Toxic Bosses vs. Great Leaders: The 4 Traits That Make or Break Work
➡️ SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/@makeworknotsuck?sub_confirmation=1
Why do some workplaces feel inspiring… while others feel like a nightmare?
The answer: Leadership.
A massive Gallup study found that what people need most from leaders isn’t just a paycheck.
It’s 4 critical traits that can make or break a workplace: Hope, Trust, Compassion, and Stability.
Great leaders get this right.
Toxic bosses fail miserably.
So where does your boss stand?
Or if you’re a leader… where do YOU stand?
In this episode, we break down:
✅ The 4 leadership traits that define great leaders (and expose bad ones).
✅ Why most workplaces suck - according to science.
✅ How to fix leadership, even if you’re not the boss.
If you’ve ever worked for a terrible leader (or want to avoid becoming one), you need to hear this.
Comment below: What’s the worst leadership mistake you’ve seen?
Subscribe for more ways to make work suck less.
📌 Timestamps:
0:00 - Why Does Work Suck?
0:30 - The 4 Things Employees Need (The Gallup Study)
1:38 - What the Study Found
4:08 - Why Hope Is the Most Dangerous Thing
5:26 - Now vs. 20 Years Ago
8:55 - A Boss vs. A Leader
16:08 - Trust (33%) - What It Means?
18:37 - The Importance of Transparency
24:23 - A Clear Sign of Lack of Trust
24:54 - Vision, Journey, Culture, Results
29:24 - This Company Does It Completely Wrong
34:45 - A Positive Example (Insane Growth)
39:00 - A Robot Will Take Your Job!
47:10 - Compassion - "Shut the Hell Up!"
48:45 - Stability Is All About...
52:20 - Can You Change Things from the Middle?
57:40 - You Have the Right to Find a Better Leader!
59:38 - Share Your Dumpster Fire Moments
➡️ Go ahead and hit that like button!
Transcript
Welcome to the Make Work Not Suck podcast.
[:Ryan, why does work suck? If you were to boil it down, is it the hours? Is it just too many meetings ineffective? Is it just crappy, coworkers? There's a lot of different reasons.
But according to a massive study done recently by Gallup across 52 countries, what really makes work suck or not suck is leadership, and a lot of leaders are getting it completely wrong.
[:What Gallup found in that study is most people don't just want a paycheck and great benefits. What they really want is hope, trust, compassion, and stability. The biggest one I think in there is hope because they wanna have something to believe in the future. If they don't have if they don't have hope that there's a future in their job and their role, then it's going to make work suck, and it makes it feel pointless.
[:Yeah. So let's break down those four, hope, trust, compassion, and stability. Let's talk about what they mean. Let's talk about why most leaders suck at it and how anybody, whether you're a leader, manager, or just, you know, starting your first job, what you can do to make work suck by leading better.
[:Awesome. Well, and I think in today's episode, we're not only gonna praise great leaders, but I think we're gonna roast a few that aren't even getting it right. So there's we're gonna go for the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between.
[:We'll say this. If if you feel roasted, it's not us doing the roasting. But if it gets hot when you're listening to this, it it might mean that your subconscious is telling you you need to listen and maybe change a few things. Yeah. So let's start with the data.
Gallup asked people across 52 countries what they needed most from their leaders. Fascinating article. Right? I'm not sure if you got the chance to read the whole thing and, but, you know, Gallup's very famous organization for doing these kinds of studies. 52 countries is a really broad dataset that is it's not just a US thing.
Right? And I think that's perhaps one of the risks the overwhelming majority of the work that I do is in The US. And so I think I can have a a biased view slanted towards The US workforce, but I love the fact that this is across all these different countries. And and what they found was is that there's four things that people want from their leaders, and this is in order. Hope, trust, compassion, and stability.
Hope was actually the biggest one at 56% of people said they need hope from their manager. Next was trust. Trust was only 33%. Still a big number. Right?
But only a third of people said they needed to trust their manager. Compassion was at 7% and stability at four.
[:So here here's I'm gonna call a couple things there because we said there's four of them, and I'm gonna reference back to one of our previous episodes. So hope at 56%. I get that. That is huge. That's up there.
Trust 33%. That's still a big trust or a big a big chunk. But compassion and stability at 74% respectively, that seems pretty low. And I'm gonna guess, based on some of our previous episodes, we talked about pay. There were several comments that were like, just pay people more, pay people more, people just want more money.
So I think what we have to talk about here is is let's assume the money is not the issue. I'm assuming in in the study, it was talking about the difference between what makes you thrive at your job versus you just punch in, punch out. And so this was kind of that if I if I understood the study correctly, this was, like, what keeps you unsaved, what makes you drive, what keeps you motivated beyond just the paycheck.
[:Yeah. Right? And I think it's interesting as I look at the numbers, I don't think this is only 4% of people said they need stability. I think it's it you know, the numbers here add up to a hundred. So I think it's, like, the percentage of the whole that this comprises.
So, you know, over half of what employees need from their manager is hope. Mhmm. That surprises me. Like, hope's an interesting word there. What was your first reaction when you saw that?
[:So it not not shocking at all, to be honest. Okay. So I've I've often said over the years and this is something this was the difference between, failure and success in the past for me. And I've and this in my in the companies that I've run and and in the companies I've worked with. And I've always said any company I work with, the most dangerous thing we can do is provide hope of a positive future and not deliver on it.
I said, it will destroy your company if you do not follow through on that because the most the most powerful thing and the most dangerous thing is hope. And how many organizations have you walked into and they're like, yeah. We wanna do this grand thing and we wanna have the mission and we wanna do this. And they get everybody rallied behind it, and then the CEO pulls you off to the side because I just need to squeeze more profit out of it. I don't care about this mission crap and all this BS and and just just, like, how do we squeeze more profits out of it?
Like, that that that makes them happy. That is a false hope, and that is very deadly and dangerous. So the reason the reason why it's 56% is because it is the most powerful thing in a organization that can make it be from a raving success, building raving fans, building a a raving culture versus a company that squeezes its people.
