5 Traits of a Toxic Leader

So my camera's not in my shot , I mean my , my phone's not in my shot . I can't seem to get that out of there . So it's not in the shot . Dang it , watch me break that bottle and the whole process . It wouldn't be the first time I've done something stupid . I do things stupid all the time . All righty , there we go .

No , stop that , stop it , stop it , stop it , stop it . There we go , all righty . First of all , we start off with what are you drinking tonight ? What are you drinking tonight ? Chuck is drinking water in my Milwaukee cup . Of course , milwaukee cup . That attaches to my pack-out kits so that way it doesn't fall over . So what are you drinking tonight ?

Tell us in the chat box Of course Shotzi's drinking his normal Dr Pepper , dr Pepper , dr Pepper . Steve Cowles is in the house and Steve Cowles says Chuck is my friend . I appreciate that , steve . I appreciate that , my friend , so I didn't do an acronym for the day today . I don't know what happened .

I just kind of oh well , no acronyms , let's do one off the top of my head IB , ib . What does IB stand for ? Do you know IB ? What does that acronym stand for ? It has something to do with something I was reading today . All right , ib . Yes , you heard Milwaukee . I've got a Milwaukee Packout Kit Cup . Yes , I also have Klein Mod Box too .

Mr Ed , quit harassing me , quit harassing me . Ed always thinks that I hate Milwaukee . I don't hate Milwaukee , I think Milwaukee's a good product . There you go . All right . So IB stands for intelligent building . Intelligent building it's part of the whole building automation stuff . I heard a really cool quote today .

I normally don't do quotes on the Thursday night live stream , but I'm going to do one today and this quote let me know if this resonates with you . Talent might make you good , but your attitude and your work ethic will make you great . Yeah , let me think . Tell me what you think about that one .

Talent might make you good , but your attitude and work ethic is what's going to make you great . Excellent , yes , I thought so too . I thought that was an excellent quote . Excellent quote LinkedIn users in the house . Chuck , long time . How are you doing ? I don't know who you are because it just says LinkedIn user . It doesn't tell me who you are .

So , yeah , tell me who you are . So there you go . So I had a couple of questions . The first one was going to be kind of a long question , right , a long question . The question and this one came from somebody I know . They sent it to me in an email and they said Chuck , we're trying to promote a project foreman to a project manager .

Trying to promote a project foreman to a project manager what are some good signs that would give me an early warning to let me know that this guy would not be a great leader ? Managers and leaders , you are a leader . So I came up with five , five things .

Let me know if you agree with any of these or disagree with any of these , or if you can think of additional ones . The first one is lack of transparency . Lack of transparency . So a poor leader is going to be somebody who's not clear or open about their decision-making process . Just do it , because I told you to do it .

How many times have you heard a project manager say that you don't need to know Just do it this way . But that's not the way the standards are . I'll give you an example .

I did a project that I was the estimator for a project at the Supreme Court building Washington DC and we got awarded a project and our crew was doing the work and the contact on-site contact wanted us to label everything with with Sharpies , which is against standards and against our practice at the time .

And but because our project manager was all buddy buddy with the end user , he just told the crew just do it . And one of the one of the foreman who was running that crew was somebody who just attended one of my Bixie classes and they they knew that that wasn't the right case . So they said I don't care , just use the Sharpies . Yeah , yeah , you know .

The problem here is when you have a leader who has lack of transparency . What that does is it creates mistrust , it creates uncertainty amongst the team members and what that's going to do is eventually , at some point , it's going to erode at the confidence in that leader because they know that he's not getting the whole story .

You know he's less than truthful , you know . Just keep in mind that lack of transparency . Sometimes I understand why some people don't want to be transparent because it hurts to tell people when you did something wrong when you should have known better . That's one of my biggest fears . I'm an RCDD Registered Communications Distribution Designer .

My biggest fear is somebody's going to ask me a question that I don't know the answer to . That's my biggest fear . But I don't have lack of transparency . Even though there's 2,200 pages in the TDMM which I don't have . Oh , there just sitting on the desk back , there's one volume of it right there . There's 2,200 pages in those two books .

