Leadership Blind Spots: How to Recognize and Overcome Them

Are your best employees walking out the door? The stats are in. It's not the job that they're leaving. It is the leadership. High turnover is costing your business more than just money. It's draining morale, productivity, and your company's future. And that's what we're talking about today on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to this episode! This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs develop new skills to help them create the jaw-dropping, show-stopping experience that their customers and their employees deserve. I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Strategist Marc Haine. And I am so glad that you are here for this episode. My guest today is an amazing advocate for better leadership Worldwide. Rob Lelecher. Today, we put a spotlight on the real reasons behind poor employee retention and how you can transform your leadership to build a thriving, engaged, loyal team. So, stick with us. And hey, if you like what you're seeing, there's plenty more where that comes from. So, make sure that you go ahead and that you subscribe to get full content and everything in the library. Make sure that you get notified every time I bring you fresh new content each and every week. So, it is no secret that retaining talented employees is a major challenge. We're seeing it all over the place. The cost of high turnover can be astronomical, not just in terms of money but also in terms of the morale within your organization, productivity, and the overall health of your business. How often have you heard, people don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad bosses? But the truth is even deeper. People leave bad leadership ecosystems. So that brings us to our Question of the Day. So, have you ever considered that your leadership style might be creating an environment that drives your best employees away? Think about it. Are your leadership practices fostering a culture of trust and engagement? Or are they inadvertently contributing to your retention problems? And if it's not you, could it be Somebody, supervisor, frontline manager who's working with you. I'd love to hear from you. Why don't you go ahead and share comments and questions? We'll answer them as they pop up. This episode is designed to help you understand the real impact of your leadership and give you actionable insights to build a better, more connected workplace. So, if you decide that you want to carry on the conversation, feel free to share this episode on your favorite social media platform. Hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership and be part of this conversation. To help us with everything we're talking about today is Russell Lollicker. Russell is an international speaker and the host producer of the Relationships at Work podcast, which focuses on leadership's impact on employee experience and workplace culture. With over 20 years of successful leadership and communication roles, Russell retained his team for almost 12 years, something that's really unheard of. His expertise in building employee and customer trust has been recognized on international stages in multiple publications. And he has been named a top thought leader by the International Customer Management Institute 4 times. Not just once, 4 times. Russell, welcome to the show!

Thanks so much for having me, Marc.

Hey, before we get too deep in today's topic, I would love it if you would shamelessly plug your podcast because I know it's awesome.

Tell us a little bit about it. As someone who's going to be a guest on my show, absolutely. It just gets getting better and better. So, my show is called Relationships at Work as you were talking about. And it's really about helping leaders build those connections Really help those workplace connections that they may be not understanding that they're missing and really helping them find those leadership blind spots because they're too busy or their priorities are put in other directions. Leaders really don't get the training they need. And I really want to help provide some resources that will help them build those greater relationships that lead to better retention, better productivity, all the good stuff.

Yeah, yeah. So, in your experience, I mean, obviously, you've had some great experiences being able to retain employees for 12 years with very little turnover. I mean, that's stellar. What do you see as the biggest issues plaguing leadership in organizations today?

Excuses. I think excuses seem to be the reason. And I've even come up with a list called the 7 Deadly Sins of Leadership. Because the thing is, is that leaders unfortunately are so fixated on fixing a thing or creating a service, which is all in the service of above, rather than understanding that it's the focus of the team. That's where leadership comes from. Not to your colleagues, not to the people you report to. You don't lead them. You are being led by them and you're neglecting your teams because of it. One of my biggest pet peeves is asking a leader what their job is and their answer being, to make my boss happy. My heart breaks every single time I've heard that. I'm like, why not focus on the team, be productive, have a huge retention, and that will make your boss happy? But that just doesn't seem to be the focus. So yeah, if there's number one, it's excuses as to reasons why they don't take the time to be better leaders.

So, I mean, when I talk to leaders, I don't find that there is a sense that people think that they are the problem. What are some common signs that an organization is suffering because of poor leadership?

I think you got to go, well, the thing is I immediately want to go, check your engagement surveys. That's if you have them. That's even if you do them at all, or you're paying attention to them, or you do them every year, or 2 years, or 7 years. The problem is that they're all there. The signs are all over the place. What's your retention like? What's your engagement scores like? Are you producing what you say you're going to produce? Do your employees embody the values you put on a poster or on the website and should be operationalizing every day? Or are they only speaking up at like— So, here's one I love is that there will be these all-staff meetings. And you'll suddenly hear from 2 or 3 people that you never hear from at team meetings. But they'll take this opportunity to grievance the entire organization. That's a huge red flag that they don't feel psychologically safe enough to even talk to their own bosses about some of these grievances or feel like they're being heard. So, there's so many signs. The problem is that leaders need to actually have situational awareness. Which I think besides self-awareness is one of the biggest superpowers you can have as a leader is being quiet, recognizing what's going on around you, and also understanding what it means, those actions or inactions from people around you.

