What You Should Expect From Your Employees (And What You Absolutely Shouldn’t)

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I hope it never comes to this, but I don't expect my employees to take a bullet from me. What is something you don't expect from your employees, Chrissy?

About miracles.

Miracles. Yeah. No, that's. That's a good one. We are going to talk about what you can and what you should expect from. Did I go too far?

No. Yeah. That was really good.

Okay.

Yeah.

What should you expect from your employees? Stay tuned. She's the CEO.

He's the marketing and operations guy.

Broken.

You need the business fix.

It's holiday season. It's the tail end of the holiday season. It's the tail end of Q4.

Yes. The big part of open enrollment is over.

How are you?

I'm fine. Better for the better. Question is, how is the team? Right.

Do you expect them to survive this?

Yes, they are still. They're still smiling. We have some holiday stuff coming up.

Is that drug induced or.

No, no, they're doing okay.

Good.

Oh, they're. They're doing all right. So good.

Good. Glad to hear. I wouldn't expect anything less.

No, not from them. They. And we know it's. It's 45 days of really rough weather.

Look, it's. It's the same as what accountants get. They know. January 1st through April 15th, you're just there.

November 1st to December 15th is awful.

No, thanks.

No.

No thanks.

And you throw holidays in the middle of it, so, you know, it's fun.

No, there's so many reasons why I don't want to do what you do.

I know. Nope.

No, thanks.

People don't.

Yeah. Yeah. You can talk about it all you want in here because I want nothing to do with any of that nonsense. Yeah.

Depends on the day. If you're going to ask us if we want to do it either, but we do.

Good. Someone has to.

Someone has to. Yeah.

Nice for us. It's always interesting at the end of the year because of the holidays. We do some work with some, like retail establishments, things of that nature. So it gets kind of busy.

Yes.

I kind of looking forward to January is one of those months that I always like, look forward to but hate. No one has their marketing budget. No, no, no one has their marketing budget till like, usually like they don't think about that till the end of February.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

Oh.

And they're like, oh, crap, we, we need to do marketing. Sales aren't what we, like, we're off targets for the year.

Okay.

So they spent November and December coming up with 10 and 15% increase goals. And then March is when they're like, oh, crap, we have to do marketing to get this, don't we?

Oh, we should do a podcast.

Right, right, right.

They're brainstorming it in January. So what you're telling me is that I need to max your calendar and I need to get all my podcasts recorded?

Yes. January is the month. I, I, there's a number of other video and like content companies that I talk with. We all kind of talk in a group and we always say we're like, January, we should just go to Florida.

Yeah, I like that idea.

Just turn it into a big party for content creation companies. Because that wouldn't be a disaster or anything there. The nice thing is, is because it's what we do. There wouldn't be a camera in sight.

Yes.

It would be like growing up in the 90s again, good job. Last week we talked about like, as leaders.

Yeah.

What our employees expect of us, what our team expects of us. Employment is a two way street. Isn't that a shocker? I know, I know. There's, there's many people out there that I know that are hearing this that are like, what?

Yes.

Yeah. No, it's a two way street. Once we've delivered the stuff that we have balls in their court.

Yeah.

But we have to make sure that like, once again, we are having reasonable, non negotiable expectations that we need to hold them to. Once again, as you mentioned, kind of like in the interim there, like, unless they're Secret Service, taking a bullet for me is not one of them. No, no, no, it's not. But then we also have to realize, like what expectations like we have as business owners that may be unfair for them. Clear vision, clarity in your vision. Yes, that's the way I should have said that. Not clear vision. Clarity in your vision.

Clarity in your vision.

Ding. We should get a ding sound effect every time one of us says clarity for clarity of vision, healthy environment. There's got to be a return on why the hell am I doing this? Unless there's a return on investment.

Yes.

What should leaders expect from their people? And then what are the baselines? Baseline for like, attitudes, behaviors that, like, you're like, full stop, non negotiable. This is what a healthy team member has.

Okay, so you know, we Talked about those three Cs of leadership a while back. We talked about clarity, consistency, and care. Ding. The return you should expect from your people. I would say what you expect from your people is expectations. So E for expectations. And we're going to talk about the three E's of a healthy team member because we need things to be in threes and we need them to have the same letter because alliteration matters.

That's the piece that I was going for. The alliteration matters.

