215: Why your team seems entitled (and what’s really causing it)

Lia (00:00)
Let's talk entitlement. Woo, this is a word I am hearing all of the time when managers or business owners are talking about their teams saying, they're so entitled. They just, they think everything's gonna come so easily. They just make demands all the time without even showing up and doing the work. Like this is, it's starting to really drive us up the wall. This sense of entitlement that we feel like our employees are bringing. And it is,

not just directed at Gen Z, okay, I that's the first question that comes up. Well, is this new generation this or that? It's coming up across all sorts of generations and backgrounds and work experiences and roles. So there is a feeling, and I think we are at a crosshairs, we've gotta be talking about this in the workplace, where supervisors, managers, business owners, founders, whatever,

are feeling like their subordinates, the employees, are feeling entitled. And the employees, let's just call it, are feeling like they're getting taken advantage of or taken for granted or whatever, right? And so there's, we're at this moment where everybody feels like they're being wronged by the other. And so today on the show, I wanna talk about this, how it's showing up and what you can do about it as a leader, because I will tell you right now that the more you...

you know, harbor this resentment for your team members. And you're thinking, they're so entitled. And you're like rolling your eyes when they ask for something or, you know, you have this, even if you feel like you're doing a really good job of covering it and acting like everything's fine and playing nice. When you feel that under the surface, it comes through. It is an energetic shift that your team members can see. They know that you're not feeling good about them.

And so they feel worried about you and it creates this really bad vicious cycle. I'm telling you that because I've seen it over and over and over. I have seen it with clients that run small businesses. I've seen it with managers that are in the corporate world where they think like, I'm just really fresh with my team, but I'm gonna put on a good face. And the team notices, right? They may not be able to put their finger on exactly what it is, but if you...

or going around thinking your team members are entitled and that is the sentiment you have, they know it and it will directly contribute to the work product that you see from them. And that work product's gonna be worse, okay? This is the New Manager Playbook podcast. I'm Lea Garvin and I'm on a mission to make managing your team the easiest part of your job. So let's talk about what this perception is that we have as leaders.

And I kind of said at the start of show, we're feeling like our team members feel like they deserve more than they do. They think they should move faster than they should. Like they should get that promotion after one project. They should get more time off. I have a client who right now they're struggling with a team member that's taking, asking for unpaid extra vacation days. And they're thinking, the team member is like, well, you don't have to pay me. Why can't it be gone? Well, to the employer.

They're thinking you can't be gone because we give you generous vacation time because that's how we plan the year. We actually can't be down another team member. They have a small team. They can't actually afford that. Other team members have to pick too much slack up for that person when they're gone. It's not about being paid or not. I have another team member who after, and I talked about this a little bit on communication around raises, another client who after giving folks very generous raises,

at the end of 2024, everybody came to them like, yep, where's my raise? That better be matched. I want that same bonus. And the business owner was really worried about being able to sustain that over time. And for a couple of folks who hadn't actually delivered at that same level they had the previous year, they felt like something was being taken away from them. And it was a really hard conversation. I have another client who gave their team members the last two weeks of December off, and they want to be really generous with this.

you know, this extra time, it's not part of the vacation day, so it's a holiday break in addition to vacation, super generous. And for the first two weeks of the month, they've had people coming in really, really with a slow start, feeling like, hey, I'm just easing in, I'm just getting caught up from being gone so long, I'm kind of getting, having trouble ramping in. And that leader's thinking, gosh, I just gave you all this time off, are you kidding me? Lot of resentments building up on that leader's side.

A lot of it. Now my managers in the corporate world, you're coming in strong, you're getting pressure, Q1, what are the goals, what are the plans, make sure you start reporting. It's almost, we're almost at the end of month one, where are you at with things? And if your team members are having that same slow start, you are shouldering the burden of being the only one that's actually kind of taken it seriously that the year has started again and we're like on. And you're feeling resentful and you're feeling like, hey, I don't know I'm gonna do all of this alone.

So this is what I'm starting to see or saw at the end of the year and all of these things, you are completely in your right to be frustrated. This is very frustrating. Okay, I wanna acknowledge that. The thing that we have to figure out now is what am I doing with that frustration? Am I caring it? Am I getting curious about it? Am I thinking about, well, this has a couple perspectives. There's actually more to the story here.

Am I trying to understand what my team member might be thinking? This is the moment where you make or break what happens on the other side. Did you decide your team members are entitled and they don't deserve what they're asking for and they don't understand the pressure that you're under and you maybe don't have the right team and you start spiraling about how everybody sucks? Are you in that space? I've been there. I've worked with clients.

who are at that rock bottom with their team and they said, I don't think I have the right people. Should I just fire them and start over? That is, just gonna be really honest, that's not a good place to be building from. And when you are at that place, everyone else is wrong, should I scrap it and start over? There's a real talk here. You're likely not taking a lot of responsibility for how it got there.