[:Do you think that this is more true now than it used to be? Like, there's a part of me that want that that thinks that this is growing in its importance. And that if you'd asked twenty years ago, hope would have been on the list, but it might not have been as big of a contribution. But my sense is that there are so many people that are so hopeless in so many parts of their life that if, there's at least hope at work that I'm I'm doing well at my job. I could get a promotion.
We're going to the you know, the the company's gonna do well. There's a boat there's a bonus for me at the end of the year. Like, there's something that I can look forward to and be hopeful for. I just think people are struggling to find that in any part of their life. And if work can bring that and your boss can bring that, that is a huge motivator for your employees.
[:A %. I mean, hope is what kept a lot of companies afloat, especially small businesses during COVID.
[:Yeah.
[:The companies that had no hope of survival and had no that nobody knew what was gonna happen when when all that went down. Nobody could predict it. Nobody could have how it was gonna go, what the government would have done, what other countries would have done, etcetera. But the companies that band together and had that hope to persevere together Mhmm. Are the ones that are stronger today.
The ones that did not have that are the companies that fell apart and went under during COVID. I mean, if that's Yep. That's not a message right there. I mean, now you take it forward. That was in a time of crisis and uncertainty as a global economy.
Now let's just talk about the normal business that's just running day in day out.
[:Yeah. You know, it's funny. I was on unsaved call earlier today with a guy, and I was talking to him about leadership development. And I used, this term VUCA, v u c a. And he was like, I I don't know that word.
Can you tell me? I was like, oh, VUCA is a is an acronym from the military. It stands for volatile, uncertain, chaotic, and ambiguous. And the the point I was trying to make with him was, like, there is there's a whole field of study around how do you lead in contexts that are volatile, uncertain, chaotic, and ambiguous. He goes, oh, that's just like every day at my company.
And I'm like, yeah. I think we we all feel that. I think the world feels like that. And if your boss can inspire hope and and give some meaning to your work in a in a world that feels more and more volatile, uncertain, chaotic, and ambiguous, I think it not only attracts employees, but it engages them and brings the best out of them because so many other places are are just chaotic. It kind of maybe makes the difference between your boss being, you know, some sort of a slave driver, or or a or a manager of despair versus somebody who can actually give you hope that the world can be a better place and that you can play a role on it.
[:When you have a hope mindset And again, this isn't like flowers and unicorns and rainbows and fluffy. This is this is actually clarity on the vision at the end of the day. Mhmm. What gives people hope is when there's clarity of what we're working towards. The secondary component of it is when there's a lack of hope or withholding of cope, that that actually is a form of, like, oppression and suppression of your people.
The the other thing in the article that that kinda talks along this is, like, the mindset shift between a boss and a leader. Mhmm. A boss that is more command and control and focuses on management is not gonna provide hope because they're in a command and control situation. They don't want you to have that hope. I mean, I'm not saying they're bad people, but Mhmm.
If you're providing hope, then you're you're allowing people to have more freedom. You're allowing people more creativity. You're allowing those things because you're providing that framework for it versus what the article talks about. Those that want hope and those that are getting it is where we're shifting from, you know, boss to leader. Leader being, you know, centered on motivating, guiding, and empowering people.
If you're Yeah. You're motivating, guiding, and empowering people, you're providing them hope and giving them control of the future a little bit within the context of the organization. Whereas if you remove hope, that's where you're gonna get command and control, fear. I think the other thing too is is hope what's the opposite of hope? Fear.
[:Okay. So Yeah.
[:If you're if you're running in fear, you're probably glass half empty. If you're running in hope, you're running glass half full.
[:Right.
[:So in the time of in uncertainty, you know, whether it's, the company just lost a a large contract or a partnership fell through, A big sale didn't happen. Its start up in cash is is, is tight. You know, are you gonna get the next round of funding? Like, those are the things that motivate people or not not those things, but the hope and the vision behind the hope is what motivates everybody that gives them the belief that they can overcome that adversity.
[:Yes. And that comes that comes from the leader. I think it was Napoleon unsaved leaders are dealers in hope. But, but I think I agree with you that leaders who adopt a more command and control, you know, try to be all IQ, no EQ. I don't care how you feel about this.
Suck it up and do it. They don't tend to produce hope. They don't tend to engage their employees. And in times of volatility, I think they're the ones who are gonna suffer the most because they haven't really engaged their people on an emotional relational level.
[:So I wanna read a a a quote. This is from Mhmm. An anime. I literally took this out of a line out of anime, and it Okay. I've it's it's been it's been on a sticky note under my monitor for for several years now.
And it's, I've I've I this may have come from something else. I don't know. But here's what it says. It says, so long as there is life, there is a future. So long as there is a future, there is hope.
So long as there is hope, there's possibility. So long as there's possibility, people can be saved. What I think is in the center of that is hope. It's are you alive? If you're alive, if the company is operating, there's a future.
[:Right.
[:Now we've taken table stakes off the table. Right? Like, there's a there's we're breathing. The company's alive. We have a future.
Yep. The next line is if there's future, there is hope. That is the foundation of the entire phrase because it is hope that opens the door to possibility. If you can execute on the possibility, then you can persevere.
[:Right.
[:So that is the essence of what the study is is showing that if you can provide that hope for your team, then you unlock possibilities that you wouldn't have otherwise had.
[:I think there's this interesting idea of hope. Because hope hope is, I I think, somewhat of attention. Right? As I understand hope, and I I think this is what they meant by this, is that there is this tension between we have to be really honest about what is actually going on. Right?
If we just stick our head in the sands and we're like, yay. It's gonna be great. Like, that's not called hope. That's called, you know, avoidance, disillusionment, fantasy, whatever you wanna call that. Right?
[:I'm I'm gonna say you're on drugs. You're on drugs.
[:Right? So so we have to be honest about what's actually going on and face the brutal reality that's ahead of us, whatever that may be. Right? But at the same time, we have to also believe that we can make it better. And if you don't believe both of those things, you're you're not really you don't really have hope.
Right? And I see a lot of leaders kind of fall into one ditch or the other on either side of that road. Right? They're just they don't admit reality. They have this, like, reality distortion.