I can't memorize everything in this . If somebody asks me a question that I don't know the answer to , I'm fully transparent . I will tell you I don't know . I don't know , but I know somebody who knows . I have a book that knows right . So that being fully transparent , sometimes when you admit your weakness you get respect . People will say , oh , wait a minute .

Well , now I know that Chuck's not going to tell us what he wants us to hear just because he's afraid of something . You know , when you start withholding information again , you're keeping away critical information from your foreman and your crew that they need to perform their job efficiently , effectively and correctly .

As a project manager , your sole well , not your sole , but your main avenue of your boss checking to make sure that you do your job . Did the project come in on time ? Did the project come in on budget ? If you're not giving your team the full information that they need to do the project , you're shooting yourself in the foot .

You're shooting yourself in the foot . It is what it is . The next one is ineffective communication skills . If you listen to my podcast for more than two episodes , you've heard me say If you listen to my podcast for more than two episodes , you've heard me say just because we work in the communications industry doesn't mean we communicate Right .

So again , another poor trader , somebody who's a poor leader , somebody who's ineffective communication skills . They can't articulate ideas or they have an inconsistent message . I think that's the bigger one there , the inconsistent message .

We'll go back to the project manager that was allowing the technicians to label the face plates with Sharpies , but he was running another crew that he was making them put on machine-generated labels . Is that consistent ? You know , our industry is small .

It's a small industry and our crew people , our technicians , our foremen , our installers , our technicians they talk to each other . They talk to each other . It's funny People like to say that women gossip . They don't gossip anything like a technician does . So when you have the ineffective communications , they will talk to each other . Wait a minute .

He lets you use Sharpies on the faceplates there . Well , you know , when you have the ineffective communications , they will talk to each other . No fun , wait a minute , he . He lets you use Sharpies on the Facebook . Well , you know what ? That ?

That that leader gets knocked down a notch because that's going to lead to confusion , that's going to lead to errors and work , because on the next job site the crew might say well , he let us use Sharpies before , so let's use Sharpies again . Well , guess what ? On this project he's enforcing it . Well , there you go .

Now you have to go back and relabel everything . How many times in a project does an estimator put in there to label a faceplate ? Once per faceplate , not more than that . So , again , because the person was a poor leader and they gave them vague instructions on their assignments , or maybe vague instructions on the feedback , or maybe not constructive .

They're not really helping their team work efficiently and that's going to cause them problems , and this all affects team cohesion and productivity . I already mentioned the productivity , but leadership that disrupts the harmony and the collaboration within the team affects how the team operates . Bad attitude travels fast . Bad attitude travels fast .

And then what happens is because of all this lack of team cohesion is what happens is you start getting favoritism . Oh well , you know , chuck , he used to be friends with that guy over there , so he lets him get away with more stuff . Again , that almost comes from those inconsistent policies , right ?

And another one too that that you fail to address conflicts within the team . I did a QA inspection one time , for he's a close friend of mine , we've been friends for 20 plus years 20 plus years but I used to be a QA manager at a company we work for together and I used to QA his jobs every once in a while .

Right , well , I couldn't show him any favoritism when I was doing QAs on his projects , because that word would get out quickly . He wouldn't say anything , but other people on the crew certainly would , and that causes problems . It causes major problems . Another poor trait of a bad leader micromanagers . Micromanagers you know who I'm talking about , right ?

The person who takes excessive control over every task or project , often involving detailed management , maybe even unnecessary execution . My wife used to work for somebody a long time ago they were such a micromanager that they would tell her go ahead , write an email to this customer , but before you send it , send it to me and let me read it .

You know , at some point you got to trust your people . If you give them some guidance , give them some direction , give them a clearly , clearly detailed instruction , as my boss at Custom Computer Cable used to say the clearly defined task assignment that's what he used to call it . Give them a clearly defined task assignment and they will do the right thing .

But if you're a micromanager , what that does is it stifles individual creativity and initiative . Because if I know that I got to send every single email to you to Peru , before I send it out to a customer , even though it might be a simple email , at some point it was like he doesn't trust me .

