#37: Leadership Hot Seat: Eric Answers Your Top Questions About Influence & Culture

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Eric:  Welcome to the Empower Podcast. I'm your host, Eric Pfeiffer, CEO of Empower. Coaching leadership isn't about titles or positions. It's actually about the influence and impact we have on our environments. This is where we get to learn how to operate well under pressure, lead with confidence, and drive meaningful results.

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It's called golf season. No, I'm just kidding. It's really a little bit of spring, a little bit of summer. It's been  raining. It's been raining. We don't know what to do. We know what to do. People we're freaking out. My favorite is watching these social media videos of, of Southern Californians mocking ourselves by saying, oh, we got a half inch of rain.

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Graphic, full disclosure. Anyways, Hey, but listen, we, we got so many honest, vulnerable, incredibly relevant questions from leaders. There was no way to fit them all into one episode. So we started last week. We're gonna pick up again this week, and today  Dawn and I are diving into the next set. The questions that surface once you've been leading for a while, the ones that usually show up behind closed doors and the ones leaders don't always feel permission

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Eric: Love it. Love it. So if you haven't listened to part one, guess what? You can absolutely go back and listen to that one if you'd like, but you don't have to. Listen to part one before you listen to part two, because these questions definitely stand alone and they hit on some of the biggest patterns, uh, for better and for worse, that we see with the leaders who are doing good work, but still feel  overstretched, tired, uncertain, overwhelmed, beat up, exhausted without clarity about their next step.

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And they just go, oh, no problem. I got you sorted. I got a good idea of what you're dealing with. And you're like, whoa, whoa. Hold on, hold on. You haven't asked me any questions. You, you haven't asked me, where does it hurt? What are you, what are your symptoms? What are you experiencing? Right? So the first order that  a doctor is gonna tackle is like, Hey, let me understand the symptoms that you're experiencing, which is gonna then.

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Sure. But some reasons for inconsistency, inconsistency that we've seen is sometimes the inconsistency has to do with the individual at hand, right? They're lacking some personal skills, discipline focused, and their ability to organize their  schedule, their life to help them be more consistent and sometimes.

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My first step as a leader would be to figure out what kind of supports that person needs. Do they need a virtual assistant? Do they need some software that's gonna help them  organize their day more efficiently? Do they need some training, some practical skills? What tangible support can I bring to bear on the situation that are going to help this person develop the skills habits to become more consistent?

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Eric: That's right. That's right. And I think to counterbalance that, you've talked about. What are the necessary support mechanisms that we can provide for those individuals, right? Because really what we're doing is we're, we're wanting to support them as they raise their level of performance. The  other side of that coin is what we call challenge.

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Expectations number one, have we provided clear expectations around what they're doing, how they're gonna perform, deadlines, goals, objectives, all those things that we think of as clear  expectations. Mm-hmm. Number two, are we providing the necessary partnership of support and challenges we've just discussed to give them the best chance of succeeding?

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The the third thing is accountability. There has to be a clear, regular review process. So that, because what happens, you know, we, we give somebody a project, they're like, yeah, let me know how you're doing in three to six months. Yeah. I'm like, well, you know, how much happens in three to six months? Like there are, there are issues that we could have addressed after week one or week two that would've mitigated against these larger compounding problems and all of that, because we didn't have this regular review process with  these team members.

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Also some ways that they fell short and those, when it's  regular, it also feels a lot less punitive. It's just this is a normal, this is how we operate. We always review what we've done, we review and we change and, and keep going.

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And I remember one day my wife calling me and saying, Hey, we got a problem on it. I said, what's going on? She said, well, it looks like our son hasn't done any schoolwork for the last three months. I said, what? And she said, yeah. And the, the school administrator is recommending. That we just scrap the year because this was like, you know, early spring, scrap the year and let him start over again  next year.

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So if my wife walked in or I walked in, looked like he was doing schoolwork, we asked him, Hey, how you doing with school? Oh great. Doing great mom and dad. But we had no regular feedback loop or review process to, again, not micromanage, but just to ensure that this person is  moving in the right direction and.

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To decide it's time to move on. And we call that tool  the radical minimum standard diagram. And the reason why this is so effective is because it helps us do a few things. One, it sets our very clear minimum expectations for essentially performance, which is the what they're doing and how they are doing it.

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In their performance, what they're doing. And it happens for a variety of reasons that people on our teams fall  below that radical minimum standard from time to time. And so when that happens, the first thing that you have to do, which we touched on in the previous question, is we have to diagnose what's going on.

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But what happens, Eric? What do  we do now? Okay. Best case scenario, they engage that process. They get themselves at or above the radical amendment standard, everybody's happy, and we go off singing into the woods. What happens? If they don't, if they persist below the radical minimum standard.