People are just, no. You know, we're not going bankrupt. And it's like, we're going bankrupt. Like, there's not enough money to run payroll next week. We have to be honest about that, or they're just pessimistic.
Right? They're like, this this sucks. We're all gonna die. Right? And we each have our natural wirings that pull us towards one ditch or the other, but I think true hope holds both of those intention.
And it says, this really sucks, and this is exactly how bad it sucks. And and we're not gonna shy away from being honest about that, but we're gonna change that, and here's how. And that's really hard to do, and I think that's probably part of the reason why so many leaders are bad at it. It's just hard.
[:So would you say if your boss is not giving you hope, then they're basically just a manager of despair?
[:Yes. And I have I've worked for some of those before.
[:But but the real question is if if if they're not giving you hope and and we're calling them a manager of despair, the real question is, why is that leader failing at it? Are they clueless? Do they not care? Or is it really the business is not set up for that and we're focused on short term results?
[:I mean, I think it depends on the leader. Right? If if you're the founder CEO of a small business and we're talking about that person, that person has the authority, autonomy to create a culture of hope. If you are a entry level or mid level employee in a Fortune 500 company with hundreds of thousands of employees and you're just in the belly of the beast, like, it's hard to be a dealer of hope in a in a context that is hopeless. That's really, really hard.
That might not be your leader's fault. It might be that just the culture that you're both in is, you know, you're both hope is swimming against the tide of of what that organization is about. And that's hard, especially when people in the middle layers want to be hopeful and they want to give hope to their people, but they're kind of, not able to give it. So I think there's a lot of reasons why leaders might not be the the hopeful leaders that they wanna be. But we've talked a lot about hope for a for a while.
Let's go to the next one. Number two is trust. I think it made up 33% of what people want from their managers. What do you think trust means? Like, what are they all packing into that word?
[:I I think what the average I wanna say person, but mostly employee that's in non leadership or manager positions. I actually think in the sense, even if you're a manager, but you're you're you still have a boss above you, I think the keyword is transparency. I I how much say, more transparency. If leadership was more transparent, transparency, transparency, transparency. I I think that's the essence of what trust in this context is is transparency in in the plan, transparency in the direction, transparency in the decision making, etcetera, etcetera.
[:It's funny. I was looking back. I ran into one of my old bosses, a guy that I worked for twenty years ago. And we were talking about our, the time we worked together a long time ago. And I remembered this situation where I was early in my career, first year or two out of school, and I messed up something.
And I messed up something pretty big. I don't remember what it was, but it was in front of a client. Like, I committed to something or I I screwed up. And I walked into my boss's office, and the first thing I said is, hey. I screwed up, and I need your help to fix it.
And I told him what happened and all this kind of stuff. And, thankfully, I had a good boss who had built a culture of trust. Later in my career, I have worked at other places, And I look back on that. I'm like, oh my gosh. What was I doing?
Like that is not a safe thing to say in a lot of organizations There's a lot of organizations where you screw up. You gotta hide that or blame somebody else or run or you know, like, there there's a lot of ways that we keep those kinds of mistakes from being found and attached to our name. And I think that's what comes to my mind when I look at this word trust is is this a safe place for me to be honest about what's really going on? And taking a risk of, like, hey, I screwed up, or I don't know how to do that, or can somebody help me because I'm not getting this? Like, if if you work in a place where you can't say those kinds of things, I would argue you probably don't work at a safe place where there's a lot of trust.
[:Oh, I think that goes back into transparency. Right? Like, how many and I think this is the negative the the negative culture behind it in in the trust sense. How many organizations have you been in where there's individuals, usually, there's more than one, that is building trust
[:Mhmm.
[:By gossiping about other things. And so the trust they're they're building they're building trust in a negative fashion, negative culture.
[:But at
[:the end of the day, they're not being transparent about the conversation at large. And I think that's where the where it goes back into transparency is can you be transparent about a tough conversation? Can you be transparent about decisions? Can you be transparent about metrics? It's Mhmm.
It's bringing all that together. And you're right. If you can't be transparent about that and you've got to hide it or, you know, bury it off to the side, then that's where the lack of trust comes in or there's no trust in whether it's the organization, the manager, or your peers.
[:It's okay, though. You can gossip and and play the blame game, just as long as you do trust falls at the annual corporate retreat, you'll still build trust. It'll be good.
[:Yeah. Watch how fast you hit the floor.
[:Right. Alright. Number three was compassion. I'm struck with how emotional these words are. Hope, trust, compassion, and stability.
Like, they're not all feelings words, but the engineer in me wants to measure these things. And I'm like, well, we need to add 23% more hope. But it is interesting to me that what people say they want from their manager are these kinds of emotional relational words.
[:Yes. I I agree with you. They're they're emotional words. How do we measure these? How to quantify them?
I think the big thing is is these all tie into the vision. These are all vision related. And remember, in the in the simplify wheel, the Mhmm. The vision component is belief. That's the core principle of it is all the things we believe.
And if we can believe and and look at how these stack up. If I can believe in that future and I have clarity of that belief that we are all on the same page, I'm probably going to have a higher level of trust. If I believe it and I can have the hope, then I'm going to have the trust, which means I'm probably going to have a level of compassion connection to it, which is gonna give me a sense of stability. If you play that backwards the other way around, if you're not feeling stable in it, then you're probably not gonna have a level of compassion. If you don't have compassion, you're probably distrusting it, which means you have no hope.
So these this core principle of it is about the belief side of an organization, the vision.
[:That's interesting. I hadn't thought of that, that hope, trust, compassion, and stability almost tie to vision journey culture and results. That's really interesting.
[:Hope is your hope is your vision.
[:Yep.
[:What are you trying to achieve?
[:If you don't have hope, work feels pointless. Feels like a dead end.
[:Yep. Trust is your your process, your journey. If you're gonna trust your process and flow.
[:Right. Do do we is this a safe place to take risks, to try things, to be honest, to be transparent to your point? And if not, feels toxic and people just disengage. They're like, I don't I don't care. I'm I'm just here to do a job.