I'm just going to quit trying to be creative and find ways to think outside the box and maybe do things better . That's going to lead to decreased job satisfaction , decreased morale . You don't think decreased morale is going to cause a problem ? Oh yeah , it will .

Oh yeah , it also stifles creativity because when you're micromanaging , you are stepping on the neck with your boot , that idea , instead of trying to think of new and innovative ways to do things . Instead , you're sticking to the tried and true methods . I got news for you . You've heard me say this before .

Just because that's the way your father did , it doesn't mean that's the way you should still do it . Gosh , if we did that , we'd still be doing coax cable for data type one , type three , right , type nine , twin x , all the fun stuff . Because they're rejecting suggestions without giving consideration .

They might even be penalizing the person for thinking outside of the box . Yeah , all because they're micromanaging . Again . This is another one that also demoralizes the team as well . It absolutely does , and it demoralizes the team because , again , the boss doesn't listen to me . Anyway , I'll tell you right now some of the best stuff I learned .

I've learned from people who have less experience than me . I was at an industry event last week TechFest and I got to sit down in a fiber ribbon lab and the lady who was teaching that , by the way , look her up on Instagram FemFiber my gosh , she's just an amazing person . She's humble , she knows a lot about fiber . I know little about ribbon fiber .

That's why I sat in it . Yeah , chuck doesn't know everything . Chuck doesn't know everything . So I sat in that class to learn that , well , the thing is going back to my poor leadership . The thing is going back to my poor leadership . If I'd have been a poor leader , I would have discounted everything she said , for whatever reason .

Because she had less experience than me , because she's from a different part of the country , because , oh my God , she's a woman , not a man . That's what happens when you start getting those kinds of things . The mind only functions when it's open , just like a parachute . Now here's the impact of that .

I guess you know you're feeling undervalued and stuff , but the impact there is you have higher employee turnover , which means you've got to replace people . You've got to replace people and it costs money to hire somebody .

It costs money to train somebody , it costs money for that new person to get up to speed to the way that you do the things within your company . I'd heard a stat somewhere and I don't know if it's true or not , but it said that for Low Volge's company , on average it takes $30,000 to hire a new employee $30,000 .

Now that counts the salary of a recruiter , that counts the money to be able to put ads on all the job boards , the payroll , the people interviewing them , selecting them , training the new person and then the lower productivity values until that technician gets up to speed . That makes sense , doesn't it Makes sense ?

So , yeah , because of that you can have the problem and it creates a toxic work environment . Toxic work environment . Yeah , you're not going to want to put out your best if your customer's always just , I mean , if your poor manager's always giving you bad information or micromanaging you .

Luckily , I can say this Of all the managers I've had over my career all of them I've never had one that fit all of these categories . I've had people that had maybe one category out of the bunch , but I'm talking about all of them .

And here's the thing A lot of people will say well , you know , chuck , micromanaging is just attention to detail , it's accountability . Let's be careful . Let's make a clarification here , because it's extremely important to distinguish the difference between oversight and overbearing control . Uh , who was it ?

Um , um , oh , he was one of the one of the first black um chief of staff for the army . Um , oh , what ? That was his name . He had a saying , a saying one of the managers that I used to work with . He had it written on his board . He said trust , but verify . Trust but verify . That's the difference . That's okay to trust but verify .

That's different than micromanaging . You need to have a balanced approach . You need to make sure that you enforce the standards , you track the progress , but you do it without stepping on the autonomy of your employee .

Lecture that your employee knows that you are open to change , you're open to listening to them and saying okay , you know what , that is a great idea , let's do it that way Instead of oh no , we can't do that . I used to tell my techs all the time I have an open door policy Come in , talk to me .

If you have a plan or an idea to make us faster , more efficient , I'll listen to it and if I think it's a great idea , we will implement it . But by the flip side of that , there also may be some information on the back side that you may not know . That might be in the scope of work that says we can't do it that way .

