Ep 435: Common Leadership Problems (Part 4 of 4)

go back and listen to it. The fourth topic in this discussion, based on the article from Sam Atiemi, is what happens when your team is losing sight of their ethics?

And boy, this this, this is a can of worms on this one because there there is so much to unpack in terms of what is unethical, what isn't, what happens when it comes from the top, like the the organizational leadership as a whole versus what happens when it's coming from the team leader as a whole or something in middle management, and also what happens when it's happening

from an individual employee. And and what a leader's responsibility is to kind of address that before it becomes widespread, because there's no doubt that regardless of where it's coming from, the moment the team believes that the unethical behavior is what is either promoted or even tolerated, that will spread into a disengagement with the rest of the team or you know, a lack of productivity or worst case scenario, the lack of ethics will spread and they have a

much larger problem, you know, with a team as opposed to just being localized to a single person.

a team. And I'll give you a great, real personal example of myself, Like you know, I have over my career gotten feedback around my sense of humor or around like just how I do things, and I overuse it from time to time, and you know, again, while I will always be open to the feedback, will accept it, will make adjustments, we'll learn from it type of thing.

There are elements of that where if I have relationships with people, or I have the ability to be who I am and read a room and know when to joke or how to joke and when to pull back and things like that, if I'm a leader of people and they look to emulate my behavior, they may not have all those same relationships, those same skills, those same understandings.

And then by default, right I am, I'm kind of teaching this behavior or something that's okay And again not that it's like wildly unethical, but it could cause issues and problems amongst the team, around the culture, around how

we get work done. So like just as a small example of I think like things that we don't necessarily think about as like unethical behavior, but if you if you pull the thread on something like that, it can have a really big impact on a team and that can cause things and decisions or well, if it's okay to joke around about this, then it's okay to joke around about that, And maybe it's not okay to joke

around about that and like that, you know what I'm saying. So, like, those are things that for me when I when I start to think about a conversation like this, I stay away from the big extremes and I say, well, let's talk about like things that may not seem like a big eye, like a big problem or an issue, but really can be if you don't understand how they impact individuals and cultures, and especially when you sit in the seat of a leader, because there are things that we

all do that then become replicated, you know, as a result of just the fact that people are trying to emulate what they might believe a successful behavior, right.

speaking about like a retail environment. In a retail environment, if a person is you know, sixteen or seventeen years old and they're working their first part time job and they there's an issue with them, you know, coming to work on time, right, there's almost an assumption that that's okay, or at least there's a higher threshold for tolerance because you have you expect certain things out of certain people

based on where they are on their lives. And if I heard that I had a seventeen year old reporting to me that was having difficulty getting to work on time, we'd have discussions about it, and it would just be it would it would be in the context of the broader knowledge that I have around that person and where

they are on their lives. If if I was in a leader of a team of people who were all in their thirties and forties and there was a person who had a hard time getting to work on time, that implies something In my own head, I think differently about that. It's like, why isn't this figured out yet? You know what? What? Or if a leader has it has difficulty getting to work on time, why isn't this

figured out yet? Right? And And so there's this this kind of this element of tolerance that that happens when individuals do things that aren't in leadership roles, that that aren't tolerated in a leadership role, and that muddies the lines of what is okay and what is not okay because again, like you said, if it's okay for this person, why isn't it okay for this person? And the answer might be as simple as, well, this person is in a leadership role. And and that's that's even too vague

to say, because that that alone doesn't say it. But yet for some reason, in my head it does say it. It's like, well, you have a responsibility as a leader that you don't necessarily have in a non leadership role. And so when I've seen this kind of rear its ugly head, a lot of times it's based on I'll give you kind of a scenario or an example that I've seen happen many times. An employee has difficulty executing

on things they're supposed to execute on. They don't have the skills, they haven't been given the training, they haven't given the leadership time to make sure they have the training and skills to get something done, but they feel like they're being held accountable to getting that thing done.

And there's a disconnect on the training. And so the employee who is tired of hearing I'm falling short, I'm falling short on this and this and this all the time, they in the absence of the skills and the training and the real work needed to get a person up to speed, they start coming up with other ways of accomplishing the same thing, other ways of accomplishing the same results.

