A short monologue by a leader reflecting on early attempts to be an overly 'caring' boss by offering perks and protecting employees from hardship. The speaker concludes that over-coddling sets employees up for failure, backfires for operations, and argues leaders should be kind but not shield staff from difficult experiences.
I thought that I was, like, going to revolutionize the industry and be like, I'm the best boss ever, because I'm going to give them all these perks and all this stuff, and I'm going to treat them so well. And then I realized I was actually setting them up for failure. So what I want to get across to people is that coddling people and protecting them from the hard stuff, it's not doing them a service, it's doing them a disservice. And I had to learn that the hard way because I built a culture off of that. And then I realized it completely backfired because that's not how an operation works. You could build a company. Can you be kind to people? Yes. Should you protect people from the hard things in life? I don't think so.
