How to Be an All-In Manager: Building Cultures of Safety, Candor, and Care

Foreign. Hello and welcome to Vibe Makers conversations with culture activators and some of the greatest minds in the people and culture business. And this one's a particularly special episode for me. I have my friend and mentor, Ali Merchant, who has spent decades leading teams and scaling learning and development departments for public companies, tech brands and the world's largest ad agencies. Today he's the founder of all in Manager, a leadership development firm that trains and coaches managers to become leaders. Since 2018, he Ali has trained thousands of managers and coaches on hundreds and hundreds of senior leaders worldwide. His insights reach more than 50,000 leaders in over 100 countries. Ali lives in Chicago with his wife Sarah and dog Lenny. Ali, I am honored to welcome you to Vibe Makers. I am delighted. I've been waiting for this for a really long time. So you said I' your mentor. I, I, I think we both mentor each other. So, so this is going to be a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's, we've known each other as long as you've been in business. In 2018 and we met, I was, you know, I'm proud to say I'm one of your first clients and you know, not only a client, but someone who learned the, the approach to leadership from you. And I feel like a lot of what I speak about when it comes to culture activation and design around that, that. So needless to say, I was just getting like, I get goosebumps thinking about your background. You have the book all in Manager which just released to the public yesterday, right? Uh huh. Uh huh. Yes, it did. And so I'm just, it's, it's perfect timing and serendipitous. I'm just so, so happy to jump in All In Manager. I was one of the lucky few who got an early copy and was able to, to read and review ahead of time as you know, to get us kickstarted. At its core of All In Manager, and I think this is the biggest lesson that I took from you over the years, is you have to start with safety, right? Psychological safety. Without it, everything else is moot. So if you don't mind, why is it that you think that psychological safety is the foundation of an all in culture? Right? And I love that question. And I'll just start by saying this. At the core of it, you get paid to provide value, right? At work, you come in to provide value and you get compensated for it. How do you provide value? You provide value by having a voice, right? By stating your opinion, by agreeing, by disagreeing. If you don't have psychological safety at work, you don't have a voice. If you don't have a voice, you don't have value. Right. So that's why psychological safety is so core. And I also want to add one more thing to it before we talk about what safety really means. I think it's just a big buzzword. You know, a lot of people talk about having safety, but, you know, a lot of senior leaders might talk about, oh, we're a very safe place. But the true test of safety isn't when the CEO says, we're a safe place. The true test of safety is when the new hire says, you know what? I can go up to my boss and agree. Disagree. That's the core. That's the litmus test of safety here. So I think at the core of it, safety is about having voice. It's about having the ability to say, I'm here. This is what I think, this is what I agree with, and this is what I disagree with. And if we have safety, we have a lot of innovation as a result of it as well. Yeah, it's kind of like when that new employee comes in, they're like, hey, we practice radical candor around here, or some sort of, you know, open feedback. And it's like, whoa, whoa. I don't know that I'm ready to give candid feedback to these people that I just met. I don't know that that's the space for me. Right, right. And, you know, it's funny, when I teach leaders, we don't just HR teams will bring me in to talk about feedback, and we won't just talk about feedback. In fact, I have a prerequisite. I don't want to talk about feedback or a difficult conversation without talking about safety first. Safety. Us to be able to have those difficult conversations in the first place. It's almost a prereq to having these challenging conversations at work. Yeah, exactly. I agree with you wholeheartedly. And having that in order to provide good feedback, good, bad, and ugly, you have to have that safety foundation. So I want to dig into one of the other themes. When I was going through the book, One of the other themes that I got really excited about that you talked about is really around that command and control aspect and really moving to that care and connect. And so, you know, help me understand a little bit about that. How does that prime the pump for great leadership? Yeah, yeah. And I want to take a step back. You mentioned candor, right? That. That. That word. That word gets thrown around a lot, which is we're just really, you know, radically candid or we're, we're just going to say what, what, what we want to say. And that kind of in turn becomes a command and control culture where the people to say whatever they want to. So the question, the real question here is how do we get to a place where it's not a compliance driven culture, but everyone can basically have a voice at the table. And the way we do it is a little controversial, it's a little unconventional. What I want to do, and this is what I teach people all over the world, is if you want to, to have candor in the workplace, you have to first define what