Alliteration matters. Yes. So it's really important. So when you show up with stability and direction, you earn the right to expect these three things. These three expectations. Okay, the first is engagement. All right? Not forced enthusiasm, but presence, which is really curiosity and effort. So when the leader eliminates confusion, when you're clear, employees can show up mentally, not just physically. And engagement is the baseline of presence. We're here to do the things, and we're here to do the things and be curious about how to do the things better. That's engagement.

Yes.

Yes.

Totally agree.

So the second one is ethics, and this is the alliteration for honesty and integrity. All right, so if I'm being transparent with you, I expect you to be transparent with me and employees. Again, we don't need employees to be perfect, but we do need them to be truthful. And ethics is really what protects your culture.

Yes, 100%.

And then the third is evolution. And evolution is really. It's coachability. So it's the willingness to grow, to try to take feedback without spiraling into defensiveness, which is a big component. Evolution says, I'm here to get better. So when leaders invest in coaching and professional development for their teams, the employee invests in evolving.

Look at that.

So it's the ability to learn things new. So when a leader provides clarity, consistency, and care, the healthy team member responds with engagement, ethics, and evolution.

The fact that you came up with this ethics, engagement or engagement, ethics and evolution goes to another piece that we have talked about. Yeah, consistency it is. Holy crap. Are you consistent with.

Very much so.

Threes and the. It's like Chrissy's. I don't know if Chrissy's a robot or not, but yeah, the consistency piece.

Thank you. Well, and when you've got those Three things. It shows that a team's present, honest and it's growing. And that's really what you want.

Yeah, 100%. 100%. When you, how do you judge that? How do you know those things are happening?

There's a lot of different ways that you can do that. Part is, you know, what are our core values? What are our mission and our purpose? And are our team members, do they understand it, do they live by it and are they learning by it?

And you can. I mean, the. Those are things that you should be able to see. Unless your core values are just wall art.

Crappy wall art, Shitty wall art. Yes, I'll swear. You should be able to see it. I think it's really. They should be quantifiable and they should be very easy to ask. A yes, no, or a yes, no question or a 1, 2, 3 rating. Do I see these in my team members? Are they coachable? I mean, coach evolution is a really big one. If I present something new and they're always like, no, we don't want to do. We don't learn new things. Now we always say that we don't learn new things in fourth quarter because we're doing all of the things in fourth quarter. But that's a little bit different.

We've had that conversation.

Yes. But if, if you're bringing in, like, if you're bringing in innovation, you're bringing in new education, new training and development around a tool or around something new that we're going to do for our customers, and all of your team members are going, we don't do this. We don't want to take feedback. That's tell telling you very quickly that you have an issue with employees that don't want to evolve.

That makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. The honesty piece, where do you see that appearing?

Oh, a couple things. One would be if they're hiding mistakes or they're not wanting to tell you things. There's that one.

That's the big one.

To me, that is the big one. It's hiding it, being afraid to be imperfect. So the other is when you've got. You have your core values and they're like, well, I don't think that I don't really care about teamwork. Well, if you don't care about teamwork as a core value, then we've got a problem with your ethics.

So, yeah, the perfection one is interesting. And the reason why I say that is that circular.

Yeah.

Because our last topic was what your employees expect from you.

Yes.

And if they get the honesty and transparency from you, they're much more likely to reciprocate that.

Correct.

If they don't, there is not a snowball's chance in July that they are going to be honest with you.

Yeah. Well. And I feel like authenticity and ethics are partners, so.

Sure.

Your people want you to be authentic and you want them to operate with high ethics. And so having those be together, being able to be transparent, being who you are, I think it just makes sense.

It 100% does. 100% does. For sure.

Yeah.

I. I've got some interesting operational pieces on this because. Yeah, there's. We talked roadmap. Yes, we talked list.

Yes.

I have expectations.

Do you? Oh, look. You do.

Yeah, I got a. I got a whole list of them here.

Oh, wow. You've got a lot of expectations here.

And not taking the bullet is not on here.

No. I like this. Okay.

It's not alliteration, though. Or. It's not.

I like your phrases. This is good.

It's not word surprise. Yeah. No surprises. We owe employees clear due dates. And once again, I'm going to frame a lot of these. Like, we give you this. And therefore, I. This is reciprocality.

Reciprocity.

Reciprocity, yes. That is the word I was looking for. It's been a long week.

A long week. Right.

And it's. We're recording on a Monday.

Yes.

It's. It's quarter four.

Yes.