So the first question I would ask you if you were my client and you're like, think I just need to get rid of everybody is, well, you know, what role did you play in kind of getting to this point? That's a hard question to answer. What role did you play in getting it to this point? We may not want to answer that, but when we answer that and we suck it up and we go, well, I let a lot of behaviors continue that weren't working. I didn't give the feedback.

I didn't wanna have hard conversations or I was really busy. I didn't have two minutes to stop and I let things go. And now a one-time thing has become a pattern and it feels irreparable. Taking responsibility and saying something like that, that doesn't mean you're a bad leader. It doesn't mean you screwed everything up. It means you're thinking, hey, okay, I had a role in this. Now I can have a role in fixing it.

And I say that because I think a lot of times it can feel like we're very exposed as a leader when we acknowledge the role that we played in something. But when our team members are feeling quote unquote or showing up as quote unquote entitled and we don't take responsibility for what we set up there, then we will never be able to break that cycle. I wanna be really clear. Yes, there are gonna be those diamonds in the rough.

Those unit quarantine members who care as much as you do and it doesn't matter, anything else, they will always do the best possible job. That is their personal sense of accountability. They bring it, but that's not gonna be every single team member. So yeah, it's fantastic when you have a lot of those people and a lot of the folks that I work with, everybody I work with I should say, never finds a team entirely made up of those people. We're never going to. Doesn't mean the rest of the people aren't valuable. Doesn't mean they don't do great work.

So we don't want to write off people just because they don't think, eat, sleep, and think about the job. Okay? That's not fair. It's not going to be everybody.

So when you have decided, you know, everyone's entitled, it's all like them, them, and you don't take that responsibility, you are stuck. You will never be able to break out of that. It starts with you, okay? It's gotta start with you. Now, when you think about, okay, what role did I play in this? And I'm gonna answer the question for you. It's always, where could I have been more clear? Where could I have given better feedback, more timely feedback?

Where could I have set expectations? Where could I have had this conversation sooner? Where could I have actually given some space for folks to actually take ownership? It's one of those answers, okay? That's your answer, Poole. On the other side of this is the question, what is my team member actually wanting? Okay, that's our second question. What role did I play in this? What is my team member wanting? The entitled thing, how it shows up for us, is someone asking for something they don't.

deserve necessarily, they don't understand how it works necessarily, they're asking for something before it's been earned, right? That's what we're really, well, what does the person actually want? They wanna feel valued, they wanna feel needed, they wanna feel respected. That's the answer, okay? So, you know, I think you're asking them also, but it's likely to be one of those things. How do we ensure someone feels valued, heard, needed, wanted?

accepted, belong, right? there's a set of kind of basic things that people need to feel safe and to feel valued, right? There is a finite list of things. And when it shows up as entitlement, a lot of times it's because our team members misunderstood.

what is the process, what is the expectation? Maybe they have the wrong idea because of past jobs or roles they worked in or things that did come easier to them. But that's not that they are inherently flawed. And so we can't say to ourselves, I have the wrong people, these people are terrible, I'm out of here, whatever. No, it's about understanding. And the more clarity we bring, the more we see is this person in it, can they adjust their expectations? Are they okay with where we're at? Or are we at a mismatch?

Now, it is a real big pain when this happens six months in. So this is why your hiring process is so critical. That's why talking to people about what does career progression look like at your company? How long is it typically between a role or a rung in the ladder? What do promotions look like? What do raises look like? That's why with my small business owner clients, we map all of that out so that you can explain it to people that you're hiring so there aren't surprises.

A lot of folks ask me, hey, when should I create this ops playbook or when should I bring you in to set up the system, you for how my team runs? Shouldn't I have everyone hired first? No. If you're about to make some big roles, you want to map this out before that so that you can make sure that everybody's clear, big or small roles. And if you already have folks in place, it's about re-anchoring them to, how do we work here? What are the expectations? It's never too early to get more clear, trust me.

So when we are thinking about how do I prevent this feeling of entitlement or people not understanding or people for asking for things that just don't, can't do or make sense, it is again about getting more clear. I work with med spa owners, gym owners, salon spas, all kinds of services that have late night hours or weekends, right? A lot of times these go into the evenings and there's a Saturday and or a Sunday. Well, a lot of times what I start to see is over time,

Employees say I don't want to work on the weekends or I don't want to do the evenings even though obviously the Business is open on the weekends and the question the business owner has is well who is gonna be there? Like what do you think is gonna happen? Someone's gotta be there This is a conversation that should not happen three months after someone starts Explicitly clear in the interview in the in the even first conversations is this is the schedule. These are the hours

When you sign up to work here, you are committing to this. Yes, we're good, good to go. In the onboarding, then we talk about this. don't wait till someone brings it up later and goes, actually, I didn't wanna do that. If someone says, actually, I don't wanna work on the weekends and that was what their job is required, there's a conversation around, this a fit? These are things that we can get ahead of. When we get to that situation I talked about where you gave generous bonuses.

