Why Great Employees Fail as Managers (And How to Fix It)
In this episode of Marc Haine Live, host Marc Haine interviews management consultant Tara Landis to explore why high‑performing individual contributors often stumble when promoted to management and how systematic training can prevent costly failures. The conversation begins by describing the "promotion paradox" – a star employee is elevated to a manager, only to see deadlines missed, morale dip, and productivity decline. They discuss the hidden financial impact of bad leadership, including turnover, disengagement, and reduced output. Common mistakes are identified: assuming management can be learned on the job, retaining the old individual‑contributor role, promoting for salary rather than aptitude, and lacking awareness of available training. Myths are busted, notably that management cannot be taught. Tara outlines a practical training framework: pre‑promotion “try‑before‑you‑buy” workshops, 3‑hour classes with tools, one‑on‑one coaching, reinforcement, and real‑time practice. They stress the need for structured onboarding (or "foreverboarding") for new managers, regular one‑on‑ones, stay interviews, clear expectation setting, and simple, repeatable habits like asking team members “what’s on your mind?”. Pitfalls such as trying to change everything at once, tackling the hardest cases first, and lack of reinforcement are highlighted, with suggestions for incremental pilots, book clubs, and consistent follow‑up. The episode closes with a concrete actionable tip – have every manager regularly check in with each employee to surface concerns – and provides contact information for BellRock and Tara’s services.
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Okay, you've got a rockstar employee. Someone who's absolutely crushing it. So naturally, you do the logical thing. You promote them to a manager. And that's when things start to fall apart. Suddenly, deadlines are missed. Team morale dips. And that once high-performing employee looks more like a deer in the headlights. Does that sound familiar? Well, that's what we're talking about today on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to this episode of Marc Haine Live. This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up core skill sets to help them create the show-stopping, jaw-dropping experience that your customers and your employees deserve. I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Strategist Marc Haine. I am so glad that you're here because my guest today is consultant Tara Landis. And today, we are going to be tackling one of the biggest hidden challenges in business. Why so many great employees fail as managers. The costly impact of bad leadership and how the right management training can turn struggling leaders into business game changers. So, stick around with us. This is going to be an awesome show. You know that moment when you think that you've made a genius move only to realize you've actually just set your business up for a slow-motion disaster? You know, you had that top performer, somebody who you knew their own job inside and out. They delivered results like a machine and made your life so much easier. And then you thought, wow, if I can promote that person, into a leadership role, they can teach everybody else how to work better. So naturally, you did what every logical business owner does and you promoted them to management. And now, instead of excelling, they are drowning. Productivity is slipping. The team seems lost and your once reliable employee is suddenly unsure of themselves. You've lost a great contributor and gained a struggling manager. A manager who's really doubting every decision they make and every step they take. This isn't just frustrating. It's expensive. Bad management is one of the biggest hidden costs in business. It leads to high turnover, disengaged employees, and costly mistakes that really chip away at your bottom line. And so, that brings me to our Question of the Day. So, what do you do to set your newly promoted managers up for success? Is it enough? Really? I'd love to know what your reality looks like. Why don't you go ahead and share the link to this episode on your favorite social media platform? Hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership and be part of this conversation. You know, when it comes to management, most people don't fail because they're not trying. They fail because no one ever showed them how to succeed. And our guest today has spent the last 25 years fixing that exact problem. Tara Landis is a seasoned management consultant, a trainer who has been the secret weapon behind 300+ small business leaders looking to solve their biggest operational challenges. As the lead Faculty member for BellRock Management's training program. She has helped over 950,000— no, 950 managers transform from overwhelmed and uncertain to confident and capable. She's a Certified Change Management Practitioner. She's a Licensed Influence Trainer and is a sought-after leadership speaker to organizations like Tech Canada, McKay Forums, and Chartered Professionals in Human Resources, both in BC and Tara, welcome to the show. It is so great to have you.
Thank you, Marc. I'm so excited to be here. I think you're going to love it.
I am just itching to get into today's topic. So first off, why don't you tell us a little bit about how you serve your clients?
