Why Your Culture Is Defined By Bad Behaviour

Speaker A: Welcome to get the Elephant out of the Room. I'm Chris Webber. We all have to deal with difficult people at work, difficult managers, difficult colleagues, and difficult customers. In this podcast, we share stories and experiences of people like you who face these challenges and share their secrets to success. Our mission is to help everyone overcome obstacles and to become more confident, better communicators. So sit back and relax while we unravel the mysteries of another difficult person. Scott, wonderful. Thank you for joining me today. I appreciate you taking the time to have a conversation with me.

Speaker B: It's great to be here. It's a sunny day in Dublin, so, uh, yeah, look brilliant. Really look forward to the chat.

Speaker A: Wasn't there a start of this year where it rained every single day for the first 37 days of the year

Speaker B: or something can better that? We actually had a year about five years ago. Her rained every day for 77 days in a row. It was like, oh my God, surely there can't be any more water in the sky. It was, uh, yeah, it was insane. But, uh, look, as I love that Scandinavian saying that there are no, there's no bad weather, only bad clothing.

Speaker A: Yeah, perfect. Perfect. And it's also a good reason why Ireland is green, because it's wet.

Speaker B: And, um, we have great milk and we have great butter and we have great meat and all of that stuff. So, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A: Wonderful. Scott. Today we're going to talk about some dealing with difficult people at work. Um, I know you do a lot of work on this with leaders. Um, it's a big passion of yours. Talk to us about who you are, introduce yourself to our audience and talk about your journey through your career.

Speaker B: So instead of doing it in the usual kind of time bound way, let me start today and then I'll go back a wee bit. So I founded inspiring change in 2017. We are an organizational culture consultancy based in Dublin. We work with organizations across the public and private sector, large and small, to help them be more intentional about the culture they want to have in their organizations. And for us at a very high level, culture is simply a vehicle for strategy. But I suspect what will be really interesting about today's conversation is how much of your culture in your organization is wrapped up in how you deal with difficult people when you find them in your organization. And we'll maybe come on to that later. Prior to this, I was five years in aib. Uh, what my children slightly unfairly call my last proper job. And, um, I know it's bad, isn't it, kids? Um, and I've lived in Ireland for 26 years. So I'm not originally from here, I'm originally from Scotland. Moved all over. And when I came here, it was funny, I did a bit of work with a coach and we were talking about my purpose. And it kind of came to me that I think my purpose is about connecting people. So whether it be about us having a brilliant conversation today, whether it be about the work that we do, whether it be about, you know, I'm always giving out to my wife that, you know, why am I always the one that has to arrange all the drinks or the coffees or meeting up with people or whatever? And she said, because you like doing it. And so I think for me, yeah, the idea of connection is so fundamentally important. And I think for, for people from, from Scotland, from, from Ireland, from those Celtic nations, I think that's even stronger. So I think that idea of connection is really, really powerful. So it is a bit about me.

Speaker A: Totally, totally agree. I spent, um, personally, I also spent, uh, 10 years living in Northern Ireland, um, and absolutely loved it. All the same, same experience. I moved from, uh, from the northwest of England, spe in Northern Ireland, and absolutely adored the place. Fabulous place to be. And fabulous place to raise children as well. Um, so there's two things that have triggered me immediately to delve into this conversation. Um, you said the word intentional, intentional about their culture. And I think that is a strong element because I think the implication is most people are not intentional about it. It's a culture that evolves. Talk to me about what that means for you with people that you work with.

Speaker B: So every, every organization has a culture, every organ. We've all worked in them. Some of them we might describe as good, some of them we might describe as bad. We hear people describing them as toxic or like a family or a nice place to be. And actually often we're, uh, senior teams, CEOs and senior teams aren't being intentional enough about creating the type of culture they need to be successful. As I said at the top, if we believe that cult culture is simply a vehicle for strategy, then it's not there just to create a nice place to work, a place that I go to, to enjoy being with the people that I work with. Yes, of course, that's part of it. But actually, commercially, what's the business about? Well, probably being high performing, probably stakeholder returns or shareholder returns or whatever your objectives are. But you've got to have the culture in place to be able to deliver that. So understanding, first of all, where you want to be so what's that? Cultural ambition is really important. We get people coming to us all the time saying, help us measure our culture. And I'm like, yeah, sure. Where do you want to be? What kind of culture do you want to have? And they go, yeah, we don't know. We haven't really thought. We've never thought about that. It just is what it is. And I'm like, no, no, it's not. Um, yeah, we might talk about Alice in Wonderland later on. I won't get into that yet, but we might come back to that after. But, um, an intentionality gives you direction, gives you focus, and that's. That's really, really important.

Speaker A: Do people use the. I mean, I. Whenever I think of culture, I think of vague words. Positive culture, uh, inclusive culture, those kind of things. Right. Which are just nefarious, you know, who knows what that really means? Yeah. Uh, do you hear that?

