Ep 413: People need to see their leaders as predictable and level-headed.

the way that he expected to go. And basically, the boss reacted poorly in a moment and it was rooted in external stressors that that that his boss was going through because of other things happening at work, and you know, he wasn't you know, making an excuse for his boss. He was kind of giving an explanation, but but he talked very openly about how that reaction from his boss in the moment really eroded the trust he had in

his boss. And you know, we've we've spoken about the importance of predictability if if you're if you're a leader, that you want to be predictable when you when you interact with your people so that they they know how you're going to respond in any in any you know, interaction, And I think this was a great example of this kind of playing out in reality and not just you know, hypothetically. He talks really candidly about the fear that comes along with that and what that can do to an entire team.

So I wanted to discuss this because I think it's something that you know, we both think is very important when it comes to the responsibilities.

and accountability. And then he said this not using passion in quotation marks as an excuse for bad behavior, right, And I think that it's that's it's such a great call out and just a reminder around the role and the expectation of leadership and what you're doing and what's going on and what you're responsible for and what you're accountable for and the role that you have when it comes to shaping culture and ways of working and the framework of what you're in which your team operates. You know,

these are things that I've seen over my career. When you have a leader like this, When you have a leader that has these kind of like off the handle moments or is not able to you know, regulate their emotions or these types of things, well, then guess what happens with the rest of the team. You see the same things start to happen amongst the direct reports. You know, especially if you're working on a team like this where maybe you've got one direct boss and you've got multiple

leaders on that team. Well, now you start to do it to one another. Now it becomes a part of just how things get done here, and it becomes you know, it becomes okay to to make a comment and then walk out of a meeting like like, how is that ever productive? How is that ever you know, creating collaboration, creating space to to to make sure that we're we're having a you know, positive work towards trying to find

a common goal. So okay, yeah, maybe you did walk out of a meeting maybe you did walk out of something where you know, things like that your leader treated you that way. And I think that's an exact example

of that. To walk out of one meeting and to walk into this one and have that type of reaction to your team tells me all I need to know about the meeting you were just in, right right, I don't even have to be there to know what would have to happen to someone to put them in that type of a mentally emotional state to feel like that would be okay to do their own team. Well, I'm sure it was exactly the same thing that happened in

that meeting, right right. Somebody felt embarrassed, they felt attacked, They maybe they had their their ego is hurting, you know, whatever that might be, and they're just kind of projecting and cascading that same emotion through their team. And if I had to guess, and I'm sure if I asked Matt, like number one, how long did you stick around? And number two that team that you were on, was this a team that was just like, you know, a great

team and a high performing team. If I'm in Vegas, I'm putting my money on probably not especially over long.

old saying that the ship rolls downhill? Right, Like, if you believe that if you got treated a certain way, that it's now part of your responsibility to make sure that your people know that because either you you are blaming them for the fact that you got yelled at, either they didn't come through for you, and instead of owning that as a failure of leadership, if your people aren't coming through for you, what is it that you're doing that makes them either not want to or not

capable of doing it. But this idea of you know, the reason why his boss treated him this way, was because that's part of the culture of the organization. Clearly, if he's being treated that way, it's not a one off. I think typically in organizations the culture, it's really difficult to change the culture with one bad apple, right, Like, if the culture is is good and people treat each other, you know, properly, and they are nice to each other.

A person who gets hired in, who makes it through the interview process, who becomes the the you know, using air quotes, you're passionate screamer, that person typically won't last long the culture outs them, right, So if it's happening in multiple places, it implies it's part of the culture and it's considered acceptable. Right. So, so I agree with

you that it's probably not a high performing team. But the the ability of Matt in the moment to look inwardly not just at why is this a problem because of his own personal experience, like don't yell at me,

but what did it actually do? What did that do to me as an employee in the moment, and he says that it completely eroded the trust that he had with his leader, mainly because he didn't know what to expect from his leader going forward from now on whether you go when into any meeting or had anything to say. He didn't know whether he was about to be applauded or chastised or anything in the middle with an interaction

with this leader from that point forward. And that's a huge problem if you want to make sure that your people are keeping you in the loop on what's going on, if you want to know what's happening on your team, if you want to be able to get if you want to be able to feel like the information you're being given by your people is accurate and truthful and all encompassing, then the only way to do that is to make sure that they have zero problem coming to

you with that information. Even if it's information it says I messed up, like I made a mistake and I messed up. The response from you needs to be arong the lines of how do we get through this together? Not how do I make sure you were fully aware that this is your problem because you fed up?

you go about doing things. You know, we take so much from the leaders that we've had, you know, both positive and negative, and there are always going to be those situations where somebody had maybe a not so great leader and has figured out ways to adjust their own style.

saying like what is acceptable, what's not acceptable? And I think over time we're seeing that more and more conversations and dialogue like this is happening, not just amongst peers and amongst employees, but but in spaces around how we're assessing who leaders are and what they do. And we're finding that leaders that have this kind of approach or are inconsistent or create fear in a team, I think are being held accountable much more than they ever have before.