Yeah, yeah. I love that idea of situational awareness. We talk about that. I mean, obviously, when you learn to drive, we talked about situational awareness. But yet, all too many times, leaders are just going pillar to post with blinders on, not understanding that over here you might have somebody in crisis. Over here, you might have somebody who is in an argument with a co-worker and they're just buckling down, just trying to make everything go away by ignoring it.

Or they tell stories to themselves that they want to hear. So for instance, if there's an employee that doesn't speak up in meetings, they'll be like immediately, they're in their head going, they're not engaged. Maybe a family member died. Maybe there are so many other things that could be happening. But unless you have the relationship to dig in and understand who that human is, how they operate, what their motivations are, what their values are, you're going to come up with your own stories. I don't have a high turnover rate. We're a training ground for other— for people to go other places. No, they're running from you. They're not even taking promotions. They're taking laterals to get away from you. But Leaders tell themselves stories that makes them feel better about situations rather than being curious enough to find out what the problems actually are.

It's really interesting as you were saying that. I recalled a situation where somebody was constantly getting shut down by their supervisor. Every single time she came up with an idea, it would get shut down. And then, when they were sitting at staff meetings, she got criticized because she wouldn't vocalize anything. And so, she got in trouble for being disengaged. But it was a learned behavior because she was never given a trusting environment to be able to turn around and share an idea without it being shot down and her treating like she didn't matter.

You create the environments through your actions and inactions. And that leader is literally going, I don't care what you have to say. Now, tell me what you have to say. Well, wait a second.

Right? And then you expect people to be— it's interesting because I do problem. I go into problem properties now and help turn them around. And it was interesting to see somebody who belongs in a leader, an owner who micromanaged everything. And her number one frustration, nobody takes initiative. Nobody tries. Like everybody just keeps doing the same thing and nobody tries anything new. Well, why don't they try anything new? And we very quickly uncovered That the reason they don't try anything new is because they know every time that they change anything, you're back there going, who made this decision? This is not how I want it.

Or it's a hiring problem where they hired a bunch of people that were very yes people. And they weren't told that they're going to have to be innovators and creators. And that wasn't what they signed up to do. Or that their previous boss before a reorg had different expectations of them. So now, if this new boss has different expectations, Where's the communication? Where's the expectations? Where are those conversations happening? And they're not. And leaders are just making, again, assumptions. I like the term I read recently, The Moral Leadership Manifesto. Fantastic book talking about arrogant assumptions where leaders will actually talk about things where they just assume things are happening because they're not being curious or imaginative enough to know or understand what could be happening.

Right. And this is something typical of people leading from the corner office. Just expunging kind of— they're looking at our financials and they're looking at productivity. And it's like, oh, my people aren't working hard enough.

And the challenge is that these are a death by a thousand cuts. What we don't seem to understand is these little microaggressions, or they're not micro to the employees by the way. Let me reinforce that. So, on my show, I ask a question. I asked you. I'll ask you on the show is, what is your best or worst employee experience? And almost every single time, it's a negative experience that happened 20 or 30 years ago.

Mm-hmm.

So, to that employee, that isn't a bad day. That is trauma because they can remember it like yesterday and they're carrying it for decades. Meanwhile, there's a leader who probably didn't give another thought to that interaction after that day. And can't imagine that they would have such an impact.

Right.

So, we as leaders have to understand that not making eye contact walking down the hall, never walking a floor except the one that my office is in, not responding to emails, not listening, not following up questions that people have, not revealing survey results. These are just progressively smaller to bigger issues for whatever reason that will just bloom into either very high turnover. Or you'll go, we need to do these big events, or we need to do these employee appreciation weeks, and wonder why nobody's engaged.

Yeah.

We have to build the foundation that builds those experiences.

You know, one of the challenges I have when I go and meet business owners, entrepreneurs, managers is that people don't know that they are the problem. To your point, they tell themselves their own story about what's going on. Lots of finger pointing. And I love the analogy. I can't remember who said it. But somebody made the analogy that when you're pointing a finger at somebody, you're pointing 3 at yourself.

Yeah, love that. I've heard that.

But how does someone tuning in uncover if they are the problem themselves?