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, all the time. And actually we don't. And, ah, you hear good and bad culture. And actually it's not about good or bad culture. I think probably the term that we would use most often is do you have a strong and aligned culture? Do you have a strong culture that everyone understands, that everyone's aligned behind, that everyone really, really cares, gets, and that everyone really lives? And that's the really important thing, that word, living. Do we live the culture that we have? And of course, a lot of that is buried in the values of the organization and moreover, in the behaviors that sit behind those values that you have, probably on a wall, on a mount mat, or a screensaver. Um, but actually, are they lived by people? Because for me, that's where culture starts to fall to pieces. And when you start to think about that idea of how do we deal with difficult people? That's all for me, tangled up in that web of behaviors and values and culture.

Speaker A: Yeah, because it's about what behaviors you encourage, what behaviors you discourage, how you, uh, deal with people who step outside the acceptable lines that you as a group have agreed to be the case. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And there's a brilliant quote that I use all the time because people say to me, how do you define culture? And we can go down the, you know, the combination of values and behaviors, systems and processes that are shared and understood as key part of how we run the organization. Or there was a really good book written, uh, in the late 90s which I can't remember the name of. I've just lost it out my brain. We'll put it in the show notes maybe, but it was written by two guys about culture, schools, culture in the US and the line they used, which is a line that I use more often than any other description of culture is your culture is dictated by the worst behavior you're willing to put up with.

Speaker A: M. Yeah. Which is. Yeah, I mean, that's powerful. And I think that's where you hear commentary on things like a toxic. We have a toxic culture. And the reason it feels like a toxic culture is because there's a sense of people are allowed to do. Do things which others feel is really negative or incredibly challenging or incredibly uncomfortable. And that creates, uh, uh, a, ah, culture that I don't want to be part of. Let's take a step back for a second. Why culture for you? What was it? Was there a moment or an experience that took you down the path of saying, it's culture that I want to be working on?

Speaker B: I think it's a great question and it's probably fair to say that it's evolved over time. When I left the bank in 2017, I'd been working very much in the engagement, employee engagement and internal comms space. And that was where the business started back in 2017. And over time, it's kind of evolved from that place. We still do a lot of that work, but it's kind of evolved by clients saying to us, well, can you help us do a workshop on purpose? Um, can you help us identify values? Do you do, uh, culture audits? Can you come and tell us what our culture is today? So we basically have then evolved the business into this space where, of course, communication and of course engagement are really key parts of driving the culture. But actually, for me, I suppose coming back to that connection piece of, you know, feeling like somebody that wants to create connections. Well, actually, if I can create stronger connection between an employee and their workplace, a workplace and the employees and the employees to their work, then that's going to make it better for those people coming into work and it's going to make it better for the organization. So, you know, it's kind of, I suppose it sits really neatly beside my own kind of purpose of what I want to do. So getting to do this work is brilliant. Um, somebody said to me yesterday, you know, do you ever go in somewhere that is just as an absolute shit show and you know that you're not going to be able to do anything about it? And I say we do get called into organizations all the time where they're really, really struggling, but equally we get called into organizations all the time where actually what they want to do is they've got it. They've got the secret sauce, they've got it bottled up. It's absolutely perfect. And their question isn't how do we make it better? Their question is, how do we maintain it? So that's something for listeners maybe to think about. Is the culture that we have, is it the one that we want great? Is it moving towards the one that we want great, or is it one that we don't want? Because those different things require different, I guess, action, different remedial action to help them along.

Speaker A: And I think there's another thing which is, um, it's dynamic. And I wonder what your thoughts are on this, because I remember I come from a sporting background and we were just chatting about that before we started recording. And one of the things that's really important is you're creating a great team culture. It's something I've experienced. I've seen some, some incredible team cultures and I've seen some terrible team cultures, uh, through my career. And, um, when you have a really good one, people want to protect it. But the problem is expectations of the participants, uh, who the participants are evolves over time. You know, you, when you start in a new job, you come in grateful for the opportunity, keen to, to meet people and to network. Three years later, uh, it's now you that are trying to grow your career. You're trying to become more confident. And that creates a tension that didn't exist three years ago. And so do you. Do people struggle trying to keep the culture when actually they should be embracing an evolution and a dynamic culture?

