Overcoming the Biggest Challenges That Take Down Leaders: Show Notes & Transcript

Post | Mar 04, 2025

Welcome back to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Looking for Marketing Smarts? You’re in the right place. After almost 4 years of helping to make you savvier marketers, we decided to broaden this podcast to include more business-oriented topics that will make you savvier business leaders.

In this episode of Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business, we’re talking the biggest challenges leaders face. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review!

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Transcript

***Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business*: Overcoming the Biggest Challenges That Take Down Leaders**

There are many things that can distract even the very best leaders. Those include the lack of prioritization, leaning too far into empathy, the inability to give timely & direct feedback, and the desire to be liked over being respected. In these scenarios, it’s essential to maintain focus and strong strategic oversight. In this episode, we take our 40+ years of combined experience paired with the many leaders we have coached and contextualize what happens, why, and what to do about it. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

Should leaders strive to be respected or liked?
What happens when you don’t cater to your top talent?
What should you do when a top performer is nota great culture fit?
Can a leader be too empathetic?
How to prioritize when you have an overwhelming amount on your plate?

And as always, if you need help in building your Strategic Counsel, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

Overcoming the Biggest Challenges That Take Down Leaders
- [0:01] Welcome to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business
- [1:27] No leader is immune from these challenges
- [1:48] What are your priorities?
- [3:46] Your strategic plan should be your north star
- [6:47] All ambitious leaders have control issues
- [10:01] Can a leader be too empathetic?
- [15:07] If you want to retain top talent, cater to your top talent
- [17:53] What is motivating your need to feel empathetic or in your need in order to feel like the business has to be a family?
- [20:13] Is your feedback coming way too late?
- [25:51] How your assumptions about giving bad feedback ruins your efficacy as a leader
- [30:07] Cater to your strongest performers without coddling them
- [32:29] Do you want to be liked or respected?
- [35:13] If you’re the boss, should you be invited to those happy hours?
- [38:50] You have to set expectations and hold your team accountable
- [43:30] Make sure to follow Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast spot and leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts
- [43:38] Learn more at ForthRight-People.com and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Linke dIn

What is Strategic Counsel?

Thanks for listening Strategic Counsel. Get in touch here to become more strategic.

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

00:01
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel by Forthright Business Podcast. If you’re looking for honest, direct, and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead and operate in business, you are in the right place. In our discussions, we push on the status quo and traditional modes of thinking to reveal a fresh perspective. This unlocks opportunity for you, your team, and your business. Now let’s get to it. Welcome to the Strategic Counsel Podcast.

00:31
I am Anne Candido. And I am April Martini. And today we’re going to talk about the biggest challenges that take down leaders and how to identify and overcome them hopefully before this happens. In our experience, there are many things that can distract even the very best leaders. So making sure to maintain focus and very strong strategic oversight is essential. So in this episode, we’ll take our 40 plus years of combined experience paired with the many leaders we have coached.

00:59
and contextualize what happens, why, and then as you know us for what to go and do about it. Yeah, and it’s important to emphasize the point that even the very strongest leaders are not immune from these things. So what we want to stress here is that you must always be vigilant in your leadership practice in order to identify these pitfalls before they become issues that really then start to detract from your leadership. I mean, we all face these things. We all kind of have ebbs and flows when it comes to our leadership.

01:27
Even when we think we’ve got it nailed, something comes in and blindsides us and changes everything up. So we all need these tools in our toolkit and know how to combat when these things come out. Yes, very good point. None of us are immune. So with that, let’s get into overcoming the biggest challenges that take down leaders. And the first one we really wanna talk about today is an overall lack of prioritization. And Anne just kind of stated, you know,

01:54
You might think you have it all figured out and then inevitably something comes in and happens, right? But even on the very best day, leaders have a million things on their plate that need to be addressed. I mean, when I think about my last agency and where I was, the thing that always comes to mind is I would be in a meeting and people would know that it was gonna end in the next five-ish minutes and I could just.

02:19
feel, even if I wasn’t facing the door, I could just sense the line of people lining up to ask me something because they knew I was back to back. And they would follow me to the next place. And it was like one after another after another. And so- And to the bathroom, and to the cafeteria. And I was just going to say- Yeah. Where I had to cut it off was one day when one of my employees followed me into the bathroom. And I was like, God love you, but I do need like at least two minutes. I can’t answer your questions while I’m in here. So anyway.