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Right? And so here's what you, when you were saying, our responsibility as leaders is to give them every opportunity, okay? Here's the, here's the caveat. Within a certain timeframe. Yes. Right. So we have to decide like, okay, are we gonna give this person a week? Are we gonna give them  a month, three months, six months?

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Is it because you know they're in the wrong position? Wrong seat on the bus. Right? We understand that language from, from Jim Collins's work on Good to great there. If it, maybe  they're the wrong seat of the bus. That's okay. I've, we've worked with companies who have kind of recalibrated somebody's role and responsibility and it turned out it, it worked fa fantastically.

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It will. Uh, undermine the, the, the trust levels of people in that space. So, you know, I worked with a company some time ago where one of their key directors was, uh, they were operating below the RMS and not in terms of their skillset, but in terms of how they handle the people around them, right? Because the RMS is not just about what we expect  people to do, but how we expect them to operate.

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I'm like, oh, I'm, I'm okay with that. We're learning this whole process. That timeline comes up again and they say,  ah, excuse, excuse. And I say, Hey, listen. At some point, you as the leader, are now responsible for the destructive or detrimental consequences that are already happening on account of this individual persisting in that role they have.

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Dawn: tolerate this  drama? Anyway, so, and you know, the reality is it, it is simply a facet of being human, that we often prefer the devil we know to the devil we don't. Mm. And we will persist with somebody who is toxic, who is, and I do think though, that leaders don't appreciate how much trust is lost with the high performers on their team.

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When leaders are brave enough. When they have the clarity and the courage to make that decision, when the time is right, they  come back and they're like, oh my God, I should have done it sooner.

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Eric: Mm. Well, we're familiar with the term called po  toxic positivity. Indeed, right? Everything's rainbows and unicorns. The opposite. The, the gutter on the other side of the road is toxic negativity.

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And so that's why we give examples from the workplace and personal life in our lives. But, you know, in, in raising our kids, we were met with a million challenges through our  journey, right? Our kids are 23 and 20, so. You know, we've moved, I think six or seven times, uh, all the way across to the east coast and all the way back to the West coast.

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Mm-hmm. So there are things that we would not share with our kids when they were five that we did share with them when they were 15 and even more now that they're in their early twenties. Right, so amount of information. So it's not like we hid from our kids that we were moving,  we didn't hide from our kids that maybe daddy was changing to a, a new job or a new company or whatever.

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Right. We have to think that  way with our team members. What is their capacity to carry? Information, especially stuff that could be difficult. Uh, challenges, lost clients, lost business. Mm-hmm. You know, supply chain issues, whatever's going on. Right. Um, and some of that, some of that within our companies is, is kind of determined by layers of leadership.

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But here's what I tell people is we as leaders have to carry the tension within ourselves between. As Jim Collins refers to in his book, good To Great is the second timer referring to it. So fine. It's, it's a, it's a plug for this book, good to Great. But he talks about the Stockdale paradox, right?  Anybody can go research that and read it up on Google, but it's the ability for us as leaders to carry the brutal facts of what we're facing, no matter how heavy, weighty, difficult, and then to carry, in the other hand, the hope.

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Dawn: the fact that we're gonna get through this.

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Eric: Yeah. Yeah. That's good. I love  that. I love that. That's a, that's a great framework for people to, to think through. I, I don't wanna dump because I don't wanna be selfish and dump this to alleviate my discomfort.

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Make sure that they have comfortable chain. It's, I'm, I'm, I'm joking because there was a season where companies real, especially with younger generations coming into the workforce,  it was like, if we just make this feel like their bedroom.

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Dawn: And the output that we achieve from them  can be fantastic because of that. Mm-hmm. But the gutter, so to speak, is that they can burn themselves out if we as leaders do not provide for them the skills of setting healthy boundaries. Supporting them, right? Help, helping offer them feedback of like, Hey, I see you answering Slack messages over the weekend.

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Dawn: And release from the pressures of work so that you can keep that momentum high. Yeah.  Yeah, because operating at the rev line, the rev limiter line is not sustainable for anybody.

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Why are they burning out? Are they burning out because they're high performers and they just don't know how to slow down and invested themselves properly? Are they burning out because of something that  we're doing as leaders? Yeah. Again, because we're not providing clear expectations, so they never know if they're really hitting the mark.

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Yeah. Uh, are we providing clear expectations? Right. Are we providing. An environment in which we slow down, you know, often enough to  celebrate the big wins. I remember working in a company for years where it just felt like, man, we would bust our hump for weeks, months to achieve a particular project. And like just when you thought we're gonna have a party, we're gonna celebrate and then, you know, to, to just rest.

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And that's how they were  able to speed up the process of delivering mail to further, you know, further outposts. Well, the problem is when we as leaders take that mentality. I'm gonna ride my team until they burn out and die, and then I'll just get a new team member, and then I'll just switch to another team member.