we mean by candor. Candor doesn't mean that if you are, if you're, if I don't find you valuable, I tell you to your face, you are not a valuable employee. That sounds. Candor. That's such as, that's just us being a jerk here. Candor is having a difficult conversation with kindness. That's what we're really after here, right? So the first thing I want us to do if we want to create a culture of candor and we want to move away from this command and control situation, is we want to lay a foundation or lay an expectation that candor is good. And as a leader, you want to tell your people, listen, I want to create an environment where if you disagree with my thinking, I don't want you to go home and tell your spouse or your dog that you disagree with my thinking. I want you to be able to tell me to my face. And guess what, employee, if you tell it to my face, I promise you you're not going to get in trouble. I am expecting you to be candid with me. But Marnie, here's the funny thing, right? Just because a manager says we all want to be candid with each other, that ain't happening. That's just the start here, right? The second thing that we want to do is after we've laid the foundation or we've had a conversation that candor is a good thing we want to talk about, ok? How do we engage? How do we actually be candid with each other? So the analogy I give to people is I'm gonna date myself a little bit here. Think of a good board game, right? When you get a new board game, what do you do? You typically, or I typically will read the rules first. I'm not gonna just start playing it. Candor is exactly the same. Let's kind of figure out what the rules of candor Are. So I'm gonna give you an example. Pixar, incredible company. They're known for psychological safety. They talk about candor all the time. But they don't just talk about candor. They have a code of candor where leaders will talk to each other and they will say, when, you know, I give you feedback, I want you to be able to absorb the feedback. The feedback is not about you as a person. The feedback that I'm going to give you is about the project. Very different. They're stating it out. They're also saying that you can take it or you can leave it. Right? It's not a directive, it's a suggestion. So what they're doing is they're coming up with rules of candor. So let's make this more tactical for you. When I. For any HR people or people Ops people listening to this, what I teach leaders is go to your teams and just draw a little circle. I'm a simple guy, so let's use simple things. Draw a little circle, right? And ask yourself, what are some acceptable behaviors of candor in our company? Right? Let me give you an example. If you disagree with me, I will listen to you. That's acceptable. So put that in the circle. Come up with a couple of things. Let's talk it out. And then let's talk about what are some unacceptable behaviors when it comes to candor. Those unacceptable behaviors go outside the circles. Let me give you an example. If you disagree with me, I'm going to eye roll. Or I'm going to say, I believe you, but I'm going to be like, ah, this guy's a jerk, whatever. Or I'm going to have a side channel on Slack and say, oh, the boss is going at it, right? The funny thing is, this exercise, and I've done this all over the globe, takes 20 minutes, and for the first time, you're like, I have the rules of the game. I know these are the acceptable behaviors of candor, and these are the unacceptable behaviors of candor. And by the way, the act of you talking about it is also something you've done to increase psychological safety. Now, I'm gonna say one more thing, and I promise I'll pause because I'm gonna recap some of this for your audience. Number one, we've laid an expectation or we've set an expectation of what candor is. We've said we want candor, but now we've gone a step further and we've said, here is how we're gonna engage in candor. The Third thing we're gonna do, which. Oh, my, I wish every manager would just do this. This is the simplest, is when someone is candid with you. Reward candor, right? If someone says, if you're my direct report, and I ask people, hey, what do you guys think of it? And if you say, I disagree, I should not punish you for disagreeing. I should be like, hey, Marnie, you know what? I appreciate you bringing this up. Tell me a little bit more about what it is that you disagree. Again, I'm not just going to believe you. We can have a debate about it. But as a valuable member of my team, if you disagree, I should reward you for having the courage to disagree with me. Now, if you do these three things again, it's not going to be magic. You got to keep doing it. But if you do it, you know what's going to happen. And here's the point I'm trying to make here. You're going to find employees who will find and build the courage to be true. They will share their truth with you. And if there is truth happening in these companies, innovation is going to start to skyrocket. As. As. As a result. Exactly. A lot of times what comes to mind is both that reciprocity. Reciprocity of giving and receiving. Because what I'm thinking of is, you know, I had a new head of finance come in, and he was interviewing accountants to come into the organization. And we got through the interview process, and of course, we had peer interviews. And those peer interviews came in and they were like, you know, his top candidate was like. They were like, no, didn't. Only one individual was like, nope, got. Got a yellow