Podcast Ep 51 | How to Prevent Mondayitis

This week on the The Growth Whis­pers Kevin and Brad are dis­cussing ​“Mon­dayi­tis” and how it pre­vents peo­ple from build­ing great endur­ing companies.

The most chal­leng­ing part is some­times it affects us as the senior lead­ers in a com­pa­ny because we just get sick and tired of things with­in the busi­ness and unfor­tu­nate­ly, we tol­er­ate them for so long they become normal.

Kevin and Brad share the 7 dif­fer­ent caus­es of Mon­dayi­tis and what you can do to pre­vent or elim­i­nate it.

EPISODE TRAN­SCRIPT

Please note that this episode was tran­scribed using an AI appli­ca­tion and may not be 100% gram­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.

Brad Giles 00:13

Wel­come to the growth whis­pers where every­thing we talk about is build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies every­thing that you need to do every­thing that you need to think about to build an endur­ing great com­pa­ny. I’m Brad Giles, and as always joined today by my co host, Kevin Lawrence, how are you doing today?

Kevin Lawrence 00:32

I’m doing great, Brad. Except for the fact that it’s the end of the day in as dark you know, as the Yeah, I know it’s day­time there but I’m actu­al­ly doing real­ly well just had that a spring break with my kids are actu­al­ly in the mid­dle of it, but had some time off with my kids last week, which was fun. And look­ing for­ward to the show today as always.

Brad Giles 00:52

Yes, I men­tioned to you just before we’ve we’re at the end of our sum­mer so and spent some time at the beach, which has been great. Went to a foot­ball match yes­ter­day with 38,000 peo­ple at our sta­di­um here in Perth, a large foot­ball sta­di­um and yeah, it was great to be back in a large crowd, you know, in an excit­ing match. Real­ly good. One word open up. Yeah, one word open out or one phrase. So what’s mine for today?

Kevin Lawrence 01:31

I was think­ing about it. my word today is per­sis­tence. And I’m going to read you some­thing in a minute, which is my favorite quote on per­sis­tence. But I’ll give you the con­text first, so on. Late last week, my son Bray­den, and I were up doing one of the activ­i­ties we like to do called snow bik­ing, which is a motor­cy­cle with a snow­mo­bile track on the front and a ski. Those are just a track on the back and ski on the front, and you go in the moun­tains, and you can kind of go any­where you want. And it’s a lot of fun. So it took my son for the first time. He had tried one before but just rid­ing it around, not like we’re doing so took him for the first time. We went on had a heck of a great day. It was awe­some. He did great. My bud­dy was there with his son who also did well on his snow­mo­bile, a tra­di­tion­al snow machine. And we had a great day, and you know, had the hot tub after had din­ner hung out and it was all real good. And then the next day my son was sore, like sore like, his butt was sore because the seat keeps hit­ting your butt when you go over bumps. Uh-huh. And he did­n’t want to go. He was just too tired to go in. And basi­cal­ly he could­n’t sit on the seat. So what he end­ed up doing is he mus­tered it up and he went and did it. And he actu­al­ly had to ride sidesad­dle mean­ing he could­n’t have his butt on the seat at have like his side on the seat is hurt too much. But so he’s rid­ing this way, and then he’s rid­ing this way. Any­way, so it’s per­sis­tence. And you know what I know one of the one of my great­est strengths as a human is per­sis­tence. It served me well. And some­times I think I have more per­sis­tence than I do intel­li­gence, although per­sist­ing has made me smarter because I’ve learned so much so I’ll share a quote. This was in my friend, a good friend of mine. I grew up with Steve Dale-John­son. His father Rod, had this hang­ing up in his office. And this is from Calvin Coolidge. Those of you watch­ing the video I’ve got it on screen. And Calvin Coolidge the quote is noth­ing in the world can take the place of per­sis­tence. Tal­ent will not. Noth­ing is more com­mon than unsuc­cess­ful men or women with tal­ent. Genius will not unre­ward­ed genius is almost a proverb. Edu­ca­tion will not, the world is full of edu­cat­ed dere­licts. per­sis­tence and deter­mi­na­tion alone are omnipo­tent. The slo­gan press on has solved and always will solve the prob­lems of the human race.

Kevin Lawrence 04:11

that’s my word today, per­sis­tence, because it’s almost a mantra in my life. And last thing just on that, I watched the I rewatch the movie recent­ly of Catch me if you can. And, you know, there’s a quote in there where the con man, it’s his father who kind of teach­es them. And he tells a sto­ry about two frogs in a buck­et of milk. And, you know, one frog drowns. And then the buck­et of cream, sor­ry, and then the oth­er frog kicks and kicks and kicks so much that he turns the cream into but­ter, and then hops out, which is again anoth­er sto­ry about per­sis­tence. So that’s a long word. long wind­ed one word but per­sis­tence is the theme of the day in the week. How about you, Brad?

Brad Giles 04:59

Noth­ing, at all that is as com­pelling as that. Yeah. Last week, my word was spi­ral. Okay. And that was we are spi­ral­ing up every time we work with a lead­er­ship team, okay? A month, a quar­ter a year goes around, we want to be at a high­er lev­el as we spi­ral upwards. And then this week, as I’ve reflect­ed, it’s real­ly about con­fi­dence. And that’s the con­fi­dence that we get when we work with peo­ple in the long term. And it’s, you know, I just, I just real­ly despise words like growth hack­ing, or phras­es like growth hack­ing, because there’s, there’s some­thing to be said for it being endur­ing. And the way to build that is focus on a long term things focus over a long term on the long term things. So yeah, my word is confidence.

Kevin Lawrence 05:59

Con­fi­dence. Yes. Love it. You know, Brad, what you were just say­ing, there’s some­thing real­ly inter­est­ing in that we’re in a world of quick fix­es, take a pill for any­thing, take a short­cut hack this hack that. I mean, it’s great to learn those things. But endur­ing suc­cess is from lay­er­ing in lay­ers of dis­ci­pline, and learn­ing and progress. And, you know, and per­sis­tence and build­ing con­fi­dence, and com­pe­tence. But yeah, there’s so many peo­ple get caught up in it, you know, growth hack­ing some­times reminds me of the get rich quick schemes, you know, those pyra­mid schemes that come along or any­thing else, and you know, and you

Brad Giles 06:38

know, who’s, you know, who the per­son who is, you know, who the per­son that gets rich? In a get rich, quick scheme. It’s the per­son that sold you the scheme. Exactly.

Kevin Lawrence 06:50

I know. It’s awe­some. Any­way, so let’s get into our show today. So we’re talk­ing about per­sis­tence and con­fi­dence. Inter­est­ing­ly, those things go very well togeth­er. Brad, you got an idea? I can see it on your face. Please. Tell me this is going to be awe­some. Hold on, ladies and gen­tle­men, He is so excit­ed about what he’s about to tell us. It’s gonna be awesome.