Speaker B: Question. And I think that on that micro level of me as, as an employee and what I've come in with is that, uh, bouncy, happy bunny on day one, three years time, I'm going, why the hell haven't I been promoted? I hate this place. Jimmy and Sarah keep getting promoted over me, and I'm just really angry about it. That's for me, that's a decision for me to have and to hold and to say, well, if this organizational. If the organizational values in here and the culture in here doesn't align with what I want as an employee and a human being, then I've got a choice to make, haven't I? That I can just go and work elsewhere. And that's okay. On a macro level, which I think is really interesting. And I love the sport. I love the sport. There's a lot of analogies between sport and business all the time, and we talk about them. I love the idea that you've got a team which is absolutely brilliant is absolutely knocking out of the park and it's the best team you've ever played on. But of course, what we forget is that the, the context in which that team is operating changes all the time. The coach might change how things are happening, might change the way that we assess success, might change the competitions that we're in, might change how people feel about the team. A, uh, global world war can change people's feelings about sport. So there's lots of things going on that are kind of buffeting, if you like our culture. So when people say to me, uh, we've got a brilliant culture is exactly what we want and need, I would often say, yeah, today, Today it is. But how do you make sure that you can protect that, uh, for the future? And how do you make sure? Which is why we say to clients, measure it every year, so just check that you've got all the bits that you need in the right places at the right time. Make sure that things aren't falling away or there aren't issues that you maybe need to resolve and, you know, just put a bit more light on. So I think that macro, that piece of micro or macro is really important. But I think to your point, evolving your culture, being an evolutionary journey, is really important. You never get to the end. You never get. You never get to. You know, you might have a cultural ambition, but actually as you get nearer to it, the finish line moves slightly further away or left or right, and you've got to just slightly reorient to get to the culture that you want or need. Because as I say, if that context changes, the culture you thought you needed 12 months ago might not actually be the culture that you need today.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I think that's where the line. The parallels between sport and business need to be understood. I've heard several people talk over the years and read lots of books and my own experiences. And there's a whole. This thing that jumps to my mind where, uh, it kept. Got thrown down my throat all the time. The phrase the Steve Redgrave, does it make the boat go faster? And he was doing a whole lot of work talking to businesses and saying, this was our men, this was our kind, uh, of phrase we used all the time. Does it make the boat go faster? If it does, we're in. If it doesn't, we're against it. And one of my challenges is that there is a goal that ends with every sport. There is an end of the season where it stops and then we start again the next season. There is an Olympic championship, there is a World cup playoff, there is something that you are training for with your colleagues, with your team, with your friends that, that then is boxed off and then you start again the next year. That doesn't happen in business. There might be moments, there might be projects, there might be programs that are happening, but I think there's a, there's a mindset that, that gets overused, which is, oh, uh, well, if we just do what, you know, the Spanish football team did, we would, we'll win the European Cups twice in the World Cup. It's not, that's not the way it's going to live, is it?

Speaker B: Absolutely not. And I think that, you know, whether you're thinking about making the boat go faster or you want to jump over to David Brailsford in, in Cycling UK and his idea of marginal gains, of all the little things, that's probably the one, you know, making the boat go fast is great actually. I love that marginal gains piece of uh, meeting. Yeah, can everyone just do everything a little bit different? And I talk about micro change all the time and I'm like, it's great being able to drive change from the top of your organization, but if you listen to Gallup, they'll tell you that from an employee engagement perspective, 70% of engagement of people in an organization isn't driven by the CEO or the CTO or the cpo. It's driven by the team leader down in the weeds in the depths of your organization. And uh, therefore, if we can get everyone pulling in the same direction to make you both go faster, but we all get them doing a little bit of change a little bit differently, all in pursuit of keeping moving to that place. And I think probably, I think to your point about the cycles of sport, of course, an Olympic cycle, four year Olympic cycle for an Olympian, for example, or Maybe it's a 12 month cycle for uh, a marathon runner. I think we do slightly have cycles because we have organizational strategy, right? So we've got our corporate strategy, which is a three year strategy, so we know what we have to get done in three years. So there's probably, if it was a Venn diagram of business and sport, there'd probably be a little bit, you know, crossover bit in the middle, which is very much that whole idea of what's our strategy? Because I think in sport you would have a strategy of what that looks like to get me to the start line for the Olympic 100 meter finals. And in business I have A strategy which is, well, what do we need to get done over the next 1, 2, 3, 10, 5 years, whatever the number is that you plan your strategy out, but making sure that people understand that, understand their role in it and can see themselves in it, that's really important.

Speaker A: I see that being even more relevant when you get to CEO level of a sports organization. That, to me, is where I think Dave Brailsford's very relevant. And his m. Marginal gains because he sat at the top of the organization. He wasn't thinking about an Olympic cycle. He was genuinely focusing on a culture change, a culture shift that affected every aspect of how cycling was going to be addressed in the uk. And. And if I imagine, if I run a Premier League football club or if I'm thinking about the Irish rugby team, I'm thinking the next five years, I'm thinking youth development, I'm thinking evolution, I'm thinking, you know, all of those things. If I'm coaching the team or I'm captaining the team, I'm thinking about this season. And I think that to me is, you know, we probably don't hear enough from the chairman, uh, and the chair people. He've delivered a strategy that's transformed. You know, I love stories where, you know, clubs come from almost nowhere or countries come from nowhere. And they. And because they've built a strategy that. That transforms who they are and creates a strong identity. It's massive.

Speaker B: Yeah. And if we take that, you know, if we extend that, the Sporting back into business again, the David Brailsford thing that when you think about as CEO, he was looking at the big picture. He wasn't necessarily down trackside saying, what can we do, Chris, to make the bike go 100th of a second quicker? He was there going, we need to. Need to. Every. Every little bit of what we do needs to get better. He wasn't doing it. Now, here's the challenge that in many organizations that we've seen, the senior leaders are too busy being down in the weeds. They're too busy trying to find the hundredths of a second, and they shouldn't be doing that. To your point there about, let's go and speak to the chairman, let's go and speak to the CEO, let's see what she says about where the organization needs to go. And let's go and have a chat with the coaches in the sporting analogy, or the people leaders, the people managers, the supervisors in the business world and say to them, uh, what are you going to do tomorrow and the next day and next Week and next month to get us closer to those objectives that we've got in our corporate strategy. And they're the ones. And that's why that role, for me, God, that middle manager role, and everyone said this forever, is so fundamentally important to organizational success. It's a coach in sport, it's a people leader, uh, in the workplace or a super advisor or a manager. And they're the ones that can take that corporate strategy from David Brailsford or from whoever, translate that down into, well, that's what it means in our division and within our division. That's what that means in our team and for our team. It means that Johnny and Sarah, you do this, Jim Bob and Sally you do these things and together we'll form part of that bigger machine which is our overall strategy and let the people on the front line do the details. If you're up there, you shouldn't be doing the detail. You should be, uh, right up there with a helicopter view of what's going on and perhaps moving some pieces around, but certainly not down in the weeds.

