The Biggest Leadership Mistake I Ever Made

Here's the biggest mistake leaders make when they're dealing with someone who's underperforming. They assume the problem is the person. They start thinking they're lazy, they're not engaged, they've lost motivation, maybe they're just not right for the job. And the irony, a few years ago I made exactly the same mistake, and it wasn't because I didn't know any better, it's because it was the most obvious conclusion, and I was completely wrong. So today I'm going to show you the exact situation that changed the way I look at leadership forever. And it's not a theory, it's not something that I read in a book, it's a real person inside one one of my own businesses. And more importantly, I'm going to show you exactly what we changed, why it worked, and why it ended up increasing the performance of an entire team, not just the one employee. Before we get into it though, let me just give you a little bit of context. Gallup found that managers account for around 70% of the difference between your highest performing teams and your lowest performing ones. And think about that for a second. The difference between a team smashing their targets, another one constantly struggling, is usually the person leading them. Not the product, not the market, not the staff. It's just the leader. And then you've got another statistic that should make every business owner just a little bit uncomfortable. Around half of employees who voluntarily left the job, so they did it to get away from their manager. And again, it wasn't the salary. It's not because of the company. It's just because of one person. And SHRM estimates that replacing someone can cost anywhere from half to twice their annual salary by the time they've been recruited, trained, and then absorbed the productivity gap. But honestly, I think that that's the least expensive part. The thing that never appears on a spreadsheet is what's happening to everyone else. When one person starts struggling, the whole team is going to feel it. And not everyone drops to exactly the same bar, not exactly the same level. Some people carry it better than others, but nobody performs at their absolute best in the wrong environment. People don't just lose performance, they lose belief. And that is where this story starts. Cue flashback sound stuff. I'm CEO across a group of companies, same overall business, same system, same standards, different sites, and a different leadership team. A few years ago, I started noticing something a little bit odd. There was a lady, and we'll call her Sarah because that's definitely not her real name, who worked across two different sites. It's exactly the same role, exactly the same person, in exactly the same company, but it was almost like watching two completely different employees. In one business, she was always as I've always known her. She's chatting, she's laughing, she's high energy, she's comfortably hitting KPIs, the sort of person who lifts the people around her. But then I'd walk into the other side and she'd almost disappear. Her head was down, she was quiet, she was keeping herself to herself. She's still polite, she's still doing her job, but there was no energy, there's no spark, and the numbers reflected it. And it wasn't catastrophically, it was just consistently worse. Now, I'm gonna be honest with you, when I first saw it, I made exactly the same mistake that this video is about. I assumed Sarah was just having an off day because every other time I'd seen her over the years, she'd been switched on, full of beans, full of energy. It's my first thought wasn't, I wonder what's happening around Sarah. It was, what's happened to Sarah? Maybe she's coming into work in a, in a mood. Maybe something wasn't going on well at home. Maybe she just wasn't really feeling it. And if I'm honest, that really frustrates me. I spent 25 years building businesses that perform consistently. I hate the idea that whether someone has a good day or a bad day depends entirely on the way that they feel when they wake up in the morning. Businesses don't work like that. People have got emotions, yes, We all do, but great businesses don't leave performance at the mercy of emotion. Great leaders create an environment where people can perform consistently. So the problem that I hadn't actually realised yet was it was the environment that wasn't consistent, because what I was looking at wasn't a people problem, it was an environmental problem, and I just didn't know it yet. So after seeing this happen a few times, I started paying a little bit more attention. Every time I visited that site, Sarah was different. Not dramatically, she wasn't rude, she wasn't causing problems, she wasn't refusing to work, she just wasn't herself. And here's what was really bothering me. I'd seen this woman for years. I knew what she was like. So every time I walked into that site and saw this quieter version of her, just something didn't quite sit right. So one day I walked in and there she was again. Her head was down, she's doing her job, and she wasn't really saying much. So I thought, right, let's actually find out what's going on. Now, this is one of those little leadership lessons that nobody's really gonna teach you. Sometimes your position is gonna get in the way. So whether you like it or not, a CEO, director, manager, whatever is on your business card, it changes how people talk to you. People become a little bit more guarded, a little more careful. I've learned over the years that if I want the truth, I've got to make it safe for people to tell me the truth. And I'll be honest, that's not something that really comes that naturally to me. I've had to lean into it over 25 years. So before I walked over, I consciously just softened myself off. It wasn't dramatic softening, just enough that it felt like a conversation and it wasn't interrogation. She was standing on reception, nobody else was around, so I walked over. You alright, Sarah? How's it going? Oh, fine. Now, whenever someone says they're fine, they're usually anything but fine. So I just ask, is everything all right? Yeah. You happy? Yeah. And then I use one of my favorite little phrases, one the team absolutely hate, but I reckon they secretly love it at the same time. I just smiled and said, well, why don't you tell your flipping face? She laughed, and straight away the tension has disappeared. And then she actually told me, and it didn't take 20 minutes. It was not me dragging it out of her. She just immediately said It's just different here. So what do you mean by that? And she said, at the other site, whenever I do something well, my manager notices, she tells me, she encourages me, she catches me doing things right. And then she looked at me and she said, here, the only time anyone ever speaks to me is when