02:48
All of that to say, we know it can be tough and you want to be able to serve your people and we’ll talk about that part two. I don’t want to preempt too much, but what you want to be careful of is getting to in the weeds or becoming a micromanager. The very best leaders are not that and you’ve heard us talk about that in previous episodes, but I think what can happen is when you reach this point of overwhelm and you have so much on your plate, it can be really hard not to just start checking the box on things.

03:18
and or answering problems that your teams should be able to solve for themselves just to get it off your plate. And so this is one of those places where you really have to stay above all of that type of work because otherwise you’ll never be able to reach the next strategic level. In fact, this is one of the things that we find for newer leaders as they try to elevate getting out of that list of things that need to be done.

03:46
And so what our recommendation is to make sure that you can get to that strategic level and then stay there is to use your strategic plan as a guide at all times. You’ve heard us do episodes on this as well. If you haven’t listened to our episodes on strategic planning, you can go and supplement this episode with that. But your strategic plan should be your roadmap on a consistent basis. And I mean this quarterly, monthly, daily, hourly, if you’re at that point where you’re really having a hard time prioritizing.

04:15
because it’ll allow you to prepare ahead of time. And then some of the very specific tools once you have that strategic plan in your hand, and I mean like carry it around with you, I really mean that, is start to look at your day against it. Your calendar can be a really good tool for this. You know, we said we work on these types of things with a lot of our coaching clients. This is a place where one of my first assignments is always take a look at your calendar.

04:40
and pull out the things where you’re not prioritizing and then start to put the blocks in so that you can be more strategic and you can plan for that and put all of the things you’re doing on your calendar before each week starts. So that’s one tip there and I’ve been talking a lot so I’m gonna let Ann chime in here and I may have some additional things but just this first one is really about making sure that you don’t knee jerk into the details.

05:05
because that’s way easier than carving out that strategic time to sit above and really solve what needs to happen on behalf of the business in your team. Yeah, I think all really, really good points and really good advice. And I just wanna highlight two of the things that you said to make sure they really hit home. One is the, really the essentiality of having a strategic plan and knowing strategic plan in just its basic makeup is choices.

05:33
That means you’re saying yes to things. That means you’re saying no to things. And so those strategic choices become the prioritization of where you’re going to focus. If you’re saying yes to everything, what tends to happen is you dilute your efforts across a very big broad area, and you have really struggled to make any kind of traction or any kind of progress in any one area. We know teams are getting leaner. We’re not.

05:59
like over inundated with staff who are sitting around and having nothing to do. So you have to be very strategic in your choices for where you’re going to match up your people with their skills and their aptitude and their growth opportunities with the assignments and what’s really gonna generate impact at the end of the day and make those strategic choices because really if everything is important then nothing is and then what tends to come.

06:22
especially for organizations like marketing, is you become the catchall for all the things that people don’t wanna go do. So you’re just doing a bunch of things, but you’re not really mindfully, intentionally creating the work that’s going to generate the impact that your team is really gonna be rewarded for. So that’s one piece. The other piece of that is control. And I’m gonna say this again. All of us ambitious leaders have control problems. So just acknowledge it, just be okay with it.

06:51
and realize that yes, this is you too. Right, so this is a really, really important thing to really get over and April mentioned the micromanagement piece, because when we start to get stressed, when we start to feel like maybe our reputation is being caught into question, we tend to take control of everything. We think if we can manage every single little piece of the details, that it’s gonna turn out exactly the way we want it and we are going to be then bayed back whole or solidified in our reputation or the work’s gonna be great.

07:20
The problem is the tighter you hold onto it, the self-fulfilling prophecy is the more disastrous it’s going to be because you ruin your team’s integrity, you ruin their trust in you, they get start calling into question whether or not they even feel like they’re doing good work. So a lot of these things start to percolate and you really, really disintegrate your team’s effectiveness and cohesiveness. This is probably one of the most hardest things for managers to really wrap their mind around.

07:48
And the way that I like to help them position is like, listen, if you’re like the top of whatever organization, like the CEO, imagine yourself as the CEO of whatever business you’re in, or the leader or the president, whatever that title is. And just think about if they were to try to hold down, control every single thing that’s underneath them, like you’re trying to control what you’re doing, you would know that that’s impossible. So the higher you go, the more control you have to relinquish. But the anecdote that is to make sure you’re setting expectations.

08:17
Make sure you are holding people to timelines and making sure there’s accountability factor. Fellow control freak over here as well. So I’ll just call myself. Yeah, we could start a club. I mean, for sure. Yeah. It’s good that you bring that up because I think also one of the things just to think about here, because it can be tough, right? Is we always talk in terms of your greatest strengths can quickly become weaknesses or outages.