flag. I do not vote for this person. And this head of finance was distraught because he didn't know the organization. He didn't understand the language and the. The openness of providing direct feedback. And I had to have the conversation with him. Much like Pixar of it's okay because you're the hiring manager. Accept it. What can you learn from that feedback? What? Lean in with curiosity, not with defensiveness. And he ended up hiring the person. They were great. But you that. That idea of what do we do with feedback and being more curious about it as opposed to that finality. Right. And it's hard, though, right? Like, intellectually, we get it that you want to be curious, but, you know, I know. And I'm sure you've been on the receiving end of it. I've been on the receiving end of it as well. And it's, you know, you have to find a way to go in thinking that, you know, that the person giving you that. That constructive. And I don't like calling it negative feedback. Feedback already has so much connotation to it. Negative just makes it worse, is that, you know, the person giving it to you is doing it to help you. Right. And. And one of the best things you can do is for yourself, I believe, is, like you said, lean in. Into your curiosity muscle. Optimize for curiosity over judgment. See where. Where this takes you. And, you know, I'll say this, this might sound controversial. We've all gotten feedback, and sometimes feedback is just wrong. And that's okay too. You get to, as a professional, you get to say, you know what? I'm just gonna reject this part, and I'm gonna accept this part, and I'm gonna work on this part as well. But going back to safety, safety allows us to lean into that curiosity, to lean into that discomfort of having that conversation versus, you know, now you're talk other versus talking at each other. And you said along the lines, it's not about the person, it's about the action or the. The how. And I think that's really important when it comes to safety because it's not always receptive, and it can be awfully scary. Yeah. And. And you know, you have to, you know, you have to get explicit. You know, make the implicit explicit. You have to tell the person, this is not about you. This is about the project. This is about the behavior in question. This is not about a judgment. And that, that's all about feedback at that point. But, you know, researchers call this contrasting, which is you tell someone, especially if the person is defensive, which is, this is about this. It's not about that. This is about the project, not about. This is not a reflection of you as a person. You're contrasting. So the person is clear about what is really happening here. I do want to add one more thing, you know, with. With. With candor. So we've kind of gone through this, right? But there's a second part to this when it comes to safety, which is. And this is very difficult. And if you have very senior leaders listening to this, they're going to struggle. And that's okay. When people struggle, I'm like, you're in the right place here, which is. And this is my challenge to all of us listening, all of us in leadership positions, which is you have to get to a place where you are seeking. Seeking dissent and you are not squashing it. Yes, this is very difficult. I've been A leader. You've been a leader. You know, typically, we are taught that everyone should agree with our ideas, but I'm telling you the opposite here, which is agreement is great. We want to row in the same direction. I'm not saying we don't do that. We ultimately have to do that. But what I'm really saying is, again, let's talk about voice. We started the conversation with bringing your voice, right? Which is we have to get to a place where if someone disagrees with us, we lean in. Again, I'm using your phrase, which I love. We're leaning into the curiosity. But don't just believe me. Let's talk about the greatest companies on the planet. Let's talk about Netflix. Everyone knows about Netflix, right? So I wanna share a quick little story. In 2011, Netflix decided to split between two companies. I don't know if anyone remembers again, dating myself, Quickster, right? They came up with this with this company named Qwikster. They're like, we're gonna split our company into two different entities, and we're also gonna raise prices. Now, what happened as soon as they made that announcement? This is back in 2011, the stock plummeted and Netflix lost millions of subscribers here. Now, that's not the crazy story. The crazy story is what the leadership team later found out was that there were a lot of leaders at Netflix who did not like this strategy, but they stayed quiet. They stayed quiet. Why did they stay quiet? Because they felt the place wasn't high in psychological safety. Now, let me connect this to seeking dissent and not squashing it. Netflix is such a great company that when they realize that, oh, my God, we thought we had figured this out, but a lot of leaders weren't with our idea, and they stayed quiet. We cannot run a great business if this happens again. So Netflix comes out with this principle called farming for dissent. I'm going to repeat this again for people who are listening. Farming for dissent. They are literally seeking dissent. Not to squash it. Not to squash it, but to learn from leaders. A lot of great things that Netflix has done. The former CEO Reed Hastings, incredible CEO, did not want to do those. But then they started to farm for Descent. And they're like, hey, wait a minute. