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One Drop of Poison with Sean Lemson · Humanity Working

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_03: Employees are a very important part of the bottom line, right?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_03: If I I can either have employees that just check the box every day, clock out at five o'clock, and just do their job and leave, or I can have employees who are so connected with the vision of the company, so feel so valued by the company that they're literally trying to solve problems for the company in the shower, right?
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_03: Which which type of employee do you think is actually going to achieve more for the company and improve the bottom line?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: All right, I'm joined today by Sean Lempson.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's author of the new book One Drop of Poison: How One Bad Leader Can Slowly Kill Your Company.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the podcast, Sean.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: All right, I want to I want to start with a statistic.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: So in the book, um use uh site research that suggests that 8 to 12% of executives would fit into a description of psychopath or sociopath.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um now companies don't have sociopath quotas that I'm aware of they're trying to fill.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: So there's obviously something going on here when you've got like a one, two, three, four percent of the general population that fits into that category, and yet more of them are uh getting into leadership positions inside companies.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: So what do you think is going on there?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: Well, um I mean just to put it frankly, I think that the incentives and the work that these leaders have to do, uh, the more dispassionately they can do that work.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: In other words, the ease with which they can make what somebody who's highly empath empathetic uh would struggle with, the higher they're going to climb in an organization.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: They they look like heroes when they can lay off a thousand people and not even lose a single night's sleep, you know.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_03: And for us for a sociopath, um, that that is something that is just like choosing which which brand of bread to buy.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it is it's they just are incapable of empathy.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: That's what makes them that way.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_03: And um so so they get uh rewarded for that what what others see as bravery in in the face of a difficult decision.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so they get moved up in organizations.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: Now they don't often, they're not very successful leaders once they get there, once they get to the top, uh, because they're they're always self-serving, right?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: Even along the way up, they're self-serving.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: So it it that becomes a lot more obvious when they're standing at the top uh than when they were on their way up.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_03: So typically it's not uh not not quite, they're not quite successful at senior leadership positions as they think they are.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So tell me about Barbara.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_03: So uh I would say Barbara was a kind of a leader who I I like to say she led with exclamation exclamation points and not question marks.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um she was very much in the you know, from the first moment I met her, she was telling me what she was being what she was expecting from me, from what she was expecting from us.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_03: And um it it it set us off a little weird because you know, we also had experience.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_03: We also had a lot of, we were trying to help her get her feet, you know, grounded at the company she had just joined.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_03: And boy, she came out of the gate with a lot of um exclamation points, as I would say, not question marks.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I saw that that right out of the gate, that that's it felt like she had to prove something uh rather than learn something, um, which was uh uh I think started off on the wrong foot, and I think everybody had that.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I think she began making some changes to the organization that the people in the organization didn't agree with.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_03: And I I mean this is an important point to make here.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_03: Leaders' job is obviously sometimes to take an organization to a place that's different than where they are, but they shouldn't do that through commandment and policy.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: They should do that through winning hearts and minds, right?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_03: If they truly believe what they where they want to take everybody, then they want to get they should have people following them to that place, not being commanded to that new place.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_03: And Barbara had a real commanding way of making these changes, and engagement went down the tubes.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, for three years, I think, the organization of 160 people, uh, the the engagement scores were just completely tanked, and uh people were leaving the organization.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_03: So it wasn't a good thing.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_03: And now now Barbara was a what I that one of the archetypes that I use called the the the peacock.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: And I use that archetype because um the peacock is someone who's very upwardly focused.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they they spend a lot of time strutting their stuff and spreading their feathers out for their leadership team at the expense of their own teams, the teams they're leading.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um and in fact, it wasn't, you know, unit's not uncommon for a peacock to completely ignore their teams altogether or throw them under the bus, if necessary, to make sure that they are look that they look good to their leaders.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so you know, my own personal experience with Barbara was was just indicative.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_03: This kind of thing happened to all of us in our own way.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_03: But I had made a huge transformation for a large team at the company that was about 20 people.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, when I started with that team, most of the team wanted to quit.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_03: The leaders were frustrated uh on the team, they didn't know what to do about it.