Don't ask me.
[:Yep. Compassion is your culture component.
[:Yep.
[:And then stability, results.
[:So compassion, you know, people feel human, not just transactional. They don't feel like a a cog in the machine. And then stability, helping people feel secure when things are uncertain because without it oh my oh my gosh. Yeah. Just the anxiety.
Right? Like, I've been in organizations where we know layoffs are coming. The numbers aren't good. We know we're going out of business, been in one of those. We know we're being acquired, been in one of those.
And just, like, nothing gets done because everyone's just so panicked about, am I gonna get fired? Am I gonna have a job? What kind of a severance package? What you know, where gotta update my resume, gotta update my LinkedIn. Like, it's just that lack of stability.
While it might be the tail of this list, Without it, it creates massive problems for everything else.
[:Exactly. And you've heard me talk about the dark void. Right? Like, it's the the point the point that you're far enough in the tunnel that you can't see the light behind you, but you're not far enough you can see the light in front of you. And so what do we do?
We tend to freeze in place or cling Yep. To what's around us because it's the only thing that's giving us stability. And and if you're if you stop your journey through the tunnel and cling to the the walls of the tunnel because it's the only thing providing that stability, and maybe the flashlight that can see the feet around you, you're stuck.
[:Mhmm.
[:That's exactly it. It's the anxiety. It's the burnout. It's the, you know, all those negative emotions versus if you have the hope and belief that we must keep marching forward, the light will appear. There is a point where you'll see the pinprick of light in the future, and it'll get brighter and brighter and brighter and brighter as you progress forward.
But Right. Without that hope, then you don't have the trust, then you don't have the compassion, you don't have the stability, and you're going to find those in your own way. You're gonna find your own stability. You you probably seen this a lot of organizations where people are panic for their job, so they'll create their own stability by doing this amount of work that really is just a waste of time and energy. But it's the only thing that they can do to create their own stability, and that is what they will trust is their future, but then it's a false hope.
[:Yeah. I've seen people hoard information in an attempt to create stability. Right? If if I'm the only person who knows how to do this thing, then they can't fire me.
[:And that's a lack of trust?
[:It's just a clear lack of trust. Right?
[:And no no compassion. No no I I wouldn't say that person doesn't have compassion. That probably sounds horrible. But there's not a compassion for the mission because there's a lack of trust and a lack of stability and no hope.
[:Yeah. Let's kinda connect this to the to the vision journey culture results a little bit more because it it seems to me that leaders who articulate this compelling vision can create hope. Leaders who follow through on their promises. Right? They they say something.
They do it. Right? There's there's connection between what they say, what they do. There's some level of transparency there. Build trust.
Leaders who care and listen build compassion, and leaders who create consistency, right, kinda like trust, produce stability. Right? Those things, when done correctly, produce the stability that we all want. Does that mean that if if you look at your organization and you see one of those four missing, does that mean that where you are as a leader, like, that's the thing you're not good at? Like, can you hide it that close?
[:Yeah. I mean, I would say Like,
[:if I
[:go take the simplify assessment, it'll tell you where you're at.
[:But Like, if I look at my organization and I I feel like there's not a lot of trust, Is that because I'm weak in Journey?
[:So I again, I think this all starts out with the this is really, like, the vision component. Right? So this is, like, vision journey, vision culture, vision, or yeah. Vision, vision, vision journey, vision, culture, vision results at a level of inception here because we're all in the belief side of the category.
[:Mhmm.
[:I think it's if you are if you're if you have a lack of hope, it means you don't have a clear enough vision defined with a journey for people to be excited about and metrics and KPIs to show a path that gets there. And it doesn't mean you have to have this perfect system.
[:Mhmm.
[:You just need to show one step at a time. And I and I you've heard me say this lots of times, a lot of organizations. We're so worried about step 10 when we gotta get to step one. But the thing is is is you provide the hope of, like, we want to get to step 10. Step 10 looks like this.
We know that there's, you know, ten ten steps to get there. I guess, technically, 11 if you're starting at zero.
[:Right.
[:There's there's those may steps to get there, and we can't see that far ahead, and we know the path is gonna meander a little, but we can see to step three.
[:Mhmm.
[:So now I've just given you a hope of what the future looks like. I've given you a level of of trust that I don't know the future, but I can tell you what I do know, it's being transparent, and the path to get there. Level of compassion. What's it gonna take to get there? If we believe in this, if we have trust in what we can do, and then we take from step zero to step one, we created one step of stability.
Okay? We just delivered what we said. You know what goes up? Our hope with that future, when we go from zero to one, our hope goes up, our trust goes up, our compassion goes up because we had a level of stability. Okay.
Let's do that again. Let's get to step two, then three, then four. What do you think is gonna happen to your team? You're achieving the vision.
[:Right.
[:You're marching towards a common goal, and you're maintaining the success. It doesn't mean it's perfect success. You're gonna have failures along the way, but it's about are you continually towards the goal without ridiculing people, taking it to that negative like, anything that that suffocates the hope will kill it. You have to maintain the hope.
[:Have you ever seen a company? I mean, you've done a lot of work with different, you know, consulting companies, probably not one you've owned. But, have you ever seen a company that doesn't have any of these, right, that had no hope, no trust, no compassion, and no stability?
[:I've seen I have. Okay.
[:But Don't name don't name them.
[:Well, I I was in a leadership meeting once. And, I mean, the leadership team looked like they just wanted to put a gun to their heads. Like, they were so defeated. So just literally wanted to create, like, business owner owner owner suicide of their business. Like, not literally kill themselves, but, like, they wanted to Right.
Kill their business ownership and be out of the out of it. There was nothing on this this list. There was just so void of hope Mhmm. Of a future that that didn't drag them down that everything else was. And and the business was just, somehow it magically worked, but not in a sustainable way.
I see a lot of companies that have these in a falsehood. Oh.
[:Like, they have a a foe compassion or, you know, fake stability?
[:There's there's several companies I've walked into, and they're wanting to get in they're wanting to break through the ceiling. They keep bouncing off the ceiling.
[:Mhmm.