08:43
when they’re pushed to the extreme. And I think the control piece, if you can think about it in your head is, it actually is a really good trait when you are effectively leading and managing because you’re leveraging the control in the right way to lead the team. I think what you heard Anne say is when things aren’t going the way you want them to or something kind of is triggered within you that it needs to happen a certain way and you start holding on so tightly.

09:10
That’s when you stop being able to see the forest through the trees and understand that you getting back to that point isn’t gonna serve the team and all the reasons for it that Anne just went through. Yeah, and you get sucked into the details in a day to day. And then if you’re in your business, who is looking on your business? On your business. Right, and really as a leader.

09:31
That’s supposed to be the mantra of the leaders. And that doesn’t mean that it’s not all hands on deck if there’s a significant issue. Sometimes we have to go into business, but there always should be an out strategy. It always should be for a timeframe. It’s always for a specific, very discreet goal that is or issue that you’re trying to resolve in that moment that you then finish and extract yourself out. The problem is that people get sucked in and then they never come out. So all those things that you said, yeah, yeah.

10:01
Yeah, really good point. The next one that I wanna talk about here, we just talked about being in all the things, right? And this is kind of on the other side of that. And that is leaning too far into empathy. Now, I just stated that some of the greatest strengths of leaders can quickly get them in trouble if they’re not in the right mindset. And like Ann said, thinking strategically, all the things that we just covered, right? So I will start by saying, some of the very best leaders that exist are

10:29
highly, highly empathetic people. And they respect their people as people first, and they understand the value of doing that and being able to get the greatest performance and all of that out of your people. And the really good ones also know their team members on a deep level. They know what makes them tick. They know what motivates them. They know where their opportunity areas are. They know how to inspire. They get what lights them up and what they don’t like to do.

10:56
And at the end of the day, they really do spend time listening first and then responding in kind based on each person and individually what they need. Where this goes wrong though, is when too much leeway is given and those expectations that Anne just talked about and part of the reason they have to be really clear, right, is because then the person has to be accountable to what they’re doing and understand that that empathetic nature of their leader.

11:25
is not something to be taken advantage of. And sometimes it happens, well, sometimes it does happen maliciously, but sometimes it just happens because there is too much leeway or gray area in what’s going on. And we see this happen on an individual basis, we see this on a team basis, we see this happen across the board where leaders aren’t holding their peers accountable, their leadership accountable above them, you know, all of those things. And what Anna and I always talk about here is,

11:55
things don’t have to be fair. Fair is a really dangerous place to live because fairness, quote unquote, is a really hard thing to define and then calibrate among individuals. And so we all have our things, right? We have post-COVID work environments. We have most companies that we work with at least are some level of hybrid, but then you have some people that are fully remote.

12:22
There’s more integration of personal and professional lives. And this is one of the places where we say now more than ever, leaders have to be more diligent when it comes to their empathy and how that is showing up. And it does go back to those expectations. So what do you do? Well, we need to make sure we keep a pulse on each member of the team and then also the team and company overall. So like I said, you know, your leadership, your peers, all of those things.

12:50
You need to spend the one-on-one time with your employees and ensure that everyone is clear on what those expectations are, how it ladders up to the bigger strategy, like we talked to in the previous point, and why it’s important for them to always be accountable for the work they’re doing. Set really clear guidelines on what is acceptable and what is not, and then measure against them. So again, to the fairness piece, it’s okay if they’re individual by person.

13:16
as long as overall that person’s being held accountable to the work that needs to be delivered, but they have to understand and know that they’re going to be measured against whatever expectations are set. And again, I feel like I talked forever, so I’m going to let a hand pop in and take a break for a second. I get very excited about this topic if you couldn’t tell. Well, it’s not unusual for April to talk, so I have to butt in when I have something to say. I actually did to that point.

13:44
as an aside have to apologize to the person I had lunch with yesterday because I realized that I basically talked the entire time so it’s fair. I would like to say it’s a shocker but um nope not shocking. Well as you can tell me and April don’t lean too far into empathy we call it we call it like we see it.