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: And their flow of the work was bad, the quality was bad.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_03: So we I really spent a lot of time with this team as a coach, you know, uh working with each individual, improving communication.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: We split the team into three squads, all pulling from the same backlog, really some innovative things.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_03: And at the end of a couple months, people were completely enamored with their new formation.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody wanted to quit.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, the quality was up, the leaders were happy.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_03: I was getting letters of recommendation from them to my boss.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_03: So things were really looking great.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so when Barbara approached my boss and asked for uh a wins, um my my boss suggested that I use this as a win.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: And uh so I gave this this whole use case with all of the wins that we had accomplished with this team.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: And Barbara just said to me, I want three hard numbers.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_03: I need numbers, Sean.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, What numbers do you want?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I need to know like what's the percent, did their cycle time go down?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that you know, I she just started touting these metrics.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: She wanted hard numbers.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Look, this is a new team now at this point.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: They were broken up into three new teams.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: There's no baseline I can compare this to.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_03: So I can't really tell you what improvement was.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: I all I can tell you is that nobody wants to quit now, and the leaders are happy with me, and the quality is up.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, those are some wins.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: And she she she kicked my win out of the deck because I didn't have these three hard numbers.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I think the message that sent to me was that what I thought I brought as value wasn't valuable to her.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: And she never brought my win to above her, so nobody above her ever heard about any of the work that I did.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I just want to stress that that thing she did to me was the same thing she did to almost everybody in her organization in some way.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_03: Their own, there were a lot of people who were struggling to figure out what value they added in face of her shutting them down.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: So uh it's yeah.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: Peacocks are one of my least favorite, and unfortunately, they're probably one of the most prevalent uh archetypes.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: If I were interviewing Barbara right now instead of interviewing you, my guess is she probably wouldn't view her tenure in the same way that you did, or your colleagues did, or or anything along those lines, right?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that gets me to actually one of the more beautifully simple definitions that you have of what a leader is.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if you could share that with us.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I I have a little trick question that I give people when I'm when I'm working with them, leaders that I'm working with.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_03: I'll say to them, you know, what's the one thing all leaders have?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I let wait for the answer, and they usually come back with, oh, you know, courage or vision or, you know, all the answers you can imagine that people say that a good leader has.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Well, it's actually followers.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: That's it.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_03: That's what all good leaders have as followers.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_03: And there are people who are who are who don't even have direct reports, who are seen as leaders.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: And conversely, there are people who have a lot of direct reports, and none of those direct reports actually view that person as a leader.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_03: So um leadership has more to do with you wanting, uh you having people who who want to follow you.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um and yeah.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: So the importantly, though, when I talk about toxic leadership, and to your point about if you were interviewing Barbara, you know, most people who are toxic leaders don't wake up every day thinking, I'm gonna destroy my teams today.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_03: You know, they're not thinking, how can I get this?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_03: You know, they're what they do, what they're doing is they're operating with uh a leadership mindset, which we can we can talk about later, um that and and and a set of uh goals that the company has created for them and incentives, uh, their own motivations, and they're just using the way that mindset they have about leadership to try to achieve those goals.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what Barbara would say.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_03: Barbara would say, I had a I had of um goals that were given to me that I had to achieve.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so I did the my own style to get that done.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I would argue that maybe there was nothing wrong with those goals or even where she wanted to take the organization.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_03: What was wrong was that she just assumed she could command us all there instead of getting us to want to follow her there, right?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: And and by the way, it is a possibility that she's wrong, also, right?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_03: And an open-minded leader would say, Oh, I have all these people working for me, and they're all subject matter experts, and most of them hate this plan.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_03: So this is an idea, you know, at least stop and think if I have all these people working for me who really know what they're talking about and they hate this plan, maybe there's something wrong with my plan.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe, you know, just open the idea to think that might there might be something wrong with your plan.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, there's so many threads we could we could pull on there.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: One that I think really comes through quite well in the book is this idea that that these things can almost kind of like spread in inside organizations.