Sure. Well, we are a management training company and we provide strategic planning. But where we started actually was implementation consulting. So, we would go into small companies, typically 15 to say, 80 people. And we'd be working away helping them implement Mm-hmm. Things like job descriptions and dashboards and sales process and project management systems, all those kinds of things. And we'd have a consultant, and they'd be sitting there typing away at their desk, you know, figuring out what to do and doing their job. And somebody would walk up, and they would say, Excuse me, I don't mean to bother you. But if I could just interrupt, I've got this guy over here. And I need him to do the thing. But he won't do the thing. And do you have any advice on how I can get him to do that thing? So we'd stop what we were doing. We want to be helpful and we'd answer the question, oh, have you tried this? Have you tried that? And, oh, thank you so much. That's so helpful. And we get back to work. Well, 5 minutes later, somebody else walks up and says, this person over here, they're really not motivated and I don't know what to do. And do you have any advice? And it was just so inefficient to answer these questions one-off. And so we created a whole training program around those common questions that we got over and over again in companies from, as you said, amazing individual contributors who'd been promoted to manager without the training to actually be successful in the role.
It really is funny, right? This whole idea of training people because they're just superstars. And we know that every person brings some semblance of brilliance to the forefront. And so, we do. We promote them. But then, we just leave them wallow. I mean, if we were to hire somebody from outside, we would at least have like an onboarding process, right?
Yeah, exactly.
To test against, right? And but then, when we promote people, it's like, oh no, you know the job. It's like, just go.
Yeah. And it's of course, it's a completely different job, right?
Of course, it is.
People management is a completely different job than whatever the job was they were doing before. I think what sometimes is even worse in smaller businesses is they don't take away their old job. So, they keep, okay, you are such a great individual contributor. Please keep delivering those results and we'd like to add people management to the list. It's pretty untenable for some people.
Yeah. So, why do so many businesses struggle with this, with management? Like when you see this, what are the common mistakes that you're seeing?
What are the challenges? Well, from a business leadership perspective, I think they aren't aware that there are management training available. They think they're going to have to send someone to an MBA or something like that. And of course, there are many more opportunities for training than a 2-year intensive program. So that's one of the main challenges. And managers themselves, or the people who are being promoted, they want that manager title. They want it because they think that's the only way to make more money. And often, companies set things up in a way that that's the only way to make more money. And so, you get people who maybe don't even want to have to manage people that end up going ahead and doing so because they want the promotion.
I wonder how many of them look at it and then they go, oh, wait a second. I used to work 40 hours a week. Now, I'm working 60 hours a week as a salaried employee. Wait a minute. Let me just calculate how much money I'm making per hour. Wait a second!
No kidding. No kidding. Not to mention, they're working way more. They're getting paid more. But they may not be delivering more value to the organization because they were never trained on how to do this thing that they're being asked to do. So now, they've got— the company itself has a real problem because they have the manager who used to be their best individual contributor, who used to produce the highest. And they've taken the ability for them to produce the highest away. But they haven't given them the tools to support others in producing more. And so, we've got this situation where production actually declines as a result of that promotion.
Well, and then you're also forcing those producers because you said to them, we want the same output. So, you end up actually forcing that person into becoming micromanager. You start hearing things like, it's just easier if I do it myself. It's faster.
You absolutely hear that. And we call that upward delegation when the work is getting pushed up. to the manager instead of staying at the level that's appropriate. And managers are, as you said, they're time-pressed. They just want to get that thing done as quickly as possible so they can move on to whatever other fire is burning.
Right. So, are there any myths that we need to bust about promoting high performance into leadership roles? What are some of the foggy glasses that people are wearing when they're making these decisions?
Absolutely. Well, one of, I think the biggest myth is that management can't be taught. Right? Either got it or you don't. That is just not the case. There are basic tools and skills that can be taught on how to delegate, how to motivate, how to hire, how to ask questions, all the things that managers do, how to manage performance. And so it is, you know, it's funny, I sometimes use this example. People are going to think this is a setup, and it really wasn't. But I don't know if you can see that painting behind me here. That's my dog Ozzy. And, uh, there you go. Right here is Ozzy. And Ozzy, that painting, I mean, I did that. I painted that. But I got to tell you, I'm no artist. And if, uh, if you asked me to paint it from, you know, just from memory or something, I mean, you'd get a stick dog at best. But I used paint-by-numbers. And it turns out that if you have all of the lines and you have what colors you're supposed to use, you can do a pretty decent job of painting a dog or anything else for that matter. Well, it's a great analogy for management training. There are tools and tactics that can be used. So, that's one of the myths that we see that just needs to be busted.