I think curiosity has to be the biggest thing you focus on is not assuming you have all the answers. And I understand that people don't immediately have that self-awareness. But leadership needs to have guardrails. If you don't have people around you that are challenging you, that are saying, you know what? Maybe that's not a great idea. You're surrounded by people that are just encouraging Bad behavior or good behavior. So, as someone that's looking to understand who they are and how they are, you need to start with situational awareness because you're not aware enough of your problems. So, you need to talk to trusted people that will be honest with you. Hopefully, that's your team. Maybe it's your colleagues. Maybe it's your boss. But again, depends on your relationship. Maybe it's somebody at home. Maybe if you could provide a case study of this happened today, that happened today to their partner and their partner's like, You are actually the jerk in that situation. Like, if you have an opportunity to talk to people that will be honest with you, great. If you don't, that plants bigger seeds. And this is one of the things I want to highlight is that we have to stop looking at work like it's different than life. We talk about work-life balance all the time. But the work life, what the emotions, who you are as a person, That shows up in the work experience. And I want to specifically talk about a thing like trust. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had where people are like, what is our strategy around building trust at work? I'm like, do you have friends? Do you have any relationships at all? Do you have a partner? Have you— do you have children? Like, what did you do to build those relationships? And I think if you're not building relationships at work, that's a big red flag that you might be the problem because you're the common denominator. If you're not consistent, true to your word, communicating, helping people, admitting mistakes, we need to get to the 101 stuff before we can start talking about strategy and understanding how better connections we can have. I think we need to get really real about the humanity of it and stop throwing the business part of it like it's something special and other.

Oh, you're talking my language. Because I get really tired with the whole thing about the finger pointing. Because when people lose employees, they shrug and say, well, they weren't a good fit anyway. Or if they can't hack it, it's better that they leave. So, what do you say to those leaders to help coax them into this idea of generating curiosity on themselves? Is it something that they already have to have? Or is it something that they Is there a way that all of a sudden, the light bulb will go on and they go, geez, I really should become a little bit more curious?

I think it's an exercise I like to do where I ask them just to assume they have a part to play in the problem. So, if somebody, regardless if you see it obviously or not obviously, somebody left. Somebody within your charge has left. Let's just, oh well, I didn't have anything to do with it. Okay, totally sure.

Absolutely.

I completely agree with you. This is my fake face. I totally agree with you. However, let's assume you have some piece to play in this. What would you do differently to ensure that that didn't happen for the next employee? What could you be doing better to— and it could be something they think they're already doing, but just doing 10% more of it.

Mm-hmm.

You know what? On Fridays, I should come in and actually make, you know, sit down with somebody in a cubicle and ask them about something that isn't work. Yeah, that would work. Like, it's just get their creativity flowing. Even if they think previously they had nothing to do with it, which to be honest, we need to come from a baseline of assuming we did. And it could be the smallest thing. But we as leaders should understand we have influence, even if it's monumental or minuscule. We do have influence, whether it's an influence directly or indirectly. It's there. So, where I try to help leaders is maybe it's not being obvious. But it is helping them understand that they do have a role to play. And that tends to get the conversation rolling.

So good. And but again, this is number one. It takes humility from the side of the leader to say, I want to fix something. Or I want to explore something. And then, it's for them to be able to find the resource to help them. Because I think it was Gandhi or Einstein who said that you can't solve the problem you worked yourself into with the same mindset that got you into the problem.

Right.

Right? So, being able to have the humility to be able to say, I want to fix this and I need to get an outside view I need to bring somebody in to help me test it. I need somebody to push my buttons for me. And I have to have the strong enough ego that I can take it.

The thing is that a lot of mindsets are so set in their ways and leadership styles are so set in their ways. We need to get into areas that are a little bit more tact. Like I'm a mindset guy. That's my shift. That's what I believe. I know that we can talk about tactics all day long. But if you don't have the right mindset, you weren't going to do those tactics anyway. I mean, how many people go to conferences and come back and go, I'm going to do all the things, and they do none of the things because they weren't that person to begin with. But there will be people that are a lot more rigid that they will need to have an experience, much like I was talking about with, you know, you have a role to play that connects the dots for them. They're not going to shift their mindset on their own because it's working for them. A lot of leaders are rewarded without having to shift their mindset. I'm an executive. Why should I have to learn stuff now? I've been given money, promotions, and power without having to shift anything. Why should I have to do that now? So, you have to be curious for them and create an environment that fosters that curiosity. Because again, why should they change if we're going to keep rewarding them, rewarding bad behavior anyway?

Yeah, exactly. And to your point, whenever I've gone into problem properties, The number one excuse that I always get is, I've been doing the same thing for 20 years. I don't know why it's so different now.

But that leads me to— and I love the question you asked. And this is sort of my insight about the statement where people say, people don't leave bad jobs. They leave bad bosses. And I actually completely disagree with that. My experience is Bad bosses absolutely exist. Every organization will have a bad boss. There's not a single organization on this planet that hasn't had horrible bosses. The difference is, is it an organization that knows how to handle bad bosses? So, if I'm an employee and I have a bad boss but I see my organization pull that person aside, make them accountable for their bad leadership, make their boss accountable for allowing that that bad leadership to happen. Train them. Work with them to bring them back to be better. I would stay in that organization because I know they have the organization and my best interests. They see bad behavior. They address bad behavior. I would love to work for that organization. I don't think it's so easy as a bumper sticker to say, bad bosses, bad jobs. I think that's too simple simplicity. It's nice to say and it's easy to say. But I think we don't give organizations enough credit to see how they're going to handle it. I know there's a lot of generations now that will jump ship a lot sooner. I'm jealous as hell of those people because I wish I was able to do that back in the day. But I think we need to give opportunity for organizations to get it right.