[:And they'll have a very high perceived culture. They'll have a very high perceived they know what they're working towards, and they trust one another, and there's a level of stability. But then when you get under the hood, what I usually find is the company is not that stable. They just hide it from people. Their culture is well connected, but it's on a personal level, not with the business.
The hope is not really hope in any sort of future in the business, and their trust is again in the people, not the business. And as soon as you what you notice is is the reason that it's a false hope is why they keep bouncing off the ceiling. And and the reason that they bounce off and come back down is because they have a good buddy culture inside the organization. And so they rally together as buddies Mhmm. And then they try again, not realizing how they're the cause of their own problems.
And then what I usually happens this is what I tell people. I say, what we're gonna do is we're gonna expose a lot of things and it's going to really kind of, you know, the the, you know, open the kimono or, you know, expose the skeleton to the closet and pick one. And I said, but what comes right after that is we have to give people hope that we're going to overcome this and not repeat the sins of the past, mistakes of the past, and we're actually gonna persevere. The worst thing you can do is not execute on that hope and go be go right back to being who you've been. And you and I have worked in a company, years ago
[:Mhmm.
[:That what did they do? We provided that hope. We persevered. We'd came a level of adversity. And what did they do?
They went right back to being who they were, and what happened to the company right after that?
[:Not good things.
[:They shrunk. They went downhill, and they basically kind of turned into a little bit of a lifestyle business for a period of time before they woke up and said, oh, shit. We have to do this right.
[:Are they doing it right now?
[:Better.
[:Not sure yet. Better. Not sure yet. Jury's out.
[:That's Okay. That's five years later.
[:Yeah. Yeah. That was a
[:They had they could have already been where they wanted to be Mhmm. But they pulled the hope rug out from underneath the employees in the ninth hour right at the peak, and it set the company back five years.
[:Yeah. During the dark void. Right? We're because I remember getting to that point where it's like, man, this is dark. I can't see behind us.
I can't see the light in front of us. I know it's there. We just gotta keep going. And and they got scared and changed course. And yeah.
You're right. Cost him five years.
[:I'll give you I'll give you two more. And these are, like, literally right now, things going on.
[:Right.
[:There is one. There is an organization I work with, and we did have a song song strong sense of hope. But it was it was the the founder didn't really endorse it and started getting panicky because we weren't getting the results. Like, he didn't have hope in it. The business had hope in the vision.
Right. Business was marching towards it, and he didn't have hope in it. And so and he wasn't feeling stability the stability. And so he started pulling things back and pulling things within control. It went from leader to boss, became demand and control, and it actually set the business back about nine months.
And the ironic thing is, is the business maintained a level of hope itself because of its leadership team, secondary from the the founder. But that leadership team persevered with a level of hope, and don't get me wrong. There's a the leadership team was disengaged and pulled back. I can see it in their pulse scores.
[:Sure.
[:A 20% drop, year over year. But now the founder's starting to believe the hope because that leadership team led, and it's not out of the woods yet. It's not out of the woods yet. Right. But the founder's starting to come around.
The frustrating thing is that was a nine month setback to the business because the founder lost hope and pulled the business down with it.
[:Yeah. Now I'll
[:give you I'll give you a positive.
[:Who go ahead. Hold on. Kudos to that leadership team because it is very rare for a leadership team or any organization to have more hope than the founder than than the senior leader. They, like, they usually like, nine times out of 10, the senior leader sets the ceiling for hope. And the fact that he lost hope and the leadership team held the standard higher is a very uncommon situation.
But so kudos to that.
[:I hear they have a really good integrator that was able to maintain
[:pace. Probably.
[:Oh, I that it that is me, but no. No. No. It's not it's not because of me. I'm I'm Okay.
Being I'm I'm being a jerk. It was, no. It's it's it's what that team brings to the table, and how they united and and persevered. I'll give you a positive one.
[:Let me
[:give you a positive
[:real quick. Give me one more.
[:So there is a company I'm working with right now. And when I started working with them in March of last year, they went from, like, everybody got 20% pay cuts. They had to cut staff, and it was they're gonna be out of cash. Like, they were cash burning. They're gonna be out of cash, and it was, I think, three or four months.
[:Yikes.
[:By getting the vision clear and getting alignment on it, not only did we stabilize the business that we do we still had to cut a few people and we had to do the pay cuts.
[:Mhmm.
[:But we were able to stabilize the business that it we didn't have to do further cuts and didn't have to, you know, potentially shut the business down. I mean, I don't think it would have shut down, but it would have had to dramatically scale back and then that would take years of years of life away. But the founder doubled down on it and has focused on the vision and given the clarity that now everybody has more hope in the business. There's more trust in what we're doing. There's more compassion into it that we built a level of stability.
Year over year growth is up dramatically. I mean, I think they were, like, negative negative 19% growth, overall last year.
[:Mhmm.
[:January this year was positive 20%. That's a 40% growth between last year and this year.
[:That's a big win.
[:Maintained in February, and it looks like it's gonna maintain in March.
[:That's great.
[:They're they're more efficient as a business. Their meetings are more productive. Their people are happier. Don't get me wrong. There's still a lot of work to be done.
But it's a completely different business because the founder doubled down on the vision, got clarity, and provided the hope, transparency, and compassion behind it that has built a positive
[:Some stability.
[:That's it.
[:It's built some stability. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. So if you're a leader and you're listening to this and you hear those four in order, hope, or hope, trust, compassion, and stability, and you get uncomfortable with one of those words.
You're like, three of those are great. One of them either I don't believe or I don't want to believe because I know I'm bad at it. What would you recommend to them? Like, what are some real practical ways to help people get better at this? How do leaders create hope, trust, compassion, and stability in their organizations?
[:I mean, I think I'm gonna just piggyback right off that that story I just shared. If you don't have hope, the strongest if the if the worst one you have is is hope, which was the higher percentage. Right? The best thing you can do is try to articulate a clear vision of what you're trying to achieve, what the goal is. And I I do think there's a lot of confusion between vision and journey.
I think a lot of people say the the vision's not clear enough. In reality, it's the journey's not clear enough. But let's start with the vision.