Speaker A: Yeah. Ah, I totally agree, totally agree. So let's start talking about personality types. Let's start talking about people who uh, you've experienced, you've seen, you've come across cultures which you know, or difficult people within cultures that you hear clients complain about or you've had to address in your experience.

Speaker B: It was interesting. So there's two that spring to mind immediately. And one was in my very first job. And I won't say where it was or who he was, but um, it was a he. Um, that narrows it down a little bit.

Speaker A: It's not 50% of the world's population.

Speaker B: There you go. We're now down to three and a half billion people. Uh, so, you know, so that was, that's the first person we can talk about. And then the other person I think is probably just more, um, probably just more generally. I think that really helps to bring to life the difficult conversations and the impact has on culture is the high performing salesperson. Uh, okay, we've all met and worked with and I know, and I'll just caveat this with, I know that all salespeople aren't like this, but I do, I have seen it often. The high performing salesperson that just leaves a trail of death and destruction behind them in the sales process, in the organization. But because they're doing 180% of their sales target, the senior leaders go, sure, listen, that's just Chris, that's just what he's like Just, you know, just let him add it. He's doing a really good job, you know, doing the selling, but actually what's he doing to the culture? So they'd be my, they'd be my two, my two kind of go to's, I guess.

Speaker A: So let's talk about your experience first of all, because I think I started the beginning, your first ever job. These are, um, these are the moments, you know, when I, when I wrote my book, I wrote the book about my memories and my experience of this because, because they just imprint themselves on you and they kind of become everything that you don't want to be. Everything. You know, that some of the lessons that you learn on, um, how not to treat people. So tell me your story. What happened?

Speaker B: So he was, this was a very, very big tech organization that was almost cultish in the way it operated. And if you were in, you were in, and you were fully in. You were literally drinking the Kool Aid every day of the week. And if you weren't in, you were out and that'd be the end of it. Well, this person weren't there for ages. Very good techie. Um, amazing technically, but from a people perspective, just gruff and difficult to get on with. And it was almost as if it became a bit of a badge of honor that the expectation of this person being gruff and difficult, almost just, it almost bred their Persona, which became this endless cycle of just becoming more gruff and more difficult. And if you got them on a good day, you were fine. If you didn't, all hell could break loose. And I've met people like that throughout my career of 30 something years. And I think the challenge with it is that it keeps people on edge all the time, that you don't quite know what version of the person you're going to get today or tomorrow. If I turn up at their desk today and ask the question, I might get this response. If I turn up at the desk tomorrow, I might get a different response. But actually I don't know what day is what or what I'm doing or when or how they're going to react. And that can have a really big impact on us, on our experience at work, on the environment at work, and ultimately if it carries on, on our own mental health. And we're having those conversations way more these days, the impact that those difficult people can have on us mentally because we wake up at three in the morning going, oh my God, I have to go and ask your man tomorrow for X, Y and Z. And I'm really worried. I Don't know what to say. I don't know. And I think that's particularly true for people younger in their careers nowadays. At the age of 53, if I met him, I'd have a fairly robust and direct conversation with them. But at 23, like it's a different, it's a different kettle of fish.

Speaker A: Yeah. And state status matters. You know, his experience. And you talked about the culture. You know, again, you talked about culture, the organization, the kind of those were in and those that weren't in. As a new person, you're not in. So that does. You don't feel the right to be able to question, challenge and approach these kind of issues.

Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. And, and you weren't in and you weren't in until you earned the way in effectively. And, and that. Yeah, for somebody new in any organization, that'. Hard. And I guess that's where the culture comes in that nobody ever sat him down and said, come here, you sit down there a second now so we can have a conversation about your behavior. Because you know what? I just don't think it's what we want around here. Nobody had ever had that conversation.

Speaker A: And, and maybe the opposite is true. They, they liked the cultish feeling, the group of people who could say whatever they wanted, who dominated the business, who kind of. Because that was a. There is a there. You know, as humans, we look for groups and an identity and if there are barriers to entry to that group, which could be because you've been here long enough or because you're one of the guys or whatever that barrier to entry might be, we protect that. And actually then they defend behavior of the colleague.