Yeah.

To—

because leaders need leaders. And hopefully, they address this when we come across these challenges.

Yeah, yeah. I get it. And again, my daughter's growing up as Gen Y and Gen Z. And I hear their stories. And where their frustration lies is because managers are left to behave a certain way. And there's no accountability. And there's no change. So, they know, their eyes roll when they know I'm going to be on shift with this particular person. It's like, oh, it's going to be a terrible day, right? And so, they know it because nothing is being done above them to change those behaviors.

Unfortunate leadership right now is really great at responsibility because then that way, they get to look like if there's a win, great! It's my win. It's the accountability problem. Accountability is one of— so again, I mentioned at the top the 7 deadly sins. And one of them is the sin of irresponsibility. And that is no accountability. You're not accountable to the people below you. Nobody gets promoted. You're not creating new leaders. Their training is absent. If your turnover is high, where does this— follow the symptoms to the disease. Stop dressing the symptom. Go to where the root problem is. And we never do that because we're thinking in quarters. We're thinking in, you know, in short-term thinking when strategic long-term thinking is the stuff that really is healthier for the organization.

I love that. And I love that you introduced the first of the 7 Deadly Sins. I'd like to get into some more of that right after this.

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Welcome back. I am speaking with renowned keynote speaker Marc Haine. Speaker Russell Lolleker. Russell, I'm loving this idea of the 7 Deadly Sins because I think interwoven in there are the solutions. But before we get into the rest of that, is there any overarching philosophy that an employee actually quits 6 months before they walk out the door? Have you heard that?

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely. And so, how important is it for leaders to then understand the entire employee journey when it comes down to who's on their team and where are they at?

Well, I mean, it's in the topic of my conversation that I always have. It's about relationships. And what I don't think people understand is that a journey is a holistic thing. To anybody that's coming into an organization, they're not looking at this as, I'm only going to build a relationship during onboarding. Please never talk to me again. Please, that's never something. And I've talked to a lot of employees and going, what is the one thing in the journey that you'd want to fix? And they're like, the onboarding experience. Like, it's horrendous. You either don't know I exist or you promise me the moon and never deliver on anything. So, I created actually a series of interviews which actually holistically feed off the next from onboarding to thrive interviews. I hate stay interviews because the goal should never just to have people stay. You should want them to thrive in their roles. And then the end, which is when they leave the organization. It's really about— so, the first impression. Now, when we talk a journey, we really need to talk about the hiring process first because that is the first impression.

Yes.

Websites, your hiring process. If you don't get back to me 6 months till after I applied, you're telling me I wasn't that important. Or your process is incompetent. Like, that's what you're communicating. And then, hey, if I'm lucky enough to get into the organization, what are you promising? Are the values just something on the wall or on a computer? Or do they actually mean something? Were they even mentioned in the job interview? Or was it all about what can you do for me? What can you do for me? What can you do for me? Rather than How will you fit into our culture? Here's what we want from you. Here's how we want to see you thrive. Like, it should be— conversations is not transactional but more focusing on this is a person I want to build a relationship with, like a friend, a colleague, a partner, not a widget that I'm going to work with and use till they burn out and move on to the next widget. These are human beings and they want to be treated as human beings. So, look at their experience like a lifespan. The hiring is the handshake. That is the introduction. And then, the intro is, hi, these are us as people. We're showing our best selves right now. And then, check in with them on a regular occurrence. I'd ask at the minimum quarterly. Hell, pulse check every week if you can. And really find out How are they working? Tweak accordingly. Are we delivering on the promises that we made when we first met each other? How's this dating period going? I mean, that's really what we're getting through is, is this a relationship that's sustainable? Is it one that's working for both of us, not just the employer, but the employee as well, to get to the point where at the end, did we fulfill all the promises that we set out for at the beginning? How did we do? When you leave this place, will you tell others that this is a great place to work? Can we work with you in that next place that you work? Again, it's a relationship. You're not breaking up. If the relationship is valuable, if it's still— I don't want to use the word profitable. But if it's still productive, then why does it need to end because of a reorg, a firing, a let go, a promotion? Those should never be the end of any good relationship. So, I really look at this holistically and not just a checkbox exercise of, we met this week, right? Great! I don't need to talk to you again for another week. Fantastic! That's not a relationship.

Nope, that's a transaction.

There you go.

