Camille Rapacz: oh, we better start recording because Oh my gosh, we're already Got it. Okay. Into it. Okay. So welcome listeners, cuz we just recorded half the podcast without you. Sorry.
George Drapeau: We've been going and going and going. Hi. Hi everybody.
Camille Rapacz: Hi everybody. Welcome back to the podcast.
George Drapeau: Happy podcast. Drop day.
Camille Rapacz: Happy podcast. Drop day. It is a happy day. I like Tuesdays. It feels very accomplished. Another podcast is out. All right. Yeah. So we, today we're gonna talk about a topic that is this.
George Drapeau: Is this topic, my fault.
Camille Rapacz: No, it's not your fault. You are not at fault. You are the inspiration. George, you're so inspiring for podcast topics.
George Drapeau: Oh man. Wait till they hear the topic.
Camille: Welcome to The Belief Shift. The show that explores. What you really need to know about building a successful small business.
I'm your host, Camille Rapacz: small business coach and consultant who spent too much of her career working in corporate business performance.
George: And I'm George Drapeau: your co-host and her brother. I'm a leader in the tech world bringing my corporate perspective, but mostly my curiosity.
Camille: Together, we're exploring beliefs about success and how to achieve it. But mostly we're bringing practical solutions so you and your business can thrive.
Main Topic
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Camille Rapacz: We're gonna talk about why people quit their jobs. Yeah. What, but also what to do about it. It actually started how do we help people do a better job of holding onto their great hires?
George Drapeau: Oh, yeah.
Camille Rapacz: That's how it started. So I actually started from a positive place, and then I kind of went into the depths of like, oh, but why do people quit? Right?
George Drapeau: Yeah. It's a good question.
Camille Rapacz: There's this saying that people don't quit their jobs. They quit their bosses. So I thought, you know what?
Let's start with why before we get into what you do about it, because we should understand reasons, and I think this is a really complicated question . There's no one answer for everybody. This is the problem. Not everybody is leaving jobs for the same reason.
Yeah. But I do think that there is a standing list of things you should do always as a business owner, as a business leader to keep your best hires around. So that's what we're gonna talk about.
George Drapeau: Yeah, I completely agree with that. You know this phrase that people don't quit jobs, be quit bosses.
I, I mostly agree with that. I think in many cases , I have this phrase that I use in my life. It's, it, it's not so important to be right or wrong as it is to be helpful versus not helpful. So like a lot of times that helps me think about when I create a model for how things work, if it's explanatory and it helps you take action or do something that's better than if it's precisely correct or incorrect.
And so, like this phrase, I don't think it's completely correct, but it's hugely helpful. Having that mindset when you're a manager, keep in mind that people are mostly gonna quit because of you, the boss, rather than any job con. If you have that in your mind, there's things that you do that we're gonna talk about that will be a huge help.
So I, I think it's mostly correct, it's a hundred percent helpful. Agree. I will say, I just resigned my post at Red Hat. I just quit. Hate that place.
Camille Rapacz: Congratulations.
George Drapeau: Gone outta there. I, I don't hate the place. There's long, complicated reasons for why I've left and taken a new job that'll announce online very soon.
It was not so much my boss that I quit in this place, but I can tell you that I think the converse is also true. I think people will stay longer because of a boss. A good boss can help people definitely stay longer than they otherwise might, and I'm gonna be arrogant enough to say that at least for some people at that company, they have stayed longer because of reporting to me than they otherwise might.
I've heard this from people in the past, people who've gone, moved from me to other people, said, you know, I, I wouldn't have stayed as long if I hadn't reported to you. So I think the converse is equally true. People will stay for a good boss even when other things are not great.
Camille Rapacz: I think that's 100% true.
I've definitely had that experience myself. I've both done it and know of people who have done it with me, where they're,
George Drapeau: yeah, people love you.
Camille Rapacz: I mean, what's not to love? Right. So I, but I think what happens is, especially if people have worked for a really poor boss and then they work with a better boss, I mean, yeah, you don't even have to be a stellar boss.