And I think that's good. I think it's really good for the workforce in general. And I think it's something that we continue to do is call these things out and continue to share and push back on these specific types of examples. There's always going to be leaders who have to I mean, we all have to hold people accountable.

We all have to be firm, we all have to be clear, we have to be you know, we have to be transparent in consequences for actions and what can happen if if goals or or or objectives aren't meant. We have to do that type of work. But there is a way to be clear and fair, and I

think and do that with with elements of empathy. Then there is to just be it, to just do it in a very you know, uh, maybe maybe rigid way that causes people to feel fear and or to copy that behavior or think that behavior is okay.

stress and the yelling and the and the passion and the emotional dysregulation. But I want to go back to something else you said I think is really important around what we get exposed to and what that leads to doing. Because you're right, we do learn from all of the leaders that we have, and hopefully over your career you have enough examples of leaders that are that are both

good and bad. Like in reality, you you hopefully become blessed enough in your life to be able to work for a leader who is not a good leader at some point because you and not for a long time, but enough to understand what is important to you and what is not important to you, what is acceptable to you as an employee, was not acceptable to use employee, and how that feels, so that you know how it feels to other people when you do those things, because

you're right, if you are only exposed to one type, it's really difficult to do anything other than that. And you know, you can make the argument that you know, oh, we should inherently know it's not the right thing to do to this, or it's not the right thing to treat people like that. Sure, I guess in your personal life maybe, But work life and personal life are different sometimes.

And I know I know people who have had situations where they have a difficult time maintaining employment because of the way they treat people at work, but they have no problem maintaining friends and personal relationships at life. They just think this is the way a boss is supposed

to act. And the reason they think that is because they work for the same boss for a long time, they got acclimated it, they got used to it, and they tolerated things they shouldn't have tolerated, and over a long enough timeline, they started to believe that that was the way you were supposed to treat people. And it's a frustrating thing to see. But if you can, over time work for enough people who have different leadership styles to see what not just you gravitate towards, but what

feels good to you as a person. I don't think anybody can say that they want to get yelled at from a standpoint to where they lose trust in their leader, where they feel like their job is in jeopardy. If you've done something and you've made a mistake, you want someone who is a leader who said I want to be your leader. You want that person to say, how can we fix this? Not how can we make sure that you're punished for it? And there might be fallout,

there might be consequences, but that's a different conversation. That's not something that has to have the emotion and the passion of the moment. The emotion and the passion of the moment should be the feverish ways in which you try to fix the situation together as teammates and as partners.

And then if there are consequences later on, they are what they are, and you deal with them with you know, with empathy and with grace, and you and you treat people like human beings absolutely, and with that it brings us us to this episode's one minute hack.

that I want people to think of me? And if the answer is no, then obviously some changes need to be made. But on the flip side, it's not just about being consistent. Because you can consistently have bad behavior as a leader too, that doesn't mean it's okay just because you're predictable. You need to be predictably a good leader. But again, the consistency and the predictability is primarily what

this is about. If your people can't predict how you'll respond to them in the moment, they're less likely to come to you with a problem. They're less likely to ask for help. But if they know that they can predict and trust that your response to them is going to be one of support and help and how you're going to get through this together, they're much more likely

to come to you when they have an issue. And so think about how those interactions happen on the little things, because all your predictability, kind of quotient is is is a sum of all the previous interactions that people have had with you or seeing you have with other people

over the last recent time. And one interaction that doesn't fit with the pattern might not hurt you that much, but more than one can, because you probably don't have a lot of interactions with a person to where they have a lot of data to go off of, and so every interaction is important because you never know who's watching. You never know who's talking with their peers and their friends and their coworkers about the interaction they just had

with you. Every interaction is important. Be a predictable and consistent leader, and your people will come to you when they have issues because they'll want your guidance and your support. They won't just you know, be afraid of how you're going.

you want to be responsible for leading people. With that comes a different level of obligation to the people that you lead and accountability to the actions that you have, Like you have to that you get that by default. So like, if you don't want to be in that space where you have to be really conscious of what you say and do and you know, regulate your emotions and be like, if you don't want that, then don't

be a leader of people. But you're saying you want to, So like you then take these things on and you have to make sure that you're conscious of them and for all of us. And it's not always the extremes. It's not always the I'm going to walk in the room and be a jerk and shut somebody down or do these types of things. It can be in the small things that you do, the small comments that you make, the hey, I have an idea, Hey, you know, now's not.

And this is this is the same thing. You can have great meetings with people where you are level headed and calm and cool and collected, but that's a controlled environment for lack of a better word. That's a place where you can put yourself on the right frame of mind. If that isn't backed up by the interactions you're having with people throughout the day, throughout the meetings, in the hallways, at the cubicles, at the water cooler, you know, all

the individual little ones you have. If you don't show consistency and predictability in those little interactions, then the big grand gestures of the meetings will be looked at for what they are, which is just you know, you know, a fabrication. It's not the real you, and you still

won't be trustworthy. Those little interactions are just as important, if not more, because of how many of them there are compared to the big ones, and it's important that those are the things that tell people that you're You're a consistent boss, a consistent leader, and not one who is unpredictable.