Fourth quarter. We say, like, leaders owe employees clear due dates. Clear. Clear. Things like that.

Yeah.

In return, I expect communication before the crash.

Oh, I like that.

The other movie quote. Same movie. Spy Game. Go look it up.

Yes.

When did Noah build the ark? Before the flood. Yes. So I don't expect perfection either. I do expect to know about a delay before the due date.

Yeah.

If you're going to. We were just talking about this earlier. If there. If something's due and you're swamped, if it's due in a week, I need to know today, not Friday.

Well, and I don't want to know. You missed the deadline. After you missed the deadline.

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I'll give you a few seconds to go to the website while we get ready to get back to the show. Correct. I'm. If it's hard if the, if we know before the deadline, we can fix it.

Yes.

After the deadline, that's tougher to fix. Same thing. If you had a roadblock, tell me immediately. Don't be like, I'll let this sit and come back to it doesn't work. The other thing is, is hiding bad news is just hiding bad news until the deadline is a failure of expectation. I mean, it's telling it. It tells you something about your culture. If someone's hiding that deadline, it is. And you have to look at, is this an individual employee issue? Are they just worried or scared? Or is this a culture issue? In some cases, if it's a newer employee, especially then they came from a culture where if anything like had a hint of going wrong, it takes a while to break them of that.

Well, hiding a deadline is something I will forgive usually once, because then it is. I didn't clarify expectations. Or again, you had an issue with a past employer or a past situation, it may be something that you've struggled with. So, I mean, I will allow that usually just once, because after that it speaks to integrity. But I agree with you a hundred percent. Right.

If they. And I mean the same. I always make analogies between relationships and work because they're so similar in so many ways.

Past trauma.

Right. If you've got this past trauma, like, okay, if, if you, I mean, if you got screamed at and berated and anytime something went wrong, you're gonna try and sweep that under the rug and just hope it goes by. If you're shown in a new relationship, be it personal, be a business, that's not going to happen. You need to adapt to that.

Yeah.

Radical ownership of how is something else now to me. Like, we discussed that servant leader question, how can I help?

Yeah.

And I expect you to bring me, like, not always the solution. Well, let me back this up. I hate it when I hear people say, I expect you to bring me the solution, not just the problem. Because I tell you what, if an employee is bringing you a problem, they can't figure out the solution. No, what I do want is you to come to me and say, I'm having a problem with this. I've looked at A, B and C. Yes, yes. I'm stuck.

Yes.

Because to me, that shows me that is my expectation is you're going to do some research as the employee, you're going to do some research. You're going to do, put in some effort to try and find the solution. I've had bosses come to me and say, don't bring me problems, bring me solutions. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. I'm here because there's a problem I can't figure. Or you're. You're the problem. I brought that to them before too, and been like, no, you're. You're holding this up.

Yes.

And they're like, I want solutions. Well, then get the hell out of the way. If someone comes to me and says, look, I've looked at A, B, and C as solutions, I can't figure this out, then great. At least show me that you've put in some effort.

And I think asking for help needs to be celebrated, especially in organizations when we're trying to deal with innovation, when we're working on building psychological safety. Another thing, when you've been talking about missing deadlines, if you are inconsistent as a leader and you constantly miss deadlines, I don't think that you should be ever be mad at your team members if they miss a deadline. So when it comes to radical ownership, I think it's really important that you, you praise individuals for even being willing to walk to you and say, hey, I can't figure this out. Asking for help is. Is absolutely something that we should be praising in performance.

I. I always do my best to make sure to say, okay, great, let's figure this out. If you don't need to buy them flowers, you don't need to send them pizza. You do not need to, like, have birthday cake in the.

No, but you can say, thank you for telling me. Thank you for telling me about this issue. Let's work on it.

100. A simple thanks. An. An earnest thanks. Not like, great, thanks for bringing me this.

No, no, no, no. Tone is important. Don't screw it up in your tone.

Right? And you have. What's. What's difficult for many leaders in this is there are times where we're frustrated with something and someone brings you in another problem. You're like, damn it, this is the last thing I wanted.

I want.

You still have to put on the happy face you do and be like, thanks for bringing this in.

Yes.

And to me, it takes practice to be in that gratitude mindset. But you, you. You have to practice that in order to make sure that when Someone walks in the door with a problem.

Yes.

You can be thankful that they walked in the door with a problem and not handed you a big bag of flaming dog shit two months down the road.