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe my people that have hired for their thinking have. Have something going on. So that's the point I'm trying to make. And by the way, I'm not saying that you do it for every small decision. No, don't do that. But if you're about to make a big Decision as a leader on your team, maybe what you do. Let me give you an example. If you're about to talk about a new strategy, maybe what you do is you tell people, hey, folks, this is what I'm thinking. What are your thoughts here? Or let me go one step further. What are some holes you want to poke in my thinking here? What do you think is not going to work here? Right. How can we make this better? And then what you do is you shut up and you let your people tell you what's happening. Because I promise you, if you've done a good job of hiring great people, great people will not agree with you all the time. But great people sometimes, like the Netflix guys, will keep it to themselves unless you give them an opportunity to share. And that is the second part of building a psychologically safe team is seeking debate and not squashing. Absolutely. And a lot of what we talk about in recent. I mean, in today's time, it's all about, you know, change and change management and how are we equipping our leaders to walk with our teams through change. And so when I think of dissent and I think of resistance. Yeah. My business partner, Mindy, she always talks about resistance. Resistance is a good thing. Right. But we've so often treated resistance as something to write up a PIP about or to performance manage out. But what you're saying is descent is really those signals, right? To me, dissent is a signal or a cue that something is wrong. How do we remove that barrier so that we get that flywheel effect of innovation and change? And that way we're more nimble as a company. But that's highly cultural like that. That's a really hard cultural shift to get your organization into. Yeah, yeah. And it's not easy. It's not easy just because we're talking about psychological safety. It's not going to happen. But that's why it has to come from top. It has to come from the top where if. If a coo, CEO, vice president goes to their team and says, hey, poke some holes here. How can we make this better? It has to. You know, you're a cultural expert, right? If it comes from the top, then it trickles down. And then people are like, oh, wow, my boss is okay. And he. He or she is actually receptive to my ideas. Think about what that does to a great employee if. If they go home thinking, wow, my boss is actually different. They're listening to what I have to say. And I want to make this abundantly clear for the leaders listening. I am not advocating for just agreeing with everything your employee says. Listening does not, and I'm going to say this multiple times, listening does not equal to agreeing. You can make me feel heard and still disagree with me, but the problem is when you don't make me feel heard and you disagree with me because now I'm thinking you don't even hear me out. Right. So the point is not debate. The point is healthy debate. The point is we have built a team where we can go at each other and still go out for beers and, you know, have the same mission. Great teams. And this, this is such a misnomer. I've spent almost two decades in the corporate world. People think great teams are perfect and great teams don't fight. That is not true at all. Great teams fight. Great teams fight hard. But you know what great teams do really well that average teams do not? Great teams are tough on the problem and tender on the person. That's what I'm after. Tough on the problem where we can disagree till the cows come home. We can say this is not going to work. But great teams do one more thing, which is I disagree with you, Marnie, but I will work my tail off to help you succeed in what you're trying to do. That is the principle of disagreeing and committing to something. Even if you disagree, we're part of that same team that we will go to town and we will make it happen. And I still think you're wrong, Marnie, but I am willing to put everything on the line and prove that I might be wrong in the process. Right. You're right. This is cultural, this takes time. But it doesn't take that long as well. It doesn't take decades, it takes months to build something of this and then kind of, you know, as you mentioned, get the flywheel running. Yeah. Some of the best leadership teams that I've had the pleasure of being around are very much that there's an aspect of care and even an aspect of fun, you know, within that team of I, I care about you succeeding professionally. I care about this company succeeding professionally. I think we forget that a lot of times when it comes to really high performing teams is that aspect of care. And yeah, I can poke a little fun at you if you fail like told you I was right, you know, or not. But it ultimately care equals growth and profit. And you know, in my opinion. So I'm going to agree with you and I'm going to shamelessly plug the book because when I talk about all in managers, I talk about all in Managers have three things in common. Three, they're insatiable learners, meaning they're always learning. And sometimes that means asking for feedback and learning that I'm wrong. Two is they're delivering meaningful results. Not just results, meaningful results as a difference. And Marnie, the third one is exactly what you said. All in managers personally care