Brad Giles 07:12

Yeah, so per­sis­tence and con­fi­dence. Great way to start. But one oth­er point, as we begin is that it’s now a year since the pan­dem­ic began. Yeah, so it was a year ago, pret­ty much today or this week, when all of the major things like coun­tries clos­ing their bor­ders. Every­one was absolute­ly in pan­ic mode, try­ing to fig­ure out what is going to hap­pen. The cas­es were esca­lat­ing, there was­n’t a new nor­mal. So yeah, the pan­dem­ic, it’s an inter­est­ing sub­ject that we’ve got today, because the pan­dem­ic a year ago was kick­ing off. And as we were talk­ing about this sub­ject, which you know, is Mon­day is Mon­dayi­tis is actu­al­ly a pan­dem­ic in itself, if you let it run free, if you don’t use the appro­pri­ate quar­an­tine mech­a­nisms, if you don’t use the appro­pri­ate safe­ty mech­a­nisms in your orga­ni­za­tion. Mon­day, itis can become a real real problem.

Kevin Lawrence 08:21

Yeah, and it creeps up on you. And that’s the chal­lenge with it is that it starts to weigh you down, kind of like a cloud hang­ing over your head, and then the hang head of your team. And then your whole divi­sion, some­times the whole com­pa­ny, it kind of creeps up on you. So yeah, that’s what we’re talk­ing about today. Mon­dayi­tis and we’re not talk­ing about, you know, the Mon­day is that our good friends that might have a prob­lem with alco­hol or some oth­er sub­stance have, or it tends to be Sun­day night, they hit it too hard and don’t make it to work on Mon­day. Although it is a sim­i­lar thing when there’s some sort of psy­cho­log­i­cal ten­sion or dis­tress that makes you not want to come to the office. So we Brad did some very impor­tant research. We went on to the inter­net and we looked at this thing called the urban dic­tio­nary. It’s a very it’s um yes, it’s kind of like the Har­vard of urban dic­tio­nar­ies. I’m sure it’s a very cred­i­ble source. I should prob­a­bly yes, but this is peo­ple’s opin­ions on it’s it’s not a word. It’s

Brad Giles 09:21

just there’s a lot of very fun­ny def­i­n­i­tions on there. There is Yeah,

Kevin Lawrence 09:27

yeah, we picked one suit­or for us. I real­ly wish some­one had writ­ten here is Mon­dayi­tis from you know from urban dic­tio­nary. It’s a feel­ing of weari­ness, sad­ness, apa­thy, and gen­er­al dis­tress that many indi­vid­u­als feel when start­ing the Mon­day morn­ing work­week. This feel­ing is usu­al­ly enhanced after a large week­end Now, also to hold true to our friends in the Mid­dle East and oth­er places that run a dif­fer­ent cal­en­dar. In a place where you work Sun­day to Fri­day, it would be Sun­day itis right? Not Mon­day. I For peo­ple that work on a dif­fer­ent cal­en­dar than we do in the West, but the point of it is it’s just it’s basi­cal­ly dread­ing going to work for what­ev­er rea­son, and peo­ple either show­ing up unen­thu­si­as­tic, like not hap­py to be there, not ful­ly ener­gized, ready to go and hit it first thing in the morn­ing, or actu­al­ly call­ing in sick, which we call it in the West. And what do you call this, call­ing in sick over in your part of the strange world there

Brad Giles 10:26

we would call if, if you’re due to come to work if it’s an assigned work­day, and you decide not to because you don’t prob­a­bly have the moti­va­tion. Let’s say if you’re real­ly sick, then you’re sick, right. But we’ll call it throw­ing a sickie.

Kevin Lawrence 10:44

Throw­ing a sick­ie, I like it. So no mat­ter what, and look, and here’s the thing, we want to say, you know, Brad and I are both big pro­po­nents of men­tal health and tak­ing care of your­self. Some­times you need to, some­times you need what we call it, we call a men­tal health day, or just tak­ing it some­times you just need an extra day off for your­self to recoup, or to deal with some per­son­al affairs 100%. okay to do that. We’re not say­ing not, we’re say­ing when it’s a chron­ic prob­lem, where peo­ple either don’t come to work or don’t want to come to work, which is the big­ger thing, it’s they’re active­ly show­ing up, but they’re dis­en­gaged. That’s what we’re talk­ing about today. And as we’re say­ing, it can be, you know, pan­dem­ic like that it can spread through­out the com­pa­ny, and have almost a malaise and lack of enthu­si­asm, or, or lack of desire for many people.

Brad Giles 11:34

Well, what we’re real­ly inter­est­ed in is when the Mon­dayi­tis occurs, because of the com­pa­ny. So yes, out, we should alco­hol or par­ty too much, or you need a men­tal health day. That’s not because of the com­pa­ny. But what about when peo­ple don’t want to come to work because of the com­pa­ny because of things that are hap­pen­ing, that’s what’s real­ly inter­est­ing. And that’s what can become a real prob­lem, cer­tain­ly, in terms of attract­ing and retain­ing a players.

Kevin Lawrence 12:08

Because it’s a symp­tom, that you’re you’ve got things hap­pen­ing in your com­pa­ny that are unhealthy, or not con­sis­tent with it being a place where peo­ple real­ly want to show up, and they’re excit­ed to get to work and do their best work, ie the intrin­sic reward is out­weighed by the pain and pun­ish­ment they get from being there. So it’s a symp­tom. So yes, peo­ple have their own per­son­al rea­sons. But we’re try­ing to get to the fun­da­men­tal busi­ness rea­sons. So a cou­ple things here, as we kind of dig into this is that this does tend to impact some peo­ple more than oth­ers. And what we know is, you know, peo­ple that are a play­ers gen­er­al­ly, are more like­ly to push through chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tions that actu­al­ly clean them up. So what we’ve seen a play­ers are less like­ly to suf­fer from this, although there’s a cer­tain point where a play­ers will be less tol­er­ant and move on, ie, if the com­pa­ny isn’t going to become a great com­pa­ny to work with. They actu­al­ly may choose to work some­where else. Yeah. And that’s at a cer­tain point, they’ve had enough. I’m out.

Brad Giles 13:18

Yeah. And we obvi­ous­ly don’t want to get there. And that’s one of the rea­son that we’re talk­ing about it today. How can you iden­ti­fy is Mon­day is a prob­lem with in your orga­ni­za­tion? And what can you do about it? You know, there’s a say­ing that A play­ers won’t work for B play­ers. And the B employ­ees C play­ers, okay. So it’s a slip­pery slope, that sud­den­ly you think things are going well. And then a year or two lat­er, you’re going down the track, and you think things have changed so much around here. And all you got to do is take your eye off the ball of try­ing to attract and retain the top 10% of peo­ple in your indus­try try­ing to get the best peo­ple, sud­den­ly you’ve got a hand­ful of bees. And sud­den­ly those peo­ple if they’re hir­ing or hir­ing sees, and then you’re like, this is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent com­pa­ny. And then peo­ple start say­ing things like, gee, I can’t wait till the week­end. That’s going to be real­ly good at the weekend.