Speaker B: Yeah. Which probably leads us beautifully into the high performing salesperson and defending that position that you know the conversation. And we've seen it loads where you've got just a really difficult. And uh, maybe they work in marketing, maybe they work in sales, maybe they're tele sales or in a call center wherever. But they're really high. They're really, really high performing. They're nailing it and they're really high performing. But they've got the worst behavior in the world, which is not aligned at all with the culture that we want to have in the organization. And it comes back to that, that point that I made earlier on about describing culture as uh, the worst behavior that you're willing to accept. So if we talk about having a value of respect, of collaboration, of innovation, of doing things together, whatever those values are that are espoused in the organization, written all over the walls if we. And, uh, let's pick respects. If we are then giving somebody a pass when they're disrespectful, you know, when they shout at somebody in a meeting or not even in a corridor in the canteen. Oh, sure. Look, I know he's just under a bit of pressure at the moment trying to close a big deal. And you know, that's just. Look, it's just, you know, that's just how he is. And you know, it's just. Yeah, but he's doing 180% of the sales number. Not acceptable. You've got to then ask yourself as an, as an, as a senior leader in an organization, what do I want this organization to be and what do I need to get it there? Back to the intentionality. If I'm truly intentional about creating the culture that I know I want and need in this organization, then I take that behavior and I have a word about that behavior. And if that behavior continues, regardless of the sales number, and that's it. Regardless of the sales number or the performance, I have that conversation. And m. If that person has a hissy fit and walks, I don't chase them down the corridor and pander to them and say, I'm really sorry, I'm really sorry. Come back, come back, come back. I just let them go. And that's really hard. That's really hard. If you're the head of an organization and somebody's doing that big number, it's really, really, really hard to have that conversation. I don't shy away from that. But for the betterment of the organization and for the betterment of the other people there, actually, that's exactly the right thing to do. Okay, thank you. Goodbye.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, do you know, there's a few things you touched on which I think are really important. Really interesting that you talked about this unpredictability in the first example that you shared. And one of the aspects of trust, when I start to analyze trust and what goes into building trust, predictability, reliability is a big part of that. We want to know that people are reliable, they keep their promises, they do the things that they say they're going to be going to do. This fits in with that. If I, if I show up today and I don't know how you're going to respond and how you're going to behave, how can I trust you? And yet we all know that trust sits at the heart of a great culture and great relationships, whether that's personal relationships or business relationships. And if one of those aspects that Reliability is undermined simply because your behavior is unpredictable, then there's a certain threshold that you won't be able to get past that keeps it superficial. And, um, in any organization, there's a balance between the results that we deliver and the relationships that we build. When I think about kind of great commercial organizations that I work with, they keep a balance. So they, yes, they're interested in building relationships with customers and creating a really strong partnership with their customer, but not at the expense of getting business results. And when it goes out of balance, if they become too results orientated, they start to complain. To me, it's getting a bit transactional, it's getting a bit cold. It feels like, you know, we're not really getting under the skin of the opportunity. And if they get too much under the skin of the relationship, then what starts to happen is they give away value to keep people happy. And like that story you just told about the salesperson kind of shouting in the corridor and then getting away with it is a good example of an overbalance of results. Leadership are expected. You know, leadership care more about his number than the impact that he has. The relationships that, that he has across the organization or she has across the organization. And that to me is a strong symptom of an organization which is losing it. And I wouldn't be surprised if when you start to explore the customer relationships, you see something similar. Because it's funny how I'm interested in your comment here. Um, leaders will say to you, I'm sure we want a positive culture and a great culture, but really what they want is numbers. They really want the numbers. And so they don't mind behavior which drives the numbers. They tolerate that because that's what they really want. The unsaid agenda. What's your comment on that?

Speaker B: Well, I think that culture should be in pursuit of performance in an organization. First of all, uh, I think that as I said earlier, culture is a vehicle for strategy. I, um, also think that, yes, that's what the top of an organization should be focused on, which is the high performance of their organization, if indeed that's their measure.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I also think that when people like me and other people that do the type of work that we do go into organizations being really hard nosed about the stats is really important. Making sure that we help to explain to CEOs and CFOs, you're investing this much money in your culture. But actually if it does a return of 9% on revenue, if it reduces your churn by 6%, and if it does this, this and this, how much money is that going to save you? Then they go oh, that's interesting. And then when you think about the damage that that one person can do in an organization, that's it. I feel really bad now. I feel as if we're throwing salespeople under a bus. Let's call, let's go with hype, let's go with high performers. That high performer, even though they're high performing and they're bringing in the money, they're bringing in the revenue, the damage that they are doing around your organization which is driving down engagement. So that idea that people want to just do that little extra bit more, that bit of discretionary effort that's being driven down, innovation is being driven down. So actually new ways to find new money isn't happening. Um, people are leaving so your churn is really high. And that's not just bodies going out the door. And that's a pain in the ass because oh my God, there's nobody to do X. Of course that's all the knowledge that's going out with that person, all the experience and the relationships that person has built up with your colleagues and with your customers and the cost to then go, the actual, the monetary cost, recruitment cost.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: Training, all that stuff. Um, but equally the time lag of that person coming in and being able to then get up to speed. So when you actually break it down and you go well what's all that actually costing you? Mhm. Like it could be an enormous number but people don't think about that. They just think about the 180% sales number and carry on. And don't really think about the ramifications of their, I was going to say their action but actually their inaction.