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously I don't know Barbara, but my guess is that it isn't that Barbara didn't have any followers.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: She probably had some followers.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, whether they wanted to follow her, like emotionally wanted to follow her, is another thing, but they but she almost certainly probably had some followers who were emulating her.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: As in other peacocks.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: They saw the peacock, they go, that's a behavior.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I understand, I'll be a peacock inside this organization, and I will emulate that.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that is fascinating because it spreads through organizations.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: We've seen this in a lot of our work, whereby you'll have um, it's really fascinating the way in which um leaders role model behaviors through their organization, and they role model all behaviors, positive behaviors and uh toxic behaviors as well.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think that that comes out really effectively in uh in the book as you're kind of arguing that this is this is somewhat more than just the idea of like what we would traditionally call toxic behaviors.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want to get that's something I actually want to get into.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of us when we hear the term toxic, toxic behaviors when it comes into the into the workforce, we think of something as kind of extreme, like um, this human has made my life hell.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I get the sense that you're looking at toxicity in kind of a broader sense, in in that there is like subtle toxins that are damaging our work environment in the same way that there are subtle toxins that are out in the regular environment damaging us in in certain ways.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you call out that in behaviors that I think some people wouldn't necessarily even consider toxic, like for example, a leader that is focusing relentless, relentlessly on the bottom line.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people would listen to that and go, well, of course leaders should focus relentlessly on the bottom line.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: So so talk about that archetype in in particular and why that can be an example of actually a toxic behavior inside a workplace.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, the problem with the bottom liner, which is that's the archetype we're talking about here.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_03: The the problem with the bottom liner is it's not that they focus on the bottom line, it's that they focus on the bottom line above everything else, including all their employees.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_03: The argument I'm making it is that employees are a very important part of the bottom line.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_03: If I I can either have employees that just check the box every day, clock out at five o'clock and just do their job and leave, or I can have employees who are so connected with the vision of the company, so feel so valued by the company that they're literally trying to solve problems for the company in the shower, right?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_03: Which which type of employee do you think is actually going to achieve more for the company and improve the bottom line?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: So the problem isn't that they're focused on the bottom line, it's that they literally look at people and see dollar signs uh everywhere instead of seeing people and realizing that the people are a step to a higher bottom line.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_03: The the one more thing I would make, uh the point I would make about the bottom liner is if I work for a bottom liner, you cannot help but think, oh, okay, I get it.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_03: The bottom line is more important than me.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_03: So rather than me give you everything, because you're not, you don't care about anything about the bottom line.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: So why should I give you my all either?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and it's so it ends up that there's a a lot of data now, and I talk about it in the book.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_03: There, there's some studies that have been done that show that even employees who also have a bottom line mentality uh withhold some of their productivity when they work for bottom line leaders.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I find that research fascinating.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Just want to double down on that.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: You're basically saying that you've got leaders that are relentlessly focused on the bottom line.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: They're leading people that are relentlessly focused on the bottom line.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And even then, they are um achieving some suboptimal results.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's just fascinating stuff.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: The uh another archetype that you call out is uh is the uh data obsessed, I guess you could call it.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_03: The data freak, yeah.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: The data freaks.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um the people that take this idea of being a data-driven leader and take that to an extreme.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, again, I think a lot of a lot of us, particularly if we've you know, read measure what matters and we've we've become like super obsessed with OKRs and all this kind of stuff, we would we might find that surprising.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, so what's what's wrong with you know with a healthy obsession with data?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_03: Well, again, it's the same kind of problem with the bottom line, uh the bottom liner.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_03: The bottom liner is focused on just one piece of data, which is the bottom line.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_03: Data freaks are just as obsessed, uh, it's just that they're obsessed about everything having to be data, right?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_03: So um, you know, you're you're uh I presumably you're a leader of people, you sell to people, right?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and so your customers are people, your peers are people.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_03: So if you have a lot of people around you, then you are in what I would what I try to make of the argument in the book, you're in the Kinefin model's complex quadrant, which is that you can't sit and strategize every possible move because things are only going to make sense in hindsight.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_03: And so when you're dealing with all this complexity of people, um it's very difficult to data your way through that problem.