But I was always open to listening to suggestions and I've listened to a lot of people over my career . You know communication is one of the most critical parts of communications Listening , listening , and here listening , listening , and listening to understand , not listening to respond . Those are different , listening to understand .

Try to think of it from that person's point of view . Another major red flag when it comes to you know who is a look ? This whole show is going to be about poor leadership . For some reason , I didn't think it would take 30 minutes to go through this . But another , another red flag Again , if you know , if you got a red flag , put it in chat box .

Look , when you have a leader who is resistant to change , they're unwilling to adapt to some new circumstance or some new innovation within the industry . I'll give you a hint Terminating MPTLs and testing them . There's a specific way and it changed just a couple of years back , two years back , three years back , something like that .

Well , you might have a leader who says no , no , no , this is the way I've always done it , because they're resisting the change . Well , guess what ? The standard state is supposed to do it ? The new way . The customer's contract says we got to do it that way . The manufacturer is going to be issuing us a warranty says it's got to be done that way .

It's got to be done that way , and the impact here is that's going to stagnate the progress and make the organization lag behind the competitors Because , I guarantee you , the good companies , the good companies are open to change . They embrace change . There's a few of them out there .

A few of them out there , you know E2 Optics , vision Technologies oh , I can't think of the other one off the top of my head oh , ies , that's it . Those types of companies embrace change . They embrace it because , yes , they know that it might be a little bit of a hurdle at first , but in the long run it's going to be well worth it .

If you dismiss new technology or processes that might be able to enhance your efficiency , or maybe even refuse to consider any other alternative business strategies , or maybe even refuse to consider any other alternative business strategies , again , those will have a direct impact to the bottom line of the project , the bottom line of the company , and it affects your

people . No-transcript , I'll say that again . Somebody who won't admit mistakes , let me know if you've ever had a boss or a leader in your organization who would never admit that they did wrong or that they messed up . Everybody makes a mistake , everybody messes up . Everybody messes up .

A refusal to acknowledge that you did something wrong or you made a misjudgment , that's a big dark cloud over somebody , because what that does is it undermines that leader's credibility , because they know that you probably know the person , this type of person .

They do something wrong and then they might realize that they're doing it wrong , but now that they're in it , they double down on it and that makes them even more wrong . I then they might realize that they're doing it wrong , but now that they're in it , they double down on it and that makes them even more wrong . I'm sorry , that's a poor leader right there .

That's a poor leader . A good leader will say hey , I did this once when I first started working for my current company 13 years ago . I did something wrong I don't remember what it was and I ended up having to buy another airline ticket , something , something wrong .

I don't remember what it was and I ended up having to end up having to buy another airline ticket . Something happened I can't remember what it was , and I told my boss hey , here's what's going on . And just so he knew , because he tracked our flights and stuff , I gotta make sure we got home safe and he's okay .

But then when I turned in the expense report he was like where's the , where's the receipts ? You didn't put that extra plane ticket on there I said no , that was my fault , I'll take the burden on that . You know what that does is that raises my accountability , my integrity , in my boss's eye . So again , a poor leader .

They're not going to admit their mistakes , they're just not . And what they're going to do is they're going to start blaming those factors on other team members . That's another one , too right . Well , you know the estimator . The estimator messed up that bid . Did the estimator really mess it up ?

You know every estimate that goes out the door has a mistake in it , every estimate . That's why they're called estimates . So blame me , another person . If you find somebody who blames other people all the time , all the time , that's a red flag .

As a bad leader , I would be willing to say that if you have somebody as a manager , if one of my subordinates does something wrong , I'm not going to and my boss is asking me . I'm not going to tell my boss . Well , you know , johnny did that . No , buck stops with me .

My mistake , I will take care of it and then I'll talk to my excuse me , my subordinate in private and we'll talk . We'll figure out how to keep that from happening again . You know that's what a good leader does .

A bad leader is going to say oh no , johnny did it , it's all Johnny's fault , right , they're going to blame other other team members , other people , instead of taking personal responsibility . Oh , here's another one . Here's a bonus one . I just thought of this one they avoid accountability . They avoid accountability .