Speaker A: Inaction, yeah. Do you know there's a sales uh, model called the Challenger Sale. I don't know if you've come across it in the time. And the Challenger said was based on a piece of research. I think you'll find it quite interesting because M they wrote, they wrote a book about it and what they did was they started to analyze organizations and people and look at their high performers in sales roles and what they were trying to identify. Is there a personality type or a Persona type that is more successful than the other? And they identified five different types of um, sales Persona that they, that they identified and one of them was the relationship builder, um, which is kind of what we often see in long term sales. Um, and they started to analyze how these personalities perform over time. Now no surprise, they Created. They identified one called the Challenger Sales with a challenger salesperson. No surprise. That was the one that came out top. And there's some analysis about that. But one of the other Personas that they identified was they. What they called the lone wolf. And the lone wolf is beautifully just described by you. And the lone wolf is there. Don't get in my way. Um, I'm out, I'm hunting, I'm winning. I do it my way. They shortcut the processes. They don't follow the systems, but they seem to get results done. And what they did through this analysis and they got a whole lot of big organizations over many years said, actually this is not the most productive type of salesperson. Even when they deliver results, what they notice is when the market is good, they deliver results. But when the market is slow, they don't deliver results because they don't build networks, build trust. They don't build relationships with people internally. They don't get the leads from the guys who kind of. Or the girls who go, I've just met this customer, and I think they'd be great for you. They. They're left to do everything on their own. And so you tend to see spikes in performance. So it goes great, and then it drops away because there's no. There's no support network. And I think it's really interesting description. So we're not demonizing salespeople. Because we're demonizing salespeople. There's an actual Persona. Don't worry.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Thank you for digging me out of that hole. I'll never get. I'll never get work with sales organizations ever again. Um, yeah, I do think it's. I. Yeah, I do think it's really, really interesting. Um, now, I do often wonder, and I. I said this to my son. My son said something six or eight months ago. He's 16. And, um, I said, sure. Isn't it maybe better to be curious and not judgmental? And he said, are you actually quoting Ted Lasso at me? And I went, I don't know. Am I? Because I hadn't actually seen the show at that point. No. I don't know if you've seen the show, um, seen some of it. Oh, my God. Like leadership. M. It's comedy and leadership. It's off the charts. So listeners watch Ted Lasso, um, but he has this line, be curious and not judgmental. So maybe we need to be asking ourselves with the experiences of both those, uh, Personas that I kind of outlined, what is it that's driving that? What Is it that's driving them to be like that? What is it that's driving that lone wolf? What is it that was driving that guy back in my first job? Just be difficult and just a bit odd. Like what, what was it? And, and how then if we're not going to be able to get rid of the person, how best can we work with the person in that environment? And, and I think there's a, there's a bit of a dearth of curiosity at the moment. I think we're very quick to judge, to make snap decisions about people, and we don't kind of ever go, I wonder why that might be, why might they be like that? And that, for me, is a shame.

Speaker A: My, um, biggest piece of insight, an old boss said to me many, many years ago, uh, no one ever gets up to do a bad job. And it stuck with me. And it stuck with me because the guy, whoever it is, who you don't get along with at work, other people think they're brilliant and other people think they're brilliant. They get positive feedback from somebody and they, they are trying to do the best that they can to get the recognition and rewards that they, that they are working hard towards. And, and just because you don't appreciate perhaps the way that they see value is something that you don't see value. Value doesn't make them wrong, but it does create that misunderstanding and conflict. And I recognize at times that when we see people who are difficult, you know, the person you met when you first joined the industry, uh, the business, um, I would pretty be pretty confident that if you asked him, they would go, yeah, that guy was difficult. It's reciprocal. It's rare that we have a situation where we find somebody who's really, we think is a difficult person to work with and they're like, no, no, no, I think you're great. It's often because there's something which isn't working. And that question of curiosity is an important bridge between two people, for sure.

Speaker B: And I think that I love that line about no one ever gets up to do a bad job. However, I do think that in organizations we can create the conditions in the environment in which we allow people do a bad job. Yeah, it's not that they're, not that they're being bad, but they're just not being, they're just not doing the job that we need them to do, or if they are doing it, they're not doing it to the level that we need them to do it at. And of course that then Calls into question probably a whole other episode's worth of discussion around performance management, around the fact that I, I, uh, very rarely see an organization which is really good at, ah, managing performance. We'll do an objective setting in January, we'll maybe have a chat in June, and then at the end of the year I'll tell you if you've been good or bad and how much bonus you're going to get. Well, actually that's not good enough. We need to be having performance conversations with people. 10 minute walk around the block, 5 minute chat at the coffee shop. Yes, we do need those structured ones, but actually often it's the little things, the little moments that really matter. And you know, what support can I give you? Where do you need help? You did that last week. It probably wasn't exactly where we needed to be. Let's have a conversation about that. And that I suppose comes back to why those two Personas that I talked about earlier on and others that you speak about in this podcast, Chris, why it's never addressed because we don't like having those hard conversations. We're not very good at performance management. We don't have psychologically safe organizations. And all of those things come together to mean that it's actually, you know what, just let him at it because he's earning loads of money or he's just always been like that and he's really clever, not good enough. But we're just not helping people to manage their way out of it.