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_03: Data is a very hindsight-y kind of thing.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I'm not suggesting that data isn't valuable, nor am I saying you should never take any data.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's just that I've been in companies that are completely paralyzed by the fact that they don't have the data before they even take one step off the starting line.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, I I won't name any examples, but there are companies that want like seven-page, you know, full-on studies before they'll do the most basic experimenting about their market.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, there are, I've I've listened to some fantastic leaders who who say, you know, I could finish five experiments before this one company gets their foot off the starting line.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_03: Now, which companies do you think are going to innovate faster?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_03: The ones that can do small, short experiments, yes, capturing data from the end of those experiments to see what worked and what didn't, or someone who's trying to get all that information before they ever start, right?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: So that's the the problem with data, the data freak, is that they can create a trust problem with their teams.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_03: You've got a team that's saying, you know, uh, I we need help here.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_03: We're we're we're overwhelmed.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_03: All of us are working nights and weekends.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_03: These are all human things they're bringing to their leader.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_03: And the leader's response is, show me the data.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think that does to those teams?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: You know, they're like, uh, we're in, we're in trouble.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: We're working nights and weekends, and now you're giving us more work.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_03: We got to make a book report for you and a PowerPoint presentation to show you how much, how much we're working over.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's just you don't feel trusted.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: And if you don't feel trusted, then you're not going to trust upward either.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a couple of points that I'd love to kind of like dive in a little deeper with you on that.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the the first piece is really around this whole idea of measure, of measure what matters, or, you know, um, the drocker quote that was never made, uh, which is the, you know, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: So um I think that it's it's really important that people think about that, right?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: We a lot of the work that we're doing here is in the is in the field of intangibles, as it were.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And this uh this whole idea of everything needs to be reduced to a largely retroactive data point, once you really start to think about it, it doesn't even pass the pass the sniff test, right?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Are you are you literally saying that um if it's not possible to measure this effectively uh effectively today, that it doesn't matter, right?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: At what point is um is you know human sentiment, for example, which is notoriously difficult to measure effectively in the moment, right?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: At what point does that cease to become effective just because it's difficult to measure?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's an important uh that's an important point.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: The second though, which I really would like you to talk about just a a little bit more, is you brought up the Kineffen framework and and I think I feel anyway, and I'm curious to get your viewpoint on this, um, that the the Kineffen framework and the challenges that we face around leaderships are very intricate intric intricately connected in the sense that I think a lot of leaders want to lead a company that is predictable and obvious versus what it actually is, which is complicated and messy.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because predictable and obvious is easy to understand, right?
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Predictable and obvious is it's easy for you to figure out what you're supposed to do as a leader if you're pretending that you're managing a predictable and obvious, obvious company.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: So do you agree with that statement that there is sort of like this this group of leaders, many of whom have been trained formally in visions of leadership and formal models as to what companies look like, whereby they're almost like maybe subconsciously, but they're passive, they're they're resisting the idea that their comp company is complicated and messy and difficult to measure and difficult to lead in and difficult to even control.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Do you agree with that?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I do want to make one correction though.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: When you use the word complicated, you're making the same mistake that others do.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, right.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I make the argument in the book that this is a word that is often interchanged, but it's that's the beauty of the Kineffen model.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: So the the predictable side of the model is complicated and predictable or uh sorry, um basic.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and I would say that where the biggest problem leaders are having right now is they're treating complex problems their teams are facing.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_03: And the fact that teams are consist of human beings and customers consist of human beings, which make it complex.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and they're trying to treat this as if it's an industrial revolution, you know, era problem where we just need more people on the sewing machines, and that's how we'll solve the problem.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I've been on teams where where the whole that the leader thought the greatest thing they could do is just feed pizza to the developers all day and lock them in a room and have them write a thousand stories of every possible thing that could go wrong, right?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: Rather than just get out there and start, because it's complex.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I I I even made the point after they had spent days doing this.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: It did it didn't take more than a week for that all that work to mean nothing.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: Because the very right when they started their work, they realized, oh, this is this changed all these.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Assumptions, this changed everything we had decided, and now we it we're gonna be scrapping half this wall.