Now this looks like you know a leader who's evading responsibility for the outcomes of their decisions or the actions they took .

Right , and we could probably think of lots of projects that we've done that , lots of projects that it's happened , and the impact here is it can lead to a lack of trust , lack of respect from the team members , maybe even the customers . If a customer has lack of respect for you , guess what ? You just lost a customer .

You know how hard it is to get a customer . You know first you got to call . You know you cold call 100 people . If you're lucky , maybe 10 of those will return your call . Of those 10 , you might actually get to meet face-to-face with two of them , and of those two , if you're lucky , you might get one opportunity to bid something .

It's a lot of effort and time and resource to get a customer . Why lose a customer because you did something so stupid that you weren't taking the accountability for your decision . I've had customers before . I did a project . One time I was an estimator and I was estimating a project and I forgot to put in the pricing for the cable .

I've had the labor in there . The customer asked for a specific kind of cable , had a long lead time so it had to go through distribution and it took a while to get the pricing . I forgot to go back and put the pricing for the cable in .

The labor was there but the cost of the material wasn't and I submitted the price to the customer and once I realized what I did , the customer already accepted the job . We signed the contract and once I realized what I did , I went back to the customer and said hey , chuck made a mistake I hate to say this and it was a significant value .

It was like $25,000 . It was a pretty significant value . And I told him . I said look , here's what happened . We'd asked for pricing on that special cable that you'd wanted and it took some time because they had to contact the manufacturer , there was some lead time and blah , blah , blah and I forgot to put the price in when I submitted you the bid .

Because of that . You know what the customer did for me , the customer . He said to me he goes . I could see how that would happen , so you know what they did was he said we have cable in our warehouse left over from previous projects .

You're more than welcome to use that Boom Right All because I took personal responsibility for my mistake , I made myself accountable . I was ready , I was ready to start doing the project and paying the cost for the cable out of my project . I knew the project was going to go into red .

I knew my boss was going to yell and scream at me because the guy that I worked for at that time , at that point in his career , his whole way of managing people was screaming at them and you could tell when he was mad because he would start to get this vein in his neck and start to pulse right .

I wasn't looking forward to that conversation , but thank god that cosmo you know , because they trusted me and they understand that I I shared my vulnerability and I took personal accountability because I told him so we'll still do the project , even though I forgot the cabling . Thanks , no , no , no , don't worry about that .

Now there are going to be times when customers are going to say , okay , too bad , so sad you got to bite the bullet . But you know what , at the end of the day , you still got to look at that person in the mirror . You still got to look at that person in the mirror and I'd much rather look at that person in the mirror and be happy with myself .

Somebody asked what distributor did we utilize ? So I worked in Anthony's in-house . So at that time I was working in the Northern Virginia area , so we used Graybar and Anixter Graybar and Anixter . And it was Graybar who was providing the price and it was not Graybar's fault , it was Chuck's fault , not Graybar's fault .

And I submitted the pricing and my inside sales rep she was a really great person she said , hey , not a problem , it's gonna take me a couple days to get this price for you because it's special order . And I said not a problem , and I forgot . I forgot . So it was not distribution's problem , it was my problems .

So I owned up to my own , my own mistake , and I was ready to take the fall for that and be done with that . That's the sign of a good leader . A bad leader is not going to own up to the repercussions . They're not going to own up to it and they're not going to own up to their poor decisions and they're going to shift that blame .

So that way it puts them in more favorable light . More favorable light , favorable light , more favorable light . Somebody's got a question . What's my thoughts on AD getting involved in the data and enterprise connectivity space ? Patrick , I hate to admit this but I don't know what . Did I say AD or did I say ADI ?

Hold on , let me put on my glasses so I can actually read the comments on this thing . Oh , adi . Okay , I was like AD . What's AD ? More power to them . More power to them . I think the more people in the space , the better the opportunity . It's gonna be more competitive . That might drive down the prices and stuff , but I think it's a good thing .

I think competition is a good thing . I truly do . I truly do .