Speaker A: And another point, uh, about the not doing a bad job is if, I guess if you witness behavior which seems to be encouraged or not discouraged, which allows other people to get ahead, to get noticed, then you're likely to emulate that behavior. And so your commentary on what we allow people to get away with starts to drive other people's decision making. And an episode recently where we were talking about, uh, mentorships and mentorships internally. And my experience of organizations who've done mentorships is often people fight to be mentored by certain executives because then they're going to get promoted. And so mentorship is not a learning experience. It's a, I, uh, guess a shop window vehicle for promotion. Right. And I guess that's probably an example of something that you've come across before.

Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, it is that I was actually only saying, so I had a meeting this morning and I was only saying to the client, I need to think of a better way of doing this. But it is monkey see, monkey do m Whatever behaviors I see that people are exhibiting, and that's what gets them on. Well, that's what I'm going to do, because I want to get on as well. And if that's what we have to do around here, then you know what? That's what we have to do around here. Yeah. And it's completely understandable, isn't it?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So what, what are your pieces of advice? So what, you know, if you're, if you're engaging with people now or people are listening to this episode and that they're thinking about their colleagues, they're thinking about how they work, they're thinking about what they're doing. What's your advice for, for either dealing with difficult people or for starting, uh, you know, at your level, n equals 1. To build a culture that you can be proud of. Can people do it

Speaker B: correctly? Yes, categorically, yes. Is it hard work? Yes. Does it happen tomorrow? No. It takes about three to five years, probably to properly, you know, get your culture strong and aligned. And we have a lot of organizational boredom that gets us off to the next shiny thing. And we don't just stick with the knitting.

Speaker A: I love that. Yeah. Yeah, I love that phrase.

Speaker B: And, and, um, that's a challenge. So what do organizations need to do? What's the really practical stuff? So, first of all, define what the culture is that you want and make sure everybody is really, really clear on it. Involve them in it. Involve the people in your organization in developing that culture. Ambition. Don't do it by, um, too many conversations or too democratically because you're the ones, as senior leaders that are closest to the strategy. So you decide what that is with some info from stuff, then be very clear on your values.

Speaker A: So just pause there. What would. What would it sound like? So you said, if you ask, if you went to somebody who said, describe the culture that you want, um, what would you love? What sort of thing would you love to hear? I mean, clearly needs to be specific, but I guess, uh, just to give us an example of what, what they could be saying, we want to have

Speaker B: a strong and aligned culture where people are open to new ideas, are open to failure, and are open to working collectively, delivering brilliant products and services for our customers.

Speaker A: Okay, wonderful. And then that takes you to the values that you were just about to talk about.

Speaker B: So how do we then achieve that? If we believe that our values are signposts to get us toward that, then we've got to have very clear values, but more importantly, very clear behaviors, because it's Very hard to go and have a conversation like Chris. I really didn't like the way that, you know, you behave in that meeting. And then Chris says, well, how do you want me to behave? And we go, because we haven't got any behaviors written down anywhere. So until you've got a set of clear behaviors, it's very hard to hold somebody accountable for living those behaviors if they don't exist. So. And uh, that's a two way street. It's me holding the organization to account for those behaviors, it's the organization holding me to account for those behaviors, it's me holding myself to account for those behaviors. And it's all of us as uh, colleagues holding each other to account for those behaviors. And I think if you can do that, that gets you a long way toward being able to have better performance conversations, be able to pull people up when they've not really lived the values or they have exhibited poor behavior. I've been able to just have those conversations and they're much more powerful because you can then say, this is what we want to see and have in our organization. And that's not what I'm seeing. How do we move you closer toward where we need you to be? You can't have that, uh, unless you don't. And if you don't have those values and behaviors actually written down and communicated and uh, lived really hard to have that conversation. Almost impossible.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I can see the connection between performance now because performance is a culmination of your behaviors. So what you do every single day is, will lead you to performance. So if you have a, uh, I don't know if you have a culture where you say one of our behaviors is that we will arrive at meetings on time and we will leave meetings on time, then you will create a culture that, where people are at meetings and then their meetings finish on time. You get to, you can, it's a good time management culture. Right. And so you're not encouraging. So when people turn up late for a meeting, you can generally have a conversation about, you know, you were late at the meeting. Let's understand why was there a problem that happened? And that's not the way we do things around here. Um, and you can add another behavior, which is when you're in the meeting, you're in the meeting, for example, and, and then all of a sudden you start to move away from people who are on their laptops, emailing or messaging or doing other things, or that they're not really contributing to a meeting because they're Doing other stuff. Then you're starting to get people who are together, uh, for the purpose that they're there together for et cetera, et cetera. That really does lead you in that direction, doesn't it? From some fundamentally, what might just be expected behaviors. By writing them down, you've suddenly got something you can drive.

Speaker B: Absolutely. I was having a conversation with a client a few days ago and they were telling me about meetings. They were having mid year divisional review meetings. And the, one of the senior people, the more senior people in the room was on their laptop for almost the entire meeting, plainly not being involved in the meeting. One of the two most senior people in the room.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And that's the behavior.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: And you kind of go, yeah, you just go, my God, like, I don't know how we fix this.