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• 22:41
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• 22:45
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• 22:55
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• 23:03
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• 23:14
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• 23:20
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• 23:27
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• 23:31
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• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: You list, as we've we've we've touched on a few of them already, you list ten different uh toxic leader archetypes.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I got the impression reading through all of them that probably all of us that are in leadership have little bits of ourselves in at least some of them, even if we strive not to.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought about this in in my case.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I think I've got a little bit of a chess master and a little bit of an invertebrate in me.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And those sound contradictory, but um, but I can I can see those sort of elements in me.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm curious, have you thought about the sort of traits that maybe linger in you a little bit and and how you strive to work on those?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think that uh like you, I feel like a little bit of a chess master sometimes.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I think that one of the reasons the place I can slip very quickly is into the micromanager position, if I don't trust the the person who's working for me.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_03: So for example, if if I have a certain quality level or I have a certain thing I'm expecting and they continually come up short on that, I'm I'm more likely to go into micromanager mode.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_03: I will say that even though the behaviors are would probably fit with the micromanager archetype, I do try to do it from a place of instruction and teaching and hope hopeful that that I can get to a place where I'm disengaging.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: I do think some micromanaging might be required every once in a while, just as some chess mastery might be required every once in a while, right?
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: The qu the art of it is Yeah, why don't you define why don't you briefly define the chess masterpiece?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think people probably understand micromanagement, but why don't you find the chess masterpiece?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_03: The chess master is somebody who who really falls into the spot of thinking that leadership is a privilege and not a responsibility.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: They think they were rewarded by for their whatever brains, whatever it is, their their quick decisions, their vision, whatever they think they they got them where they are.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: And that reward makes them, I mean, I'm I'm just gonna be blunt, makes them feel better, like higher than the those who work for them.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_03: And so because of that, they feel like they're the ones to solve the problem, not the one to uh that they're they're a lot in the problem space and not in the question space, which is what I when I'm coaching someone who's a chess master, I usually ask them to put themselves in the question space more than the answer space, which is a very uncomfortable place for them to be.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's a little bit of an art to both know the answer to something or know an answer, and also empower your team to come up with an answer.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so, uh, but chess masters tend to not do that.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_03: They disappear uh and then they pop out of their cave, as I like to say, uh, and just hand off all the instructions of how the teams are going to be.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_03: Here's a new policy for the team.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, we're gonna break the team up and we're gonna put you over here and you over here, as if they're just moving chess pieces around on a board and not necessarily uh actually working with the team to solve problems.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that part of the book is actually something I'd recommend people do, spend a little bit of time working through and and I suggest even work through it with that, with that mindset.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because I do think that we all have like these behaviors that we'll sneak into, particularly when stress levels are high.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: So in my case, for example, the reason that I identify quite a bit with the chess masterpiece is that um sometimes, particularly when things are you know tight in terms of time or a budget or something like that, yes, I'll involve the team, but basically I'm involving the team and telling them what I think the solution would be and then just having them act upon act upon it, yeah, versus actually bringing them in to actually do the sub the solutioning piece of this.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: And and so it's really fascinating when you work with leaders a period of time.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's like what they do when stress levels are low and they're thinking about this, and then there's and then there's the behaviors they fall back into when stress levels are high, which of course is actually when you need the contributions of your team, uh, of your team the most.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: But it can be quite difficult uh for us to do that kind of stuff as a leader.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um which sort of brings me to your world actually, of because you obviously spend a lot of time now uh coaching and training organizations and and helping them uh both from an organizational design perspective and then also the individuals in the uh in the organization.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if leaders have got this like disproportionate ability to poison a culture and destroy a company, you'd think that like giving them real actionable developmental opportunities would be like a huge priority inside companies.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: After all, I mean that the the fate of the company depends upon having leaders that are not like Barber.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that should be the case.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: But yet many companies really only start to work with a leader when they know that they're failing.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: So why do you think that is?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_03: Well, first of all, most companies don't even pay attention to when their leaders are failing, at least not in the way that we're thinking.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: One of the problems with toxic leadership is that some of some of our worst leaders look like highly successful leaders on paper.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, get into that.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: I love that uh so let's talk about it in the context of like a publicly traded company, for example.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a great you have great examples of that.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: So I mean, if you if I if I look at a uh a leader as somebody who just delivers what I give them to do.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_03: So in other words, we have this new initiative that the executive team has decided they're want to work on.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna empower my leaders, the ones who work for me, to actually make that come to life.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_03: If that's the goal, and I mean it isn't just a goal, let's be honest, Paul.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_03: These people are bonused on it.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_03: They get uh they get there's a financial reward for it.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: They they're probably envisioning their stock price going up when this is done.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_03: So there's all kinds of financial and other kinds of rewards, even political rewards, that are associated with you just simply getting this thing across the finish line.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_03: So let's just say that's the that's the environment these leaders are working in.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: Now, there are two ways that leader can make that happen.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_03: They can either make it happen by just commanding everybody to make it happen.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: I don't care what you got to do, get this done.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I don't care if you have to work weekends, evenings, whatever, get it done.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_03: That's one way.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_03: The other way is to have highly motivated employees who who will want to do it on their own time, even if they have to.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_03: They'll do whatever they got to do to get it done because they they're so enmeshed in winning uh for the company that they want this.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_03: The the problem is that from the from the senior executive leader level level, it looks the same.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_03: Did you get it across the finish line or not?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_03: You got it across the finish line?