Kevin Lawrence 14:21

And that’s a real­ly big prob­lem when you’re the CEO and own­er of the damn company.

Brad Giles 14:26

Yeah.

Kevin Lawrence 14:27

was recent­ly hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with a CEO who has Mon­dayi­tis is Tues­dayi­tis, Wednes­dayi­tis, Thurs­dayi­tis, and Fri­dayi­tis is he hates his freak­ing com­pa­ny. And we start dig­ging into it. And I was talk­ing with him about this as we’re going through it. It’s like he’s got a whole bunch of the wrong peo­ple. He does­n’t like most of the peo­ple that work for him. That’s a prob­lem. He actu­al­ly put some­body else in charge of a lot of it. And this per­son I, I’m sus­pect­ing was not on cul­ture prob­a­bly does­n’t even care about cul­ture and based on the peo­ple deci­sions. So yeah, it’s almost like the new CEO hired a bunch of peo­ple. And, and most of them are mediocre, but a bunch of them are mediocre. But, you know, the CEO is talk­ing is I don’t like these peo­ple. I don’t like what it’s like, in my com­pa­ny. I don’t these are not peo­ple I’ve had to spend time with. That’s I explained to him, Hey, by the way, that’s not how it’s sup­posed to be. No, you’re actu­al­ly sup­posed to like the peo­ple you work with and want to work with them and believe in them and feel ener­gized from the work you do. So yeah, this guy does­n’t just have Mon­dayi­tis, this he’s got like every­dayi­tis. He’s the own­er of the com­pa­ny. And you will make the change he will. But it’s sort of goes both ways. It can be from the own­er to their team or a leader to their team, or a team to their leader, it can go either way. But the most impor­tant thing about this is it’s damn con­ta­gious, like this new vari­ant of this, you know, bubon­ic plague that we’re deal­ing with our world right now called COVID. And, yes, thank you for the tech­ni­cal term. Yes. You know, but and tru­ly, it’s like, for exam­ple, this CEO, I’m sure he’s not hav­ing the great­est influ­ence on his team. He’s not show­ing up with a lot of love and joy and engage­ment, it’s going to spread through the whole com­pa­ny, the com­pa­ny prob­a­bly would get dirty. There’s a say­ing that, you know, the CEO, sneezes, and the whole com­pa­ny gets a cold.

Brad Giles 16:47

Yeah, right.

Kevin Lawrence 16:48

So that’s good to see. But, but the thing I real­ly want to say is, also, on the week­end, I was talk­ing to anoth­er entre­pre­neur, Every­where I go, I know, I’m always talk­ing to dif­fer­ent entre­pre­neurs, and not in the week­end. Last week, I was talk­ing to this entre­pre­neur, in between our fun times. And, you know, we got the chat going about labor unions, and I don’t know what it’s like in every part of the world. But, you know, labor unions were start­ed, you know, prob­a­bly 100 years ago, when peo­ple died at work reg­u­lar­ly, because things were not safe. And peo­ple were not treat­ed well or tak­en care of. Yeah. And today, most com­pa­nies are quite good. But it’s almost like that this Mon­day, itis that can spread like crazy between peo­ple can almost, you know, is a rea­son why I guess in some parts of the world where labor unions are there, because when work­places become tox­ic, peo­ple don’t feel respect­ed, or val­ued, or what­ev­er it hap­pens to be, it cre­ates this, peo­ple start get­ting frus­trat­ed. And if noth­ing changes, they look for an exter­nal source, maybe to dri­ve some change, ie a labor unit. We had one com­pa­ny that we worked with that and most entre­pre­neur­ial peo­ple don’t want labor unions, like most, you know, four don’t want unions in their busi­ness­es, because it’s, it’s, it adds addi­tion­al cost from an own­er­ship per­spec­tive. And, and I there’s sure there’s

Brad Giles 18:12

but it adds an adver­sar­i­al partner.

Kevin Lawrence 18:15

Exact­ly. And that takes a lot of ener­gy to man­age well, and is not always for the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple or the com­pa­ny. So any­way, you know, and we’re not even here to say whether, you know, some peo­ple believe in I’m like, the best thing, you know, on the side of the fence that they tend to add an expen­sive adver­sar­i­al part­ner. But in this com­pa­ny that they almost brought a union in, and we had to work like heck, well, there was an a‑hole of a plant man­ag­er. The man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty was get­ting tox­ic. Peo­ple were not being treat­ed, right. And in many ways in our debrief. It’s, you know, we and I include myself because I’m an advi­sor. So we earned that labor union com­ing in to tell us to smarten up. We had, we had screwed up, we had had some of the wrong peo­ple treat­ing peo­ple the wrong way. And the union’s there to say, hey, that’s not okay. Which, at the end of the day, they were able to turn it around. But it was basi­cal­ly the whole plant was start­ing to have Mon­dayi­tis because the plant man­ag­er was such a jerk.

Brad Giles 19:20

You know, Jeff Bezos has got this say­ing, which is your mar­gin is my oppor­tu­ni­ty. Okay, so he looks out and he looks at the indus­tries where there are healthy mar­gins. And he says, your mar­gin is my oppor­tu­ni­ty. And what I’m hear­ing through what you’re say­ing there is that if you have a weak cul­ture, if you have a tox­ic cul­ture, if you have a cul­ture where Mon­dayi­tis is present, per­haps that is the labor unions oppor­tu­ni­ty. Like they see that as being this is our oppor­tu­ni­ty to go in there. And to fix this from their own per­spec­tive. We could win pay ris­es, We could get in there. So yes, yeah. It’s almost like chaos the­o­ry where if you run a tox­ic work­place, even­tu­al­ly, there will be a third par­ty or some­thing else will come in to try to rec­ti­fy that.

Kevin Lawrence 20:22

They will. And you know, some of your best peo­ple will leave. So look at the end of the day, you know, these are prob­lems that come into our world. And we got to be care­ful because we don’t want this to become a con­ta­gious thing that spreads. And it does, and it comes in bit by bit. And then we get a wake up call, and we do some­thing about it. And our job should be to be proac­tive and stay ahead of this. So yeah, let’s dig into some caus­es we got, we got sev­en main points, which we have here, which is we look at what are the caus­es, and then we’ve got some solutions.