This is what we signed up for when we decided we were going to lead a business 100% that has more than you. Correct.

If you're not a sometimes you is the toughest one to manage.

True. I agree. I am the hardest person to manage.

But do your damn job. Start looking at other stuff over here. Speaking of that is there's a process for things we talking about, talked about documenting processes.

Yes.

To me, I expect an employee to follow the agreed upon process until we agree to change it.

Yes.

I love when people explore other opportunities. I was just presented one on how we do podcasts shown like, hey, this tool starting to work better than that tool. Awesome. I really appreciate you like looking at that.

Yes.

I appreciate you test. These are the types of things why I love the people that work with me. But it's, it's that not like, hey, I've completely scrapped everything that we've done and started something from scratch. Don't come at me with that.

No. There's usually a reason why we do it the way we do it.

Correct. And what's tough is explaining to people like the way you do your thing may affect the way someone else does their thing. And making sure that the problem is, is so many people don't explain those connections.

Yes.

And making sure you do explain like, hey, I realize this may be a hair easier for you. This may save you 10 minutes, but it costs Bob down the hallway an extra three hours when you do it this way.

Yes.

So I need you to spend the extra 10 minutes.

Well. And as you become a leader in an organization that is continuing to grow and may have spaces for silos, it's really important, especially as a CEO, as an executive leader, that you're able to fill in the gaps for your leadership team so that they can understand where the impact is. Because I see that a lot. In fact, we just dealt with it in an issue at aui. We're working on a new CRM for the marketing component. And so one of the individuals on my team came back and said, why do we have five different names for the same carrier? And I went, because there are five different products. And this is how this works. And he's like, well, the CRM company wants to change it. And I went, the CRM company has to go through Alice to change it. He's like, oh, never mind. So it's that conversation about understanding why things are the way that they are. Now this enables us to service our, our clients better because it gives us the, the understanding and the information. And no, you cannot change that simply because a program developer thinks that's a good idea. No, take your web development away from my insurance products.

The one, the, the one that's a deal breaker to me is quote unquote freestyling.

Yes.

I want people to find new ways, I want people to look at new people to find inefficiencies, and I want people to talk.

But we don't do that on critical operations.

Not only that, but when they just start doing it on their own.

Uhhuh.

I've fired a number of people, I have to for just that, where they're like, no, no, I've got a better.

My process is better. We don't understand what your process. No.

Right, and I'm happy to sit down and talk about this, but don't just go off the reservation and expect us to come after you when stuff goes sideways because we don't know what happened, we don't know how you did it, we don't know why you did it. And therefore you've, you've kind of caused a whole calamity in itself.

Exactly.

If there's an sop.

Yes.

If there is a standard operating procedure, my expectation, you follow it.

Yes.

That is very much to me a non negotiable. Now once again, the only, the only way that I have wiggle room on this, if there is a problem, we need to know. So, and this, this to me is the operational piece that I always loved, is when we had a problem, I'd always look at it. First off, one time is not a problem.

Yes.

But second off, I always look at it be like, is this an opportunity for us to change things and do them better? Is this an outlier or is this just someone screwed up?

Yeah.

If you don't have this documented, if, if you don't talk about problems when they happen, you can't get better. You can't fix things and you can't adapt to things. And if you don't adapt to things, you're just gonna die. That's all there is to it. So to me it's that, that, that, that adherence to the process is just such a key for me. And 90% of the time I find that when we have something messed up, guess what? We forgot to step in the process.

Yes. We didn't follow our process. And I don't think there's anything wrong with. We're going to discuss, we're going to debate, and then we're going to decide if we need to innovate in our process. But we do that as a team. No one gets to go rogue.

No.

Including the business owner.

Correct.

Don't do something you don't want to. I mean, if you want to see people totally disrupt your processes, do it to them.

Yeah. It's funny you say that, because I've had to. I've helped out with some editing recently, and I'm going through our process sheet like, oh, yeah, I got to do. Because when the process sheet has greatly evolved from when I was doing a lot of editing, because when it was just me, I set up the sheets and I'm like, okay. And then as we've talked and as tools have changed and as things have changed, I'm like, oh, if I did it the old way, this would be all sorts of screwed up. So I have to adhere to that. I've got to make sure that I do that, because otherwise, once again, I'm going to turn out some just absolute garbage. And I got to make sure that it's my responsibility as the business. I get pissed at someone if they did that to me. Well, guess what? I. If I do it to me, I gotta get equally as mad at me.

