the idea from someone else. I don't know. If I'm not giving someone credit, I apologize, but it's something that it is a very cool thing to watch because people, you can tell when they win it, they feel appreciated. And…

Tyson (02:25.272)
Sometimes we're not the best as law firm owners because we're so busy. We're running law firms and we're going to court and we're working on wills or whatever you do. And we forget to thank the people we should be thanking and really giving them the credit that they deserve. And this helps with that. And it helps you, one of the benefits, this is my first thing I want to talk about is cultivating that culture of appreciation. And so…

One of the main parts of this for us is it does, it really does drive that home. Having that award, knowing that person, that they won that quarter, it really is cool. And it's that reflection of the just genuine acknowledgement and respect that your teammates have for you. It's really, really cool. It helps foster that positive work environment that…

that everyone is looking for, right? That's what we're looking for. We want to have that positive environment. And that's something that we have been really working so freaking hard at our firm is making sure we have A players, but not only A players, but people that are just positive people that have the energy, they bring it. Another way of putting it, a more negative way of putting it is just not having toxic people, right? That's a more negative view, but sometimes you have to kind of…

Some of you maybe need that punch in the nose a little bit. But it is a great way of cultivating that environment. Which part of that is just a boost morale. People get motivated because they know that their efforts every month, every day, every hour that they put in that they're going to be recognized. And so…

This episode isn't necessarily just about, I guess, teammate of the quarter. It's really about, it's really about just try to cultivating that environment that you want when it comes to that, that appreciation of your employees, of your team members, of your teammates. Another, another part of this too, is it, I think it helps encourage teamwork and collaboration because I can tell you, I, cause I don't, I remove my name from the survey. I think that you should too, by the way, you can do it whatever you want.

Tyson (04:48.665)
Even though they're like, hey, we want you to have your name on there. I don't, I'm not, I'll never have my name on one of those surveys. Um, I don't think you should either, but, um, it is, I can, I can, I see trends. I see whenever people are, are, have been collaborating with each other and they vote for each other. So I, I, I see it and, um, great. I think it's good. I think it's fantastic. Um, you, you, you have that, that collaboration between team members. I think that's great. That's what you want. It's exactly what you want.

Something else is like, this is something that is maybe a little bit overlooked is that you have the collaboration, but there's also that engagement with each other too, right? Collaboration and engagement, they're two different things, right? Collaboration is where we're working sort of towards this common goal. Engagement is like we're getting to know each other. We're interacting with each other. And it enhances that engagement that you're looking for when it comes to your employees as well.

And then I'd say the last thing, and then I'll get into sort of the nuts and bolts of how we do it, is it drives a little bit of healthy competition. Okay. And this is one where you are in the survey, you're supporting each other. So it is a healthy competition. There can be unhealthy competitions for sure, but this is one of those things where people want to win this award. Okay. They want to win this award. And I know that if I were eligible for it, I'd want to win it too, if I were an employee. So.

People are going to want to win it. And so they're going to, they're going to, you know, competition, healthy competition usually, usually leads to better results. So think about that as well. All right. So the mechanics of this, we've done this, you know, a few different ways. I, this time, I tried to do a little bit different this time, but we, I didn't realize the limitations of Google meets polls, but the, you can't do more than 10 options. I don't think on a -

hole in Google Meet. So I just sort of scramble this quarter. But what my plan was is we'll do a live hole. And I thought it'd be kind of cool to have live results. That's why I wouldn't do it. I thought it'd be kind of cool. And it didn't quite work that way. But what I did was I went back to what we normally do. I made a copy of an old Zoho survey that we use where we have in that survey.

Tyson (07:12.184)
And I didn't do it this time because I was pivoting very quickly, but usually we have, you list your name, you list who you're voting for. And then we talk about the, we have two questions that we have on there. And the first one is about, tell us about a moment that, and I'm paraphrasing by the way, but.

Tell us about a moment in the last quarter where this team member has really excelled. And that's not the exact wording of it, but it's somewhere along those lines. What we're doing is we're looking for a story, right? We want them to tell a story about the teammate that they're talking about. And so the, I like being able to hear that because that.

we can then repeat those stories. Those are things that we can use in the future, which I think are helpful. And so that's a question that we have used. Another question that we use, it's just very simple, you who's your choice? I've done this where it's anonymous before too. I don't know, I like to have them identify themselves, but you can do whatever you want. We've had one where we ask, you know, what makes them special? Actually, I think it's kind of a cool.

question and that allows them to sort of freelance a little bit with it where they can go a little bit deeper. When you ask that question you do see a lot longer answers because it's a little bit more thought -provoking. And so those are a couple questions or a few questions that we ask them.

And we get some pretty good feedback. We get some pretty insightful responses as well. So it's a pretty simple survey. We normally will send it in the week or two before, because we sent a survey in advance of our quarterly meetings. And what we've… So there's something I've been doing recently where we've been testing out a couple of different things. So in previous quarters, we sent just a…

Tyson (09:35.768)
fairly simple survey where we ask a little bit. Q4 for that survey, we sent an extremely detailed survey. Okay. And then this quarter, no survey. Okay. And I wanted to test and see, I wanted to compare them and see what was better and see if it made any difference on the meetings. We actually just had a phenomenal meeting to be honest with you. It was really, really good, but the…

The feel of the meeting was different. People had been working really, really hard. This quarter has been one where everyone's just working, working, working, working super tough. So I sort of want to reward them with a little bit of a lighter quarterly meeting because they can be a bear. For those of you that do them, they can be kind of a bear. They're extremely important. They're something that we can't not do. We've got to do them because they're just so, so important. But we…

We wanted to sort of, so it was a, we started with, actually, I'll talk about this in another episode, what we actually did this quarterly meeting, because I think it was a little bit different, but it was cool. Really enjoyed it. The feel was different and our team deserved it. But for getting business done, I'll tell you, doing the more detailed surveys, that's the way to go. But I can talk about it in another episode as well. But.

Hopefully you all got something from this. Oh, I guess I didn't finish. After we do the survey, we will normally announce it at the quarterly meeting. That's how we do it. So we will announce it at the end of the day, and then the winner gets a day off of work that's paid. So it's an additional vacation day, which they all love. They all like being able to take an additional day off. And so it's one of those just added perks to it. It's not just…

I mean, you could give cash prizes too and all that if you wanted to. Maybe sometime we'll try that as well, but right now we give a day off and people seem to like it quite a bit. So that works pretty well for us. Test out what you like and what you don't like and I'd love to hear from you. If you do have a tweak that you want me to make when it comes to the teammate of the quarter or if you've got any ideas or if you have any questions, I would love for you to text me at.

Tyson (11:55.449)
314 -501 -9260, 314 -501 -9260. I love hearing from you. We get lots of text messages and I love to see them when they come in. So keep them coming, really appreciate it. Until next week, remember that consistent action is the blueprint that turns your goals into reality. Take care, everybody. See ya.