This is wonderful, Russell. For people tuning in, if this is resonating with them, how can they get in contact with you?

Oh my goodness! relationshipsatwork.ca is my favorite website. Also, russellohlicker.com if you can actually spell my name. But yeah, relationshipsatwork.ca is probably the best way to find me. Relationships at Work is very easy to find on our social networks as well.

Love it! You mentioned the 7 deadly sins. You mentioned the first one. Can you round through the next 6?

Oh my goodness. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. So, the biggest one I find is the biggest sin is the sin of negligence. And this is the, I'm too busy. I am going from meeting to meeting to meeting. I don't even have time to breathe, go to the bathroom, eat. Next meeting, next meeting. I had the amazing Gary Ridge on my podcast and he called anybody that works like that, is a commodity and is serving a calendar, not their team. They are just a commodity that's moving from office to office, screen to screen. And I couldn't agree with him more. So, the biggest sin is the excuse of being too busy. Another sin that I see that really— now, I should preface this and I should have prefaced this before I— these are sins of leadership that perpetuate bad leadership. What these do is allow bad leadership to grow and fester within an organization. If I'm too busy, then I'm not noticing bad behavior. I'm not noticing neglect because again, I am in too many meetings. Accountability, as I mentioned earlier, is also a big one. If you're not accountable to anything, then nothing's ever going to get fixed because nobody's actually accountable for anything that goes wrong. We're just moving on to the next task. success. I'm using air quotes for anybody that can't see me. Another one is the sin of cowardice. Those leaders that hate conflict, those that don't want to rock the boat, those are like, oh, status quo is fine, right? We'll just— everything will iron themselves out on their own. You know those 2 staff members that hate each other? They'll figure it out. That is a fear of conflict. They don't want to have those difficult conversations because it's uncomfortable for them. Again, nothing changes. Bad leaders get to continue to be bad leaders because we don't want to have those difficult conversations. Sin of apathy. No curiosity. We've already talked about curiosity about this. If you're not asking why. So for instance, if you have a survey that goes out and your engagement scores are 30% lower than they were the last time and you're not curious as to why that's happened, And not keeping to ask the question, like, what is it? The 5 Whys is a way to get deeper and deeper into an issue. If there's just the, well, that's what it is, what it is. That is one of my least favorite phrases in all of corporate because all you're saying is, yeah, I don't want anything to change. I have no influence. It is what it is. Well, then nothing will ever change and crappy will stay crappy.

Yeah.

So, that's a big problem is that there's not enough curiosity as to the cracks. Also, there's no curiosity as to the good. There are some amazing leaders that are doing amazing things that other leaders need to be more curious about and steal from and learn from and be mentored by. But if you're not curious, the good and the bad will continue on and not not influence the organization.

Before you jump in any further, one observation I have is the big downfall to not being curious enough to address the issues and not having time to address the issues is bad behavior will always evolve negatively. It will never ever evolve to the betterment of the organization or to the betterment of the team. It's always going to evolve And it's going to evolve badly. If it's somebody who gains a semblance of power by bullying, they're not going to stop bullying. It's just going to get worse because if they validate their existence because they're a bully and they get people working and because of that, they're able to check their boxes of performance.

It's working.

It's work. And Stephen Covey in his book talks about the guy who Runs a factory, right? They had brand new equipment. And the first guy went in there all the time and he was high production because he never had a single day shut down. And then, when he was replaced by— they were shut down all this time to do equipment maintenance. And it's like, well, the guy before you was so much better because he had better output. He goes, yeah, but the machines are broken if we don't fix them.

Right.

And so, it's interesting to that so much of what you're talking about is this idea that we put ourselves into leadership roles. But because I'm a manager, because I have these reports to fill out and these meetings to attend, I must be a leader. And what you're actually pointing out is that just because you're a manager is not making you a leader.

No, I've seen some phenomenal frontline staff who are stellar leaders.

Yes.

And I've heard— and how many people have met or heard or worked for CEOs that should never ever talk to another human being for the rest of their lives? They are horrible. at interacting with other human beings. They should be in a bunker somewhere. Just because you're smart doesn't make you a good leader. Go in a bunker. Morse code me the answers because I don't want to ever see your face. I don't want to ever engage with you. And unfortunately, positions of power get to stay in those positions of power because it's tied to money. It's tied to productivity regardless of the cancers that they may be perpetuating. Or modeling for others to follow. To your point, it never gets better because they're— and oftentimes, people will be rewarded because that jerk continues to move up the ladder because maybe they're still delivering. But we don't ever address the problem, which is they're actually hurting your culture and the health of the organization. Yeah.

So, they're delivering but at what cost?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Good.

So, you have a couple more, a couple more of the 7 Deadly Sins.