Yes, you do.

Take myself out back and punch me in the face a few times. The things that you cannot expect. The mind reader.

Telepathy is not a skill you screen for. Oh, no.

Okay. Podcast. No, we're done here. Yeah, no, I, I. It always upset me when, as an employee, someone is like, why didn't you do this? And I'm like, you didn't tell me. Well, you should know. No, obviously you didn't tell me.

I shouldn't know.

I didn't. We don't have a procedure for this. And you didn't tell me what this is. Well, it's right there. No, it's not. I. If I. Don't get mad at me. If I didn't do something you didn't directly tell me to do. Don't get mad at your employees if they don't. And just because you think you told them to do something, unless it's documented and you can go back and say, see where it says do the thing, it's not there.

Well, research says it takes 10 times for someone to truly understand, so that's something else you got to deal with. I know.

Wow.

It's hard.

Wow. Wow. And we've done 35 episodes. Boy, I was just trying to do the math here real quickly in my head. There's only 315 episodes left to go before it's really pounded.

Exactly. Exactly.

The other one is. Is too. I, I'm. I am going to stare at you directly in the eyes as I say this one.

Yes.

And you know what it is?

I do.

Owner level obsession. No one is going to care as much as you care.

Nope. Never.

Tonic. You worked 80 hours. Congratulations. They do not give a shit. Nor will they do it.

No.

They may do it if. On the occasion, if it's needed.

Yes.

But don't expect them to do it.

They're not doing it every day, they're not doing it every week.

They're not going to do it out of the kindness of their heart.

And you don't want them to.

Oh, gosh, no.

You don't want to deal with yourself.

No, no. We don't want to deal with ourselves. That's why we work on our businesses for 80 hours a week.

Exactly.

They have lives. You have a legacy. Yeah. Do not expect them to care about the business as much as you do now. They should care about the business. They should care about the results. They should care about the people around them, the business as a whole.

They not the same way that you do.

No, no, no. It's the same thing. Don't expect someone to care for your kid the same way you do.

Exactly it.

Expect them to treat your kid well and with respect and all those other things, but don't expect them to do the same things for your kid that you would do.

Yes.

That being said, how do you determine if a missed expectation is a training issue, meaning it was the leader's fault or an attitude or maybe an employee issue?

Okay. So I would say you ask yourself, is this a skill or a will issue? Yeah, we rhyme now.

So are we at it? Are we going to start doing.

Yeah, God help you. I can do all of the things and you will just.

I can rhyme too. I can rhyme with the best of.

Them and I can do insurance abbreviations. So just, just know it's going to get interesting. If that's what we're going to do.

I'm going to tap out now. You win.

So is it skill or will? So if it's a skill gap, that's on leadership. So we didn't train well enough or we didn't set the person up with the right tools. But if it's a will problem, that's attitude. And so that employee has to meet us Halfway skill gaps, I believe, are fixable always. But will gaps rarely are. If you're a small business owner navigating the world of marketing, or looking to establish yourself as an industry expert, you already know the power of a great podcast.

But getting it all right from the sound of the strategy can be a headache. And that's where Pedal Stopper Productions comes in. We're the team behind the business fix and Chrissy's Better Business for Small Business Leaders podcast.

One of the things I love about what you do, Josh, is that you're always willing to help out. And part of that is with your free 30 minute no pitch podcast consultation.

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Back to the show.

I, I, it's funny. I agree with that. And it's that there's, with the will gap, there's always other signs, too.

Yes.

That there's. You can see that this is a cumulative thing, not just, oh, they're missing that one piece. They're missing the chunk.

Well, they are. And I mean, leaders get in trouble when they treat will issues like a training issue. Because you cannot coach someone into caring. No. And I know that there's something and you're not. Jesus, you can't do it.

When you try and do that, that typically pushes them the other direction.

It does. It becomes really strong.

When you say, read the handbook.

No.

And read our core values until those set in. No, no, no. They are going to have a bonfire with your core values and that's it. They are going to turn that into kindling.

Yeah. And you just need to exit them quickly.

Someone doesn't meet standards. How does that affect the high performance on the team?

Oh, gosh. It hurts the high performers. They're gonna exit. They're absolutely gonna exit. When you allow under performers to coast, I mean, your high performers feel punished for caring. And then they start thinking, you know, why do I care so much? Why am I working so hard if nothing changes? You want your high performers to exit. You maintain that low performance standard for somebody else 100%.

