Cameron Herold, former COO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, criticized his 100-person team for wasting time. The harsh delivery crushed morale for weeks, even though the feedback was accurate. Leaders should deliver hard truths with curiosity and excitement instead, acting as Chief Energizing Officers who inflate rather than deflate.
Chapters
I really wish I knew this a long time ago. I remember back, gosh, I'm going back about 25 years ago now. I was leading as the COO at 1-800-GOT-JUNK, and I was running a meeting with all of our team. It was a standup meeting. We had about 100 employees there, and I just decided to kind of give them shit about how much time we were wasting inside of the company. And technically I was right. But when you come down on that many people with that much negative emotion, it really almost like took a balloon and took all the air out of the balloon. It took weeks for them to build that energy back up. Sometimes it's not about the words that the COO uses or the words that the CEO uses, but sometimes it's the intent behind the delivery. Sometimes it's slowing down and thinking, I know the message I'm trying to deliver, which is let's not waste time or let's show up at meetings and be effective. But the delivery and the approach sometimes matters as much as the actual words do. So if I had slowed down and said, Hey, I want to show you guys something that's really been driving me crazy. We're crushing it, by the way, as a business. But there's something that's really been driving me crazy and I didn't really know how to work it out. And I figured it out. I want to share it with you. I'm excited because I noticed how much time we can be wasting. If I had approached it in that way, I probably would have empowered them and excited them. But when I came in and just gave them shit for what we were doing wrong, which again was accurate, I literally deflated the entire balloon. So keep in mind the intent of what you're trying to deliver and try to always remember that your job is to be the chief energizing officer, right? The CEO. Well, the same thing with the COO. Your job is to inflate the balloon and not deflate the balloon.