And then you get to the next year and you're like, God, I can't sustain this. Talking to your team members in advance about how you are approaching giving out bonuses. Right? This is why this is part of the ops playbook work that we do together is we say, what's our philosophy around bonuses? What is our philosophy on pay raises? So that it doesn't feel random and it doesn't feel like something's getting taken away. When we feel our team members are entitled because they're asking for promotions before the time is due. Well, they're asking because they don't know how it works. So.

Spell it out. Again, a piece of the Ops playbook is what are the roles we have? What does progression look like? What are expectations for each level? How do you jump from one to the next? How long is that jump take? That is the kind of thing that I map out for you so that you don't have to be feeling like, no, but you know, people are just asking me the same thing over and over and I'm just telling them like, wait, I'll get to it later. The feeling of entitlement, this is a perception. This is a, we are having a mismatch in understanding.

And when you clarify it, now you get under the surface and you can say, hey, are we aligned? Do we both want this? Do we both like this? Where are we at? So I really encourage you, if you're feeling like everyone's entitled and they're asking for stuff, it's like the question, the curiosity first, what role have I played in this? where could I be more clear? What feedback could I've given? That's really where we start, personal responsibility, right? That creates our team members to take responsibility. And then thinking,

what do they really want? where do we get a line around this? We don't ever wanna be in a situation where we feel hostage to an employee that's making demands, right? This is something that, again, I see a lot. We have a team member and they are an A player, they are crushing it, they're fantastic. And then that person knows it. So they start saying, actually, I want you to double my salary this year, I'm gonna leave. Like someone that makes unreasonable demands like that.

There's other issues, right? With like, are they a culture fit? Are they really looking out for the best interests in the business? Have they made a contribution that's really valuing that? Those are some things to figure out. But I would say, we want to always have a philosophy and a methodology behind these things so that it feels fair and we can be equitable. And we can sustain this going forward. My corporate managers who have less control over pay and progression potentially,

We want our team members to understand what is the criteria for a promotion still, right? How long does it typically take? What kinds of projects do I need to work on? What are ways in which I can get closer to that? The same issues show up in whatever work environment you're in because people, they, you know, we all want, wish we could get paid more. We all, know, not everyone wants more responsibilities. I'm gonna be very clear about that. Not everybody wants to take on more responsibilities. And that's another piece to think about.

Okay, if someone's asking for more pay and they really don't want more responsibilities, well, that's a level setting conversation. When the way that we get more pay is actually taking on more responsibility. It's not just being here a long time.

Again, right, that is a get clear on the same page. So entitlement is something that I hear again, hear about the word comes up every day. It's a question, are they entitled? Am I missing something? Well, let's first ask, what am I missing? What role am I playing in the way this dynamic is shaping up? Where can I be more curious? How can I understand that team member better? Where can I get more clear? And then you see, is this a match or not?

the asking for something and it feeling like a little bit out of place, we can anchor it back into its right place and then figure out if we have a future here. All right, and truly this is why the Ops Playbook has been so transformational for small businesses is because we take that guesswork out. All these frustrating conversations where every freaking week someone's asking you about their raise and their next promotion and this and that, where you feel like, hey, like not yet, not yet, but you have no framework. Of course, someone's gonna ask about it if you...

They're looking out for themselves or they don't ask you about it and they leave, right? The person that doesn't ask you out is like, well, I didn't know where I stood. I don't know if I have a future here. They leave. The more we spell it out upfront, the clearer we make it. The more you have this like physical playbook of like, here is how everything works. Here's how you're successful. Your team members feel so excited to come to work. So excited to deliver. excited to step up as an owner. It's game changing.

And that entitlement issue that can sort of be their origin of these conversations is wiped out because everybody is on the same page. So ask yourself those questions. We don't need to feel stuck and resentful. And when we do show up that way, our team members notice and they are going to leave because no one wants to feel like I'm in a team where my managers are like me. Ugh, no.

but we solve this through these questions, through setting up these systems, and it starts to create such a more positive goodwill in both directions. I promise you that. If you need support, you wanna talk more about the Ops Playbook, see what this would look like for your team, reach out at hello at learva.com, and I would love to support you in feeling this freedom, feeling excited about your team members. It is literally the most liberating and game-changing feeling because it's a reflection of you.

the team members and their enthusiasm about the work and their feeling connected to it, this is what you're here for. You are a leader, whether you like the leadership stuff or not, you have hired these folks, it is on you to deal with this, it is on you to solve it, and I'm here to support you every step of the way. See you next time.