14:07
And that may or may not work for your organization. But again, I want to kind of pull out a couple of points of what April said, because I think this one is a really tough one to navigate because, you know, we talk about servant leadership all the time, empathetic leadership, and those are definitely very good qualities. And that really at the core means that you’re treating people as humans, and you’re understanding the human need, and that your needs of the humans are individualized, right? And so that’s why when April says, you know,

14:37
that you don’t have to treat everybody fairly. You treat everybody fairly in the fact that they’re humans, but what works for one person may not work for another. And I think this is the thing that we need to get back to you guys is that things like working from home or having a flexible work schedule, whatever the little care it has become are not rights, they’re privileges. Yes. Right, and so if people are not being able to deliver against those expectations, those privileges get taken away. Not for the whole not retiring team necessarily,

15:07
but for those individuals. And that could feel very uncomfortable for leaders because then they have to explain themselves. But listen, you guys, this is gonna sound very controversial to say, but when you’re building an organization, you’re looking to be able to retain your top talent, right? And so you need to cater to your top talent. I’m gonna give a little anecdotal story. April’s heard this one a gazillion times, but I think it really is a true testament to how leaders think through this. So huge Cowboys fan, as you guys know.

15:34
I had the privilege to work with Jimmy Johnson and this was after he was done coaching, but he was reminiscing back to a story because I specifically asked him this question. I’m like, hey, do you treat everybody equally? And he goes, absolutely not. And he said the story, this is how he told the story. He said we were in a team meeting and one of his second stringers fell asleep during the meeting and he went and he woke him up and he was yelling at him. He was in his face.

16:04
Because literally, if you’re a second string player and you’re trying to showcase what you’re made of and you think you should be awake during a team meeting, that would probably be a really good testament to being able to maybe make the first string or get more play time. It was really obvious to me. So I said, well, what would you have done if Troy Eichmann had fallen asleep during the meeting? And he goes, I would have walked over there and I would have gently shook him and said, hey Troy, can you wake up? I have something important to say. So this is, I mean, and that’s not to excuse bad behavior.

16:33
But it is a true testament to the fact that you have to put the emphasis and the focus where the emphasis and the focus needs to be in order to create a team of top talent. That is just the name of the game. So all of this going back to, we need to treat everybody equally and we have to understand everybody’s position and all the excuses. No, you do not. You do not, okay? So you need to run your business like a business. And I think this is another really important point that I’m gonna round this one out with.

16:59
because a lot of us, especially in small to medium sized businesses, wanna come in and say, well, our business is family. No, your business is not family. Your business is a business. And you have to treat the people who are in the business as business teammates, not as family. Because when we start to get into this paradigm of family, we start, our minds are shifting to accommodate and permitting bad behavior, as opposed to being able to hold people accountable as to what April was saying. And in addition to that,

17:29
things from people that we shouldn’t expect. Sometimes as leaders, we want it to be family. That’s where we’re getting our connectivity, especially when we’re starting to pull out of our business and we have to let go of that control, we may not feel as connected to the people in our businesses and we want that connection. We want to feel like we’re part of it and we’re gonna talk about that in a second, so I won’t preempt too much of that. But really be conscientious of.

17:53
What is motivating your need to feel empathetic or in your need in order to feel like the business has to be a family? And think about it if it’s really what’s good for the business or just good for you. Yeah, I mean, I won’t elaborate too much, but totally in full agreement on that. And we even get feedback from employees that they really hate the family reference. Like it’s not good for them either.

18:18
you know, people that are on the team, the doers, you know, not necessarily the leaders, that it just makes them feel uncomfortable because like you said, Ann, then the expectations are just, I mean, wonky for lack of a better word, right? You don’t treat your coworkers like you do your family. You just don’t. But the piece about that that I think is dangerous, back to my point about setting clear expectations and then measuring against it.

18:43
it’s way too gray when you start to lean into the family because it almost signals to the team members that that is the more important part, which is the exact opposite of the business expectations. So, and I mean, I said now more than ever, I think it is such a hard thing because we kind of swung so far the other direction with COVID and now people aren’t sure what’s quote unquote appropriate to ask in some instances. So even more reason that you need to provide

19:13
very clear direction to your people. Yeah, and I think what we heard from the people in the organization who get that thrust upon them, they also say, well, then they feel like they have expectations against them to go above and beyond and to excuse things that they may not excuse in other situations or to break things on, accept things that they would normally accept because they feel like they have this expectation that they’re supposed to live up to this.

19:42
family ideal. So you’re putting them in a really awkward position too and you’re not going to get the best out of people who feel like that is an expectation that they don’t really want or they don’t really appreciate in the work environment. Yeah, absolutely. All right, so the next one, which can be a symptom of trying to be too empathetic maybe. Are you going to talk too much again or are you going to? No, I’m going to break it up. I decided I’m not going to do the what to do about it. I’m going to tap you in. How about that?