I sure do, Marc. Yeah, abandonment. The sin of abandonment. No follow-up. So, it is a subset of curiosity, but there will be a lot of, let's have that one-on-one thing. Great. I don't hear again from you for 6 months. Or there is, I go and I take a conference and I like, great, you went to a conference? Dead air. Like nothing. Like just, that's fantastic. Check. We can put that in your performance plan. You went.

Yeah.

Not, what did you learn? Is there anything you could share for the rest of the group? There is just this no effort. It's just like everything's in the moment or it's all about me. And if it's not either of those things, it's a fire that I need to put out. I don't care. So, it's really that follow-up piece that shows you care. And then, it's part of the relationship where you follow up and check in to make sure everything's okay. For instance, the pandemic was transformative for so many organizations. So, it wasn't just a matter of, did you have a bad day? It was, you had a bad day and you continue to be having a bad day, a bad month, a bad week, a bad year. So, we need to be continually checking in to make sure our staff are doing okay, if they're progressing in the way that we need them to. Not just a, I'll only use you when I need to use you. Problem. So yeah, the follow-up, the abandonment, as it were. The sin of deceit. This is near and dear to my heart, not because I do it, but because it's a communications one.

Yeah.

It is the words over actions, saying one thing, but the actions don't. And how many surveys are out now where executive, what they believe and what employees know tends to becoming a bigger and bigger chasm as we come along. But at the same time, those leaders will talk about engagement. They'll weaponize their values as things that they find, this is what we stand for, when everybody in the office is going, what now?

Huh?

Yeah. Or they'll give a trophy to a leader for being exemplary leader and their team is laughing about it because they're like, how did that Who did that? What? Like, it is just out of sight, out of mind. Can't believe you think that person's a great leader. But because they say the right thing or they say the right thing to the right person, it's— people believe it. But unfortunately, the actions are not matching the words that are coming out within the organization. Values tend to be, or vision and mission statements tend to be the biggest offenders.

Yes, absolutely.

And last but not least, because I'm pretty good at my counting here, it's the sin of confusion. It's the cognitive dissonance. It's the, you know, something's wrong. You know it's happening. And then you go on your merry way. Like, it is— you're telling yourself a story of roses when it is bloodshot eyes that you're actually looking into.

Yeah.

Different red there, people. So, the idea of that confusion of you admit that there's negativity but you tell yourselves a different story and nothing changes because it doesn't impact you or it's not your problem or you don't think you have any influence over it. That's the other— that's the— so yeah, those are my 7. All those things perpetuate bad leadership, allow bad leadership to grow. And I think if any leader just takes one of these for a little while and rides that for a bit to learn how they can do better, even around just too busy, you know how many problems you would fix by even just addressing that one? I can't even imagine.

So, I mean, I find that they're all interwoven with each other. But you're absolutely right. If you just start working with one, would you suggest that that's the starting point? for leaders to start looking at how they're going to transform their impact on employees?

The reason I suggest the sin of negligence, too busy, is because that's the only one every leader will agree that is a problem. All the other ones, they won't necessarily agree that they fear conflict. Nobody's going to admit that. Or they're going to talk about that they don't follow up or they have no curiosity. Those can be seen as like attacks on people's character. But everybody will admit that they're too busy. So, I think that's your sort of gateway into all the other ones. But it's the one that people will admit, at least admit to.

I love that. When we come back, I'd like to talk about some pitfalls and cautionaries for those people who kind of fall onto the band-aiding bandwagon. I'd like to talk about some pitfalls and cautionaries we should be aware of. And we'll get to that. Right after this.

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Welcome back! As you can tell, Russell and I are committed to serving businesses just like yours. If you are planning a leadership retreat or a conference and you'd like to explore how we could be of benefit, drop us a line. Our contact details are in the show notes. down below. Russell, what practical advice do you have for leaders to— you mentioned blind spots earlier. What's the best advice you can give them to avoid these blind spots?

Oh well, I'll attack it from the highs and the lows. So, more direct, I think we need to— and we hear this all the time. But I don't think it gets repeated enough is that we really have to know and understand our teams. I did a really interesting exercise with that team that I had for 12 years where we sat down and as a group, we defined our values and we defined our motivations. Now, the twist to this, and I know I'm sure anybody listening to this is going, I've done so many value exercises. I get it. I know. But the thing where we flipped it a bit was that we then socialized it with each other. I think values are useless if we just keep them to ourselves. If motivations are just our own, we are not creating strong relationships. So, what we did was that we shared all those values so that we better understood each other, that we better understood what our motivations for even working day-to-day was because we don't all show up for the same reasons.

Right.

We don't have the same values as to what motivates us. So, if we as a team understand that, say, Susan has different motivations, I may approach her when I ask her to do work differently than I might approach Michael or anybody else because I get to know them more as people and what drives them. An extra piece of that was I took common values and common motivations and I created sort of a manifesto. Sort of thing that really showed, well, these are our commonalities as a team. This is where the connective tissue is. And they loved it. They couldn't— I couldn't tell you how much they absolutely love the idea of getting to know each other better. That was the value. It wasn't even getting to know themselves as well. It was getting to know— and this was like years and years after we'd all been working together very, very successfully. There's always something to learn about each other.