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: Great.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: I'm done, cool.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_03: Here's your bonus, here's your reward.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_03: But what they're not doing is following up afterwards to find out, hey, after you got this across the finish line, did three quarters of your talent want to leave the company?
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_03: Because if is that truly a win if you know a third of the people on your company want to leave after accomplishing this because they were commanded to do it in a way that was just a terrible work environment, from the top, from the top, it looks the same.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_03: That's the point.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: And this I think is part of the is potentially part of the challenge.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like if I can let me play devil's advocate a bit here.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: And and um in the book, uh, it's fairly clear that you're not a fan of Jeff Bezos.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, and and I think a lot of people would look at that and go, well, hold on here.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about one of the most consistently successful companies of the past couple of decades, right?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe a company that, you know, if I'm a as as they say, like if I if I if I'd bought you know$100 a stock in in Amazon way back when, I'd be a very rich human being right now.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: So how can we logically argue that Jeff Bezos is not a good leader when the company has been not just been successful quarter over quarter, but has a track record of success that now dates back a couple of decades?
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_03: Well, first of all, let's not forget the fact that Amazon has a turnover rate that is, especially in their in their more blue-collar side of the business, which is a significant side, uh, that is that is unprecedented.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there there are senior executives of the company that are have privately expressed concern that they're running out of human beings in America to hire that haven't already been through the company.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_03: So um, you know, I would I would argue that there's more than one way to measure success, right?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: We we certainly want the company to make money.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and uh what I what I want to caution everybody, though, is to think of success as what the stock market is doing with the company, because the stock market has a very disconnected view of what's actually happening, right?
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_03: I like to say that the people who are on the stock, you know, who are shareholders are are if they if they were on a cruise ship, you know, they're trying to steer the ship from a portal down in the third level below above sea level.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_03: You know, they're not up at the captain's bridge looking at everything going on.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_03: They have a narrow set of metrics and measurements they're using to determine the health of the company.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_03: And employee engagement is rarely one of them.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_03: So, uh, or turnover is not one of them.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_03: And and so the the from a purely financial perspective, yes, I would argue that Amazon is successful for now.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: However, I would argue also that that is, you know, we we've also reached a point where Amazon is almost untouchable from how I could give you a more uh more recent example, which would be Elon Musk and Tesla, right, who is going through laying off 14,000 people article after article.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: You can just go Google it right now and you'll find a ton of articles about how everyone at the company who's there still, who hasn't been laid off, is feeling like corporate hunger games right now.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, they feel like they don't know what how to do their jobs.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_03: They they are all scared for their jobs.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I I've been in environments like this where layoffs take years to do, and then uh then you have innovation not happening.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: I don't even know if the person I'm supposed to meet with is even going to be here next week or if I'm even gonna be here next week.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I I don't I I can't, no matter how the stock is performing, I can't imagine that that isn't going to lend itself to good quality output from employees and innovative solutions.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_03: Now, if your company's already developed all those and you don't need any more of them, I guess then go ahead and create this environment at your company.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_03: But I would assume that someone's gonna eat your lunch, and that is exactly what is happening right now at Tesla because they're not innovative.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, look at look at the models of Teslas that are on the road.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: They're the same models we've had for, you know, since the beginning, pretty much.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um, they're they're not really innovating much.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is really important because there's a danger of us learning the wrong lessons, right?