Brad Giles 21:02

So num­ber one, they could actu­al­ly just be sick, they could actu­al­ly be cool­ing in Mon­day. And this is not only about peo­ple who are hav­ing the day off, let’s be very clear about that. This is about peo­ple who are almost active­ly dis­en­gag­ing on on a Mon­day right there. Now, if you’ve got high vacan­cy rates on a Mon­day, or peo­ple who are away on a Mon­day, then that could be an extreme cause, but this is just peo­ple are dis­en­gag­ing on a Mon­day. So num­ber one, they could actu­al­ly just be sick, or they could be tired from just par­ty­ing too much on the week­end, or hav­ing too much fun. Or, you know, maybe they went on a trip away. I remem­ber when I was younger, I used to race cars, and we’d be rac­ing cars at night. And you know, we’d be get­ting home at two in the morn­ing or some­thing like that, after hav­ing a full day’s work and a full day’s rac­ing at night. Either that for a day or two in a row. And plus, we’d have to dri­ve off into the coun­try to do it. So you know, you can be pret­ty exhaust­ed. So it could just be that they’ve got a real­ly active social life out­side of work. And, yeah, that’s inter­est­ing to know, as a leader.

Kevin Lawrence 22:17

Inter­est­ing. I had a flash­back there, Brad. I remem­ber being out all night par­ty­ing with my friends one night, and then rolling into work the next morn­ing and going I don’t think I’m in the con­di­tion to be at work. And, and just do. And, you know, we’re still show­ing up, I was not the type of per­son that would call in sick, but show­ing up. But yeah, not with all my fac­ul­ties as for sure. So yeah, that could be caught, they could have just learned that there are peo­ple that are so com­mit­ted in their per­son­al life, their per­son life is so busy, there’s no there’s not a lot of ener­gy left for work. So that’s you know, so the solu­tion to that is, you know, just have a con­ver­sa­tion with the per­son, right? You can if you notice the pat­tern, Hey, what’s going on? I’m notic­ing, you know, what can we do to have you ready to go bring in your best foot for­ward Mon­day morn­ing, for some peo­ple, you know, there’s a Sun­day night rou­tine that peo­ple do like I often do to get ready for a great week. Or there’s things to set you up to win. And that’s where coach­ing and, and offer­ing guid­ance can real­ly come in with your people.

Brad Giles 23:25

And that’s a real­ly impor­tant point that I picked up that you said through that you approach the sit­u­a­tion as a coach and not a man­ag­er. Okay, so we’re try­ing to encour­age man­agers to act like coach­es or to be coach­es not in what we do not exter­nal advi­sors or coach­es. But if a man­ag­er was to deal in a man­age­ment type think­ing man­ner with an employ­ee, they’d be say­ing, if you come back to work like this, again, you’re fired. But what we’re say­ing is, what can we do to help you? This is a ques­tion because coach­es ask ques­tions, what can we do to help you arrive at work, so that you’re in the state to be pro­duc­tive and to deliv­er the results that we need as a team and that you’ve com­mit­ted to? So very dif­fer­ent approach to approach it as a man­ag­er instead of a coach? And we’re advo­cat­ing for the coach style approach where you’re ask­ing the per­son ques­tions. Yes. And

Kevin Lawrence 24:27

so peo­ple would­n’t have had role mod­els or expe­ri­ence of some­times. And if they’re ear­ly in their career, they might need some guid­ance, let’s just say, cool. So the sec­ond one, is they’re sick of deal­ing with their aihole boss,

Brad Giles 24:39

peri­od. Yeah.

Kevin Lawrence 24:43

I don’t know if you ever had one of them. Yeah, you know, I had I’ve had a cou­ple clients that were like that. I actu­al­ly I had a boss I could­n’t stand when I was I will not name names. But I remem­ber she I had a pre­vi­ous Boss, that was amaz­ing. And then they brought this new per­son in, and I could not stand her. And I think it was mutu­al. She could­n’t stand me either. But we grad­u­al­ly warmed up more over time. But hav­ing a boss that you don’t like, is about as dread­ful as it can get.

Brad Giles 25:20

I know, a client that I work with a CEO, he told me a phrase maybe a month ago, which was, which was pret­ty, which has real­ly stuck with me. And that was that hurt peo­ple, hurt peo­ple. Okay, and it seems so sim­ple. But I thought back when you asked that ques­tion just then and I thought, yeah, I had a boss and, and this boss many years ago, he just was an angry per­son. He just, he just felt like, the only way was to shout, not at me at every­body. The only way was to be angry. And, and he took delight in, in caus­ing peo­ple embar­rass­ment, or, you know, on hap­pi­ness he just took and I just thought instant­ly, I thought you know what, he’s just a hurt per­son in some way. And he’s that’s how he’s play­ing that out. And so the peo­ple yeah, they used to, for­tu­nate­ly, it was a sit­u­a­tion where you did­n’t have to inter­act with him all day. It’d be once or twice a day. But yeah, we would want to do any­thing at all to avoid that per­son. Every­body would. So yeah, I think that I think that this is num­ber two, but it’s prob­a­bly one of the biggest issues is, is a boss has a job to do. Let’s be fair, right? They need Yes, hold peo­ple account­able. They need to get pro­duc­tiv­i­ty out of peo­ple at an accept­able lev­el. That’s their job. But what I found, what I observed through my career is that there’s no, that is only on the job train­ing. It’s very, very hard to find a cause or some way. Yeah. So this is how you tran­si­tion from being a work­er to being a super­vi­sor, to being a man­ag­er, and how you han­dle peo­ple, it’s all on the job. And many peo­ple have this vision of Well, I’ve just got to yell because like my dad, you do what­ev­er it is, what­ev­er they roll more, or a

Kevin Lawrence 27:34

man­ag­er ear­ly in my career yell that was a role mod­el. I’ve worked with a lot of boss­es that were jerks that we’ve had to stray note and coach them I had, I was talk­ing with anoth­er entre­pre­neur, but this last week, he’s very suc­cess­ful, but his team is hav­ing a hard time with them. And he’s stuck in this growth, because he does­n’t know how to man­age high per­form­ing lead­ers. Man­ag­ing front­line tech­ni­cians is a dif­fer­ent skill than hir­ing or lead­ing sort of high per­form­ing lead­ers. It’s very dif­fer­ent­ly and there’s a my favorite quotes is that, you know, it’s lead­er­ship is get­ting peo­ple to want to do what must be done. Yes, man­age­ment meant man­age­ment is get­ting peo­ple to want to do what must be done. And that’s a skill. And if you aren’t high­ly skilled on this, peo­ple, you know, peo­ple are gonna have a hard time work­ing with you. And that’s why, you know, as we were prep­ping for the show, one things we talked about is, you know, this is won­der­ful book called mul­ti­pli­ers by Liz Wise­man, that has you be able to self assess whether you’re a mul­ti­pli­er, which is you mul­ti­ply tal­ent, or a dimin­ish­er, or you make peo­ple stu­pid­er and small­er. And at the end of the day, it’s not rock­et sci­ence to fig­ure out who peo­ple would rather work for. Not only do mul­ti­pli­ers attract tal­ent, and grow tal­ent, because peo­ple want to work with them, because they’re there. They’re com­ing from a place of belief and respect. And, but we all can have, you know, dimin­ish­ing ten­den­cies, we can all be a bit of that aihole boss some­times and not even know it.