Speaker A: I have a client recently where, ah, um, something similar happened. I was uh, running an event, running a program, and two senior people on their laptops all the time. Their team were there, uh, attending the training, the workshop that we were doing for the afternoon. And the message that, that they were giving was we're too important to be in this meeting. And then there was a. When I talked to people about it, they said, oh yeah, it happens all the time. And it, what also gets happens is people will leave a meeting because they've got a meeting with someone more important, more senior, um, and they kind of announce it and it's actually now become a badge of honor that if you're important in this organization, you don't have to be in this meeting, whatever this meeting is. And if someone more important calls on you, then you need to announce to other people that that's happened because you're now that's, that's a badge that you can wear with other people. And then meeting culture, it's awful because that's what everyone's always doing.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And meeting culture is about again. I was running workshops last week and one of the outcomes from that was we have a really poor meeting culture. People just invite you to things without looking at your diary. So you've got four things at 10 o' clock on a Thursday morning. And then you're like, I don't know, I don't know which one to go to. And then nobody says, yes, I'm coming or no, I'm not. Which means that you don't know who's going to show up and you don't know if Chris, who's the main kind of person who needs to make the decision of the meeting if that person hasn't said yes or no. You kind of assume, well, presumably they are going to come. So you have the meeting, they don't come, and you have to have another meeting, um, to which hopefully they will come. And that, ah, just all of those little things, you know, meetings overrunning, not keeping to time, doing meetings that are an hour long so people don't literally get time to go to the toilet or grab a cup of tea or glass of water during the day. All of those things are such little, tiny changes. But as I said to the group, and it was a group of senior leaders, you can write down all you like in a, uh, meeting etiquette, whatever, but unless people are held to those meeting behaviors, and it starts here in this room with senior leaders, if we can't hold people to those behaviors, forget it. Don't bother. Just, you know what, don't even waste the time having the workshop to come up with a bit of paper, because it's pointless. And that's the same values M. Put them on the wall. Don't live them. Pointless.

Speaker A: Yeah, totally. So have a clear description of what your culture should look like. Align your values behind that. But then more importantly, get the behaviors mapped out in detail so that you can hold people account and hold yourself to account and hold other people to account to. Are we doing the things each day that are going to lead us towards this purpose?

Speaker B: Absolutely. And I better finish before we close, Chris. I better come back to Alice in Wonderland, because I said at the beginning. Yeah, yeah, Alice in Wonderland. Please do so. In Alice in Wonderland, I use this all the time when I'm running sessions. There's a part in Alice in Wonderland where she comes to a fork in the road. Cheshire Cat is up a tree beside where she's standing, and she says, I don't know which path to take. And the Cheshire Cat says, well, where are you going? And she says, I don't. I don't know. And the Cheshire Cat says, well, take any path then, because they all go there.

Speaker A: One of my favorite, favorite, um, jokes that I heard many when I was living in Ireland was a guy, he was, um, just south of Dublin. And he said he stopped at the side of the road to speak to a farmer to get directions. And he opened the window of the car and he said, look, I'm trying to get to whatever this, uh, you know, the hospital. And the farmer looked at him and said, well, I wouldn't start from here. Always stuck with me. And it reminds me a bit of Alice in Wonderland.

Speaker B: Brilliant. Just Being really clear about it is so fundamentally important. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A: Thank you very much for your time, Scott. I really appreciate telling the story. Please, finally, just tell us, how did you manage with the guy? Your first job, your first, uh, experience, and this guy was difficult. How did you get out of it?

Speaker B: Just avoided it.

Speaker A: Wow. Now, isn't that a telling reflection on culture where, uh. And I think that is the interesting toxicity that probably many of your clients don't even notice that. What's wrong with our business? No, it's fine because people seem to get on with each other because they manage. They don't have conversations. They make it just by email. They avoid the people that are going to be difficult. And. And so can I see any problems? No, I can't see any problems. I don't see any people clashing or any arguments. Of course you don't, because human nature is built to avoid this stuff.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker A: That's the, you know, it's. Who's not talking to who is the question we should be asking. Thank you. That's so insightful.

Speaker B: We've built a page so if people want to get more information or anything like that, they can pop to inspiringchange, ie forward slash elephant. And we'll stick all the information up there and I'll put in that book as well that I could remember the name of earlier on. So that'll be great.

Speaker A: Yeah, please do. That'll be. That'll be amazing. If people are interested to talk to you more about the work that you do and, uh, get in touch. Where can they find you?

Speaker B: We'll stick it. Probably the easiest thing to do. We'll stick it all on inspiringchange, ie Elephant. All of our contact details are on there and all that stuff. So that'll all be there.

Speaker A: Wonderful. Thank you very much for sharing your story, Scott. Really appreciate lots of insight, lots of lessons. Thank you.

Speaker B: Brilliant. Thank you, Chris, for having me on.

Speaker A: Pleasure. Thanks for listening. I hope you took away some useful insights. Join us again next time when we unpick the behaviors of more difficult people. Until then, take care and m. See you soon.