You can just be a, one of the most respectful bosses that they've ever worked for. Yeah. They kind of wanna stick around cuz they're like, gosh, I might end up with a really crappy boss if I leave here. And it is just a case and it's, there's no way to know until you're working for them what it's gonna be like.
No. So I do think that's true, but I also think it gets even more complicated than that when you start getting into the culture of the company and all that kind of stuff. Mm-hmm. So we're gonna talk about some of these things and some of the reasons why. And again, I do think that ultimately it is really complicated.
I don't think anybody leaves for any one single reason. There might be a primary reason. And that's what we're gonna talk about is what are some of these things for you to look out for. But more importantly is what do I do to do my best to prevent the people I value most from leaving my company or just, yeah, the people period that you value, that you just turnover is really costly for a business, big or small, it's very expensive.
And while you job isn't to, you know, trap people so they never grow their careers and go anywhere, your job is to create an environment where you can create a fulfilling space for people to wanna stick around and contribute to the bottom line of that company as long as possible. Like, that's your job as a leader.
So we're definitely gonna talk about that.
George Drapeau: Awesome.
Part One: Why People Quit
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Camille Rapacz: All right, so let's dive into first why people quit. I, I did, yeah. I did my Googling like I do, just to see what I could find some data out there. Cool. And these were actually from a couple of just recruiting companies or platforms that, you know, this is their job.
They're doing this kind of studies all the time to just understand what's going on out there with people. And so one of these was a recent survey that was done by this company called Flex Jobs, and they focused on recruiting for remote and flexible workspaces, which I thought that's really Oh, interesting.
Important. Their focus absolutely in their survey would be interesting cuz this is a big deal. So I do wanna talk about remote work as part of this equation. Yeah. But here's what they said or what they found in their survey. So their number one was 62% of people said toxic company work culture. It showed up as their main reason to leave a job.
Toxic company culture. Get that and I that could mean a lot of things, right? How you define toxic company work culture could mean a lot of things to a lot of people. So we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. Okay. The second one was low salary. 59%. 56% was poor management.
Yeah. 49% was lack of a healthy work-life boundaries. Interesting. And then the fifth one was 43% not allowing remote work. Yeah. Yeah. Now you have to remember what these surveys, the answers they're gonna get. Also, were driven by the types of questions they asked. So clearly they specifically asked about remote work, whereas this next one may or may not have asked that specifically, right?
Yeah. They might not have put that in the survey. So, you know, you have to put these all into context. But I just find the survey information to be really interesting. Me too. So the next survey I pulled some information on was from The Muse, which is another re recruiting platform, and they, at the top of their list at 70% was work-life balance.
Number two was pay, so that one matches the other one. That number two was low salary, right? So pay came in as second reason at 67%. Number three was learning and growth opportunities at 59%. Number four, job perks and benefits, 58%. So right underneath learning and growth opportunities. And then five and six are job security and then company leadership.
Wow, interesting. Yeah. Right. So then, yeah, a little bit more information that I got from The Muse and looking at their studies is they looked at Google search terms and found that toxic work environment, that search term peaked in 2022. It was the highest it had been since 2004 in terms of people searching for that term.
Interesting along with Toxic Boss. So that was definitely a top topic that people search for in 2022, more than it had been in, you know, almost 20 years. Yeah. I
wonder why. It's fascinating, right?
Yeah. And then there I also found there's an MIT Sloan Management Review study that looked at toxicity in the workplace and they found that it was 10 times as powerful as compensation in terms of causing people to leave.
Again, these studies, who knows how big or small or who they're asking, but I just find this is, this data is interesting to look at. Right. It's very interesting. Yeah. And then McKinsey also found that toxic was by far the leading reason that people were leaving.
And this was, these were both from 2022. So very recent kind of matches the Google search term thing. Yeah. And a December, 2022 poll, they found that 64% of people experienced toxic work situations overall, and that women were more likely to report toxic experiences. They were describing them as disrespectful, abusive, non-inclusive, unethical, cutthroat.