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Dawn: That's a great, that's a great point. Yeah, and it's, it, it is interesting. Most of these problems  are, have two sides of the same coin, and we as leaders need to be able to pay attention.

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And because obviously we, we know that there's been this massive kind of. Attention called to the importance of mental health and people  burned out in the workplace and you know, all this stuff. But what's interesting is in the workplace where we are spending most of our time with different companies and across different industries, you know, how much attention is given to self-care, to how are you investing in your own health?

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Dawn: Vista. I would say too, before we jump hop off to our last question, that if leaders are  not willing to acknowledge the loss of productivity, of revenue, of time and energy, yeah.

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Millennials, gen Y, gen Z type folk.  And then the alphas, which my daughter hates 'cause she's a Gen Z or, and she's like, why do they get to be the alphas? Why didn't we get to be the alphas? They can be the betas anyways. I'm not in charge honey of determining those labels. But what's interesting is. There's this, there's this kind of growing complaint in amongst leaders and organizations that these young people, you know, they're so entitled.

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So let's just grant, that's, that's part of that, that age group, not just that generation. Mm-hmm. I said, but however, don't ask your team,  your employees, all the way down chain to give you something that you are not prepared to give them. Loyalty from an employer is no longer, is no longer understood through the lens of I give you a paycheck, I give you a seat, I give you a desk, or I give you an office.

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Yeah. Last time I checked, those people aren't shareholders. They don't have equity in the company. Right. So I, I think for a lot of these, I, I, I encourage them. We have to learn what does loyalty mean to these younger generations emerging? And naturally, their view of loyalty is going to be  largely skewed by what their parents committed themselves to and how did, what did they get out of it?

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Dawn: And we don't have a question on this, but this is, I think, so important. I, I would don't mind staying here for another minute because that the other thing that I hear  from older leaders, which gets my blood boiling, why don't these young people wanna work?

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Dawn: Largely. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Until you Right. They're in this for, for their success, their  development, their winning at life, because they have not seen their parents get the same loyalty from companies that maybe the boomer generation got from companies. Yeah. It's so, it's so good. And, and so until, to your point, until you, as their leader prove loyalty to them, they're gonna be in in it for themselves.

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We're just saying, Hey, at some point you have to consider the, the, the culture, the quality of life within your, your team or organization. I think that's why we're helping so many. Leaders, like really ask what does it mean to be a, a vision driven  organization? What does it mean to be a values driven organization?

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And re and, and simply to ask, okay, but how can we make your, the quality of your experience in this place such that you, it's a win-win. Mm-hmm. Rather than win  lose. 'cause what we, what those kids saw their parents do was win-lose. That's right. The company always wins. The employees eventually lose at some point.

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Mm-hmm. Must be one of the core leadership skillset that we develop, period. Why? Because life, business and the world around us is constantly changing. Yeah.  Constantly change. There's the moment you think you've wrapped your head and mind around something, it changes. Technology is changing, politics are changing, society's changing.

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Number one, as, um, from a leadership perspective, um, how do we not erode trust, but how do we build trust in an environment where things are changing? And that could be  our team members are changing. It could be, you know, whatever issues are changing. First and foremost, as leaders, our responsibility is to name the change.

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Own the change. And call it out. Yes. Don't hide from it. Don't put it under the rug. It's not gonna do anybody any good. It's 'cause it's not gonna go away. And what happens when there's some  change, uh, is it's going to be disruptive to people at different levels. There's nothing worse than a disruption you didn't know was coming.

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So number one, we've gotta call out the change, gotta identify it, and we've gotta expose it and let people know we're entering into some change. Number two, as leaders, we have to provide a clear vision for what's on the other side of this change. Yep. Whether it's a change we've chosen, that we've initiated through a, a new sales process, a new marketing system, a new  whatever.

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Maybe it's a change that's a difficult negative, or, you know, our supply chains just went crazy and now we've gotta find different places to source our products. Okay. You can still cast vision. Hey guys, you know what this is gonna do for us? This is gonna give  us an opportunity to put all the stuff that we've been learning into practice to see how we operate under pressure.

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We don't show up negatively. We don't give into toxic negativity. As we referred to earlier, we're not gonna put our head in the sand and pretend like nothing's happening. We're not gonna come in and do toxic positivity. This is how we will show up. This is how we will engage these difficulties, these pressures, these changes, the discomfort,  and we are all committed to showing up in this particular way.

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Eric: I love it. If one of these questions hit home for you, you are  in good company. Every leader wrestles with these same tensions, and the fact that you're naming them means you're already.

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We love you. We're grateful for you. See you next time. Hey, thanks for tuning into this powerful episode. Today's conversation is a great reminder that leadership  isn't just about what you do, it's about who you are becoming. If this episode gave you something to think about or inspired you in any way, share it with a friend or colleague, leave a quick review and make sure you've subscribed so that you never miss an episode.