I've done something wrong. And honestly, that sentence has stayed with me ever since, because in that moment, everything suddenly made sense. I wasn't looking at two different employees, I was looking at the same employee responding to two completely different environments. And it was a little bit embarrassing. I was shocked. If anything, it confirmed what I'd already been suspecting. The site had kind of been underperforming for a little while. It was the same business, same system, same product, same expectations, same owner, yet consistently weaker results. In my experience, when everything else is the same, you stop looking at the people and you start looking at the leadership. But then I caught myself because my first thought was, why haven't the directors spotted this? And after about 30 seconds, that frustration turned straight back on me. They haven't had 25 years doing this, but I have. If they couldn't see what I could see, then I hadn't taught them what to look out for, and that's on me. And that's probably one of the biggest leadership lessons I've ever learned. When the people around you keep missing the problem, before you question their ability, you need to question your leadership. Have you actually equipped them enough to see what you can see? Because experience isn't just transferable by magic, by osmosis. You've got to teach it. So at this point, I had myself a choice. I could tell the manager to be a little bit nicer, to give a few more compliments and try and be a bit more positive. And that's what most people do, but that isn't going to solve anything because if leadership depends on remembering to be nice, it'll disappear the first time someone gets a little bit stressed. And I don't want them to rely on good intentions, I want them to have a system. And that's where I introduced one of the simplest leadership tools that I've ever used. So now I knew what the problem was, or at least I knew what the problem wasn't. It wasn't Sarah, it wasn't motivation or attitude, it wasn't engagement, it was the leadership. And I see this mistake across all the businesses I work with all the time. Once they've identified the problem, they'll try and fix the person. Let's send Sarah on a course. Let's have another performance meeting. Let's put her on a development plan. But why? Sarah wasn't broken. The environment was. If you've got exactly the same person producing two completely different levels of performance, you don't have a people problem. You have yourself a leadership problem. So I needed to sit down with the manager. Now, before anyone jumps to conclusions, this wasn't a bad manager, and that's really important. They cared and they worked hard and they wanted the to do well. They weren't waking up every morning thinking, how can I make everyone's life miserable today? They were doing what a lot of managers do though. They've become brilliant at spotting mistakes. Every time someone got something wrong, they noticed. Every time someone missed a process, they noticed. And every time someone made an error, they flippin' well noticed. Because that's what managers are often taught to do. Fix the problem, spot the issues, correct the behaviour. But the trouble is, the only time your team hears from you is when you've done something wrong, and they eventually start believing that's all you ever see. And that's exactly what Sarah told me. At the other sites, they catch me doing things right. Here, they only notice when I get it wrong. That's the indicator. That wasn't because the manager didn't care. It was because nobody had ever really given them a better way of leading. So instead of telling them, just be more positive, I gave them a framework. This is the one that I've used for years, and it's called SBI, Situation, Behavior, Impact. And the reason I love it is because it removes emotion from feedback. It stops feedback feeling personal. So instead of saying, you're doing a great job, You're going to get really specific. Yesterday afternoon on that customer call, the way you handled that complaint meant the customer stayed with us. Now the person knows exactly what success is going to look like. Equally, when something needs improving, you don't attack the individual, you talk about the behaviour, not the person. And that's a huge difference because behaviour can change, but identity is much harder to. And this is probably the most important bit. SBI! isn't magic. Consistency is the magic bit. We don't do one meeting, give everyone a little pat on the back, and suddenly everything's changed. That isn't how leadership works. And unfortunately, and I wish it did. This manager committed to using it every day, every week, over and over and over again, catching people doing things right, correcting behaviors early, and making feedback normal, and making recognition normal, and making conversations normal. Not waiting until someone had failed, helping them win before they get the chance of failing. And I think that this is where leadership gets misunderstood. People think leadership is about motivation. I don't. People don't need motivating every morning. They just need a little bit of clarity. They need to know, what does winning look like today? Am I winning? And if I'm not, how do I get it back on track? And that's what great leaders create. Not motivation, just that clarity thing, because clarity is gonna create confidence and confident people perform really well in your business. And over the next 3 months, that's exactly what started to happen in mine. And it wasn't overnight, not after one conversation. It took 3 months, one conversation at a time, one piece of feedback at a time, one lead again, a little bit better every single day until eventually the whole environment started changing. And once the environment changes, the people inside it are going to change with it. And that's when I went back to the site, and I'll never forget what happened next. Now here's the thing: we didn't spend another 100 grand on marketing, bearing in mind we didn't recruit a load of superstar employees, we didn't change the product, we didn't change the systems. All we'd done was teach one leader a better way to lead. And over the next 3 months, they consistently used that framework, and they weren't perfect, but they were consistent. And then one day when I went back into the site, honestly, before I'd spoken to anyone, before I'd even looked at a dashboard, before I'd seen a single KPI, I already knew because you could feel it. There was a buzz in the air. Now that's probably a strange way of describing a business, but if you run businesses for long enough, you'll know exactly what I mean. You can feel when people are winning. People were chatting, they were laughing, they were helping each other, and there was energy. But this is important. They