Most of those people were blaming leaders, then managers, then coworkers, then teams, leaders, and managers were on the 40%. Yeah. And the other two were like 30 to 15%. So, Leaders and managers are definitely taking the brunt of their responsibility in terms of this people reporting on this. And then solutions that people were, if they were like, well, who's, you know, solving the problem, what's the solution to this?
And said, leadership and management training was number one. Number two was accountability, and number three was better work conditions. Wow. So that's a whole bunch of data about a whole bunch of different things. I'm curious, just as I laid all of that out to you, you're seeing it, you know, fresh. So George, you hadn't seen this before this podcast.
Yeah. So you're literally hearing this as everyone else is. I'm curious, what, what do we make of all of this data?
George Drapeau: It's fascinating. The, the outing of toxic company culture. I hadn't really, I, I totally believe it. The toxic company culture is a reason people would leave. I mean, people talk about culture at big companies all the time, and I think the better companies try to reinforce a positive culture that has all kinds of good attributes about it. But I think also awareness of culture has come to the fore over the last 20 years. That's my belief. I could be wrong, I'm a young guy. Maybe, I don't know. 80 years ago it was, everybody thought about it, but it seems like that's something that more people talk about.
So I could believe that it would be a top of mind for more people. I'm gonna guess about the, this December poll where women are more likely to report toxic experience that they've always experiencing it, but more recently it's become okay to actually surface it and talk about it. That's my guess, that it's not a new thing, but it's newly discussed.
I, I don't know. Do you have a thought about that, by the way?
Camille Rapacz: Oh, I got lots of thoughts about that. I think. When I think about this, just in my, in my own experience and other women of my age in going through their career journey when we started out, when I started, you know, in my career, we didn't really talk about it.
And the way that men would treat you in the workplace was considered something that was part of our strategy to deal with in order to climb the ladder. Yeah. So it wasn't something we could call out and say, you aren't allowed to treat me that way. It was instead something that we were supposed to go, oh, that's how men do it.
Okay. I gotta figure out how to fit and how to work with that and the way that they are. So how do I be part of the guys group, you know, that is, drinking at the bar or whatever is happening where you're trying to connect with people and guys are doing it in a certain way. And women sort of had to work their way into that.
And deal with all the ridiculous jokes and, you know, whatever they would do, as harmless as they might think that is, they were treating, women in a certain way that now is completely inappropriate. And so there was this empowerment moment as moving through my career where I was like, wait a minute.
It is not okay for me to have to deal with that or accept that, or even have to break through into that. Yeah. In order to have my own career. So I, this relates to what you're saying. I think there's this, there is just this awakening I think about how things have been and what what we really should be doing and demanding in terms of equality in the workplace and what that means.
That's really what it comes down to, right? Which equality isn't, I want to play your game with you. It's, wait, we're actually two different beings with two different ways of working and being, and how do we merge them together? So, Those are my thoughts.
George Drapeau: Yeah, that makes sense to me. Ugh, sorry. Let's,
Camille Rapacz: yeah, I mean, it makes sense also just because you, when you look at the system of work, yeah.
Overall it was designed by white men for white men. Like that's just a fact, right? yep. That is just what happened. And so this is what we got, and now we're in the struggle of, wait, what if we have to change that system so that it's for everybody, designed by everybody.
George Drapeau: Well, here's me looking through those colored glasses.
Let's hope that the work system was a caterpillar and we're in this chrysalis moment and we're coming out in the next generation will turn into butterflies. Let's hope.
Camille Rapacz: I hope so. I mean, it's definitely been getting better and I think it's not a sometimes I think we get discouraged because we want it to be a straight line of improvement.
Yeah. And it's never gonna be that. There's always gonna be these ups and downs. It'll, I think it's still steadily improving overall if you look at the trend. But on any given day, it might feel like, oh, we just took a step back. Oh wait, now we gotta, you know, we gotta fight to gain some ground back. I, I think that's just the reality of change, right.
