Team Member Episode: Accountability Isn’t a Toxic Workplace

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Welcome to the podcast. So this is a recording I've wanted to do for a while. I've talked to my team about, or my, my team about it. I've talked to my clients about it a little bit. Like the podcast I did about, you know, sort of how we've been lulled into abdicating our personal power as team members and sort of the employee class, if you will. Um, I think this episode might also, if it did, if the previous one stimulated a little, I don't know, conflict, this might too. But I just think it's important that we all engage in some different kinds of conversations. Lots of things are changing, so why not really evaluate all of it? I'm certainly making evaluations of everything right now in my business, Everything, including this podcast. To be honest, I've been doing this for, oh, 10 years, putting out a podcast every week. That's a lot of content that I have proudly provided. Ideas, insights, perspectives. And I'm not convinced that it's the right thing for me to continue to do. So I'm evaluating all of it and I think we have to always. This is something I learned a few years ago. It's just you always have to be willing to, to honestly look at everything, everything in your life, in your business, in your home, in your. Like, we get so stuck in not being willing to consider anything that then we stay stuck. And, you know, my constitution, for whatever reason, has just been like, no, everything's always up for discussion. And so that's what I want to talk about here. And so this podcast is about employee acumen. I want to make this podcast and I hope that there will be team members who listen to it. And I'm inviting you to listen to this with a really open mind. There's nothing about my intention here that is anything other than just sort of providing perspective.

So, you know, I, I always think about the businesses, right? Why do businesses exist? Businesses exist to fulfill a promise to deliver a result. And small businesses, medium sized businesses, big businesses, every business has sort of a different level of that, right? So really, really big company that's publicly traded, they have stakeholders, they have a lot of things they have to do to meet the demands and, and commitments that they've made to their stakeholders. A small business, that small business has a result, it has to achieve and likely has to achieve that result, whatever that is. Usually it's revenue in order to keep the doors open, period. Right. If you're a team member and you have chosen to work in a small business, you are not Working for deep pockets. I think there's a real misconception now. We're in a real tumultuous time when it comes to employer employee relationships. Understandably. On the day that I'm recording this, another announcement of 10,000 more federal workers being laid off. Of course, we've all been through private industry layoffs. Well, I was, I worked for. I was a. I was one. I was laid off. I was part of that process. I have laid people off. And I was, you know, in my early 30s, late 20s, during the massive, massive layoffs that happened around 2000 to 1999, 2000, especially in the tech world. So nobody should be surprised when layoffs happen. But I think the way that things are happening in the federal government are really, really antithetical to what leadership looks like. I think they're being. I think it's terrible the way that this is happening. Just for the record, it's my opinion, but as an employee, when you say yes to a job, first of all, you have some responsibility immediately. And here's what I want to just tell you. If you, if you get offered a job and whoever offers you that job doesn't tell you what the job is, they don't give you a job description. They don't tell you what the salary is. They don't tell you what the benefits are. They don't tell you when your performance will be reviewed and how you are eligible for, or if you are eligible for salary review and increase. They don't tell you if there's any bonus. They don't tell you any. They just offer you a job with very little structure. That is a buyer beware moment. And if I talked to you, I don't care what the job is. I don't care if it's working as the cashier at the, at the Chevron down the street. I don't care if it's a vice president position. If you and I were having a conversation and you said, yeah, they offered me this position, it sounds really great, they're going to pay me this per hour, I would be asking you, did they put it in writing? Do you have a job description? Did they give you an explanation of benefits? Like, what do you have? If you say yes and you don't have that, you have already stepped into a dynamic that I believe is compromised you. I'm just telling you that right now because I coach the leaders on the other side of it. And my expectation when I work with my clients is that they prepare you beautiful offer. It doesn't have to be the offer you want. But they do prepare