[:What's the difference in, you know, the vision's not clear versus the journey's not clear?
[:When people are looking for the step by step, like, I have to know how to do every aspect of my job or the vision's not clear enough.
[:Right.
[:So when it comes down to, like, you say you you provide a list of things and, you know, it it it goes back to the job description. You know, it's like, here's your responsibilities. This this this this this this and everything else that is not listed here. Mhmm.
[:Yep.
[:What people want is, like, we'll just put the everything not listed here. Please just put it on the list, and then, therefore, I have my description.
[:Mhmm.
[:There there's always a nuance. There's always a a anomaly or an exception to the rule. And and so people go the vision isn't clear enough because I don't have all of the process and procedures and SOPs and expectations outlined. That's a journey problem. It does start with a clear vision, though, because where the vision comes in is if the and everything else, you're the janitor, you're the marketeer, you're the sales guy, you're the phone operator, you're the finance person.
Like, that's just there's no vision in what you're trying to do. You're just all over the place.
[:Right. I would say it's funny you'd say that because I'm working with a client right now that is having some of these challenges. People like that. I don't understand the vision. The vision is not clear.
The vision is not clear. And I think the vision is clear. I think it's a journey problem to your point. It's the vision's clear. The journey is not if the journey is so crystal clear that you know exactly what you're supposed to be doing and exactly how to get there and you've got visibility in the next five or 10 steps, you will not have a job much longer.
There will be a robot that will come do your job very soon. Your boss is paying you to help them figure out that journey. And the moment there's no more thinking required, that's the moment we're gonna hire the robots. So you can look at that one of two ways and say, well, the vision's not clear. I don't understand what I'm supposed to be doing.
That's the job. Like, you're go you have to help them figure that out. And if you don't wanna do that job, AI will. You're never going to have perfect clarity. And if you do, you should be very nervous because that's the moment I can outsource your job to some other place that'll do it for a fraction of the cost.
Being comfortable with that uncertainty is a big part of what our jobs require. And it is funny. I think especially technical people, detail oriented people, it's not clear to them if they don't have every letter spelled out for them. But but that's not actually a good thing for you. Because if I'm having to come up with every one of those steps, we're not really gonna get to a good place.
I need you to help me in that journey and define it with me.
[:Look. I get there are some things where we need things spelled out like that. Like, if you're manufacturing a a medication and, you know, measurements and things matter, like, there are situations where it does need to be spelt out. But that's not that's the exception. That's not really the the rule.
And I think it in it goes back into if you build the environment where people can be successful actually, let me let me rephrase that. If you built an environment where people are afraid, there's that lack of trust, lack of compassion, stability, etcetera, then people are afraid of making mistakes. When people cannot make a mistake, then they want everything spelled out for them so that they don't get punished for making a mistake. Because if they have every little I dotted and t crossed and they follow it, then you can't yell at them. But what happens is is we think we want that.
Right? Like, we want every I dotted, t crossed. Then what we get is an SOP that's so overwhelming that we can't possibly do it, and it doesn't incorporate everything. And then we fail it, and then we get yelled at, and it's like, well, you're both wrong.
[:The other thing
[:I'm gonna call out is there's a difference between a mistake, and a repeating mistake or what I often call mistake versus sin. Right? In the sense of you cog you cognitively chose to make that decision knowing the consequence was negative. A mistake is when you unknowingly make it and you learn from it, you improve it, and you don't repeat it. There's no such thing as a repeat mistake because the second time you cognitively chose to to do it wrong.
So I think it's there's a difference between we need to we need to make sure our systems don't allow repeat mistakes, but it need to be flexible enough to allow mistakes in order to be successful. You can't have success without failure. We have to have an environment where people can fail in a successful manner that still drives the business forward. That is, that that's where you start loosening up the reins. That's where your SOPs and your job descriptions and your boundaries can be a little more looser.
You want your boundaries to be rigid, so everybody knows what's inbound and out of bounds, like, think a soccer pitch. Everybody knows the goal lines, the markings on the field.
[:Yep.
[:But nobody's telling the striker exactly every step to take.
[:Right.
[:He knows his position. He knows what he's gotta do. Nobody's telling the goalie exactly when to dive for the ball and when not to.
[:Mhmm. He
[:knows his position. Defend the goal. Don't let the ball go in. Right. Oversimplified, but, you know, everybody else, don't use your hand, only your feet.
Like, you don't have to overcomplicate the journey side of it if the vision side of it is clear in the direction and definitions, etcetera.
[:It's similar to what we've said in the in the methodology, vision journey, culture results. If vision isn't clear, it's really hard to get the rest of those pieces to line up. And I think I would say the same thing about what this Gallup poll has found is is that if hope isn't there, trust, compassion, and stability are really hard to get to as well. I think it it kinda has to start with that hope. Alright.
So if you're the leader and you see there's not hope, we talked about vision. What if what if you're a leader and you see that there's not trust in your organization? What would you do?
[:I think trust and stability are gonna go a little hand in hand. Okay. But I'll I'll I'll start with I think I think one thing with trust is is is consistency. Mhmm. Consistency is key.
If you're bouncing all over the place, you're changing your mind, you're moving the goal post, you know, Sometimes you need to define a goal, and when people achieve it, even if the goal was wrong or, you know, there was some anomaly or something like that, like, something we couldn't predict, don't move the goal post again. Make it an iteration. Because the worst thing you can do is move the goal post on people. Be consistent. I think the other one is is there's you need a level of transparency too.
The one thing that'll kill all of this is if you're fearful of being transparent with your people because you're afraid that they're gonna respond negatively, then you're literally begging for people to not have hope. Now am I am I saying take the p and l and and just, you know, print it out and throw it up in the middle of the room and let everybody read it and go line by line? Like, no. That's there's there's a level of maturity you have to have in there. But I think it's okay to show top line numbers, gross income, gross profit, you know, bottom line.
People understand for profit businesses are in business to make a profit. Most people don't have a problem with the business making profit. Where they have a problem, and this is where the assumptions come in and the downward spiral is, and it is in fact an assumption, is when they believe the business is making a greater profit and not taking care of the people or the customers.