And it starts with cutting corners, and it can lead to unethical behavior with regard to how they interact with their clients or customers that can lead to the results on paper looking like they've been turned aroun, I have to fix this. Look at look at my results. They're they're great now. And if the leader at that point just goes, oh, yeah, you're right. I can see on my spreadsheet of all the employees that you've turned this thing around, good job to you. I'm going to stop

paying attention now. As opposed to thinking, okay, let's validate this, let's like show me this in action. I want to I want to make sure that it's not just the result that you know that, it's not just the results that I'm looking for. It's the behaviors that I'm looking for, because I believe that if the behaviors are there, the results will be there on a long enough timeline or on a long enough average of time. But if I don't validate that because either a I'm not invested in

the employee actually getting better, or I'm not. I don't actually care about the process. I just care about the results, because that's all I think my leader cares about. They're just they're just hounding me about the results. So, like you know, the the stuff rolls downhill. Right, If that's if that's the culture, is one of the results matter,

not how we got there matters. That is a breeding ground for these things happening, for the little cuttings of corners that turn into unethical behavior that then get validated because people with the great results get hyped up and have the spotlight shown on them and they put on pedestals and this person does a great job. Well, did they do a great job or are they doing things incorrectly? And a lot of that can be determined simply by

looking at outliers. Right, If a person is head and shoulders above literally everybody else, you're doing a disservice to your your like you're literally it's a dereliction of duty as a leader. If one person is head and shoulders of everybody else and you're not investigating why that is. If the person has turned around the results really quickly from being a low performer to being a high performer. It's also a dereliction of duty if you don't investigate

are they actually doing things right? If a person is doing an average job that is in line with other high performers on the team or in the broader environment, it might need less investigating, but it's still your responsibility as a leader periodically investigate how the results are being obtained, because if you don't do that and it has turned into the cutting corners unethical behavior from a person, again, it might spread to other people before you, before you've

done what it takes to stop that, and then you have a much bigger problem on your hands than if you addressed it with the individual.

you spend your time? How do you measure success? And and you know, if it's too simple, if it's too easy, if it's just a data point, if it's just an outcome, and you're not taking the time to really understand how people did the work, then that's exactly where you are. You know, maybe intentionally, maybe not intentionally, but you're creating these types of behaviors or potential opportunities for unethical behavior to happen because you're just simply saying it's all about

this thing, you know, and and and again. Like in industries and in jobs, in places where the outcomes absolutely matter, right, they absolutely matter, you have to measure them. A part of the job is being someone as a leader, as an employee who is good at positively impacting the outcomes of the organization, like that's taking a job and getting paid by company to do that. Those things absolutely matter.

But as a leader, a big part of that responsibility is digging into to understand how it's being done, asking the questions going deeper and again, I'm I'm just as interested in how are we so good at something? As much as I am as how are we so bad?

At something. You know what I mean? I want to know both, because this is so good at something, if there is not intention there, or if there is not a clear strategy aligned with values and growth and development and skill building, that that is a larger issue in my mind than being bad at something and somebody saying we're just not good at it and we don't know how to do it. Okay, Like we can work with that, you know what I'm saying, We can work with teaching

people how to do that. But if you're really good at something and you don't even know why or how, I need to understand that. I need to dig deeper into figuring that part out, because that can create a false sense of success and believing that you know, you're just really good at something that you may put no effort into, and that's not helpful in building a great rounded culture of performance, right.

I don't know how to do this. If a person knows they can do that, and the response from the leader is I can work with that, like what you said, then you're golden. That's that's great, that's how you actually solve a problem. But if when a person says that, the response is an eye roll and like why do we hire you that? Like I thought, like you've been here long enough, you should know how to do this.

The longer person goes in a role or in a job without knowing how to do something, the harder it is to speak up and say they don't know how to do it. It's the it's the Chris Prap meme. I don't know what to do here, and at this point I'm afraid to ask, right. It's like it's easy to ask the question or to say I don't know how to do it on day one when you have like kind of blanket immunity against not knowing how to do the job. It's your first day, right, and even

maybe the first few weeks of the first quarter. But at a certain point in time, you might be believe that your leaders think that by this time in the role, you should know how to do this. And if you believe that's the case to the point where you don't have the ability to speak up and say I don't know how to do something, then that's when it starts to become easy to cut corners. The other thing that I want to bring up when it comes to this kind of unethical behavior is when it comes to the

leadership kind of validation. I've been in organizations where the leader was not validating the positive stuff, like when things were going really, really well, they didn't validate that with their behaviors. And it's not because they they didn't. It's not because that they wanted the lack of ethics to happen. It's because they a loved the accolades they were getting for the positive results and didn't want to lift up

the rug to see the roaches underneath. They were just kind of happy being able to say I don't know that they're doing anything unethical, and it was true, they don't know because but it doesn't mean it's not really their responsibility to know. It is their responsibility to know, and they just decided not to know. When it comes to validating those behaviors, there's only so much that a per can do when they are several layers of leadership

removed from where those behaviors are happening. So if you're a leader of leader of a leader of leaders of leaders, then you may not have much interaction with the people who are executing whatever that strategy is, and it might be very difficult for you to validate those behaviors on

an actual one on basis. But that doesn't mean that it's not your responsibility to speak to your direct reports about the importance of validating those behaviors and to make sure that it sounds something like I would love to know how they're doing this, don't you don't you don't You don't respond from a yeah, right, I'd like to