Yeah.

The second piece of that to help with blind spots is you need to be able to provide time. Time is one of the most valuable things you can provide those that you're responsible for. As part of that, one of my regular practices was that I provided a half hour to each of them, their time, totally their time. We could talk about anything. Their family, something that was ticking them off that was happening in the cubicle beside them, their career aspirations. Whatever it was, it was their half an hour. However, I had questions, curiosity, but at the end of it, it was all just either listening or, how can I help you? That was it. That was all I was there to do. I even tried canceling them a couple of times because they were— it was getting busier. And I'm like, do you really still want to do it? I was kind of checking it and they got so angry at me that I would even think to get rid of these. We talked all the time. It wasn't like we weren't engaged or we weren't talking or answering questions. But this was their— this was so private and so important to them that they wanted this on top of our regular daily operational engagement. So, because it was so individual to them and catered to them. And that was something that I was so precious that it just— we had it for years and years, and it was one of the most valuable things to them and to me as a way for them— for me to understand them and get to know them. And because the more I can know them, the less blind spots will show up, because nothing's a blind spot if you know what to expect, because that's how they show up, that's what motivates them, that's what their values are, that's what scares them, that's what triggers them. There are no blind spots because I've opened up my view 360 degrees.

You've also created an environment of high trust because people aren't entering into the discussion or into that private time with thinking about, okay, well, what's his personal agenda? What's he going to use to hang me down the road? And so on. So, you've also created this high-trust environment, which I think is paramount in making sure that anything works?

Well, my first out of the gate is like, I'm an idiot when it comes to a lot of things. I don't know a lot of things and they are brilliant people. So, out of the gate, I was very quick to go, no, no, no, I don't have all the answers. As the leader, I have the vision and goal of where we want to get. But you need to tell me how to get there. You are driving the car. I just know where we're going. And once that really set in and that wasn't just lip service, that wasn't just words over actions, I wasn't doing the sin of deceit. here that I actually was vulnerable and proving that I was humble and didn't have all the answers, they were much more seeing us as equals. Even though, you know, a lot of organizations are very hierarchical, they need to see me as a colleague, as someone, but also somebody who has their back and has more power and influence when they need it, but to serve them rather than to exert over them.

Yes. So, they view it as they are working with you, not working for you.

I'm their partner in this. I'm their partner in the success, right?

Yeah.

And that's where the psychological safety came from. That's where the trust came from was that I'm Russell. I'm the guy that you can just come into the office and talk to for half an hour. But I'll also kick you out if I'm busy and you're okay with that. Like, we're just We're here to do a job and we like spending time with each other. And again, this team was very varied. They were not the same across the board. Very different people. But it still worked because we knew each other and what to expect from each other.

Love it! Cautionaries and pitfalls. What should people be looking out for if they decide that this is going to become their focus for the next 30 days? Let's make this the focus. What should they be aware of as cautionaries and pitfalls?

Sure. I think it's the lens we need to look at the world through and to avoid those pitfalls. I think if we focus too singular on things like, I can't tell you how many people tell me, what's your leadership style? I'm like, if I have one, we have a problem. What are my leadership styles or what are the ones I'm trying to get better at? I think one of the biggest pitfalls is leaders being too focused on one thing. I use an example of leadership impact. I talk about this a lot in my keynotes and stuff is leaders need to understand the impact they have on the organization, on their employees. And I like to break it between an air, land, and sea sort of situation. And this, I think, will help a lot of avoiding pitfalls is if we look at this as a bigger lens, And if instead of looking at it as one over the other, that's the biggest pitfall I think a lot of leaders do is they just look at their environment today or they look at the thing they have to do by the end of the week, the deliverable, as opposed to the ripples in the pond that those— I'll give you a story. I was talking to a friend of mine who was raving about a leader. raving about this leader. And I knew for a fact this leader was horrible, like top 5 horrible leaders. And they were raving about them. So, I shut up. I know you're listening to this and going, he shuts up? Like, yeah, it does happen. So, I listened and just wanted to take it all in because I was so curious as to why she thought this person was a great leader. And at the end of it, I had to ask the question, why are they such a great leader? And her response was, Probably doing some very filling in the gaps here. Her answer was because she gets what I want when I need it. And to her, that was good leadership. Now, I knew for a fact that same leader, to get her what she needed when she needed it— turnover, burnout, unrealistic deadlines, bullying. Like, there was all this stuff to get a thing to a person. But her retention was horrible. The amount of talking behind her back was brutal because of the horrible reputation this person had. So, how are we defining leadership? I think that's one of the biggest problems a lot of organizations have is we will talk Simon Sinek. We'll talk Brené Brown. We'll talk Mark Haine. We'll talk Russell Lulliker. But we'll reward not that. The same thing. We'll promote deliverable, not how you got it. The ends justify the means, not the humanity piece. So, we have to be super honest and transparent. I think that's one of the biggest pitfalls is we don't define things. And if we don't define things, we can never be accountable to it. There is another— back to my sins. And I think that's one of the biggest pitfalls is we don't We're not singing from the same song sheet. Boomers will talk differently than a Gen Z, Gen Zed will. I'm Canadian. I'm going to say Zed. So, one of the pitfalls is defining things. I think that's one of the big ones. And to go back to my earlier one, I think we need to look beyond just singular impacts. To my point earlier, air is the bigger view. That is, The economic situation. Rent is horrible. Groceries are brutal. The pandemic. Bad things are happening with their kids. Like, there is a lot of things going on that we have no control over as leaders. But we have to create an environment that allows and gives space for those bad things to happen because they're going to bring it to work. They don't have any control over that. But again, as leaders, the pitfall is focusing just on environment or what's happening that day.