and caring doesn't mean kumbaya. Caring means Marnie. Marnie's dropping the ball. I care enough for Marnie to tell her, hey, Marnie, this is not like you. Like something's, something's up. And if you don't figure this out, I feel like we're going down the wrong track here. That is true. Caring at work. Yes. And that's the thing. You know, we can pip our lives away or performance manage and whatnot, but if we start with caring, and not in that hooey way, but you know, caring about the success of your team, then your likelihood of having to do that dirty work down the line is much less. So I'm imploring people, leaders to keep that in mind. I know they say, you know, what is it? Caring is kindness or clear is kind? Thank you. So being clear at the very onset of those relationships. So this is an all in manager thing too, of what do your one on ones look like? What are the conversations? And to me that is really the front lines of where that psychological safety. Safety comes in. Yep. The context, the performance, those conversations all starts in that meeting. Yeah. And you know I talk about this in the book, right? Which is, and I went back and forth. I think the first foundation of your leadership is building trust, setting clear expectations and having psychological safety. That's it. That's the foundation piece of any great leader is do my teams trust me? Am I becoming a trustworthy leader? Am I words, your trust, that's the first thing. Have I shared very clear expectations about how I want to do this? Hey, everybody. Tim Sackett, host of HR Famous, a new podcast on the Work Defined Network. Am I famous? No, I'm HR famous. My wife says I'm a micro celebrity and 13 HR ladies around the world want their picture with me, which I think is funny. So, hey, what do we talk about on the pod? We talk about all the dumb stuff we do in HR in any given day, week, month. And we have fun with it. And we have some great guests come check us out. We're not famous, we're HR Famous. How I want to show up. And third is am I building a safe team? If you do these things, these three things, and I'm assuming you're a competent leader. You know, if you're, if it's software, you know, what you're doing here. It. I'm not going to say it's. It becomes easy. I'll say it becomes less difficult as, as you go forward. What about the reluctant leader, Allie? You, you talk about that. And, and you've had a lot of those people. I've sent you a lot of the reluctant leaders in the past. You know, what about those people? Yeah, yeah. You know, and, and I, I say this. The people who don't need the training, who don't need the coaching are the ones that need it the most. The ones that say that I don't need it, weirdly enough, are. Are the ones that need it the most. I, you know, I'll tell you something. It's so. It's. It's such a, A difficult question, and I've had some time to think through this, which is if I am reluctant, if you're reluctant, rather, instead of me giving you more information or telling you this is good for you, maybe I take a step back and maybe I ask you, hey, you know what? Maybe you don't need the training, maybe you don't need the coaching, but can you share why you are so reluctant when it comes to X, Y, Z? And you know, we're talking about, like, hearing people out, right? So you make the person feel heard. And I've done this, and people will tell me, oh, you know what I got, man? I've gone through leadership training. It sucked. It was a waste of time. And a lot of leadership training is terrible. You're right. You're right, it is. I'm sorry. I empathize. But I think, I think, and maybe I'm naive. I don't think people wake up in the morning thinking that I want to be difficult for people around me. I think most people wake up in the morning thinking, I want to be good, I want to be kind, I want to be valuable. I want to be useful. Now, with that being said, if I ask you for your reluctance and you tell me, hey, this is what's going on, right? I'm like, great, I'm going to hear you out. But then I'm going to do one more thing. I'm going to side with you over the problem. I'm going to tell you, hey, I'm going to share something with you. And I say this with all sincerity. I am noticing a blind spot. And here's the blind spot. And if you don't work this blind spot out, it's going to stop you from growing into whomever you're trying to grow. My job is to tell you the truth. Here's the blind spot. Here's how people are talking about you behind your back. Here's what I am seeing as well. And I'm going to leave it up to you. Either we do something about it or we don't. But if we don't do something about it, I don't think it looks favorable or I think we go. We keep going down the wrong path here. And again, we can talk about what that. We can extrapolate what the wrong path looks like, pips and blah, blah, blah. But my thing is, have the freaking conversation, please. And I'm gonna tell this. I say this to leaders all the time. I don't know who said this, but I love this line and I believe this line in the core of my heart, which is difficult conversations don't ruin relationships. Avoiding difficult conversations often ruins relationships. We've got it backwards. I've got. And I'm with you. I don't like having difficult conversations. Yeah, nor do I. Right. But the cost of inaction is way worse than the discomfort of that action. Yep. And honestly, Marnie, I think all of us can have 20 seconds of courage and just have a conversation. It doesn't take a day. It literally