Brad Giles 29:09

And that’s and that’s, that’s such a fan­tas­tic con­cept from Liz again, there was Liz Wise­man’s book mul­ti­pli­ers, where, where some lead­ers mul­ti­ply the smarts of some peo­ple to give it a slight­ly dif­fer­ent phrase or per­spec­tive, and oth­ers shut down the smarts of oth­er peo­ple. And then and so if you have a dimin­ish­er boss, which is shut­ting down the smarter peo­ple, rather than mul­ti­ply­ing the smart if you have that type of boss, it can be a real drain as a per­son under the dimin­ish­er boss. And we actu­al­ly spoke about a very sim­i­lar con­cept a cou­ple of episodes, which is the con­cept of a genius with 1000 helpers. I think that was Episode 49. For us, where, you know, if you are the helper or one of 1000 helpers, to use the phrase, under a genius, it can be real­ly, real­ly demo­ti­vat­ing and could ulti­mate­ly con­tribute to you not real­ly want­i­ng to go to work every day.

Kevin Lawrence 30:18

Yeah, I guess it can be melt­ed, men­tal­ly exhaust­ing. So, point num­ber two’s sick of deal­ing with their aihole boss. And that could be you in ways that you don’t even know. And if you have those kinds of peo­ple on your team, which some­times we do, your job as a leader is to is to not allow those peo­ple to keep that behav­ior going. Because it can become con­ta­gious and mess up the whole cul­ture. And it starts it can become almost accept­able to treat peo­ple that way, or just dri­ve a lot of peo­ple crazy. So let’s go on to the third one. So the first one is they’re actu­al­ly sick or tired, just oh, they’re over, you know, they’re exhaust­ed from their week­end. Sec­ond is their a‑hole boss. Third is sick of the work being so damn hard. And there being so much fric­tion in the sys­tems and or just a night­mare to get things done. And whether it’s because your busi­ness has grown, and there’s com­plex­i­ty, whether it’s because your soft­ware sys­tems are clunky and messy, whether it’s because there’s so many mis­takes, they have to keep doing things over and over again, or whether it’s cuz they don’t real­ly have the resources to do the job. Some­how. The work is a hell. That’s the that’s anoth­er rea­son why peo­ple would­n’t show up. They’re not gonna they don’t want to show up to hell, first day on Mon­day morning.

Brad Giles 31:37

What we’re specif­i­cal­ly not say­ing here is that they we’re not say­ing that they don’t want to work hard. That’s not what we’re say­ing. What we’re say­ing is that no, we make it hard for them to do their job. Because I make it hard­er for them to work hard. We make them yeah, yeah. It’s like, if you talk to them, and you and you, you know, and they talk about sys­tems that don’t make sense, like, why do we do that par­tic­u­lar process? This does­n’t make any sense. Why are we doing it that way? We com­plete these forms. And they don’t end up going any­where. There’s, there’s no point to it. And often we always have

Kevin Lawrence 32:20

Brad, but that’s the way we’ve always done it. That’s why we do what we’ve always done it that way.

Brad Giles 32:26

And if that’s what you’re say­ing, like there’s a whole episode that we can talk about that right? Num­ber one, be hum­ble and always try to find a bet­ter way. This is very com­mon. And I don’t want to sin­gle out a employ­er. But this is, but I will. But this is very com­mon in gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cy, which is peo­ple find it very hard to do a good job because the size of the you know, the bureau­cra­cy pro­tects itself. And there’s a lot of work that gets done for no real pur­pose or rea­son or outcome.

Kevin Lawrence 33:10

Yes, and, you know, bureau­cra­cies, build sys­tems to pro­tect them­selves from real­ly incom­pe­tent peo­ple. That’s why bureau­cra­cies exist you have. So instead of deal­ing with the incom­pe­tent peo­ple, you build cum­ber­some sys­tems and dupli­ca­tions and 14 sign offs, and three approvals and all kinds of stuff. Instead of deal­ing with the core peo­ple issues, that’s a whole oth­er episode on bureau­cra­cy, but we don’t even want to talk about it that much. But yes, you end up with the sys­tems. And that’s why many com­pa­nies that we work with, I know with you, they will have many of their there’s their exe­cu­tion plans are about stream­lin­ing and improv­ing sys­tems. And it’s not just Hey, we’re gonna buy a new soft­ware pack­age. Because that’s just a way to spend more mon­ey. It does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly, you know, if you’ve got a crap­py sys­tem, and then you auto­mate it, you’ve auto­mat­ed crap. Like it does­n’t heal, you need to improve the sys­tems, stream­line them remove fric­tion, from the per­spec­tive of the user, not the per­spec­tive of head office, get­ting the reports, but the peo­ple in the field doing the job. And it’s, it’s a for­ev­er project, just to con­tin­ue it at that at the front­line team lev­el through the whole com­pa­ny to keep stream­line to make it eas­i­er for peo­ple to do great work.

Brad Giles 34:31

Yeah, there’s one team that I work with. And they thought that they were going pret­ty good. They were pret­ty con­fi­dent. But I got a bit of a sense that what was being said at the lead­er­ship team lev­el may not be exact­ly the same at the lev­el below them when we got to what was real­ly hap­pen­ing. And so we ran a work­shop and I asked them the ques­tion as a group, the say there was about 20 peo­ple in the room. And I said, So tell me, what’s the, what’s the one thing that pre­vents you doing your job bet­ter? And so we went around the room and every­one got to have a say, and they’d be one thing, one thing. Okay, what else? What else? And we went as far as we could, we had this mas­sive list of things. And then I said, Okay, so we got to vote on one. What’s, what’s the one, we drilled it down to one thing. And then, so we got this one point. And it was that in the busi­ness, they had all of these process­es and flows, that would work. But it was incred­i­bly frus­trat­ing, because oth­er peo­ple could dis­rupt that process in the work­flow, if you know what I mean. So sales, peo­ple could come in and say, I’ve got this urgent job, I want that to jump in, like at the front of the queue. And so that meant that they could­n’t trust the dead­lines that they talk to cus­tomers about to get things out. And the whole work­flow was being com­plete­ly dis­rupt­ed. And it just kind of evolved over decades into that sys­tem. And every­one, all of these 20 mid lev­el man­agers say like, this is just dri­ving us crazy, because we can’t trust the sys­tem that we’ve got, we don’t know where our cus­tomers job is. Because some­one comes in with like a three day or five day project and plugs it right in front of at any point. Like we it’s, it’s, it’s com­plete­ly ter­ri­ble. Now, now, all the lead­er­ship team, they did­n’t real­ly even know that this was such a big issue, or the num­ber one issue. And that was incred­i­bly demo­ti­vat­ing. For these mid lev­el peo­ple who had to fight these bar­rels on a con­stant day with the peo­ple who were the cus­tomers who just want­ed to know when is my, when is my prod­uct going to be ready.