20:13
Well, you can do it however you want to go do it. I just was just wondering what I should be anticipating for the transition back to me. Maybe I’ll prompt you where I need a pause. All right. Anyway. All right. So the next one is the inability to give timely direct feedback. And for Anne and me, this is not- I guess we covered that one, didn’t we? Yeah. The same way that Anne said we’re maybe not always the best example of empathy in the way that we communicate with each other. We have no trouble giving each other direct feedback.

20:41
Luckily for us and those around us, it’s just us. So anyway, it really doesn’t serve though to withhold feedback, especially feedback that’s of a critical nature for any length of time. And yeah, I mean, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things, right? You don’t want to unleash on an employee if it’s a particularly bad meeting, but that’s out of character for them. Or if you have a fiery personality, you know, I’m looking at myself when I say this.

21:09
Sometimes maybe you need to take a minute before you provide feedback for someone. So we’re saying, okay, like let’s be reasonable here, but the point of this one is, it is actually disrespectful of your employees to not give them feedback when it is due, and it’s also disrespectful of your business. Anne and I talk all the time about our directness.

21:33
And we know that not everybody has this trait. So I joked at the beginning, right? We have no trouble with this, but we do know that not everybody is direct and that is perfectly fine. But if you can look at this through the lens of you’re doing what’s right for yourself, the employees and ultimately the business, you can lean into the empathy in a really good way and channel it in the style by which you provide the timely direct feedback.

22:01
If you don’t handle it this way, and this is what I mean when I say you’re being unfair to employees, again, we’re all people. People know when they’re quote unquote in trouble or they didn’t perform or you’re acting differently or you’re avoiding them, right? All of the things that we do when we get uncomfortable and we don’t wanna provide this feedback. And when you do that and you act like that, number one, you distract from the business.

22:27
But number two, it becomes a much bigger monster to then have to deal with. And so if you can get in the habit of giving that timely direct feedback, even if it’s something that you have to practice, it’s much more better, much more better. It’s much better for your employee in the long run. All right, that wasn’t too long. Well, you’re not gonna say what to do about it? Well, now you’re telling me to keep talking. All right, I’ll keep talking. So what do you do about it? If you’re not naturally good at this, you have to practice.

22:56
It is, it’s tough, it’s hard. It’s hard to be critical of people, even if it is with good intention in mind. And then I think setting the tone and the expectations of the culture of the team is really important. And that’s before you ever get to this point, right? But if you have your mission vision values of your team and you lead through it and you have the tone set and the expectation for the way by which you all treat each other, you can lean into that style. And if you can…

23:25
learn with practice to do that consistently, then what actually happens is that people aren’t so scared of the feedback. I mean, one of the things that I really leaned into is after a meeting, if I had feedback for one of my employees, I never did it in front of other people. That was not the culture of the organization. And especially given what some of my leaders, especially the new ones needed, it probably would have deflated them or made them a little bit more gun shy.

23:54
But what I would do is say, hey, can I grab five minutes of your time? And I would just pull them aside and give the feedback right then, and then we would move on. And I asked the same of the team members. So if they had feedback for me, I asked that it be communicated in the same way, that they not hold it until our monthly one-on-one, or whatever, but that they do the same thing for me. Pull me aside, shoot me a text and say, we need to chat for a minute, whatever it was. And so that feedback loop really became highly unemotional, actually.

24:24
People liked it because they felt like they could course correct right away. And then for my ones to the point of, you know, treating people differently and understanding their motivations, the ones that were prone to being particularly hard on themselves if they felt like they had faltered, were able to get over it faster because it wasn’t such a big deal. So there you go. What do you think, Anne? I mean, I think all of that is super important. I think the feedback piece is the hardest outside of giving up control to really practice.

24:53
Because as you mentioned, it makes us feel bad to make others quote unquote feel bad, right? Or at least that’s the assumption that’s kind of rolling around in our heads that, oh, it’s just so uncomfortable, they’re gonna feel really bad about themselves and I’m gonna feel bad that they felt bad. And then you’re leaning too far into that empathy piece that we were talking about. And what happens is that we tend to then just kind of kick the can down the road until that can can’t be ignored. So either.

25:22
other team members are starting to complain or they’re starting to question your leadership because why are you letting somebody who maybe not is doing their work or delivering their work and they’re impacting the entire team, why are you letting that slide? So then for them, they start to believe that they can let it slide. So you know, there’s these expectations you’re trying to build and integrity you’re trying to build within the team. But if you don’t hold that integrity within yourself, which means making sure you’re very

25:51
what you’re expecting out of the team and holding people accountable, it just all disintegrates around you. And then you have an inability to be effective in your leadership. I think the really great point of this is that it’s generally that feeling of feeling bad, it’s very short-lived. If you can get over that, then you can, this practice of getting feedback gets more efficient and better and it becomes part of the culture of the team.