is a couple minutes. And we talk about caring. If that is not caring, then I don't know what is. But talk about caring for yourself, even in the morning, to have that as a leader. I just love when you say that. 20 seconds of courage. That's all it takes, is this. 20 seconds of courage will provide me so much less stress and heartache in the future. Yeah. I'm a conflict avoider. You know, like, you know, but I've had to learn that over the years. Right. I think. Yeah. You know, I am with you. I have not only have I avoided, actively avoided conflict, but I used to be a people pleaser as well. And I'm. I tell people I am a recovering people pleaser. And it's. It's better on my end. It is hard being a people pleaser. Right. But let's get tactical here. Right. What if you are a leader who hates conflict? Let's use hate. It's a strong word. But I want us to know that we dread it. We're having sleepless nights, but then you're listening to this guy who's saying, hey, difficult conversations don't ruin relationships. And you're like, oh, what do you know, you don't have to have those difficult conversations. How do you do it? Right. How do you actually do it? I think the first thing you do, and I've done it, the first thing you do is you remind yourself that feedback isn't about doom and gloom. Feedback is simply helpful information that you have about your employee. And if you share that information, no matter the discomfort, you are actually going to help them become more successful. That is the essence of feedback is not to get in trouble or to pip someone. The essence of feedback is to help someone become better. Again, most of us are helpful people. So that's the first thing. I'm sure the skeptic is saying, okay, yeah, great, then what? Right? So let's get really tactical here. Then what you do is you go up to the person and before you give them feedback, you ask them permission. I learned this from an executive coach of mine. Just incredible person. I used to get a lot of. Lot of difficult feedback from her. And she would always say, I have something I've observed, I want to bring it up to you. When would be a good time for us to talk about it? And Ali, you can say no. And I've said no, because I'm like, I'm in a crappy mood. Let's talk about it tomorrow. So that's the second thing, which is you ask me for permission. And when I ask you for permission, I'll also add a disclaimer. Martini, you get to say no, we don't have to do it today just because I'm the manager. We don't have to do it. We can do it tomorrow. But I want us to have this conversation. Right? Right. Third thing you do is you tell me. Oh, man, if you just do this, just, you're way better than most of us here. You, you tell me the why before you tell me the what, which means you give me the intention, which is, marnie, I am sharing this with you because this is a blind spot. I am sharing this with you, Marnie, because I care about you. I'm sharing this with you, Marnie, because I want you to succeed. Yes. Tough on the problem, tender on the person. Right. And then when you share your feedback, and I know we're going into feedback, but this is important, you tell me the what. What is the behavior? The behavior is, I have noticed when we do team meetings, the laptop is on. Or I've noticed when someone disagrees with you, your pitch goes up. Behavior. I'm being very specific. Jerk. I'm not saying you're a jerk. I'm not saying you're not professional. Those are judgments. I'm giving you very specific behaviors. Right? That's the what. Then what you do is you say, so what? So what is, Marnie, when you raise your voice, people around you clam up. Or when you raise your voice, it makes it uncomfortable for us to share our thinking. That's the impact. And then the last part is, now what? What do you think, Marnie? Are you seeing what I'm seeing? How do you think we can make. How do you think we can get better? That said, it's, it's literally, we don't need two hours of training here. Permission, intention, what so what now what? And by the way, you know, in the real world, you're not going to do everything specifically, you can kind of mess around with. I'm giving you the ingredients. You'll make your own recipe, but these are the ingredients here. And the other thing it makes me think of is I tend to approach, like, if I have an observation, I'm a pretty emotional person. So when I have emotions and I'm going into, you know, I need to give feedback, what I'm having to do as a leader is really understand how to remove that emotion. Like, you had mentioned assumptions, and that to me was the big. It's like, what do I know to be true in this circumstance? And what assumptions am I making as a leader? So that I can go into that conversation very much focusing on the what and the how, you know, and that, that to me is, is like one of my critical steps going into that as well. Yeah. And again, I'm stealing that line that you used so well when we first started, which is you're leaning into the curiosity. Right? And I talk about this in the book. In fact, in every step of the way, I say, what do you think? Do you. And this is one of my favorite lines, do you see what I see? Right. Because the thing is, and I work with very senior leaders, and they'll be like, hey, I'm giving feedback and it's just not working. And maybe it's not working because the other person doesn't see what you see and you don't see what they see. And none of this, we can't see each other's perspective unless we ask the other