A short monologue from a YouTube video titled "Leadership in the Trades Starts With Culture." The speaker reflects on leadership styles, lessons learned from observing poor leadership, the importance of avoiding toxic workplace culture, caring for employees, and making hard decisions for the greater good. The speaker highlights a leadership test: observing how things function when the leader is absent.
One thing you said if you ever got to a place of leadership, you didn't want to have a toxic culture. Can you speak more to that? The great thing about leadership, there's so many different styles, and a lot of them work. But wrong is wrong. And I've learned the absolute best lessons from the worst behaviors that I said. I'm not going to do that. Really, It's a reflection of your people. Like, how are you caring for them? I always say the greatest test is how do things function when you're not here? Because that is going to tell you how great of a manager you are. If you're in a seat that can make those decisions, shame on you. If you're not making the hard decisions and making sure that you're taking care of the greater good. Sometimes they're not popular decisions, but I've had employees come up and thank me because they'll be a popular employee, but they're coming in, storming through the office, demanding things. It's like, that's not what we do here.