Of the, especially of this magnitude.
George Drapeau: Agreed. So why don't we take the, the first statement at the, the top of the podcast and hold it accountable, versus the surveys, people quit bosses according to the first poll. That's the third reason. Not even the, the top or the first one. And it's the sixth reason on the other, the other poll.
So what do you, what does that say? I don't disagree with these survey results. They make sense to me, but neither of them have, you know, my boss is the top reason they quit. How do you react to that?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, I have thoughts about this. So my basic thought is, and, and this is definitely my, just from my personal experience in the way that I view the world, right?
Okay. Which is that you can say culture is the number one reason. You can say work life balance is the number one reason, Uhhuh. And, and that's true. However, those things are driven by the leadership of that company. They decide what it should be. And this gets into a little bit of a tricky conversation of there's a chicken and egg problem here.
Does the culture define the leadership or does the leadership define the culture?
George Drapeau: Mm,
Camille Rapacz: and I think it's both ways.
I think it goes in both directions. The culture you build will influence what type of leaders people will be. And can shift leaders into a certain style when they join the company.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: But leadership can decide and should be deciding very deliberately what culture they want to build. And I think sometimes they're not owning that enough and actually building the culture they want. Because that can be really, really hard. But I do think it's their job, so I kind of put them back at the top of the list.
George Drapeau: So you are saying that sure, these things are all true, but really they're all significantly driven by your manager?
Camille Rapacz: I think that, yes. And so I would say it's leadership as a whole. Okay. So every manager and leader has a responsibility to this.
I do think that especially managers like you get lower down and you start talking about mid-level managers have a much hover, harder time sort of holding. To a culture that they want to hold to versus getting sort of sucked into the one that might exist already. Right. Trying to fight against that culture.
But the leaders in a company, so when you get to executive leadership and who's really setting the tone for the company and instructing their managers and how to act, those are the ones that actually really own it.
Yeah. So some other thoughts I had about just what might demotivate your team or keep your, team from really, wanting to stick around.
Oh, cool. So these are just more at a micro level. But so some of them on my list are you, you're taking credit for their work.
George Drapeau: You mean, you mean I have to stop doing that?
Camille Rapacz: You should stop doing that.
George Drapeau: But it's so much fun.
See the look on their faces when they hear me speaking their accomplishments and not giving them credit for it, they're like, yay.
Yes. Yeah, that's an awful one. It's awful.
Camille Rapacz: I know so don't take credit for what your people are doing. Yeah. Take credit for having hired the good people and got them to the place of doing that work.
Definitely take credit for that, but give them credit where credit is due for the work they're delivering. So it's not like you have to completely say that had nothing to do with me. That's also not a great leader trait. Nothing to do with me. Alright. So the other one would be not changing your mind.
Or the convers is changing your mind too often without context. Oof. So you gotta watch. It's this tricky line of like, if, if I never change my mind, I'm never willing to, you know, consider other options that's bad. And you definitely, your team's just gonna be like, why bother even telling them anything?
Yeah. But the flip side is like other, I've worked for bother. They're just co. I'm like, we need to talk to them. Cuz whoever they talked to you, do you ever have worked for somebody who you knew who they had just last met with because of the decision they just brought to you? You're like, oh, you just had a conversation with so-and-so, didn't you?
Like anybody got in their office and it would just change their mind. They would just do it so often. It was like they didn't have their own set of like their own algorithm for how they were gonna make a decision. They just went with whoever could sell 'em on the next best idea. Yeah. That's not great.
George Drapeau: That's interesting. Yeah, you, I haven't thought about that until you mentioned that and I have this immediately internal reaction. Oh yes I do. It's awful.
It's awful.
Camille Rapacz: I know. It's so frustrating cuz you can't keep up. That's why it's demotivating. Like, I have no idea what this person's gonna want me to do tomorrow.
And it could be that everything I did yesterday is not even valid anymore because we just changed our minds so fast. Yeah, that's frustrating.
Not dealing with the bad apples on your team.