person, hey, what do you see? Do you agree? Do you disagree? Right? And a lot of leaders, I call them, you know, impulsives. They'll just say it, be strategic, but you need to be more visible. And I don't know, I don't know what that means. I don't understand that. Right. So again, I think the reframe here is start with safety. Say it, but say it properly. Don't sit on feedback. Again, that's the line, right? Avoiding difficult conversation. Difficult conversations. Don't ruin relationships. And I talk about this in the book as well. This idea of. And we've all been there, the avoiders, where we know we need to give feedback. We'll tell the whole world about our employee. But we don't. We won't tell the employee. Right? We'll tell our dog. We go to happy hour with our buddy and like, oh, this employee of mine just doesn't get better. And I see this on the receiving end when my clients tell me, oh, man, I'm so frustrated. And my question to them I talk about in the book is, it's a very simple question, and I'm giving my playbook away. Is what you just shared with me. How much have you shared with your employee? And they're like, dude, nothing. I haven't shared anything. And I'm like, well, there's something to be said. And the thing is, I've done this test. I've done this experiment, rather, where I'll push them a little bit and we'll talk it out. We'll kind of, you know, do a whole situation. And then the same person comes to me two, three weeks after, and they've had the conversation, and they're like, ali, this was not a big deal, man. Like, this was okay, or I was freaking out. But when the words start coming out, we had a conversation, and I feel like we made inroads. Now. This has worked 99% of the time because you just had a conversation and you followed a little bit of the steps, and it was human. It wasn't like a bot. You weren't, like, scripting the conversation. Right? You were just coming from the heart and you just said it. And it. It. You know, it works. But it only works if you try it. It never works if you don't try it. I know I'm being Captain Obvious, but that's what happens all the time. You don't try it. And then we say, oh, it's so hard. But you didn't really try to have the conversation. Right? Exactly. And you're not setting the stage for that reciprocity in your meeting and in. In your conversations. And I love what you said about you can't sit on feedback, you know, and all of a sud. My mind I have. I'm not a bread Maker. But it's like a sourdough start, you know, that that's growing. It doesn't go away. You know, you, you have to take care of it. Otherwise it just, you know, gets worse. Yeah, absolutely. The, the elephant in the room just gets, just keeps getting bigger. It, it does, it frustrates you, it frustrates the employee. And you know, I'll say this. I, I, I, you know, it's a disservice that you do because like kind of, let's just flip the roles. If, if you knew that your boss had helpful information about you that would help you become more successful, you would want to know that information, right? You would want them to tell you. And by the way, you know, there is research, the research is clear. There is that people want, your employees want feedback. The problem is they don't want more feedback necessarily. They want better feedback because the feedback that they've gotten has sucked. We've all been burnt by bad feedback in the past. I have, you know, so I think we just want better feedback, richer feedback, specific feedback, behavioral feedback, so we can actually do something with it. Oh, that's it. It's actionable and relevant and not in a performance review six months down the, six months down the road that is not even relevant to what happened that day. Right. And you've forgotten it, you know, at that point. And I'll just say one thing. I see a lot of people who share their performance reviews with me, written performance reviews. And when you read the manager's feedback, it's just, just a, you know, it's like a sandwich. It's like positive, constructive, positive. And you're like, wow, what is this person trying to say? They're just kind of slipping in stuff. Oh, you were great, but this was terrible. But you're great. And you know, you're getting mixed messages here. So you have to learn to say it, you have to learn to say it specifically and you know, again, make it a helpful information. Make it helpful information. Yeah. Ellie, do you have time for one more question before we close? Okay. I know your, your time is valuable. You have a new book out. You're, you're roaming the world. This is great. This is great. One of the things when, when prepping for this conversation I really wanted to talk about because it really resonated with me was burnout. And the idea of burnout, I think we approach burnout as a time bound thing. Um, there, it's a workload thing. It's a, you know, oh, if you're burnout, then Just take some time. If you're burnout, maybe you're not delegating appropriately, which may be the case. But you stated that burnout is actually a signal of culture. And I'm just wondering if you wouldn't mind expanding on that a little bit because I just found that very eye opening. Yeah. So I think when we say burnout, and the response to burnout is, hey, take a break. My thing is how many people have taken a break and come out refreshed? Probably most of them, but then two weeks into it, they're feeling the same thing again. Right. So I had to look into the research on what is the true source of burnout. Now