Do you think now that we're like— I truly believe that we've moved like I was talking about my first experience offline, about my first experience in management back in the industrial age where it was yell at people, carrot and stick, and all that sort of stuff. I really feel that we We moved in from we wanted people's hands to then we wanted their brains and their hands. Now, we're at the part where we want their hands, their brains, and we want their heart. So, we're in more of a relational kind of culture now. So, do you find that we give our managers way too much functional work to do rather than leadership work?
Yes. I mean, it's a broad statement. But in general, I think that they also gravitate towards toward the functional work. They gravitate toward it because they're good at it. They're so good at it, they got promoted to be a manager. And so people like to do things that they're already competent at. It feels good. It feels like we're contributing. And then where they don't do the work is the places— and it's not that they purposefully don't do it, at least I don't think it is. It's that it doesn't feel good to do it. And so they'd rather do things that feel better. Yeah, yeah.
Well, I can tell you from my experience of being an incidental leader where I got promoted without the skill sets, I mean, my learning curve was huge. I mean, my first impression is, hey, these are all my friends. I'm going to be leading them. It's going to be a cinch. And then realizing that everybody took whatever leeway I could possibly give them at all and took full advantage of it. Then it was like, okay, well now, that's it. That's it. No more Mr. Nice Guy, right?
Yeah.
And I had to find, at 19 years old, I had to start Finding what worked for me. And in the meantime, I had like horrible kind of workplace cultures. People were upset. People felt that there was favoritism or persecution. There was all these different kind of cultural definitions within that realm. So right now, for people who are listening, how does one know if poor management is actually hurting the business? What are the red flags?
Well, you've got low morale scores. People are complaining about the manager. You might have people walking around saying, oh, they didn't really mean it that way. Like, you know, the point that there are people, other people are trying to interpret the manager's communication. Oh, but they're really smart people otherwise, or they were really good at that job, so maybe you should listen to them. I think one of the biggest ways you can tell if it's going to be hurting performance is if a manager has No definition of what they want to be as a manager. Often, what we find, if you were to say, talk to an individual contributor and say, what, you know, why do you want this position? How are you going to handle it? Often, they'll describe their management style in terms of what they aren't going to be. Well, I'm not going to be everyone's friend because I had that one time and it didn't work. Or I'm not gonna, I'm not going to be a micromanager because I had a micromanager once. I'm just going to let people do their thing. Or I'm not going to— Whatever the not going to is, The question is, but what are you going to do instead? And I think that's where they really sort of lose the plot. They don't know the answer to that question, especially if they don't have any management mentors. If they worked for somebody who is a great manager, they're really lucky, and they can model that behavior. But even then, everybody's different. And so maybe that person who was a great manager, a naturally great manager, had a very maybe charismatic or gregarious position— personality.
Mm-hmm.
Now we've got somebody who's a real introvert. Well, introverts can be great managers too. But stylistically, it's different. And so, in any of those cases, you can just see how things can start to harm the performance of the business.
Yeah, and really, I remember having a situation where I was driving to work one day and I knew there was an employee that we had to reprimand. And it was a long time coming. I had just started within the casino. And my opening introduction to her when I got introduced to her, she shook my hand and said, are you for or against rules? And right away, I knew this one was going to be a challenge. And so, one day we had to do a discipline action. I remember driving into work thinking, how I handle this is going to define the kind of manager that I am. And I think to me, that was a very kind of awakening as I was making that drive because I had never thought about it in that term before. And I just thought, as much as I dislike this person intensely, I can't let them know that. They can't see it. I knew that pushing buttons, it's what she does. And so, but I knew at the same token that I need to be very strategic in dealing with her so that I make absolutely sure that I treated her as fairly as I did my best, happiest, most friendly employee.
Yeah, I love that example.
So, this idea of kind of getting the skill, like I was lucky that I had that as a kind of epiphany. But we're not necessarily given those skills on how to be able to do that effectively. And so, right now, we have leaders in workplaces who are just wallowing. They're trying to do the best they can. But in the meantime, like you said, low engagement, High turnover. It's costing you much more to get jobs done and to get things done. So, when we come back, I'd like to talk about some actionable strategies that we can do to kind of turn the ship around. And we'll get to that right after this.