26:19
that that’s just how we are and that it’s going to we’re hoarding each other, all of our each other accountable including yourself and other team members accountable for delivering the best work or servicing our customers in the best way whatever that big overarching goal is. And it becomes data. And I think that is a really important thing when we can pull the emotion away from it, it becomes data. It’s about self-improvement, it’s about team improvements, about growth, it’s about scale. And when we put that right context on

26:48
the feedback, then it becomes a less emotional place and a less personal place. So that’s where really, really the practice comes in, is that if you can link everything, all the feedback back to what is needed in order to achieve that goal that your team has established, it starts to become more objective than subjective. If you’re going to walk in and you’re going to say things like, oh, this team is just horrible and it doesn’t perform well and

27:14
You guys are just not doing the right work. I mean, that’s not going to solve anything. And again, you guys be like, I would never say that, but we have all said that at one time or another, especially when emotions and tensions are running high. But if instead, if you come in and say, hey, what happened here is not gonna be in benefit of being able to deliver this goal that we’re gonna try to deliver. So we need to course correct this now in order to be able to deliver against this goal. Explain the context, explain the why.

27:41
Explain how you want to course correct if it’s necessary without trying to micromanage it, but sometimes we need to take that time and that effort and really treat that person with respect that they’re learning too. And if you’re not going to invest the time in helping your team learn through the feedback, then you’re just not gonna be an effective leader. It’s really what it comes down to. Yeah, I mean, I think all really good points and I’ll use an example just to…

28:09
Show how important this actually is. One of the places I think the feedback gets really tricky for people is when you have to give feedback to high performers. And it usually comes through the cultural lens, right? So I was in a session with a coaching client a few weeks ago. She’s in a new very high senior level of leadership and she had given some feedback about folks and the culture of the organization was such that those people were untouchable.

28:39
quote unquote, because they were such high performers. We’re not gonna give them that feedback. We’re not gonna, you know, all of those things. She rises then to this position of leadership and had a couple of people come to her with the intention of resigning because they couldn’t work alongside these people. And right before our session that week, one of these folks that was no longer a peer and was a direct report decided to

29:07
treat her in such a way that was not reflective of the culture, but again had been promoted or not promoted, but, you know, ignored the team members that were in question and wanted to leave were there and saw this happen. Good news is it was able to be corrected, but it actually ended up with one of the two of the people having to be let go. And the other one is a work in progress and things are going better.

29:37
what can happen when that stuff goes unaddressed. And those two people that were coming to her saying, like, we can’t do it, were in fact the ones she wanted to keep more. That feedback piece, I just, I don’t know. I think the high performer piece is one where it gets really tricky. Cause it’s like, well, but they, you know, carry so much more work and they deliver so much more. And, you know, look what they do when really it’s like, yeah, but you can’t do that at the expense of being able to treat people within the culture of what you find that you then should be holding people accountable to.

30:07
Right. And I think that’s really important point because, you know, I don’t want it to sound like I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth when I’m saying you need to cater to your strong performers. Right. Right. Yes. Right. Right. But at the same time, that doesn’t give them a blank check to be able to act however they want. They still need to operate within the integrity of the organization, however you’ve established that. And so what I’m saying though is like you may provide a little bit more attention to those folks. You may

30:36
seek out their thoughts and their advice about how to structure the team in order to be more conducive, more efficient. Like you might be more mindful of what’s going to make them happy for sure, but that does not give them a right to act like a jerk. It does not give them a right to disintegrate the whole entire team around them. I mean, you’re not gonna sacrifice the whole team for the benefit of one. So it may sound like I’m talking in both sides of my mouth. I’m hoping you guys get the nuances there of.