I don't believe this, Let's see how they're really doing it. No, you can assume positive intent from a standpoint of hey, if you're if this is working so well on your team or with this person, it's we're doing a disservice everybody else. If we don't kind of share the how, right we need to figure out how how how to spread this out to make sure that more people are doing it well. So let's let's validate this with a

with a process. Let's find out how we can get this person to get into a stretch assignment role to teach others how to do this correctly. If they're doing something unethical, Believe me, they will shy away from those stretch assignments because they know that they you know that the emperor has no clothes, right, they want to if they're doing it correctly, they'll want the accolades. They'll be like, yeah, let me, let me show you how I'm doing this.

And you have to keep your keep in mind at the possibility of the person legitimately believing they're doing it the right way, but they're not doing it the right way, so that it's not necessarily unethical, but it doesn't mean

it doesn't need to change. If a person is doing something the wrong way but they believe it's the right way, that just means that the accountability process doesn't look like, Okay, we need to have a discussion around whether or not you belong here, because the decisions you're making fall or you know, rise to the level of a lack of ethics. If it is truly just they don't know how to do it and they think this is the right way, then that person is salvageable with the right training and

the right changes to the process. Because that's that's a difference between you know, performance and character. Is the performance low or or is there a shortage of character?

to investigate further. And while every person on your team deserves time to validate, the people who are the outliers, both at the high end and the low end, need that consistent validation of what the process is that led them to the results to make sure that they are doing it the right way or the people at the low end that they are they have the skills to

do it the right way. If you're a leader of leaders and you don't have as much access or time or visibility to the result, to the behavior is necessary to create the results. It becomes incumbent upon you to speak to your direct reports around the importance of validating the behavior every single time they come to you to talk about results. So, if you're a leader of leaders and the person comes to you and says, look a look at what my team is doing. These are the

people who doing it really well. I love what they're doing. These are the people that I'm working with, and they're talking about how well the team is from a results standpoint, the very next words out of your mouth should be, how are they doing it? I want to know how they're doing it? And if that leader can't that, that leader of people who reports to you can't speak to that, Oh, this is how they're doing it. This abc D, these are the steps. If they can't speak to it right away,

it means that they have not validated it themselves. If they're kind of pencil whipping it on the fly, like they're I gotta make this up as I go. You'll be able to know that. So figure out whether or not they actually can speak to the why behind it, because if that's not the first words out of your mouth, then the person that you're speaking to will be under the impression that what's important to you is the result, not the behavior that got there. And while the results

are important, they're merely a validator for behaviors. And if the behaviors are in line with the ethics and the values of the organization, and that leader can speak to the behaviors that are actually happening, then you're on the right track. But again, pushing back on how did they get there should be the first thing you say, because that will create a culture on your team that says, Okay, my boss knows that what's important here isn't just the results, it's how we got there.

are the actions, what are the behaviors, what are the expectations? Now, let's go validate that that in fact, what you're saying you're doing is exactly what you're doing, And then again, on the flip side of that, if you're having struggles or you're you know, you're seeing people that have opportunities with things, it's important to get to them as well and say, hey, I see it, right, let's work together to figure this out and make sure that you can

see some progress and some improvement here, because if you don't address that, that also can lead to un ethical behavior because they may be desperate to do whatever they can to get whatever they're trying to get, and that could cause a major issue as well from a leadership standpoint.

it up for Lorenzo. He had the highest sales last month, right, he had the highest customer retention last month, then Lorenzo is always getting called out as the top and now people below, people who are not as good, think I need to get more sales, whatever that looks like. But if you as a leader, have done your due diligence to validate the behaviors, you will see positive behaviors out of everybody on the team, and negative behaviors even the people who are not at the top and at the bottom.

So it's like the broken clock is right twice a day. The people who are kind of average on the team, I bet they have really great interactions and really great behaviors at least some of the time. And so while they may need some extra help to get through it all the time. If you're calling out positively not just a person who has the great results, but if you're saying, hey, let's give it up for Lorenzo and Chris, what they did last quarter in terms of customer attention looked like this.

They did. They had these interactions with their customers, They sent these follow up emails, They had these conversations where I heard them say this thing. Not this is the result,

but this is the behavior. If all you're calling out to the broader team as a whole, that what you're looking for is rooted in behaviors and the results are just something that you use behind the scenes to validate those behaviors, your team will very quickly get the impression that what's important is behaviors, and they will try to replicate the behaviors, not replicate the results.