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Welcome back! I am speaking with management consultant Tara Landis and we're talking about the importance of training Leaders. Because ultimately, Tara, how do we turn incidental leaders into great managers?
Yeah, well, it is through training. And right before the break, you brought up an example where you had to have a difficult conversation with someone that you didn't really like, an employee that you didn't like. That's a really common problem that managers have. One of the things that I always tell people is you have to kind of love your employees.
Yeah.
Like not in a creepy way, but in the way that you want to develop them and grow them, right? You want— it's not like kids because they're adults, but it is the kids in the sense that if you're going to go out of your way for them, there has to be something in it for you. You have to really care about them. And you can actually find a way to care about even people you don't care about or don't respect. And that is finding a common goal. While the other person may not be your cup of tea, at least together you can come up with a common goal of serving your own customers or making your internal customers' lives better. If you can come up with that common goal, then you can work together to solve whatever problems are in your way.
And it's interesting because in order to do that, communication is probably the biggest tool in the quiver, isn't it?
Yeah, absolutely. And The regularly scheduled, rarely missed, ideally face-to-face one-on-one meeting is one of the most productive tools a manager has in their toolkit. We actually have a downloadable on our website free of charge that people can go to and take a look at on how to hold a really effective one-on-one and who to hold it with.
Oh, I love that. We'll make sure to put that in the link. Make sure that people can grab it because this idea where technicians become managers but yet they're still expected to kind of get the work done and do the work. And because it's easier for them to do it themselves, they end up starting micromanage and so on. It's really hard for them to be able to say, okay, well now I have to schedule time. I have 8 people on my team. So, I'm gonna have to set time down once a month to be able to sit down with these people, or once every 2 weeks to sit down with these people. It creates— you need a strategy around it. You can't just say, okay, okay Tara, come on sit down. Okay, so what's up Tara? So, what do you want to talk about this week? Right? It becomes completely non-functioning, right?
Exactly. Yes, they need it. They need a formula. But I'll tell you what, if any manager has ever had that thing happen where the person calls or sends an email and says, we need to talk. Can I book a meeting with you? I mean, your stomach drops. Your heart starts racing because you know they're about to quit. Of course. You know that that's what they're doing. Well, if you were having your regular one-on-ones, you wouldn't experience that kind of trauma because you would know all the way along how they're feeling about their job. If you had a proper one-on-one, you'd know whether people are engaged or disengaged, what they need, whether your company can even offer them what they want. Maybe it's important that they do have to move on. And wouldn't you like notice on that rather than having someone just suddenly send you that email saying, here's my 2 weeks?
Yeah, it's really interesting because early on, I realized I can't control that people will evolve. And my only hope is that if they leave me, it's because they're evolving. Not because they're pissed off at the job. And so, knock on wood, having that as a mindset was always kind of a huge motivator. Being able to understand where my staff were at any step within their journey to understand whether or not they have high job satisfaction, whether they're engaged, that they found value in what they were doing, and so on. In fact, I had a person who got a Bachelor of Marketing, business business diploma in marketing. And her father was really upset because she stayed in the casino as a server with me for another 8 months after she graduated just because she said, but Dad, you know, I'm making good money and I love working here. Right?
Yeah, yeah. People definitely work in order for food and shelter. They get quite addicted to those things. But then, once they were paid enough, Then why are they sticking around? Well, they're sticking around because they have friends there. They like the sense of belonging in their team. And they're sticking around for their manager. So if your manager isn't trained, you're going to lose all your best people. But you know what? You're going to keep the bad ones. The bad ones will stay forever because it's easy. The manager's already doing their job for them basically anyway through the micromanagement. They can just sit back and relax. And it's not that I think that most people are horrible or have these nefarious motives. But I have to say that that's what you see happen. You see the quality of the employee start to diminish and their productivity of the department really start to suffer.
Yeah. And again, I don't think anybody wakes up every day and thinks, today, I'm going to shag the dog. Today, I'm not going to do a single thing. Right? I don't think people wake up with that. I truly think that people want to come in And they want to work within their zone of genius if given the opportunity. But all to your point, all too often, especially with micromanagers, people are marginalized. I find that people are marginalized, especially within their job description.