there are six, and this has been proven time and time again by Christina Maslach, who's like the authority on burnout research. And Marnie, the funny thing is you mentioned only the first one, which is workload. Workload is one reason out of six and I have it on a little posted, so I don't forget. The second is control, which is how much control do I have in this company? How much autonomy do I have? If I don't have a lot of autonomy, burnout creeps in. But that's only two. The third is my favorite, which is reward, which is am I being rewarded for what I am doing? And by the reward for the people listening doesn't mean monetary reward. It could mean psychological rewarding as well, which is are you listening? Are my ideas being appreciated? Am I being put on really interesting projects? If that doesn't happen, burnout creeps in. The fourth is community. Is there a team culture here or is it dog eat dog? Is it just me against you or is it weird together? Fairness is one as well, which is if I'm working and this is, this might relate to it resonate with a lot of your listeners. If I'm working really hard and the whole world is getting promoted, but I am not, burnout creeps in. And let's talk about culture. The last one is eye opening, which is values. If my values are different than the values of the company, burnout starts to creep in. We think burnout is just exhaustion. That is not true. That is not true. That is just one part of this. And I'll give you a great example. I know people, senior clients who have decided to quit companies because the companies got acquired by, you know, a different company. The values of the company completely changed and they had a values mismatch. And what happened was they were still working really hard, but they were coming home and they were Feeling exhausted. It wasn't just the workload that was getting them that was the root cause of the exhaustion. It was like, I wouldn't do it like this. I would do it like this. And that also is a cultural aspect to all of this. It's mental turmoil when you get home and you've been working in a way that is not congruent. It's. It's opposite of what. Where your. Your heart and your. Your personal values lies. So values in action matter, people. I'm telling you, they're important. So, yeah, they, they, they. They get a bad rep. But they. They values and behaviors app. Absolutely matter. And, you know, I'll. I'll just. I'll just say one thing. And this happens a lot where the workload is high. I think I'm gonna say this again, being controversial. I think let's just to be high. I just think we have to get to a point to expect that workload is constantly going to be high. But then we can have other things if we're not being rewarded for the extra work we're doing. That's not helping us. If we know that. Hey, every time I share an idea, no one listens to my idea. Then apathy sets in, which is just code for another element of. Of getting burnt out in the process. So it's not a one size fits all. This is a big problem. And folks, the answer. I have given this answer, I will raise my hand, which is, oh, you need to just take a vacation. No. Because you're still coming back to the same situation. The vacation. Yes. Take your break. Absolutely. Have a beer at the beach in Mexico. Do your margaritas. Nothing wrong with that. But just know that. That. That's a band aid. Yep. That's not a permanent fix. It's not sustainable. It's not sustainable. That's a better word. Beach beers matter as well. Like, I'm all for the beach beards, but, you know, it's not sustainable, so. Isn't. And I will say one last thing. I get to work with incredible clients who are creating cultures that are very intense. Very intense cultures. There's a lot of people working very long hours. But you know what? They have joy. They have joy. They're being taken care of. They're being rewarded. They're being heard. It's safe to disagree. They're having fun while working tremendously hard as well. Right. And those can coexist in this day and age as well. This is not an either or. Love that. Ali, I think you and I could probably talk like the first, you know, let's have a four hour podcast. I think we could probably go on for that long. But I know your time is valuable. Where can my listeners find you find the book. And I will say I'm gonna, I'm gonna to prep this. If you are a leader, whether you just started thinking of starting, been started, this book needs to be on yourself. Okay? And, and I, I've read it. It's going to be my new, my new gift. I, I love to have books that I gift to leaders and this is a new gift for, for anyone that is in my, my ecosystem. So all of that being said, Allie, where do my listeners find you find the book? Well, first of all, thank you for being so generous with your time as well. Really simple. I'm on LinkedIn. If you search for Le Merchant, I should pop up. I write daily so that, that's the easy one. The second one is just go to allinmanager.com, same word, allinmanager.com and third is Amazon. Just search for the word all in manager. The book should pop up. But you don't even have to go to Amazon. Just go to my site site. When you go to the site, there's a little top banner which says here's how you can find the book. And that's it. Just, you know, if you connect with, with me on LinkedIn, please say hi, don't be a stranger and keep leading. I'm rooting for you wherever you are. And this was, this was a lot of fun. Marnie, thank you. Right back at you, Ali. Thank you. Yep, you got. Sam.