one, right? You don't have to say yes, okay? But once you've said yes, you've said yes. And one of the things that I think is vital that you understand is that when you said yes to a position and you've said yes to whatever the result requirements are of the position, you have said yes. You have said yes to deliver that expectation. You haven't said yes, well, but only if I like it. You haven't said yes, well, but only if they let me have the time off I want. You haven't said, yes, but only if I work with nice people or only if I like the way my manager talks to me. You've said yes. Now, if you get into that job and there's something about that role, maybe there is a communication issue with the person you work for and you don't. You don't enjoy working for them, maybe there is an issue that you thought you were going to have more free time, more time off that you're getting. Okay? Maybe there is an issue that you didn't really understand how specific and rigid they were with the goals that they've set for you. Okay? Maybe you get into the job and you realize, you know, I can't really get there at 8am But I could get there at 8:45. Not if you said you'd be there at 8. So we have this dynamic happening. And this, you know, I'm talking to employees right now. Let's trust me that I spend the majority of my time talking to employers. But if every time you walk through the door, either literally or figuratively, because you log in and you sign on, you have said yes again, not yes, but not yes, if only yes. And I believe that you are compromising your personal integrity if you say yes and then you don't do your job, that is not how this works. That is. That is beneath you as a human. If you work for someone you shouldn't work for, quit. If you don't like their dynamic, their culture, the way they speak to you, quit. If you wish the hours were different, but they won't change them. Got it? Quit. If you don't think the goals are fair, okay, quit. But if you stay and you, every time you walk through the door, you say, yes, pay me for this day, then you are agreeing once again to be there. And I want you to hear me say that being held accountable to a goal that you knew about is not creating a toxic work environment. That is not making you and everyone else Unhappy. If you know what the goals are and you said yes and you're not hitting it and they hold you accountable, that's actually what's supposed to happen. If you and I made an agreement to go to lunch together and then you didn't show up, would you expect that I would just go back home and ignore it? No. I would text you and I would say, hey, dude, we were supposed to have lunch today. Where are you? So if you're at work and you said that you would make this many phone calls or get this project done by Tuesday, or hey, hit this sales goal or you know, produce this many widgets by Tuesday and you don't, why wouldn't you expect your manager to say, hey, dude, what's going on? You said you would do this. That's, that's actually what it's supposed to look like, accountability. But we have built such a blame oriented, non accountable culture that even just saying to someone, hey, this month this was what you were supposed to do and you didn't. What's going on? If it happens for another month, we're gonna have to put you on a performance plan that's now somehow a personal attack. No, it isn't. Not if you knew what you were supposed to be doing. Now if you don't know how and you ask for training and they don't give it to you, fine. If you have tried and tried and tried and you are definitely in skill gap, you need some training, you need some support, ask for it. If you just said yes to a job that you are just not good at, that's okay, get another one. Nobody owes you a job, love. Nobody owes you money for just showing up. Employers pay employees for results, not time. Employers pay employees for results, not your experience, not who you know, not how long you've been there. Employers pay employees for results and they don't just pay your salary. Many of them pay for benefits, they pay for your time off. Sometimes you get a bonus, sometimes you get some education. They pay for all of your resources that you're using. If you're in a circumstance where you're not able to deliver the result, it is not up to the employer to, to change the result. So you feel happy. Now, that might feel really controversial. I don't know. I'm sure there's going to be some people who listen to this who are pretty upset about it. We haven't met my manager, he's really mean. He's really difficult. Okay, quit. And don't tell me that. Don't tell me it's hard to get another job. Listen, you're right. That's why you should do your due diligence before you say yes. That's still not a good reason. You got one job, you can get another one. But just standing in the way of an organization, not performing, I don't think that's acceptable. I think that's beneath the integrity of a person who has strong personal agency and self worth. Find somewhere else. You'll thrive there. You're