And I'll even add to that and say, you spoke about working to their genius. What you'll find is that when managers are forced by their organization to give quote-unquote feedback, the feedback that they think they have to give is either negative feedback. Here are all of the ways you do things wrong. Let me itemize them and humiliate you. Or they say, you're just amazing at everything. And what a lazy coach. Like, imagine if an Olympic coach went to that athlete and said, you know what? You're the best in the world. I got nothing to say. I mean, they wouldn't be doing their job. Have fun with your next race! Yeah. And we're not coaching Olympic athletes. We're coaching, like, you know, the kids playing on the soccer field. Like, we surely, we can find something they're good at and encourage them to do that Yeah, yeah.
What a good point. You mentioned the thing about leadership training. What separates effective training from just, I don't know, another leadership seminar or sending them off to a conference? What are the aspects that people should be looking for if they're tuning in and they're saying, you know what? I think we're on to something. But I don't know how to choose what kind of training we should be doing.
Well, I think the most important thing, once you find out just what the topics are and if the topics are the ones that you want, the most important thing is that there's some sort of reinforcement and they have a way of being able to use what they're learning in real time and then again practice it before additional tactics are taught. So when we do management training, we offer 3-hour classes. There are lots of tools, but every class comes with a one-on-one coaching session Because we want to give people every chance to have success in their management role and to use the tools that are being taught.
So, for the people who are coming into class, if the boss dictates the training to the employee, do you have situations where people are like, oh, my manager's making me take this training course. I don't know. I've been doing this for 15 years. I don't know why I have to take this training course. How does one kind of bridge that gap so that you know it, that the business knows if I'm going to invest in this person that we're going to get the very best out of them at the end?
Well, I have to say first of all, that is not the person that I would pick to invest in if it were my business. I think misery is optional. And so, if they're that unhappy and they already know how to do everything. I don't know that that's where I'm going to start. I think that's more of a performance management issue than a training issue.
Yeah.
But for the people that are interested in, in training, I think that, that they can actually do quite well with it. And so when sometimes people are at first reluctant, maybe they've been managing for a long time, and so they think there's nothing to learn. Well, that's when we start actually being managers ourselves. And asking them questions about their frustrations as a manager. And you'll hear things like, I'm so sick of babysitting these people. I'm so sick of having to, you know, follow up with them 16 different times. I'm so— I can't believe I have to do performance evaluations again. HR is always making me fill out these forms. They're just whining. All they want is more money. When you start to hear that kind of thing, it sounds like maybe they have a problem that they would like a solution to. Right.
Yeah.
And if they have a problem that they would like a solution to, well, we can offer them that.
Yeah. Well, and to your point, what people bellyache about isn't necessarily the problem that they're complaining about. There's something bigger usually behind that. So, as you were saying all those things, it just popped into my head. Tell me more about that. Why don't we dig a little bit deeper? Why do you feel that way? Because the answers are there.
Yes. The classic not a great manager thing that we hear over and over again is, and especially right now with everybody with remote work, is they're not working the hours. Like, I need them to fill out timesheets. I need to know how much time they're putting in. As if time is any sort of proxy for productivity.
Right.
It is the last gasp of the desperate manager. Saying, I need to actually see them in their chair. Because honestly, they could be playing solitaire while they're sitting in their chair with you. It's the last gasp. And the other side of that coin is when the employee starts to complain about money. Now, there are fair complaints about money and I get that. But when they leave a job because of 50 cents an hour more, they did not leave that job because of 50 cents an hour more.
Right. They left that job because of the job and the manager Yeah, well, I'm going to push back just a little bit because I think the biggest leadership complaint that I see, bar none, whenever a manager is ineffective, from his mouth you will hear, you have to listen to me because I'm your boss. There's a struggle to re-emphasize the fact that they are the leader.
Yes, I was actually on a coaching call right before this where the leader had told the HR manager, this is not a democracy. And that was on the choice of what kind of team event they were going to be doing. This is not a democracy. We're doing it my way. Anytime someone is trying to use force or violence or even money to try and influence and persuade, again, you're grasping at straws. Yeah, or promises.
Just give me 3 more months. We'll talk about a wage increase in 3 months. Just if you could hang on for 3 3 more months. And then, right? And then, 3 more months later, it's like, oh, I'm terribly sorry. We had our budget and we had to make some cuts. And it's like—
No, absolutely. Yep, absolutely.