Yes.

LAND is the culture. That is what's around, what the team culture, because there's 17,000 cultures in every organization. There's not one. The executive culture, the team culture, your relationship, that. And then C is the below the surface. And that's more the self. That's understanding us, how we show up, how we handle anger, how we handle success. So, looking at those 3 things and not being blinded by focusing on just one.

Yeah.

So, those were longer answers. But yeah, those are where I worry.

But that's a great metaphor. And I think people can place themselves within that very easily. This has been such a great discussion, Russell. Do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about today?

I love leaders. I think that's the thing I'd want to start. I come in hot because I'm passionate about leaders getting better. And I think one of the things we think is that Bad leaders are bad leaders. We need to quit bad leaders. They're horrible people, blah, blah, blah. They're not. We are failing leaders so badly when it comes to training. We are failing so bad leaders around expectations.

Yes.

They're thrown into so many situations they are not trained for. They're not prepared for. It starts at the fast food industry or that whatever first job we have. We have teenagers that are managing people. And we just give them a name tag, kick them in the butt, and go off and try not to ruin them. And then, 20 years later, people are telling these stories of horrible leadership from a 17-year-old. So, and then they just perpetuate and perpetuate. And I'd love to say organizations are better now. They're not. The expectation of leaders shouldn't be just deliver a service and deliver a widget. It should be, do we have a healthy organization? Are we understanding our staff? And I don't think leaders are given the space, given the support, given the training to be able to do what they actually do want to do. Nobody wants to work for a toxic culture. Nobody wants to contribute to a toxic culture. But because they don't have self-awareness, situational awareness, the support from their bosses because they're getting away with not getting trained properly, I just feel so much empathy and compassion for leadership. And I know we can do so much better. We just have to be more aware, both with ourselves and with the situations we're put in.

I love that. You just hit the nail on the head. That summarizes this whole episode in that one statement. Could you remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?

Absolutely. My name is Russell Lollicker. If you want to know how to spell my name, it's Lola and Cher. I won't tell you how that came to be. But my brother tried to get our last name tattooed on his knuckles. And that's how we found out that we had Lola and Cher. So, you'll never— you'll always remember it. But yeah, you can find relationshipsatwork.ca is the easiest way to find me on my website. And hello@russellawlicker.com is the way to email me. So yeah.

And you had a giveaway. Subscribe to something and—

Absolutely. Come to my website. We have— well, first off, you get, if you sign up to my newsletter, it's called Raw Notes, which provides not only some insights into my mindset shifts of how we can do a little bit better. I think an upcoming issue is about how leadership is going to fail you and that's okay. You have to be prepared for that. It will happen. Also, takeaways from some of my amazing guests, which Marc will be one. And Just sort of that newsletter is probably my pride and joy as much as the podcast. And to sign up, you also get those free employee interviews I was talking about earlier. Onboarding, thrive, and end interviews for the employee journey. So yeah, please. I'd love for you to join.

Thank you so much. This has been such an amazing conversation. I so enjoy your passion and your expertise that you shared with us today. It has been really, really brilliant. Thank you for doing this.

Thanks for having me, Marc. This was a blast.

Why don't you let me know if this was of value to you? As always, my offer stands. If you would like 30 minutes of my time to brainstorm your business with you and your team, feel free to book some time on my online calendar. The link is in the show notes. It's the one that's marked meetwith.marchaine.com. It would be my absolute honor to be of service to you. And while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and leave a review or a comment about this episode. I'd love to get your feedback. Was this of value to you? Please go ahead and do that because that tells me that I'm on the right track and that this is the kind of content you'd like to see in the future. Thanks again for joining me. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.