31:03
being able to really shape around the kind of team and the kind of culture you want, which is not just performance led, but making sure you’re also thinking about the impact that some of this behavior is gonna have on the rest of the organization and making sure that everybody is being upheld to the same ideals of your mission, vision, values, and you’re not letting those things slide just because somebody is a good performer. So I say all that and I’ll go back and amend my story to say,

31:32
If Troy Aikman was a jerk, I mean, Jimmy Johnson didn’t allow anybody to get away with that kind of stuff. So because he was a high performer, if he fell asleep in a meeting, he might get a little bit of a pass compared to somebody else. But if he’s a jerk, he gets called out for being a jerk. So there’s a little nuance. Hopefully I kind of closed the loop on that so people aren’t sitting there going, but you just said. So, but I guess like the reason I bring up that example is it’s an and. When you say high performers, what I hear is…

32:01
the people that lead or do their work through both the culture and the expectations of their job. It’s not an or. That’s all. Right, right. Yeah. I think that’s a really good redefinition of what we mean by high performers, not just people who are producing results, but people who are exemplifying the culture as well. Yes. And I mean, I should probably clarify for my example, like all four of these people were high performers, two were culturally sound, two were not and getting away with it. So yeah, there you go.

32:29
Alright, so the last one I want to talk about on this episode, and Ann said earlier, you know, we’re gonna get into this a little bit more, is the desire to be liked over being respected. And so, you know, we talked a lot about empathy. We’re all human. We’re all people. There’s a reason that the expression, it’s lonely at the top exists. But the difference between being a doer, or managing, and leadership is learning to be respected over liked and being okay with that.

32:59
And this is really especially true. It’s one of the things we see as people rise from doer to manager and then on to leader. It’s a thing that is really hard for people because like in my example, I just gave that person rose up to the C level and went from being a peer of some of these folks to the boss of them. When we talk about this one, we acknowledge again with Anne and me not always being the most empathetic that it is.

33:26
natural. You spend a lot of time at work, you spend a lot of time with your co-workers, we’ve already covered the fact that they’re not family, but you may be friendly with people, you know, you may really enjoy going to happy hour with them, you might feel really hurt if all of a sudden you’re promoted to boss and you’re no longer invited to the happy hour of your peers, for example. But again, if we go back to the fact that this is not family, this is not social time,

33:53
If you want to lead and you want to rise in your career, in your organization, in the business, you have to understand that it’s more important to be respected than to be liked. And this is also true not only of the people that report to you, but your peers and those that are above you. And so what we see happen is when that becomes imbalanced or people rise in the ranks and can’t get out of their head about being liked, this is where it can become a problem.

34:22
So what we say here is you need to get really clear in your professional goals and the roadmap to getting you there and what you ultimately want from the organization you’re in, but your career in total. You need to map out what it takes to get there. So similar to the strategic planning exercise that we talked about and that really is Anne’s area of focus oftentimes.

34:44
you need to do the same thing really for yourself. And what that will do is it’ll make it more objective. It’ll allow you to see really clearly and reassess the relationships you have across the organization and where some recalibration needs to happen. Really, it needs to ultimately be, you know, no longer friend to either, you know, boss or whatever that looks like. And what we suggest for people, because this is hard and it can be emotional, is to start more at a tactical level.

35:13
So where should you show up? Where shouldn’t you show up? If you’re now the boss, should you even be invited to those weekly happy hours? If you are invited to the weekly happy hours, should you go? Or if you do go, how long do you stay? Or if it’s Friday night, and typically you guys would all hang out for, you know, into all hours, do you just pop in for 30 minutes and then you leave? You really have to look at that level and it’ll help you get more clear on the difference between where you ultimately at a high strategic level want your career to go.

35:42
and what steps you need to take in order to get there. So what do you think about that, Anne? Yeah, I agree with all of that. And I think, you know, this kind of puts a bow on several of the topics we’ve talked about because if empathy is one of the struggles that a lot of people have, this is another one. It’s especially prevalent, I think, in female leaders because there’s so few of us. So when we tend to have other females within our organizations, we…

36:10
We either want to bond with them or mentor them or, you know, kind of be connected to them in one way or another. And that can be a very dangerous place because there is a big difference between expressing vulnerability, which is another one of these big now legacy words for leadership.

36:32
So there’s a difference between vulnerability and oversharing. Yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Right. And I think there’s a it’s not even a fine line. I mean, it’s a very thick line on that. So vulnerability is, hey, you guys, I’m going through a really rough time. Just know if I’m being a little bit short, it’s not because of you. It’s because of what’s going on over here. But, you know, if you guys are feeling any tension, please call me out on it.

36:58
That’s vulnerability of like kind of sharing that you’re going through a tough time. Oversharing is I’m going through a tough time. My husband is a piece of you know what he did this and he did that and you know, and this might be to a group it might be to a single person. So first of all, your subordinates don’t know what to do with that information. Do not put that on them. Okay, so they that is just unfair and it’s more of a personal kind of relinquishing of your own.