Let's go back and look at some of our comments , because I wasn't really paying attention to the comments because I was on a roll there . It happens sometimes . Holy cow , there was tons of them in here . Let me see Shati . He got the acronym correct . He said intelligent building . Ed says I need some Makita .

I used to have a Makita drill a long , long time ago , long , long time ago , ed asked me if I've seen his patch box video yet . And what do I think of their system ? I somehow missed that , ed . I'll go look at it after my RCD study group tonight . I promise you , my friend , I promise you . So here we go .

Another comment comes in says my work ethic just landed me a six-figure income . Attitude , attitude and ethic just landed me a six-figure . See , it pays off . It pays off to have not just be good , but to have good work ethic and have good attitude . It pays off . It paid off for LinkedIn user .

I don't know who that is , they know me , I don't know who they are . Six-figure job that's not shabby . Not shabby at all . Jane's in the house . There's Janeane . Throwing people under the bus isn't horrible . People don't come first . Throw people under the bus isn't ? Isn't humble ? Yeah , okay , I'm sorry , I misread it . That's what happens .

You don't have your glasses on . Yes , yes , yes . If you don't take care of your people , what's going to happen is when , when push comes to shove and and something goes wrong , they're not going to jump through the hoops . If you need to work overtime to get a job done , they're going to say , yeah , well , you know what .

You threw me under the bus , right , jane ? You threw me under the bus and , jane , I still need to get you on the show . I still need to get you on the show . We need to finalize that . Shotzi says never admitting faults , blaming others and issues are always red flags .

He says never admitting faults , blaming others and issues are always red flags , absolutely red flags . Lack of communication . They think secrecy is their power , and that's a very true statement , because in our industry we tend to hold information close to our chest .

We don't want to teach the new people how to do things because we're afraid that they're going to take our job . Yes , they're going to take your job , but you're supposed to be taking the job of the person above you , right ? A good leader here's one . I didn't say this .

A good leader is always training their replacement , always training their replacement , always training their replacement . Steve Cowles chimes in . Good managers give praise in public and chastise , correct or criticize in private . Absolutely , shotzi , thank you . It was Colin Powell . Colin Powell who said trust but verify . And then Steve said it right behind him .

So 10,000 points to both Steve and Shotzi , because they both got it correct . John Bowser's in the house , my cousin In my department I try to use the principle of HRO to help with leadership and staff workability . Here are some of the principles in a high reliability organization Sensitivity to operations , preoccupation of failure and reluctance .

You ran out of characters , didn't you ? Hey , john , let's get on the show . Let's have you and I come on the show and do a show about that , all righty . So , ed , yep , he said it too . Colin powell yep , see , why does everybody remember that name , but not me ? Right ? Jason's in the house . Make sure you go to jason's youtube channel , subscribe to it .

He's a good guy . Uh , trust but verify is a russian proverb , and r and Ronald Reagan used to say it , but maybe that's where Colin Powell got it , because Colin Powell used to be one of Ronald Reagan's main generals , one of his four-star generals , right ? Every president , you'll say , since born fits that description .

Let's not get into politics , ed , let's not get into politics , okay , let's not get into politics . Never admitting fault is new management style of the 2000s . Unfortunately it is . It truly is . Jane says make a mistake as a woman , lol , and you'll see a molehill become a mountain . You know , there's a lot of truth in that statement , jane .

There is a lot of truth in that statement , and I have noticed that the entry has gotten better , but we're a long way from perfect . And if somebody's making a mountain out of a molehill just because somebody did or something wrong with a girl , the problem is not with the lady , it's with the person who's making that accusation . So there you go .

Alrighty , linkedin only took 28 years . I'm not sure what that means . And then we see sensitivity , operations , preoccupation , failure and reluctance to simplify , resilience and deference to expertise . So , john , let's get you on the show man , let's get you on the podcast , let's talk .

I want to learn more about this stuff and I think the audience would love it as well , too Well , I'm already five minutes past my time . I didn't even get to the questions . Didn't even get to the questions , so you have to come back next Thursday night for the questions . I didn't expect the leadership one to take as long as it did .

I truly didn't expect that . So , all right , everybody , until next time . Knowledge is power .