This is a fascinating— I'm loving this conversation. Could you just let everybody know how they can get in touch with you if this is resonating?
Yeah, I'm at www.bellrock.ca or you can find me on LinkedIn at Tara Landis. And I'd love to talk to anybody about this stuff. It's my passion.
Yeah, I did put the link in the show notes as well because I think you also offer a 30-minute complimentary discovery call.
You betcha! Yeah, I would love to speak to anyone about this stuff.
Yeah, yeah, you and me both. I love this stuff and it's just, I just shake my head because the answers are there. So Tara, can you walk us through the ideal journey of a new manager receiving kind of that proper training? Because again, we talked, I think was it Before we came on live, I said, you know what's interesting is that when we hire outside leaders from outside, we'll do a whole onboarding. When we tend to promote people internally, there's like zero onboarding process. So, what should this process look like?
Well, I think in an ideal world, and I recognize we live in the real world, but in an ideal world, a manager before they become a manager would be given an opportunity to sort of try before they buy. And so, what I mean by that is put them into some training so that they understand what the job is that they're signing up for. Yes, they might, of course, they had a manager before. But that doesn't necessarily mean that that's the job that they are signing up for, that kind of management. And so, I really encourage people to get the training before they actually get the promotion. What you really don't want to have happen in an organization is promoting someone to a manager position. And they get to go home and say to their spouse, you know, oh, I got promoted, and I'm so excited, and look at my career. They tell all their friends. And then they get into the job, and they hate it.
Yeah.
And the ego of having to walk that back, a lot of people just aren't prepared for that kind of thing. Also, remember that being a manager doesn't necessarily mean more money. In fact, being a sales manager usually means less money. So just helping them to understand what the pay bands are, what the job is, you know, Hmm. It's a really great point. It's, it's just onboarding. Give them the warts and all of the job. Don't try to trick them into it because you'll lose them. Once they've had that training, though, then they can get in and start really managing people. And I encourage people when they start as managers, we talk about swimming with the current. Like, manage the easy ones first. Don't try to tackle your hardest problem right out of the gate. Pick a couple projects that you want to work on, a couple Things from a management perspective, and really go for that. Develop some mastery before you take the next project on. If you're inheriting a team, that team got to where they are for a reason. And so, we have to unwind that slowly if in fact it needs to be unwound.
Hmm.
I also really encourage new managers to have individual conversations with each of their employees, as well as a Group conversation where they hit the reset button and they set expectations, set expectations of behavior and what we're going to do if we don't meet those expectations. A really common example right now of this, and I can't even believe we're still talking about it, is cameras on. If you're in a Teams meeting or Zoom or whatever you do, are you supposed to have your cameras on? And I have so many managers complaining to me they never put their cameras And you know what I ask them? I say, did you ask them to put their cameras on? Because maybe if you ask them, they might do it. People can't meet our expectations if we don't set them.
Right, yeah. And doing it early on is like the only way. But it's interesting because you were talking about this idea that person is in their employee role before they get promoted. If they have good leadership that is taking care of them, they're already going through coaching sessions where it's like, okay Steve, let's talk a little bit about what you feel your future is. What are some of the things you want to develop? How would you like to see your career move? Right? And so, if we have those open communications on the onset, then we're not actually blindsiding people because we've been highly strategic with both the employee becoming a manager. And to your point, getting that training done early. It's like, I have a colleague of mine who runs a Safeway. She's a store manager for Safeway. And so, anybody who would like to get onto the leadership track, they have to join Toastmasters.
That's fantastic! I love Toastmasters.
That's the basic thing of anything is work on your communication. Learn some basic leadership things. But invest in yourself first. And then, we'll see. And then, we'll move you into a leadership track where we'll train you and we'll move you up. But that's her number one thing, right?
I love it. And we have lots of clients that also require their people to go into management training before they will be promoted. It's a prerequisite. And what's really cool about that actually is then, in larger organizations, the people who've been through the training before are able to really encourage the others and say, oh no, You need this training. This is going to tell you what you need to do and how to be successful. And so, you've got the legacy, the culture is starting to be built around learning and development and that things can be taught. And that we really can be gold medal athletes and not kids playing on the soccer field.