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: We have a his we have a history of taking leaders.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can go back in the past, you can think of Jack Welsh, who you mentioned quite a few times in the in the book right now.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: We we take leaders who have been successful at a company for a period of, let's say, 10 years or 15 years or something like that.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: We ignore the potential structural advantages that that that that company has.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, advantages that company would have no matter who led that company, right?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: And we attribute the success of the company to typically the 50-year-old plus white male who conforms to a specific style of leadership that we think that we think is a really good thing.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's only decades afterwards when we look back, Jack Welsh being a primary example, and go, well, that was kind of dumb, right?
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so there are um and we may be in that we may be in that position right now.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's impossible for us to answer um whether Amazon is where it is because Jeff Bezos is a uh is a great leader, or whether it whether it is where it is because of structural advantages that Amazon has combined with elements of luck and various other, you know, and various and various other things.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I love your Tesla example because Tesla shows what can change inside a company when the company, which is as it was, has no real meaningful competition in its space and a movement behind it.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then what happens when it does have meaningful competition in its space, and the movement behind it kind of dissolves somewhat, and all of a sudden it the challenges that you're talking about become oversized problems.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so Tesla, Tesla is a great example.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you'll have it more more of it in your uh in the next version because it's such a fascinating thing uh to see in terms of what's happening on the organization right now.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm working on a YouTube video for the Tesla example here.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, I'm sure I'm gonna you know upset every Tesla fan in the world when I say this.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I'm sure they idolize the guy.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_03: And I used to idolize the guy, I really did.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I really thought that he was very visionary, and I still think to some degree he is, but there you can't shake the human frailty of look at look at what is how he treats his critics.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, look at how he, you know, it's really hard to see that as balanced behavior.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_03: Uh that someone would, you know, that there's a story going around right now that his the head of his supercharger network was someone that did not agree, she didn't want to do any more layoffs.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and so he laid off her her and her entire team.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_03: It was like 500 people on the team.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_03: This is not the behavior of an emotionally stable leader.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_03: This is the behavior of someone who has um, I I don't know what to call it.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_03: I try to make up a word here, but I call you like wealth itis, right?
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you the the you know, he there's something about when you get really wealthy, you suddenly think you're an expert in every territory, in every every subject matter.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, and it's a problem um that happens with power as well.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, this is the other thing that we unfortunately we don't really have time to go into in any depth today, but maybe it's a topic for a follow-on discussion.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: But as these leaders are moving up inside their organizations, the other thing that is happening as well is they're hearing much less from people who disagree with them.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're hearing much they're hearing all the time from people that are, particularly the peacock archetype you're talking about, right?
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: All the time where it's like flatter, you know, I flatter this human, it will benefit me, right?
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: So so therefore, everybody you're hearing from, or many people you're hearing from, are people that just that are flattering you.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I I call it the um uh leadership award itis.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, the the further you go up, the more unsolicited awards that you that you start receiving, with everybody telling you how just amazingly awesome you are.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_03: And it's and if you talk to those leaders, they will tell you they want that negative feedback still.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_03: When I work with executives, they're telling me it's very hard for me to hear anything I'm doing wrong.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_03: I'm talking about leaders who have a growth mindset and want that.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it is, it's a uh it's it's something to watch out for.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not, if you're a leader and you're not getting that uh that type of feedback and you're not hearing from others the candid feedback, there's there is a problem.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a a point that you make in the book, it's you kind of allude it to a dying star, right?
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you make a point in the book that that when people are telling you what's wrong, they're actually at their most engaged.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then if that's not acted upon, they'll shut down and they're out.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like the the star that that did the supernova bit and now is dead.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's that's that's right.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_03: This is that's the mistake.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_03: That is a mistake that leaders make when they think that high engagement means high morale.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_03: It actually, they're not the same thing, right?
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_03: Engagement just means I'm engaged with helping you make it better.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, not I'm happy.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I think people really screw that up.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_03: When you screw that up, you you really do have this flame out, start, star flaming out scenario where someone, you know, starts out kind of trepidatious, they're new to the company, they don't want to ruffle any feathers, they don't want to rock the boat, or whatever metaphor you want to use.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: So they're just sort of sitting there watching, and then they get comfortable enough to start really speaking up and telling you what might be wrong.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_03: And that is your most engaged employee right there.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_03: But what ends up happening is these are the leaders who, the leaders who are threatened by that will scarlet letter that person and either ignore them until they stop talking, which now they're dising, they're disengaged, right?