[:Mhmm.
[:I think a lot of people are understandable. If the company is only making 3% profit and just for simple sake, let's say they're making a dollar, I know it's a low number. Yeah. But if they're making a dollar a month and the employee or a team of people wanna spend $10 a month, it makes it very clear that that's the business is now negative $9.
[:Right.
[:That's a level of transparency versus I think what happens is is they we hoard the p and l as leaders. We hoard those KPIs and metrics. People don't understand it. They make assumptions. Well, they see revenue in the door, and they do some calculations in their head.
And they go, we can do that. Well yeah. But I mean, a a perfect example. You hire somebody for $80,000 a year. You got benefits and taxes and overheads and all of a sudden, the other.
That $80,000 a year person probably costs closer to hundred and 10 to hundred and $20,000 a year.
[:Yep.
[:Well well, they're only making 80 a year, and and we we just wanna spend, you know, 10,000. No. No. No. No.
No. That person cost a hundred and 20,000 a year. Now I'm not saying make everybody's salaries public, but there's you have to get to a level of you can share top line numbers for people to go, oh, okay. Now if you really are squeezing, like, you know, 70% profit out of the business and you're underpaying your people, you deserve for those people to leave. Like, there's there's a point you have to take care of people.
So I I think that goes into if if you have a lack of trust, you've gotta be consistent, you've gotta keep promises, and you have to maintain transparency.
[:Agreed. Alright. What would you do about compassion? If you looked in the mirror of your organization and saw that there was no a lack of compassion, what would you recommend?
[:Shut the hell up. Stop talking and listen to people. You'll be surprised. Your people know more than you think they know. They have better they may not have the solution or the perfect solution, but they are they are the perfect stakeholders to solving the problems.
Now, again, I don't think most employees don't have the solution to it. They may think they have a solution, but they can articulate the problem and a direction for a solution better than you can sitting on high in the they call it the Ivory Tower. Right? No. Not all business owners are in the Ivory Tower or that far.
I think sometimes too many business owners are down in the weeds, but Mhmm. Stop thinking you know the answers, stop thinking you have all the solutions, stop thinking you know more than your people, and just listen. You'll be surprised. You'll learn something about them. You and I'm not saying you need to, like, go to everybody's baseball game and wedding and this, that, and the other, like but just they're human beings.
[:Right.
[:Treat them like humans, talk to them like humans, and interact with them like humans. And you'll be surprised how much just having that level of humility will change the the the the entire conversation, the dynamic. You don't need to be their best friend. You don't have to be their buddy. Yep.
Just treat them like humans. Listen to people. Check-in.
[:Yeah. That's good. You mentioned a little bit about stability. I think it does tie very closely to the trust side. Stability is a lot about results.
And if you don't have hope, trust, and compassion, I think stability is gonna be tough to get to. But I think consistency in decision making, by making sure that you're not just making these kind of random nature decisions, but that there's there's clearly a method to your madness of of how you're making decisions. One of the things that I think, even if the results are showing up, but working for a leader who's like, this is the priority today. No. This is the priority.
No. This is the most important thing. Like, if you're constantly getting pointed in different directions and your people just feel disoriented and off balance, like, even if you're producing results, which you're probably not, that instability is exhausting. And and so hard to be hopeful and trusting and compassionate when there's a different number one priority every day.
[:So I think I would recommend people go back to one of the earlier episodes. We talked about red line, green line.
[:Mhmm.
[:And it's exactly I think the thing that would bring stability to a business is stop freaking redlining everything. And and a red line in a nutshell is when you have an idea and you act on it with no thought of the consequences or you acted on it in a vacuum, kinda going back to the compassion statement I met I said a minute ago. When you make decisions in a vacuum from an idea Mhmm. And that causes the knee jerk reaction, it has a high perceived value, but the actual value on the other side is very low because you're burning your team out, you're building you're reducing the lack of trust, you're disengaging the compassion, and you're you're reducing the hope. So if you're a a visionary and you're like, well, I'm a visionary.
It's my job to come up with a hundred ideas and and I'm the leader, so I'm telling all the people we're going left and then we're going right, we're going left, we're going you're just literally spent I mean, like, you're you're either just zigzagging back and forth or you're just walking your people in a circle.
[:Mhmm.
[:Either way, you're not delivering value. And and pro I'm gonna guess it's probably your own ego is in the way because you think that's adding value perceived.
[:Right.
[:And you're convincing yourself that's your value as the leader, and it's only your own ego getting in the way, and that's what's actually holding you back from success.
[:Yeah. I love how think about the red line as going backwards through the wheel, like, vision to results. Right? I've got this idea why isn't it working, because you haven't gone through the journey and the culture first to get to those results. You haven't done the hard work of defining how we're gonna get there and who's gonna do what and what it's gonna mean to the culture.
And there's just a lot of leaders that I've worked with and that I've just seen that have an idea and try to just jump straight to the result, and it always has bad consequences. Alright. So what if what if you're not the leader? What if you're an employee and you work for, a boss, a leader, or or just an organization that sucks at all of this? Right?
There's no hope. There's no trust. There's no compassion. There's no stability. You're, like, stuck in a hunger games, situation.
What do you do?
[:I would take update your LinkedIn profile for $1, Bob.
[:Yeah. I I would agree. I don't think that that's the only option, but I think it's probably, an important one. Have you ever seen somebody not at the top of the organization bring hope, stability, trust? Can you can you change things from the middle?
[:Temporarily.
[:Okay.
[:You can with enough change, you can change from the bottom up. It is very, very, very hard. It takes everybody being bought in, and the biggest problem with a bottom up strategy is that everybody looks up to the CEO, founder, or decision maker
[:Mhmm.
[:And they see them not bought in and go, why should I care if the person on top? So I'm gonna I'm gonna quote something from the Lorax. Unless someone cares a whole awful lot, nothing will change. It just won't. So if you're going from the bottom up, everybody has to care in a way that will change the the people at the top.