George Drapeau: I think this is a great one and I'm gonna give people credit. This is hard to do. It's to do, it takes courage and it, it's not easy to deal with this one, but I totally agree it.
I Yeah. Mean you don't deal with bad apples. It's to Yeah, it's, oh, that one gets me. It's toxic and I try to hold myself accountable for this kind of stuff. It's one of the toughest things I have to think of as a manager. Like am I being, realizing I'm being good at the team by pointing out bad behavior, dealing with bad apples?
Absolutely. Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, it's really hard when I think, you know,
George Drapeau: like immediate emotional reaction to this.
Camille Rapacz: I know. Well, and I think you and I have a very similar approach to just people, which is that I know that there's potential in them and I could just, if I just get another chance, I could bring it out and you just wanna like help them.
Yeah. And so that makes this one really hard cuz you tend to not see people as bad apples. You just see 'em as like, oh, they're just not there yet, but we're close.
George Drapeau: That's true.
Camille Rapacz: But you really have to look the effect that's having and how much energy that's taking for you to work with that person to try and bring them around.
And you're neglecting all these other fantastic performers on your team cuz you're spending so much time with them and they could use your time. So there's that. Yeah. Oh boy. Another one is just unbalanced feedback. As in, I always tell 'em when things didn't go well and I don't tell 'em when things didn't go well.
Oh, I see. You know? Yeah. Yeah. And then micromanaging. Those easy ones.
George Drapeau: Yeah,
Camille Rapacz: so those are mine. Anything you wanna add? Do motivators?
George Drapeau: Well, that's a hard list to, to top. That's a great list. I don't think so. Not at the moment. I mean, the ones these really resonate with me. Somebody taking credit, I, you know, absenteeism .
So I think having a nice consistent relationship with your manager is really important. And when they're flaky about it, you don't notice that for, it's like the boiling frog, a fa, a frog and boiling water. You don't notice for a while, but after a while you realize, Hey, I haven't talked to my manager in six months.
That's, and you realize, man, that sucks. So I guess I'd have that one to the list absenteeism, I don't know what else to call it. Lack of attention, you know?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. Lack of attention. It made me think also of just the idea of sort of, or reliability or consistency. I am consistently available to my team.
Something like that. But yeah. I get what you're saying. Yeah. Bummer.
George Drapeau: May I tell you a story about that? Yes. So I had a boss and we didn't have regular one-on-ones and I asked him, can we set up, I'd like to set up a regular one-on-one with you. And he said, you know, here's my thing on that. Here's my take on that.
The way I like to do one, I travel a lot. How I like to do one-on-ones is when we meet up in the same city or for the same event or something, I like to grab time, like maybe a long breakfast or half a day together, kind of a pickup. And we catch up and we do a really deep dive then, and I heard him say this and I said, oh, you don't really don't care about your people that much because , you want it to happen by chance when you happen to be in the same city.
And maybe you're relying on that chance happening frequently enough because we both happen to travel a lot and similarly enough that we're gonna meet. But how often is that? Once a quarter, half a year? Or sometimes every three weeks and sometimes not for nine. Like what is that? as he said it, I was thinking, wow, you really don't get building a relationship with your people, do you?
Nor do you care about it. He practically said those words. I, at that point I realized, okay, I know what you're about. My time with you is limited. Either you're gonna move me out or I'm gonna leave, but my time is limited, so,
yeah.
Camille Rapacz: Ah, that is a sad story. Yeah. I do think that people think, oh, I trust you that you're always doing a good job and we'll just, you know, have these meetups or whatever, and they're missing the whole point of, yeah, why do I have a recurring meeting with this person?
And they're not taking on the full responsibility of what it means to have people report to them, right? Yes. Yeah. Yes. Also, like bad on them to just, even if they're aren't into recurring one-on-ones, to just not even ask you. Well, tell me more about that, George. What, what would that do for you in your job?
How would that help support you? Yeah. And be willing to have that conversation.
George Drapeau: But he, he didn't care. No.