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: And the worst thing you can have is a bunch of employees who have quit, but who are still staying there on your payroll.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_03: That's the disengaged uh piece.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_03: And I I mean, look, the one of the things I'm trying to make the point about in the book over and over again is how can you not see, even if you're bottom line obsessed, even if you're data obsessed, how can you not see those as data points you want to turn around?
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Sean, I'll bring us home here.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: I wanna I'm getting really struck by both in the book and in this conversation, that this is obviously something of a mission for you working with individuals and teams and organizations to let's let's call it eliminate toxins.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um but you know, it's a challenge, right?
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: You've given the nature of our society, the way our companies are built, um, the way in which we measure the success of leaders inside organizations, it's an uphill battle.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: So um do you think it it really is possible to make a difference?
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm I'm preluding, if you like, how you finish the book, which I think would be a great way to finish the pod.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, the uh first of all, this is not I just want to say this way.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_03: Uh when I hear that people say, oh, the culture here is, you know, I've been that I don't know how many companies where I've heard say, oh, that's just the you know, Cisco culture, that's just the Adobe culture, that's just the Nike culture, whatever.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um the thing is the buildings themselves do not have a culture, right?
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_03: The the logo on the side does not have a culture.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_03: The culture shows up when all the people show up every day.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_03: So if you want a different culture to show up, you either have to have different people show up or you have to have people show up differently.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we contribute to a culture individually, one by one.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_03: So you're right, it's an uphill battle, which is one of the reasons why I start at the top of the hill as much as I can, because I want it to be a downhill thing, not an uphill thing.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not going to get the masses to convince their CEO to have a different mindset about leadership, right?
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the the that leader will probably fail miserably and then blame everybody but themselves all the way to their retirement anyway.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_03: So the leader who's already aware of the fact that they have an impact on the culture, those are the leaders who I want to get to.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I feel like, and and I also want to make the point, and I'll make it again, that we don't wake up thinking we're trying to destroy our teams every day.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_03: These are every every person out here who's listening to this podcast, who is a leader, is not and probably doesn't know that what they're doing is toxic, um, doesn't want to be toxic.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_03: And if they were, if they found out they were, they would want to change it, most of them.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not saying there aren't some villains in the leader space, but most leaders are not, okay, that way.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so I want everyone to think of this as optimistic, even though the book has sort of a cynical tone to it.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_03: I want everyone to feel optimistic about their own ability to change who they are.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_03: I've heard for some very good leaders who have read my book who have told me, wow, I've spotted myself like you did, Paul.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_03: I've spotted myself in this archetype here.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I sometimes it genuinely surprises me because I know these people as leaders and would have never known that about themselves.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: But it speaks to their growth mindset that they are looking for the negative to find the thing that they can change.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_03: And um I I really feel like that's one of the so when I finish the book, I talk about the star, the the um starfish story, which is that a little girl is that this a big storm has come and washed thousands of starfish up onto the beach.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_03: And this this little girl is on the beach and she's throwing the starfish back into the ocean one by one.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_03: And this man comes up to her and says, you know, what are you doing, little girl?
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_03: You're you're never gonna save all these starfish.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_03: There are thousands of them.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_03: And she looks down at one and she picks it up and she throws it back in the ocean and she looks back at the man and says, I made a difference for that one.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_03: And he stops and thinks, and he starts to help her.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_03: And soon all the people that were mocking her join in.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_03: And before you know it, all the starfish are saved.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_03: And that story is a is one that just keeps me going every day.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not trying to get into a company and change the whole culture.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_03: I'm trying to get into a company and change individual leaders because I am positive that if I do that, the culture will change.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: Great way to end it.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, Sean.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: Once again, the book is One Drop of Poison.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, uh great read and really engaging read as well.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: You'll almost certainly learn some stuff from it.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: So go ahead and get that.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: And uh thank you again, Sean, for your time today.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much for having me on the podcast, Paul.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: Humanity Working is produced and edited for Billion Minds by Matt Neal.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: Our interviewer is Paul Slater.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: Music is by Dolo Records.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: If you like this podcast, please subscribe, like, and recommend us to others.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: It helps us reach more people.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to learn more about how Billion Minds gets companies ready for the future of work by building adaptable, resilient employees, look for them on LinkedIn or visit their website at billionminds.com.