Kevin Lawrence 36:59

So and it’s a mas­sive project to go and stream­line that, like, yeah, don’t dig into it, because it becomes a beast. Right. And they become so I we have one in a com­pa­ny we’re work­ing with, just like what you described, we’re and we’ve got­ten good peo­ple that want to be account­able for stuff. Inter­est­ing­ly, the per­son that has tak­en the most account­abil­i­ty and run with it is the wrong part of the busi­ness to run with it. So not only do we have to stream­line the process, we have to shift where account­abil­i­ty sits for dif­fer­ent things in dif­fer­ent deci­sions. And there’s a whole bunch of change man­age­ment required Nev­er mind fig­ur­ing out a bet­ter way, and being open to chang­ing the old, but then deal­ing with it the resis­tance that you’re going to get and the and the peo­ple’s pride that will be bruised. But those things are crit­i­cal. So that, you know, the the the advice that we would leave you with on this is, you know, sys­tems crit­i­cal sys­tems that allow peo­ple to do a good job, because peo­ple take pride in their work. They need con­stant improve­ment con­stant for the until the end of time. And you know, you just got to make it.

Brad Giles 38:08

Yes, feed­back, peo­ple who are using it,

Kevin Lawrence 38:11

yes, from the user. So the final thing I’ll say is, if you’re it wants to go and stream­line the process, or some­one from the cor­po­rate office wants to go and do it. That’s real sweet intent. But they’re not the one who has to use those sys­tems every day, you have to have the voice of the users in every con­ver­sa­tion. Because those oth­er peo­ple have good inten­tions. They’re just dis­con­nect­ed from real­i­ty, or they have dif­fer­ent pri­or­i­ties. So let’s move on, shall we? They know the next one, num­ber four. And this is also very com­mon, and I have expe­ri­enced this, but they’re sick of work­ing with a tox­ic per­son on the team, or the whole damn team is tox­ic. Usu­al­ly it’s one, one or two that start to con­t­a­m­i­nate the team. And it’d be there’s dread and I don’t leave a few Have you ever been in a meet­ing or a sit­u­a­tion where you dread hav­ing to go into a cer­tain meet­ing, or work­ing with a cer­tain per­son because it’s just gonna be a headache?

Brad Giles 39:11

You know, 1% of the pop­u­la­tion is psy­chopaths. 15 to 20% of the jail pop­u­la­tion is psy­chopaths. In com­pa­nies, about 3% of peo­ple are psy­chopaths. And the fur­ther that you go up the lad­der, the high­er that per­cent­age increas­es. So that means if you’ve got a com­pa­ny of 100 peo­ple, sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, you’re like­ly to have three psy­chopaths in the busi­ness. Now, that does­n’t mean that you do maybe they’re not attract­ed to your indus­try or maybe you have an effec­tive hir­ing and onboard­ing process. It’s going to fil­ter those peo­ple out. Yes, but we all have to work along­side tough peo­ple and you Yeah, when when we’ve got a tox­ic per­son on the team, like, it’s just like a virus it spreads. You know, mis­ery loves com­pa­ny. We’ve heard that say­ing before. And yeah, we’ve got to under­stand through things like the net pro­mot­er score, the employ­ee Net Pro­mot­er Score com­po­nent of that, or oth­er employ­ee sat­is­fac­tion sur­veys is a good way to begin to under­stand what is actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing. And when you see those things dip, that could be a real prob­lem. But you know what, I don’t want to work along­side a psy­chopath, I don’t want to work along­side a tox­ic a play­er or a C play­er, like, it just drains my ener­gy, and it makes me feel like I don’t real­ly want to go to work today. And that’s what most peo­ple would feel in this envi­ron­ment, in this on this item

Kevin Lawrence 40:53

100%. And so as a leader, we have to keep an eye out for it. And watch out for those tox­ic peo­ple and don’t pro­mote the tox­ic peo­ple. Right, that’s one of the things that we do is, you know, ide­al­ly, quar­ter­ly tal­ent reviews where we review the whole port­fo­lio of the most impor­tant lead­ers, all the lead­ers are the most impor­tant ones. And just make sure that they fit the cul­ture, and they per­form well. But it’s the ones who don’t fit the cul­ture, and we know who they are, because there’s always prob­lems and dra­ma with them. But our job is to not allow them to keep their role. And def­i­nite­ly not to pro­mote them with that bad behav­ior and deal with it. Because at the end of the day, cre­at­ing a great work envi­ron­ment is a set­up for cre­at­ing great work. And if you don’t have an endur­ing, great com­pa­ny, you have to have an envi­ron­ment where peo­ple can feel good now. And some­times peo­ple go tox­ic, we just, we just got to be on it, and not allow it or you know, encour­age it by pro­mot­ing it. So tox­ic peo­ple to tox­ic teams, you know, we got to be there to help them, make sure we man­age it and don’t allow it.

Brad Giles 41:55

And most of the time when you let some­one go for per­for­mance relat­ed cul­tur­al issues. In oth­er words, they’re not per­form­ing accord­ing to a cul­ture if they’ve tox­ic, every­body around them is going to go thank God for that. Like I know, they’re like, why did­n’t you do that reli­gion ago, it’s a mas­sive relief for every­one around them. And there’s no one thing that

Kevin Lawrence 42:18

we you both you and I are fierce with the com­pa­nies who work with peo­ple that are tox­ic, ie they don’t work, play well with oth­ers, accord­ing to your cul­ture. Give them a giv­en feed­back, let them step up. If not, thank you for your time. Like, you know, and and and some­times it takes a bit of time to cre­ate a an appro­pri­ate exit a respect­ful exit, if that’s appro­pri­ate, which it usu­al­ly is. So yes, don’t allow tox­ic peo­ple’s peo­ple sus­tained lead­er­ship or man­age­ment roles, don’t pro­mote them.

Brad Giles 42:47

So on to the next one, this sick to their stom­ach of deal­ing with a con­flict or an embar­rass­ing issue. Now, this could be with anoth­er team mem­ber slight­ly relat­ed to the last one, but per­haps not, maybe there’s a con­flict. This could be with a project, it could be with a cus­tomer, it could be with a sup­pli­er, but it could be with some­thing else. But this could be some­thing in the work­place some issue. That is that is just drain­ing their ener­gy way too much. Now, maybe it’s just Well, you know what, that’s your job you need to deal with it. Or maybe it could be that this is such a big prob­lem that I don’t know, you, you as the leader need to step in, I think about one of the entre­pre­neurs that I work with head they had a very large project. And on this project, they had a fixed price com­po­nent to do their job. But their client had do and charged com­po­nent. Right? So the client object sole objec­tive was to make this thing last as long as pos­si­ble and to draw out any issues so they could get as many hours as they can sold. Where­as my client, they had a they were we want to get in there and we want to exe­cute it. It was just I did­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly know that at the out­set. But it was just such a drain­ing exhausting.

Kevin Lawrence 44:26

Yeah, they were set up to cal­cu­late con­flict­ing pri­or­i­ties or what a wind looked like to each of them actu­al­ly would cre­ate it would crater engi­neered a conflict.