not meant to thrive everywhere. Neither am I. Neither are they. It's okay. And the other thing about a small business that I think is really vital that employees think about when you go to work for a small business, a lot of people I know who work for small businesses get a little chat. Like they watch the owner and they think, God, that owner has all this money, that owner, they're just, they're putting all the profit in their pockets. First of all, okay, guess who started? Guess who took the risk and said, I'm going to open this shop, I'm going to open this restaurant, I'm going to take all the risk, I'm going to get the loans, I'm going to buy the equipment, I'm going to take all the financial risk and put this thing on the planet. And then I'm going to go find people who want to work here and I'm going to pay them money to work here. And then those very people who now have a job because this person had an idea in their brain, now they're resentful. That probably. Probably for sure. At least five to eight years after that idea was born, they start to realize some actual profit. They start to realize some actual personal gain. The risk is mitigated. Now these employees are like, resentful. No. You know what's true is if you want to build wealth and not just have a job that pays you that you become dependent on, go be an entrepreneur. I invite everyone who is a team member and an employee who is really irritated with their small business business owner that they don't want to work for or they don't like working for or they resent. I just invite you to go build your own business. I think you should do it immediately. Be careful you don't steal ideas that'll get you into some trouble. But I think you should go do that. I think you should go right now and assume all the risk. Take the loans, build the thing, go get it. Go without benefits, find your own. Go without a 401k. Build your own. We have a contentious Period of time that we're in right now, and I don't know how this will end, but the majority of people who are small business owners are doing the best they can with what they can. Are there some people out there who run businesses, the small businesses, and they're kind of knobs and kind of tools? 100%. My children have worked for them. I promise you. I know this to be true. Don't work for them. Leave. The best way to teach terrible leadership that they're terrible is to quit them. But what people do is they stay and complain about them. That does not change anything, especially for the person who's running something poorly they don't learn. I have a very specific example that I won't give a lot of details about. It is not a client, but of someone who worked for a really terrible leader. Everybody knew this person was a terrible leader and manager and was not paying their employees properly and was over pocketing their profit. And that business within 1 1/2 years solid went debunked. It got closed. That is how we teach crappy leaders that they are crappy. You quit them. Good employees leave. Stop staying and complaining. It's a terrible use of your life. And the small business cannot just open up a drawer and give you a raise because you want one. If you work in a small business and you, let's say you've been there six months. I hear this all the time. You've been there six months, you're making $20 an hour, but now you think you should be making 23. So you go to the founder or the owner and you say, hey, I want a $3 raise. I want to tell you what I say to my clients on the other side of that, because they come to me and say, I don't know what's stuck to this. What do I do about this? I always say, what are they going to add? If you want a $3 raise, where's that $3 going to come from? What value are you going to contribute to the business to justify a $3 raise? There's not a drawer. Small businesses don't have this drawer where all the money is. Where do you think the money comes from? It comes from individual employees delivering results. So I recommend is what I have told my clients, if you have people on your team who want to raise, they should all get together and find out and talk about what you all will start to do. Increase, add to the bottom line so that the business can give you a raise. This is basic business acumen. You have to understand where the money comes from. The money comes from in team members who succeed, who deliver the results, the goals that they agreed to. There isn't just money. It's gen. That's why they hired you. Now, in a big company that has all sorts of avenues for revenue, that's a different story. I respect that. But at this, at the bottom line, it's still the same if employees are meeting their goals, because the goals are designed to deliver results. So if employees are meeting their goals, the company will achieve results, and then the company will have the revenue to be able to reinvest in their assets, primarily being employees. But if you just blanketly walk in and say, hey, I've been here for a while. I should get a raise. Why?