Yeah, well, and there's so many different like mindset things about people getting into leadership roles, right? Like you see somebody getting a leadership role. And they're really mean with people and they give people a hard time. And it's like, why are you acting like that towards your staff? Well, because that's the way my managers used to treat me. So, and it becomes a rite of passage. Well, imagine if that rite of passage was coaching and training and this camaraderie of, hey, welcome to the team. Let's support you as you grow. And let's go from this idea of onboarding to foreverboarding.
Yes, yes, I love that. I love that. And stay interviews as well, right? We don't need exit interviews. We need stay interviews. Yeah, yeah.
I always think it's so fascinating when somebody quits and they're like, oh, can you come in? I'd love to know what we could do better. It's like, why didn't you have that like 8 months earlier?
And also, I had a conversation with someone last night who I'd coached many years ago. And she just left her job. And she was saying, I said, And she had some feedback for the organization, but she was giving it to me. And I said, you know, I think it would be a really generous thing for you to tell them that because you're on your way out anyway. And wouldn't that be great if they knew that for the next person? And she said to me, I don't know if it's safe to do that because what if my new opportunity doesn't work out and I want to come back? And so, isn't that tragic?
Yes.
That someone feels they can't be honest on their way out Even though they really like it there enough that they want to leave that door open. But they're just not feeling quite safe enough to be able to share the truth. And how can people change if they don't know what you're thinking?
Right. And but again, it's maybe it's too little too late because as well, depending on the environment, the managers look at it and go, oh, she's just an employee who's angry at us and it's all negative. It's not really true. And so, we fool ourselves and we justify based on the fact that, oh, disgruntled. It's like, it's so easy to say that.
It is so easy to say that. And it's also equally easy if you have regular one-on-ones to talk to the other employees and say, hey, scale of 1 to 10, how do you think our communication is here anyway? If you've just had a complaint about communication, I mean, why don't you do your research and find out if it is just sour grapes or if in fact, there's a real issue.
Yeah, you know, I believe that we could probably— you and I could probably do this for like 3 hours just as a master class in this. So, but what I would like to do is I'd like to get into and talk a little bit about some cautionaries and some pitfalls. My biggest fear is somebody tunes into this. I don't know if you've ever experienced this where a leader goes to like a seminar and they come back and they go, okay, okay, from now on we're gonna do things different. And then, like people are like, okay, it's the policy of the month time. And then, it just fades off. So, what I'd like to do after the break is I'd like to just get into some pitfalls and cautionaries of when we want to make this change. How do we do a lasting change versus putting a band-aid on it? And we'll get to that right after this.
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Welcome back! I hope you're getting tons of value from this episode today. As you can tell, Tara and I are on a mission to support businesses just like yours. So, if you belong to an organization that could use our help, or you or somebody you know might be planning a leadership retreat or an industry conference, drop us a line. We'd love to explore how we could be of service to you and your people. Don't be shy. Our contact info is down below. Tara, many leaders feel like they don't have time for management training. When it comes down to this time excuse, what do you say to them?
Well, first of all, I'll just say your listeners have time because they're doing it right now. So, it can come in many forms. And this is a great opportunity. This is a great forum for people to get some learning. The thing about learning though is just because you know the thing, like you've heard of it, it doesn't mean you really know it. And just because you know it doesn't mean you're using it. And even if you're using it, it doesn't mean you're using it in the best possible way. And so I do really encourage people, I think one of the pitfalls, the common pitfalls, is trying to do too much too fast or all at once. Pick a lane, pick a few things that you will be able to say in the next 3 months I am going to develop my skill in this. And then stick with it. Try not to get distracted with those shiny objects. So one pitfall is too much and too fast and not enough reinforcement, right? Another pitfall is starting with the hardest case first. We have so many examples of companies saying, you know, that, remember the old Life cereal? Let's get Mikey. He won't eat it. He hates everything. Well, if you take That guy, if you take Mikey and put him in any sort of program, guess what you're going to get? Well, you're not going to get the Life Cereal version. You're going to get someone who proves exactly what they thought when they walked in. Start with the easy cases. In fact, maybe a little beta team. You can let people apply to do some training. They can apply and get them to give their reasons, and then actually let them win the opportunity to do learning. And learning doesn't have to cost money. It definitely costs time, but it doesn't cost money. You can even just start a little book club in your own company. Start a podcast club. Listen to this podcast and schedule 15 minutes for a little mastermind session on what you can take away to your organization. And if you just did that every couple weeks, every month, imagine the upskilling you'd get in your organization. So, start slow, start small, and be consistent.