Brad Giles 44:35

Yeah,

Kevin Lawrence 44:36

yeah. So these stress­ful sit­u­a­tions exist all of the time, and they’re always there. And our job is to try and help one min­i­mize them, or the way things are set up and look for, you know, con­flict that is there. And then sec­ond­ly, once we do see it con­flict or an embar­rass­ing issue, how do we get it on the table quick­ly? resolve it quick­ly. And for exam­ple, with con­flicts, the num­ber one solu­tion is to get both of the par­ties with the cliff con­flict into the room with us a more senior per­son and talk it out. Peri­od. Yeah, like talk­ing to them indi­vid­u­al­ly. That’s only good if you’re gonna then have a joint con­ver­sa­tion. And a lot of peo­ple make con­flicts worse by Oh, what did you think, oh, what did you think and try­ing to bro­ker a deal? ver­sus get them in the room? And, and get them to work it out? That is it and fast? Like Don’t let it faster? Don’t let it fester.

Brad Giles 45:46

And so num­ber five, they are sick. No, no, no, no, we’re on to num­ber six, excuse me. They are sick men­tal­ly, and they can’t han­dle the thought or muster the ener­gy. So about the amount of work that they need to do the first item was around, they’re phys­i­cal­ly exhaust­ed or sick from the week­end. But here, you know, they’re just hav­ing men­tal health issues. I think we’ve spo­ken a few times before on this pod­cast about every­one expe­ri­ences men­tal health issues to some degree. And it’s often not a case of well, you just need to tough­en up, you know, just hard enough. Get a bag of con­crete, Kevin and eat that bag of con­crete, tough­en up, and you’ll be fine.

Kevin Lawrence 46:30

And then is that an Aussie thing? con­crete and you’ll be fine. I’ve nev­er heard that one.

Brad Giles 46:36

Yeah, I don’t know if it’s an Aussie thing. I have cer­tain­ly heard it before. Real­ly? Yeah.

Kevin Lawrence 46:43

But as a taste, how does con­crete? Have you tried it?

Brad Giles 46:49

I haven’t. But I know that it can be quite acidic when you get it on your hands. So I imag­ine it would be quite painful to eat. Not that I’m going to try that.

Kevin Lawrence 47:01

Okay, but the poor thing. And we’re not advis­ing you. I’m just quite curi­ous about Brad’s sto­ry. But yes,

Brad Giles 47:06

yeah, so what we’re real­ly say­ing is it every­one, this is an every­one, every­one has a body and a mind. And some­times the bod­ies can be unwell. And some­times the mind can be unwell. And, you know, like, it’s a per­fect­ly nor­mal part of being a human, we need to work through these things. So if, if that’s the case, like we need, we need to just iden­ti­fy that some­times you’ve got real­ly fan­tas­tic team play­ers who are going along, and then sud­den­ly some­thing dips, maybe they’re hav­ing prob­lems at home, maybe this, who knows what it could be. Dur­ing the COVID cri­sis, we often saw a few times we spoke about giv­ing them a free pass, you know what, like, this is such a ter­ri­ble sit­u­a­tion, maybe we just need to give them a free pass for their per­for­mance or coach­ing issues, coach them around, and then you know, sup­port them and move for­ward know­ing that that’s inher­ent­ly who they are. They’re just deal­ing with a tough sit­u­a­tion. Thoughts on this, Kevin?

Kevin Lawrence 48:14

Yeah, well, in my book, your oxy­gen mask first one of the chap­ters while there’s a chap­ter on men­tal health and help­ing you to rec­og­nize when you’re men­tal­ly cooked and exhaust­ed and burnt out, and you’re gonna have a ver­sion of Mon­day, itis when you’re like, that hap­pens to all of us at times. And if that’s the case, he has two things. One, if it’s real­ly bad, like, you know the orange or red zone on the men­tal health con­tin­u­um, you know, see­ing a psy­chol­o­gist is usu­al­ly the best advice as a way to help unpack those things that are that have cooked your brain. Sec­ond­ly, is what I call resilience rit­u­al. And sor­ry, the oth­er one is your doc­tor, you know, I go to a natur­o­path­ic doc­tor, when I get burnt out, he helps to reset my sys­tem and get me back on track psy­chol­o­gist helps you to unpack the stuff. So those are two things. But then there’s anoth­er chap­ter. In this chap­ter three, it’s called resilience rit­u­als. What are you doing? and Brad, you men­tioned the body in the mind, what are you doing to rebuild your resilience? Some­times you actu­al­ly have to have a recov­ery peri­od to rebuild your strength because you’ve just worn your­self out deplet­ed your­self. So there’s no for body mind and spir­it. What do you do and it’s inter­est­ing, as I’ve been talk­ing to lots of peo­ple that have had a tough time in the last year and been very worn out and falling into this where they did­n’t want to go to work or their you know, deal with what­ev­er is the amount of peo­ple that got burned out because what they used to do for their own resilience changed. Some places gyms were closed, you know, you could­n’t have din­ner par­ties with your friends, you could­n’t do a lot of things. And so fig­ur­ing out what you need to do for your own resilience is crit­i­cal. It’s why I bought a motor­cy­cle last year I need­ed to get out and move because I could see the with the way the rules were would­n’t be able to do a lot of the oth­er stuff I would do. And I knew I need­ed to do some dif­fer­ent things to stay strong. Point being, is that when you are men­tal­ly burnt out or cooked, you typ­i­cal­ly have to find a reset your­self. And you know, because you might not be hav­ing the best impact on your team and such as well. But reset your­self. So, you know, take care of your mind, body and spir­it, poten­tial­ly psy­chol­o­gists poten­tial­ly a doc­tor or natur­opath or what­ev­er it is that you use.

Brad Giles 50:30

Yeah, and so I guess the advice around that one is one thing that you men­tioned, which is the men­tal health con­tin­u­um. So as a leader, we’re a big fan of this tool. You can google the phrase men­tal health con­tin­u­um, and it’s a spec­trum from healthy to unwell. And it says, It asks to look for the behav­iors, the observ­able behav­iors in an indi­vid­ual in our in this con­text, who may be a part of your team. And it asks you what num­ber of these behav­iors are they expe­ri­enc­ing where on the spec­trum, and then it kind of advi­sors what to do. So you know, there comes a point where if they are unwell, as you said, we want to send them to a psy­chol­o­gist to help them to work through that. And then it could be a bit of time off or what­ev­er it is. But the men­tal health con­tin­u­um is the tool that we rec­om­mend, if this is what you sus­pect in this area,