Part Two: How to Reduce Turnover
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Camille Rapacz: No. Well, that's a nice segue into let's talk about what do we do about this? Yeah. So there's all of this data now, and so maybe you're thinking, oh, do I have it, do I need to do something about toxic work culture?
I'm sure that my company doesn't have that. Or maybe you're like, oh, we definitely have that, and you're, but you're still trying to figure out like, what do I do? Whether you're, you know, just a manager working with your little team, you're a business owner, trying to keep all your people on board, whatever it is.
Or even a big company is like, man, we really gotta focus on, turnover. It's killing us. It takes so much time to find good people and then, you know, they're, they're leaving right away. And I would say, you know, even the idea that you would do an exit interview and try and learn, you don't wanna have exit interviews be the thing that, the source of data for you to learn about how to keep people like it's too late by then.
Right? Yeah. Yeah. So we need to think a little more proactively about this. So in terms of keeping your best hires, I was gonna ask you, George, if you have a top three, could you easily come up with a top three or do you want me to go through my list and then you can vote?
George Drapeau: I have a top two off the top of my head and I'd have to think for a third.
Camille Rapacz: Do that, do two.
George Drapeau: A clearly maintained and curated relationship. Not friendship, but a relationship. It's kind of addressing what I was just talking about. Yes. So are you making sure you have a relationship with your director, with your manager? That's number one. Number two , having clear standards about what is expected of you, clarity and, and fairness.
And do they seem fair not just to you, but within your peer group? Oh. And I guess the third is making sure that their gifts and skills are being applied on a regular basis. I guess those would be by my top three.
Camille Rapacz: Mm, love it, love it, love it. Okay, so yes, all of those are gonna be in my list, cuz of course I have a list and I had a longer list, as you know is my way Really? Yeah. And I paired it down. Okay, let's, because it was too long for a podcast I think we're gonna try and get through six of these. Okay. I don't wanna drag this out too much. But, so I sort of have a top six and they all touch on those three themes that you just brought, brought up. So definitely touches on those and sort of goes at them with more specifically what to do.
#1 Onboarding
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Camille Rapacz: So my number one is onboarding. You gotta set the right tone right out of the gate. And onboarding is, I consistently see this done really poorly. Like, they just meet with their person and they're like, and your your chair is over here and talk to the IT guy there to get your stuff and then go, and they don't really do all the things that they need for this person to be successful in their job.
Your job is to set them up for success, not to just put their butt in a seat and then hope that they survive. So your onboarding should go include what, you know, part of what you talk about, give them clarity about their role, about how communication works, about little details, like work hours.
What's your expectation? Make sure they understand all how all these things work so they can do the right things. Make sure they get training on any of the systems or processes of the business. I've heard this in other companies of, you know, people get on there and they're like, I don't, I'm supposed to log everything in this system and nobody's trained me on it.
Yeah. So they're just slow at their jobs or they're frustrated because they don't know how to use any of the systems that the company has, right? So make sure they're signed up for all the training that they need. Make sure they get introduced to people. Set them up to meet other people, not just their team, but other people they're gonna have to work with in the company.
Or for that matter, it could be vendors they have to work with. Make sure you are getting clear with them about who are the people that are important in their job. And then set those expectations of both what they should do that first week, but then that ramp up time so that first week, they gotta do a lot of these one-time activities of learning how things, there's probably some, you know, HR requirements they have to meet or some, there's, there's all sorts of things they're gonna have to do.
So make sure that you're setting clear expectations about what week one should look like versus ramping up into doing more actual work . Yeah. And this should not just be one meeting, so you should have an initial meeting with them, but you should have a series of meetings as you are onboarding them into the company that are specifically just about easing them into their new job.
Those are my thoughts on onboarding.
George Drapeau: Those are great. Nothing to add to that. I love that. I like the list. Excellent.
Camille Rapacz: I hope this is your experience in your new job.
George Drapeau: So far so good. Yeah.