Because of your tenure. Why would I pay you more to achieve the same results? Like, really think about it. It's a math problem. Right now. Some of you won't like this. Like, well, I'll quit then. Okay, you should. If you think you can make more money somewhere else, you should quit. You should go do that. Because truthfully, this. My clients probably won't like me saying this, but it's the truth. I think it's true of anybody who works for me. If you can make more money somewhere else, you. You are here for your life, my friend. You are not here for this employer. You were not born and then destined to be a whatever. For this employer, you were born to live a gorgeous, beautiful, fulfilled existence on your terms, whatever that looks like. You need to take all that personal power, all that personal agency, and stop abdicating it to an employer. So if this employer is like, look, I can't give you that $3 raise. I can give you a dollar raise. And you don't think that's enough, go get a job that pays you more. Because I can certainly tell you that the employer that you work for, if you work for a small business, when they had this idea to create this, it's a widget or a storefront or a, you know, a restaurant or a product or a service, you know what they didn't do? They didn't think, I am so excited to create this business so that I can give George a job. They did not create this business to employ you. They created this business to deliver a result. And they will hire people like you and more of you to deliver that result. And if it's not going to be you anymore, they might be sad, especially if y' all like each other. If you. If they've invested a lot in you, all of that, they'll be sad. They'll replace you, just like you will replace them. But staying somewhere miserable, don't do that. But I'm going to tell you something. If everywhere you go, you're miserable, you've heard this before. You need to look at the common denominator. Love. And maybe you don't want to work, maybe you don't enjoy working, find a way to generate a livelihood that you can find joy in. You don't have to love it. But if everywhere you go, you're miserable, there's something else happening here, right? We have been taught for a century or more that we're supposed to finish our education, whatever that looks like, and get a job. I actually think there's a lot of ways to live your life that defy that. And I would really invite you to push against the influence and the insidiousness of what we've been taught. To ask yourself what you really want your life to look like. I think there are too many people who are just mindlessly following the path and they don't evaluate it. And are there people in circumstances, up, down, right and center? Absolutely. I don't know what everybody's life is, but what I can tell you is if you know you have to work to make money because you have a family to provide for, focus on the reason you're working if that's the best you can do right now. I am doing this work because I know what it does is it rewards us as a family with food, clothes, and maybe comfortable shelter. And if that is your focus, let it be. If you don't like the work you do right now, but there's nothing you can do about that, it's okay. But don't resign yourself to misery. There are other ways to choose to think about what you're doing. And there is always a next step forward if you choose to make it. But staying in a job and being miserable and complaining about it and making it the boss's responsibility to make you happy, that is a no win for you. Not meeting the goals that you've agreed to and then blaming the employer for it, that is a no win for you. When you say yes, you walk through the door, yes, pay me for this day. You have made an agreement to deliver whatever the result is that you've agreed to. We have to have basic business acumen to understand how as employees, we fit into the big picture of this business that we work for. And the smaller the business, the bigger the impact that you're going to have. And if you are not delivering and that boss holds you accountable for not meeting your goals, they are not. That is not personal. That is their job. Because their responsibility is to the success of the business, not to keep George employed. There is a kajillion ways, there are a gajillion ways to find joy in work. There is so much we can do, but we are not raised to believe that. We are raised to believe there's only a finite amount and only some people get it. I don't think that's true. I have. That has not been my life experience. That has not been the experience of so many people. I know of every shape, size, color, you name it. What sets people apart is the way they choose to think about it. And I think that if you are in a job that you don't feel good about and you're not enjoying, the very first thing you could do for yourself is to believe there is something better and ask of yourself what that would look like to take that step. And the very last thing I would encourage you to do is to be spending time, anytime, blaming your current boss for your circumstance. That person is a temporary person in your life. Do not give them more than that. And if you're not meeting the goals of the business as you have defined as, as you have agreed to decide, yep, I'm gonna do better, I'm gonna work harder, I want to achieve it, or, nope, this isn't for me. I'm gonna find something else. But do not make it their fault that you have failed. You just keep yourself in your own prison like that. Why would you do that? They're not gonna change. Take responsibility for yourself. Accept ownership for your current circumstance and do something. But if you wait for them, you're not going to get what you want. And then you guys stay in this impasse. It's so unhealthy for everybody. I just wish everybody would get that there's so many options for you. Never forget that. But blaming and staying and complaining, don't make it be one of them. Threatening, I'm going to quit. Yeah, I think you should quit. You should go take care of yourself. He'll be happy. It's going to be okay. I know this.

I've watched it over and over again. It's amazing how many times on both sides of this when an employer finally lets someone go that they've been trying to help figure it out. It's like immediately that person leaves and the whole organization changes. Things feel lighter. And immediately that person finds something that's way better. Like it's not healthy for anyone. Anybody. So, for what it's worth, I hope this episode was useful.