Kevin Lawrence 51:34

for sure. And you know, and then if you need pro­fes­sion­al help, just always get it, there’s experts for that when you have a med­ical emer­gency, you go to the hos­pi­tal, and when you have a men­tal emer­gency, you should go to a psy­chol­o­gist. Yeah. Awe­some. So then num­ber sev­en. And this is anoth­er case, and it’s no slight­ly dif­fer­ent from the oth­ers. This is just an when, when peo­ple are tired of feel­ing like sick and tired of feel­ing of fail­ure. And they know they can’t win. And you know, they want to crawl into a hole, or they’re out look­ing for anoth­er job now. And if these are peo­ple that were mis hires, and you as a leader or com­pa­ny made a bad choice, you know, it’s prob­a­bly great that they’re out look­ing for anoth­er job, and then maybe call­ing in sick to go to a job inter­view or do the resume or who knows. But it’s also a sign that if you have peo­ple that are fail­ing and floun­der­ing and you’re not deal­ing with it, you’re not doing the best for your peo­ple it’s like, and that’s not that you put them under mis­ery you’re sup­posed to, you know, when peo­ple are fail­ing, are you hav­ing the con­ver­sa­tions and help­ing them to get back on track. And if you come to the real­iza­tion that this isn’t like­ly going to work, you know, they’re there, they’re not going to love this job or thrive in this job, you’ll have a con­ver­sa­tion with them about mak­ing a change, we’re adults, you can talk with them about going and find­ing a job some­where else, or maybe trans­fer­ring to a role that would be more appro­pri­ate for them if one exists in your com­pa­ny. So just peo­ple fail­ing, and that does­n’t feel good. Every­body wants to be proud. Every­one wants to do good work, right? Most peo­ple want to do good work and feel proud. And that some­times it can be us let­ting them down as a leader because we’re not help­ing them to suc­ceed or to move

Brad Giles 53:20

well as lat­er on a scale of one to 10. If you’re think­ing about an indi­vid­ual, how would you rate them in terms of their under­stand­ing of how to suc­ceed in the role? So if you’re giv­ing them yeah, they under­stand like we’ve giv­en them every­thing train­ing and train­ing and coach­ing and train­ing. And we’ve, we’ve, we’ve doc­u­ment­ed the sys­tems like we could not do a lot more, well, then that’s inter­est­ing, okay, maybe they’re just not the right per­son for the job. But if you’re giv­ing them a four, or five or a six, that’s a dif­fer­ent con­ver­sa­tion. And that real­ly comes back to you as the per­son­’s leader or man­ag­er. Because as the per­son­’s man­ag­er, you need to get them to under­stand how to suc­ceed in a role if they don’t under­stand how to suc­ceed in their role. And that’s kind of on you. They are, you know, they are there to do their best work. If you’re not telling them, this is how to suc­ceed. It’s a real, real prob­lem. So it could­n’t actu­al­ly be on you. And then there in terms of oppor­tu­ni­ties to resolve this. That could be a case of, you know, maybe it’s ear­ly days there, you could reignite your onboard­ing pro­gram. Or maybe you could just begin with an over­all train­ing pro­gram or some­thing. There’s some way to get them to under­stand their role more or even some one on one coach­ing between the two of you.

Kevin Lawrence 54:52

Yeah, you need to remove the vari­able of them hav­ing the right leader because if there are a cou­ple of lay­ers down from you, you don’t know Know how much they were trained to the coach, take a sales­per­son, you know, if a sales­per­son has­n’t spent a lot of time doing role plays with their man­ag­er, espe­cial­ly a new sales­per­son. And they haven’t done a whole bunch of shad­ow­ing with sales­peo­ple and haven’t had, what­ev­er the prop­er train­ing and devel­op­ment pro­gram is in your com­pa­ny, they could be an amaz­ing sales­per­son, but with­out the right train­ing and resources. And that’s why we like to always do a dou­ble check before we assume that the per­son is no good. Have we done right by them. And then we can sort of say, hey, maybe this isn’t going to work, which is, you know, that’s what a per­for­mance improve­ment plan is, or a pip as they call it. It’s to map out, okay, here’s the things you need to do to win. Let’s fig­ure out how we can help you with these things. What are you going to do? What can we do? And then let’s get back to win­ning? Yeah,

Brad Giles 55:49

yeah. Awe­some.

Kevin Lawrence 55:51

the theme of this today is if we go back to the ini­tial is, you know, is there a pan­dem­ic of Mon­day this in your org? And if so, what can you do about it, and we’ve gone through and, and looked at this, you know, this thing where peo­ple just don’t want to come to work, or if they do, they’re com­ing par­tial­ly engaged and not ful­ly excit­ed to do their best work. And we’ve talked about how it’s, it can be very con­ta­gious, and what it could, espe­cial­ly if you’re the CEO, but it can be very con­ta­gious, if it starts, you know, spread­ing all over the place. And it becomes the default of the cul­ture, which is a not a hap­py place to be. And we had some points, Brad, you want to kind of walk through one of your things.

Brad Giles 56:36

Num­ber one, what caus­es it, it could be that they actu­al­ly secre­to­ry they’ve had a big week­end. Num­ber two, they’re sick of deal­ing with a whole boss, their boss is not mak­ing their job eas­i­er or bet­ter, it’s actu­al­ly mak­ing it a lot worse. Num­ber three, they’re sick of the actu­al work being so hard to we’re mak­ing it through our sys­tems and process­es, we’re mak­ing it hard for them to do a good job. And for the sick of the tox­ic team mem­bers, or the tox­ic peo­ple that are on their team, and that they’re like, you know what, I’d rather be any­where else. And five there, they’ve had enough they seek because they dread­ed, they’ve got a con­flict, or an embar­rass­ing issue. It could be a project could be a client, it could be some­thing that they’ve com­mit­ted to doing. And it’s embar­rass­ing, or it’s tough. And it’s you know, it’s a ter­ri­ble state that they just have had enough of num­ber six is that they’re actu­al­ly there, they’ve got men­tal health chal­lenges. There’s this sick men­tal­ly, and they’re, you know, they’re not oper­at­ing at their best. And then num­ber sev­en, of course, they’re sick of feel­ing like a fail­ure when not help­ing them to under­stand how to suc­ceed or giv­ing them the sup­port that they need to suc­ceed. So yeah, if Mon­day itis is a chal­lenge for you in your orga­ni­za­tion, a cou­ple of good ideas there and what to do with it. But you know, the thing that you def­i­nite­ly can’t do is just let it con­tin­ue to fes­ter. We want peo­ple to come to work, excit­ed to come to work that you know, they’re not going to dread the Mon­day they’re going to go cool. I’m look­ing for­ward to a good week not be like, gee, it’s Mon­day lunchtime. I’ve only got four and a half days to go. That’s the worst scenario

Kevin Lawrence 58:31

that is not build­ing an endur­ing great com­pa­ny for your­selves or for the peo­ple you work with. Awe­some. Well, thanks for lis­ten­ing. This has been the growth whis­pers pod­cast with the awe­some Brad and Kevin shar­ing our ideas of how we can make things bet­ter. And always try­ing to make things bet­ter for us and the peo­ple that we work with. So for the video ver­sion, go to youtube​.com and for Brad evo­lu­tion part​ners​.com​.au and for Kevin — Lawrence and co​.com. Have an awe­some week.