#2 Proactive Management
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Camille Rapacz: Excellent. So number two is you gotta stay proactive. So this is your like building the relationship, making sure you have a recurring conversation with this per first person where you're providing both expectations, they're getting clear directions, you're constantly focusing on giving them clarity, right.
About what does good look like and how do I do that? So again, it's more often I think in their first say, 90 days, cuz you're really checking in and getting them up to speed, but then you just need a consistent schedule after that. You need that one-on-one. Yes. Gotta do it. Absolutely. Anything to add?
No, I, I love this too. Makes perfect sense. I, my practice is, Generally one-on-ones, one hour a week for the first four weeks, and then I back off to 30 minute one-on-ones every week. I notice you have more often in the first 90 days. That makes sense to me too. I think that's the conceptually, whatever your time ramp is, I, we both seem to agree more frequently, upfront, during ramp up time, and then figure out your regular cadence, which is not gonna be so frequent.
So don't worry about you're spending all this time up front and it's never gonna stop. It's gonna back off. It's gonna be easier and less frequent. You're never gonna stop it, but you're not gonna have to do it all the time.
That's right. Yeah. And you know, first 90 days, maybe it's first 60 days, I don't know. You gotta pick a time period that works based on the complexity of their job and what you're asking them to do. And maybe not all of those meetings are with you, by the way. Maybe some of them are with some other folks that they're having to collaborate and work with. The point is that upfront investment in helping them get up to speed quickly is completely gonna pay off for you down the road.
Cuz that's your job is I need them to be effective in their job as quickly as possible. And so I need to make it as easy as I can for them to do that. That's my job. Yeah. As the boss, right? Yeah, absolutely.
#3 Create Optimal Culture
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Camille Rapacz: All right, so number three is, And this is really a sort of leadership responsibility. Again, we're talking about leadership and management.
It's all leaders' responsibilities around this. But you've got to be deliberate as a company and as leaders in a company overall in creating the optimal culture and work environment that you want for your entire company, for everybody that works there. Mm-hmm. If you're not deliberate about it, it's just gonna morph into something that maybe isn't the most helpful, isn't gonna drive the best performance.
No, it definitely is going to do that. It's just gonna turn into some mushy thing, yeah. You can't just put a bunch of good people in a room and expect that then magically good things will happen. Everybody needs guidelines and rules and you know, what are we all working with here? So you wanna think about, addressing the remote work agenda.
What, what does that look like? What are our rules? Be clear with people. There's also the psychological safety. Have we created a space where people are free to share their ideas? They're encouraged to make contributions and take risks in expressing their thoughts, right?
Are you staying true to the values of the company or do you just have a list of values? But employees see this right out of the gate. When a company's like, well you say we're all about this, but that is not how we act. Yeah, I see it all the time cuz the values look great on the wall, but are we actually behaving in a manner in alignment with our values. Yeah. So stay true to your values. Have accountability at all levels. Transparency and clarity. So all of these things, and just being really deliberate about what kind of culture you want and it, it, it doesn't stop with, I wrote a vision and a mission statement and have a set of values.
You have to behave in that way as well.
Yeah.
All these things make sense, and I'm starting to think, okay, wow, I got a lot of stuff to do as a manager to get all this stuff to make it good for my employees.
Well, and this one is a much bigger picture, right? So this is definitely something that upper leadership owns or a business owner really needs to pay attention to, which is, am I being thoughtful about the culture and work environment I'm trying to create?
If you're at a manager level, your organization should have defined this for you, and your job is to make sure that it's just been clearly translated to your team and that you're working in alignment with it, that you aren't working outside the values of the company, right? Yep. Yep. Cool. But yeah, there's some work for you to do.
You can't just, you know, skate your way through. All right? That's why you make the big bucks, George.
George Drapeau: Yeah, exactly right.
#4 Provide Growth Opportunities
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Camille Rapacz: Number four is provide people with opportunities to learn and grow. Yeah, so I love what you said about, you know, making sure that you're really leveraging their expertise and their skills and that, so that plus also challenged them to do more, to learn more people wanna learn.