weren't just stood around having a bit of a laugh. Sometimes people mistake culture for everyone getting on really well. That's not culture, that's just being friendly. With each other. This is different. There's a really nice balance. People are enjoying coming to work. They're absolutely laser-focused on what they were there to achieve, and that's that sweet spot. So I started chatting to a few of the team. How are we doing? Good. What's your target today? Straight away they knew it. Where are you against your target? Straight away they knew it. What do you need to do before the end of the day? Again, they knew, and they hadn't memorized some magic script. It's just because they genuinely understood what winning looked like. They could feel it as well. When people know what winning looks like, they start enjoying the challenge. If ahead, they're celebrating it. And if they're behind, they're figuring out how to catch up. So nobody's guessing, nobody's drifting away. They're really, really clear, and that clarity changes everything. And then my proud moment— I saw Sarah, and honestly, that was the moment that it really hit me. She wasn't the quiet version anymore. She was Sarah, the Sarah that I'd known for years. She was laughing, she was joining in, she's talking to everyone, she's bringing energy into the room, she's hitting her numbers. She was exactly the same person that I'd seen at the other side with the same personality and the same confidence and the same work ethic. Nothing about Sarah had changed, but guess what? The environment had. And then almost as an afterthought, I looked at the numbers. Sales were up 17%, targets were being hit consistently across the board. And remember, we hadn't replaced anyone, we hadn't found better people, we hadn't put more money into advertising, we hadn't changed our strategy. It's just one leader had learned a new skill. And think about that for a second. One leadership skill created a happier team, better performance, a 17% jump in sales, and it didn't cost us anything other than a little bit of time to learn it and the discipline to apply it consistently. And that is a massive return on investment. And that's why I always smile when someone tells me leadership training is really expensive. No, poor leadership is expensive. Teaching someone how to lead properly is one of the highest return investments you're ever going to make. So what's the flipping point of all of this that I've just been banging on about? Is the lesson that you should use SBI! No, I think SBI is a brilliant framework. I've used it for flipping years, but I don't reckon that's the lesson. The lesson is much bigger than that. The biggest mistake leaders make is believing people are the problem. Now, don't get me wrong, sometimes they absolutely are. Sometimes someone's in the wrong job, sometimes they don't want to be there, sometimes they simply aren't a good fit for the culture. I'm not naive enough to think that every performance issue is caused by leadership, but there's an important question I always ask before I ever blame the individual. What environment have we created for this person? Because if you've got somebody who's capable of performing absolutely brilliantly in one environment and they're performing poorly in the other, the person isn't what's changed, it's the environment that's changed. And Sarah taught me that. Actually, she reminded me of something that I should have already known, really. People don't suddenly wake up one morning and decide, today I'm going to stop working. Most people come to work wanting to do a good job. They want to feel valued. They want to know that they're making progress. They want to know that they're flipping well winning.. And that's the word I keep coming back to, winning. Because after 25 years of building businesses, I've realised something. The best businesses don't just have happy people and they don't just have high-performing people. They've got people who know what winning looks like. So if you walk into one of our businesses and I'll know within a couple of minutes whether it's being well led, and it's not the spreadsheets that are telling me, and it's not yesterday's cash and revenue that's dropped in, it's cuz I'm gonna start talking to the team. I'm gonna ask them, what's your target today? If they know it, Then great. Then I'll ask, where are you against it? And if they know it, then that is even better. And then I'll ask, what do you need to do before you go home to hit your target today? And if they can answer that, I already know a lot about how that business is being led because they're clear and they've got confidence. And confident people perform. And I often stand back for a minute and I'll just watch. Is there energy? Are people helping each other? Are they laughing? Are they celebrating wins? When someone gets something right, does everybody notice, or is the only conversation they've ever had with their manager? Well, it's when something goes wrong. And that is the difference, and that's the culture you need to have. So it's not about the posters on the wall or the company values that are printed in reception, not the little away days that you all have. It's the conversations that people have every single day. They're what creates culture. Every business is perfectly designed to produce the culture that it currently has. So let's read that again. Every business is perfectly designed to produce the culture that it currently has. If you've got a disengaged team, there is a reason. If you've got an inconsistent set of performance metrics, there's a reason. If people don't know what success looks like, guess what? There's a flipping reason. And before you start changing the people, just change the environment. And I know this for certain, I didn't change Sarah. Sarah was already brilliant. I changed the conditions that allowed her to be brilliant every single day. And that is leadership. It's not controlling people, it's not motivating people, it's creating an environment where winning becomes normal. It's the thing we all do. People don't need a manager who catches them out. They need a leader who helps them win. And if this story has done one thing, I hope the next time someone in your team starts underperforming, you don't just ask yourself, what's wrong with them? I hope you ask yourself, what have I created around them? And that one question has changed the way that I lead, and I genuinely believe it'll change the way that you can lead as well. If you're serious about becoming the sort of leader people genuinely want to follow, I've put together a free 21-day program which covers leadership, and sales and growing your business. The link is in the description. Ah, as always, thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next one. Let us crack on.