You just gave me goosebumps because Kim, the lady I was talking about who forces everybody to go to Toastmasters before they get promoted, one of the things she did with her middle managers was she bought copies of my book and they turned that into a book club. And so, once a week, they go through a chapter and then they meet once a week very quickly just to do a round robin of what is it that we can apply to our business, to our departments that we learned from this book? And then, they had great discussions.
No, it's so— honestly, it's so great because not only did they read it, they were exposed to it. But by talking about it, that made them retain it even more. And then, by putting it in their own context, that's where the learning really starts to stick. And I think a lot of organizations, they are well-intentioned in sending sending people to like a 2-day leadership training intensive. But they're at best going to come away with 3, 3 key takeaways. The rest of it's going to fall by the wayside when they show back up at work. And I guess that's another tip that I didn't think of before, but now I'm thinking of it, which is whenever you learn anything, whatever you're learning, schedule some time tomorrow to think about it. So just put in your calendar 10 minutes to review what you learned yesterday. And see if you can make that part of your ongoing development and actually put these things into practice rather than just being the flavor of the month.
It's so funny that you say that because I tell people, do exactly that. Put in— meet with somebody for 10 minutes and tell them what you learned and teach them the concepts. Because that's, you know, if you can teach it, then you understand it. If you can't teach it, then you can go back and review it and say, I wasn't quite— I wasn't able to vocalize it. So, maybe I need to go back and just challenge it a little bit more.
Yeah, or even if you've tried it and it didn't work and say, you read something in a book by Jim Collins or someone who we know these people are experts, right? This is proven stuff. And very little in management at this point is unproven stuff. We're humans. We have psychology. We evolved a long time ago. It is Yeah. These things are what they are, right, for the most part. And so, if it didn't work for you, be open-minded to the idea that maybe it does work and maybe it's the way you were using it that was the issue. Find an expert. Find a sounding board. See if maybe there's just a different way to use that tool. You know, when, what do they say, when all you have is a hammer, all the world's a nail. Maybe there are other tools that we could use to drive these things home.
And part of that is to move yourself from, I don't know anything about this, to now, I know I don't know anything about this. So hopefully, if you're tuned into the show, that's something you're getting today is you're getting that thing is like, oh, I wasn't even aware of that. Now I know. Now you can reach out. Now you can do more research. Now you can call Tara and say, yeah, can I have 30 minutes of your time?
Yeah, exactly. And I'd be happy to give it to you.
So, if we were to just shake this globe and one important simple actionable thing that every business leader can do starting today to improve their management effectiveness, what would it be?
I would tell them to go and find someone and ask them what's on their mind. If that's all they can do, if all they can do is one thing, go find someone that works for you. Ask them what's on their mind. And when they answer you, ask the question. And what else? What's on your mind? And what else? And we'll see what shakes out of that because that's part of managing is learning what other people are thinking and then riffing on that.
This has been brilliant. This has absolutely been brilliant, Tara. Could you remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?
Yeah, we're at www.bellrock.ca, a proud Canadian company based out of Western Canada. But we work all across the country. And you're free to reach out to me as well on LinkedIn or on my email, tlandis@bellrock.ca.
Lovely! And as we wrap up, do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about today?
Oh, I just want everybody to understand that management is a science and it can be taught. And if it can be taught, it can be learned. And if it can be learned, you can learn it too.
Yeah. Tara, thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here. I really feel like we're two peas in a pod. And I knew I'd be tickled by this conversation. And the goosebumps abound. Thank you so much for being here today.
Thank you so much for having me. I really had a great time.
If you have any questions about today's episode, or you would like a complimentary 30-minute brainstorming session with you and your team, feel free to book some time on my online calendar. The link is down below. It's the one that's marked meetwith.marchaine.com. As always, I am at your service. And if you haven't done so yet, make sure you subscribe to this feed and follow me on social media. I post all sorts of stuff. And of course, make sure you follow Tara now as well. Thank you so much for joining me today. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.