37:26
or what’s going on and it’s just unfair to put it onto your support. And like I said, they don’t know what to do about that. So share if something is going on and it may be impacting the way that you are engaging with your team. You do not have to give them the details. That is not being vulnerable. That is just being disrespectful when it comes to separating your personal life from your professional life. And as April mentioned, we get it. It gets a little bit more uncomfortable. It is lonely at the top a little bit. Go.

37:53
Get a network outside of your business of other people who are in your position that you can then have these conversations with. Whether or not they’re masterminds, there’s professional groups, there’s other more personal, social groups, there’s lots of other places that can serve as a proxy for being able to have these conversations, sharing what’s really truly going on, getting the advice you need. The people that report into you are not those people. So,

38:24
That is the one thing that I want to say about that. I also want to relook back to the feedback piece and say, this is a big reason why people don’t give feedback. Why leaders don’t give feedback is because they’re afraid that their people aren’t going to like them. Or if they are afraid if they hold them to the expectations that they’re not going to like them or they’re going to say they’re a bad boss. Listen guys, expectations exist for a reason. This is the way that the world works. This is the way that businesses work. It’s what defines your strategic plan.

38:50
You have to set expectations, you have to hold to them. There has to be consequences for not following the expectations. Your team will respect you when their work is delivered and they’re all rewarded for doing good work versus one person sliding and the whole thing falls apart, but you are nice to that person. So therefore they still like you, but the rest of them don’t because the work fell apart. So just make sure that you’re being very mindful again, what your personal intention is and who you’re serving.

39:20
And just remember that the higher you go, the more you’re gonna have to seek out external people to help support you in this, and less you’re gonna be able to rely on the people that you work with, even colleagues, frankly, that are at your same level within your same business. That’s also can be another landmine, but that’s for a different episode. I know, as you were talking, I was like, oh, I could go here, I could go here, I could go here. Where do I wanna go with this conversation? So I won’t do that because we’re at the tail end of this, and I’m not sure that.

39:49
people can take much more because we’ve packed a lot into this and I think it’s one of those episodes where it’s a re-listen one and also go back and process and put it into practice and know that you can’t tackle all of this at one time. So give yourself some grace from that. But the one point I do want to say about this one is if you are respected, it doesn’t mean that you’re not also liked. I want to make sure we make that point too. So

40:18
We talk a lot about personal brand. I almost went down that rabbit hole and decided not today. Um, but what I will say there is that. If you ha if you know who you are, and then again, who you want to be as a leader and how you want to show up. If you manage through that, it is highly likely that you will be respected and liked, and I offer that caveat because. The bad behavior we don’t want to see is that you lay down an iron fist.

40:47
and people respect you, but they fear you, that’s not a great place for people to be either. I think the piece for me personally as a leader was I felt the most personal pride or use it as a kind of metric when someone would say either I ultimately want your job or I respect your leadership style, right?

41:17
Like they wanted to become you in some way, right? Or emulate it, not that we encourage people to try to take on the traits of others. But to me, that was a good way of saying respect and like. Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. Yeah, these are not meant to be polar opposites and that you can’t drive both. It’s just a matter of being intentional about the way that you’re showing up and what the real motivation of that is, right?

41:44
Yes. And the need for structure, the need for guidelines, the need for expectations, the need for accountability, all of these things that are critical leadership qualities and tools in order to have a highly effective team. And that if you have to sacrifice one, people may not like you per se for their own personal reasons or whatever that might look like, but they respect the job that you’re doing. So I think

42:11
Ideally, it’s they like you and respect you. That’s always the preferred position. So yeah. Yeah. And you won’t please everyone. Right. So again, it’s work. You don’t get to pick. You don’t pick everyone you work with. All right. So we’ve covered a lot of things today in this episode. Obviously the point is overcoming the biggest challenges that take down leaders. So hopefully you’ve heard a lot of both here’s the situations you could find yourself.

42:39
in but also then some action items to go and do. And we would just say, give yourself grace as you go through and take it a little bit at a time because creating and changing behavior is a really big challenge. So just before we close out here, and as a reminder, the four things we talked about today for you to keep in your head and take away is be careful about a lack of prioritization. Don’t lean too far into empathy.

43:08
Make sure that you give timely direct feedback versus avoiding it. And if you have to choose, work to be respected over being liked. And with that, we encourage you to take at least one powerful insight you heard and put it into practice because remember, Strategic Counsel is only effective if you put it into action. Did we spark something with this episode that you want to talk about further? Reach out to us through our website, fort We can help you customize what you have heard to move your business.

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