They will start to perform at that, at that same level as the low performer. Because, like, they can get away with it. Why can't I?

Well, they're like, well, we can't find anybody else to do this job. And it's really Important. I. I bet you can, or I bet your. Your high performers will say, we would rather work alone than have to drag dead weight, especially along this boat anchor. Exactly. I mean, you have to think, too, that, you know, keeping the wrong person. And we've talked about this several times in other episodes, you know, but it hasn't been 10 times yet. You know, it's always more expensive. Okay, maybe, but we're going to need.

To talk about it 100 times.

Yeah. I mean, you keep the wrong person. It's almost. It's almost always more expensive than letting them go with dignity. And exiting them to a new opportunity is really. It's. Sometimes it's the best thing you can do for a low performer.

Yes. And I mean, 100%, it's the. It's a good thing for them, but it's the. The biggest thing for you because, like you, like you said, those other people aren't dragging along that boat anchorage. And it's tough because the other thing is too, sometimes that low. The low standard may just be an enthusiasm thing. And it does not take. I mean, we're both enthusiastic people. I've been in rooms where you've got the Eeyore, and it just sucks it right out of you.

It does. It's exhausting.

Yeah. We're just like, okay. I mean, if. If everything's first off, you look at some of those people, like, just get out of here. If this is so terrible, get the hell out of here.

Yeah.

But when you're around that, it makes it very difficult to function at a high level.

And it's.

It's. Be aware of the room you're in.

Well, I think it's a really good conversation that you have with organizations that are working on accelerating their growth. It's having the conversation around. You know, you may have people that are in this organization that do their job. Okay, but they are difficult to be around. What is that doing to your organization as a whole? And if you want to move faster, you need people that are in alignment with you. And we. We dealt with that over the last few years at AUI and Clarity, we've had significant turnover in part because we started managing and doing performance evaluations by our core values and saying, hey, these are our core values. And. And we need you to like them. Well, I don't really believe in community. Like, okay, well, we don't believe in you anymore either. So it's just. That's kind of how it went. It's. No, I know it sounds heartless, but it's really important. You can't, you can't grow fast when you're not in alignment with people. And now I walk into the room and I'm like, I love all these people. They're great.

I love the, the simplicity at which you said that, though, because here it's like we talked about fear a couple episodes ago, and here this seems like a big deal and it's really not. You're just not a fit if somebody's just not a fit.

Well, and I will say for years there, I drug dead weight for a couple of different things with, with people. And specifically I'm like, I need you to love this as much as I. And it's like, I'm not telling them enough. I'm not selling it. I'm not being in. I'm not being clear. Right? No, I was being clear. They were also being clear with their middle finger and they didn't care what I had to say. And it was like, you know what, we need to move on.

Yep. Yep. Something else. Like, how do you reset expectations when someone has been, okay, yeah, we 30 years in, they're like, okay, I'm coasting till retirement.

Yeah. So I think sometimes too, with long term employees, you know, your expectations can drift because the business grows and you don't necessarily recalibrate the role. They're like, oh, I'm still doing the same job I did 10 years ago. No, you're not. Like, you've, you've moved up in the company or you've moved laterally or we don't even do the same things anymore.

I was about to say it's not even the same thing anymore.

That's it. Like, we don't, like, like what we do in insurance has changed dramatically in the last 15, 20 years, even in the last five years. I know it's surprising. So I think it's really important that you, you reset that implicit contract of like, you know, this is what the role requires today. This is where we're going. I mean, it starts with, you know, honesty delivered respectfully. Here's what the company needs now.

Yep.

Appreciate all of the work that you've done in the past to get us to where we are, but this is what we need from you moving forward. And this is what success looks like. Do you think you could do those things for us?

Yep.

And if they say yes, you go, great. Let's add some more training and development. Let's work on things. Because what I will say too, Josh, is as organizations grow, if you want the people inside the organization to grow as well. You have to be able to develop them professionally. You have to give them new skills, the ability to have access to new skills. Which is why you also as a leader have to be adding new skills to yourself. A lot of times when organizations flatline in the middle and they're like, I'm. When. When a leader is frustrated with their middle management, I would say 99 times out of 100, it is because that leader at the top isn't developing themselves.

Sure.

You don't get to be ticked at your middle leadership because they're falling to the level of their training, which is below where you are. And you keep thinking that everybody needs to coast. I don't like it.