If you have a leadership team and a founder and I have done this. The the one I talked about earlier where I said it was a nine month delay, that was a bottom up strategy that worked. Everybody was bought in. It took nine months. There was a lot of
[:Say bottom left. It sounded like it was, like, it's leadership. So it's still pretty high.
[:But it took but it took the entire team to be bought into everything. It was a bottom up strategy.
[:Okay. Alright.
[:So, I mean, it wasn't just the leadership team was bought in and pushed down. Like, it was it would actually, I agree with you in the sense it was kinda side loaded from the side. Mhmm. But it really did take everybody from the bottom all the way up to influence change at the at the very, very, very top. Now if you've got a leadership team that is just as equal with the the founder founder owner, a bottom up strategy is is, I wouldn't say impossible, but probably improbable.
It's very hard, and it's it's it's gotta be the right it it you know, the whole the the, I forget the the phrase, the statement, or whatever. It's, you know, you put a hundred people in a cell, and everybody has a red button, and if nobody pushes it for twenty four hours and everybody's free, but if one person hits it, they get out while everybody's stuck for life or something like that.
[:Prisoner's dilemma.
[:Prisoner's dilemma. Okay. That is the bottom up strategy. Right. Usually, somebody pushes the button because they're afraid of their job.
And I'm not saying it's wrong. Somebody's afraid of their job or they don't wanna be you know, can't negatively impact them personally.
[:Mhmm.
[:And it's not usually one person. It's usually a percentage of people.
[:Right.
[:Statistically, 16%. And so that's where where bottom up strategy sucks. Or not sucks. It's hard.
[:It's hard. I have seen both sides of this coin. I have seen a great leader who is a you know, brings hope and trust and compassion and all those things, stability, inside a toxic organization. Right? So they just have a department.
I have also seen a healthy company with a toxic leader leading a department. So so they're inverses of each other. I've never seen either of those last for more than about eighteen to twenty four months. A great leader who can create that kind of umbrella of safety and trust and hope and all those things, like, they just eventually get ground down by the people above them. Right?
They they don't last very long. And on the other side, in a healthy organization, when there's a toxic leader who is you know, know, everybody else has hope and trust except for the people working in that department, that guy usually gets found out and gets kicked out within eighteen to twenty four months. So I think I would agree with your assessment that, yes, it can last, but not for very long. And in my experience, it's generally eighteen to twenty four months. Sometimes unique circumstances can give it longer, but rarely have I seen it last much longer than that.
So I I still think I come back to your LinkedIn update your LinkedIn profile. Well
[:and I think I think it's it comes down to, like, what where this is really gonna impact people. If you're doing a job and and maybe you don't care about the future of the company or where it's going and, you know, it it it's you don't really need hope. You've got a level of trust because you got trust with your boss. You've got stability because the pay is, you know, good. Maybe it's it could always be better, but it's, you know, paying the bills and you're satisfied.
Like, that's okay. I think what this really caters to towards are the people that are trying to advance their career. They're trying to advance a cause. They're trying to work for something bigger than themselves. And so, you know what?
You can work in a company that has no hope, trust, compassion, or, I guess, I could say, stability. I guess I guess, if it the they they would at least have stability in the scenario I'm talking about. Like, that's that's okay. But I think it comes down to if you're looking for those and you're not getting it, especially if you're on the lower end of the organization, the best thing you can do is update the LinkedIn profile and find a company that'll give it to you. You know, I I know I've used this phrase a few times.
It's, it was our our friend Nathan Magnuson. He always says, you have the right to be well led, or you have the freedom to be well led. You have the right to choose your leader.
[:That's
[:good. Your leader is not providing what you need. It is your right to find a better leader to serve you. Mhmm.
[:I remember a situation in my career where I had two really good job opportunities. It was a lateral move inside a big company, and I was trying to decide. Both of them looked good. And I asked for some advice and somebody said, follow the leader. Like, all things being equal, follow the better leader.
And I did, and it worked out great for me because it ended up being one of the best people I've ever worked for. And the person I did chose to not work for got fired, like, less than twelve months later. So I think that's great advice. I'll pass it along that has shared with me. When in doubt, follow the leader.
If you're a leader, are you giving hope, trust, compassion, and stability to your people? Gallup survey across 52 countries found that that is what employees want from their leaders. They want hope, trust, compassion, and stability in that order, primarily hope. So if you're not giving those things to your people, you gotta look in the mirror and you gotta make some changes. But what about if you're not the leader?
[:Well, if you're an employee, you're not powerless in this situation. You can influence change. You can change the organization from the bottom up. It just starts with the one person who cares enough to drive the change. And if leadership refuses to change, then you have the freedom to find a better leader, update the LinkedIn profile, and advance your career.
[:Yeah. So I'd love to hear a little bit more from our listeners. What's the what's the worst leadership mistake you've ever seen? Right? Somebody who has just burnt the hope, trust, compassion, or stability to the ground.
I I always love to hear the dumpster fire stories.
[:Let let's just rephrase the let's just let's just rephrase the question here.
[:Okay.
[:What is the worst leadership mistake you've ever seen? Share your dumpster fire moments.
[:There it is. That's awesome. If you know somebody who needs to hear this, share it the way do not do that in a passive aggressive way. Right? This isn't your way of telling your boss they suck.
That is not what we are trying to encourage here. I I mean I
[:mean, you you know, you never know. Like, if you're out the door and your boss needs to hear it, then share it.
[:Right.
[:Sometimes sometimes good advice hurts to hear.
[:Include this link in your resignation letter.
[:Yes.
[:Because everybody want I mean, this is what Gallup found. Right? This isn't us. This is Gallup. They're reputable, long standing organization.
They found that no matter where you are, no matter what country, culture, industry, all employees want these four things. They want hope, trust, compassion, and stability. And those who can provide that are making work not suck. The best leaders don't just manage people, they inspire them.
[:Make work not suck. Our podcast that talks about exactly that, our process, vision, journey, culture, and results. We present real world business solutions that make the difference. Our goal is to make work not suck, hosted by Ryan Hodges, cohost Daniel Steer. Join us each episode in Make Work Not Suck.