It's so funny how people so often promote someone and without prior training and without follow up training.

Well, they were good at their job, so now they're going to be a good manager. That is not accurate, Peter.

Principle. I still see it. We talked about it a couple of different contexts a little bit earlier off the air to kind of wrap all of this up. Clear, actionable takeaways. We always like to give these to people so that way they can walk away and be like, I learned something today. Other than that Josh talks too much.

Not true.

To me, the biggest one is like what I should expect from my employees is when I tell them what done is, I want them to get to done.

Yes.

There's no ambiguity about that. There's no it's. And I have them, I have the expectation that they get there. They don't give it to me beforehand. It's here's what I defined as done and that is what exactly what I'm going to get.

Yeah. And I would say to defining done, you also need to define the why. So if you want people to give you engagement, they need to understand the mission. So if you assign your team a task, you need to assign your team the why it matters.

My other one is I talked about Noah built the ark before the storm. I mean, I'm not even a religious guy. And I still like that one.

That's a good one.

Is if a deadline's at risk, tell me the conversation happens before the client sending me that nasty email going, hey, where's my stuff?

Yeah, where'd it go? Well, I would say to you too, I'm going to steal this from you because you've talked about it before. It's normalizing that check in.

Yeah.

So you create that culture where speaking up early isn't a sign of weakness. It's A sign of ethics, that other E. Yeah, yeah.

Back to the ease. And with that, check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Yes.

We've all. I know we've all done this. I did this a couple of times when I was younger. Run into the room, damn it, you screwed this up again. Why the hell is the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, well, boss, this is what I was told to do. And you're like, oh, oh, sorry about that. Oops, do you want lunch? I, I right. We, we've all been there. And I mean instantly. Like I say, you've my other analogy. You feel your esophagus and your large intestine swap places. You take that heavy gulp and then. Yeah, yeah.

And I would say in going with the checking yourself, you need to coach the next step.

Yeah.

So when those expectations slip, you're going to focus on that evolution, that last E asking, what's the next skill or support you need to hit this next time. So you have accountability and support. It moves people forward as opposed to being fearful.

Yeah, that. And that will give you that expectation of that, that accountability. They'll feel that.

Yeah.

They'll feel accountable for things and be proactive on it. To me, I know you've seen this hundreds of times. You've seen thousands of red flags. Some of them have been waving in this direction. What is the single biggest red flag that an employee has mentally checked out and it's no longer like meeting whether any expectation, but let's say cultural expectations.

Yeah. When communication disappears, culture disappears. That's the biggest red flag. Silence is the biggest red flag.

If they're quiet.

Yeah.

Especially if they suddenly go quiet, like.

Yeah. It's very telling. What is the one operational metric that proves an employee is owning their role?

To me, I don't have to ask. I just know it's done, it's on time. It's. It's that to me, full trust. Yeah. There's the, there's never a question. There's never. And I mean, I'm always like, we use asana. I'm always going to check on stuff on the sauna. Where are we at with this? What's the workload like? Because I want to be proactive in those things, but when I get the, when I don't have to ask the questions like, where are we at with this? How's this going? How are you feeling? When I just know what the mood in the room is without asking. That's. That's when we know stuff is going right.

Yeah.

That being said, high performance is a two way street.

Very much so.

If, if you want high performing people, you have to be a high performer for them. Yes. Not just for the business, for them specifically.

Model what you want to see.

Yes. Yes. Oh, I need to work. I got some work to do. If you want to find out some of the work that we all should probably be doing. Business Fix podcast.com you can go get all the old episodes, all the new episodes. You can get them on YouTube. Also go look at all the social medias. We've, we've got the clips that are on there. We have a lot of fun putting those together. Lots of good antics in those also, especially if you're just like if, if you're sitting on the couch and your spouse or partner, whoever is watching something that you absolutely hate, scroll our entire feed.

It's fun.

It's. It's fun. You're going to learn something and you probably have something to make fun of me for, so we'll take it. Also, review subscription on any of the podcast platforms and let us know what you want to hear. We would love for you to tell us what topics you need us to, to address or to talk about next week. A, B and C players, who are they and where do they fit in your business?

I.

We're all A players. Everyone A, B and C players to me all have a fit in the business. Figuring out where, how, and what's going to make them most effective. Yeah, we're going to talk about that next week. Do me a favor, take care of yourself. If you can, take care of someone else too, we will see you very, very soon. Sam.