So delegation is one of the things we've talked about as a way to help them learn how to do different things outside their job by delegating some of the work that you do to them. There's obviously training, but I think training is the lowest end of the totem pole in terms of offering opportunities.
Everybody wants to go to training, but it, doesn't always add the most value unless there's a follow up. So offering them individual coaching or giving them space to really solve problems on their own as a way to learn. And there's so many different ways to do this.
This is one of my favorite topics to work on with leaders is how do you really challenge people to learn that isn't just, I'm gonna send you to a training class.
George Drapeau: Oh, cool. Yeah. I remember. I don't know why, but when I was running the other day, I think I was listening to one of our podcasts to kinda refresh myself when we were talking about training.
We were talking about, and I remember clearly your comment about like, yeah, it's not good enough just to send people to training. That's not the same as learning. We've talked about that in depth before. So there's an opportunity to review that. The difference between just training and true learning and growth.
Camille Rapacz: Yes. I think it was our episode on a learning organization or learning mindset. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. And yeah, because I think this is a mistake a lot of companies make, which is oh, we can solve that problem by just sending everybody to this training. Yeah. But it doesn't solve problems because just taking that course, they don't necessarily know how to implement that in real life.
So you have to have a way to transition that into, now what does it mean in our company and how do we leverage it? If you, because I'm not saying training's bad, I'm just saying it by itself is never gonna be enough.
George Drapeau: It's interesting. I have thoughts for my last company that I just left about training, because there's a thing that's been happening this year about upleveling the skills for this huge portion of the population through training.
And there's been a lot of grumbling about it. And I think there's some nuance to talk about. And right now what's happening I think is, I mean, I'm not gonna spend the whole podcast, you're talking about it, but what's, what's happening is training. And people are like, what? Why, why me? What? You know? And that's not being delineated very well, not being clear, clearly articulated why it's, this is going on.
Camille Rapacz: Yes. I think that's a big mistake that companies just make because they're, you know, seeing like, oh, we can solve this problem. There's this great program that we could just put everybody through the training mill is what we used to call it. We're just gonna crank everybody through the training mill and out the pop trained and ready to go, I guess. I don't know.
#5 Make Pay Increases & Promotions Clear
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Camille Rapacz: All right, so that's number four. Number five is make your pay increases and your opportunities for promotion really clear and consistent.
Like I find companies just, they just don't talk about this with their people. Like, how does it actually work? How do people get pay raises around here? What should I expect? Just, you gotta be clear about, I think that if you, being clear about it is in some ways even more important than just doing it.
Like just doing it randomly is, it's nice. Everybody wants more money in their paycheck. Yeah, yeah. But what's more important is that people know, how do I actually get that bonus? Or how do I actually get a pay raise or a promotion? What are the requirements for me to do that? And I see lots of companies, I, they're just not clear enough.
And so people are like, I don't know. And that could make people leave. Cause they don't really know what it takes. So you've gotta be really clear about that.
George Drapeau: Yeah, absolutely.
#6 Address the Bad Apples
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Camille Rapacz: All right. So my last one, unless we wanna go into bonus time, is what we already talked about, you've gotta be quick to address the bad apples, which doesn't necessarily mean you have to fire them, right.
It doesn't necessarily mean that, but you do need to address the behavior if you have people on your team, anybody who is just, and it can be in the smallest ways, like how come that person always seems to show up late to our meetings and they get away with it? Yeah. That will tank morale so fast.
Because somehow that person's an exception, and I'm not clear why. Maybe they have a really valid reason for always showing up to the meeting late, but it's just never been spoken of. Yeah. Well people are gonna make up horrible stories about why that's happening, and it's always gonna be something very negative and toxic, and that's just where our brains go, right?
We will always build a bad story. So you really just have to deal with even the smallest things in a really clear and precise way. Just as quickly as you can so that it doesn't start turning, it'll just fester and turn into something, you know, the bad apple will turn all the other apples bad.
George Drapeau: Absolutely. Completely agree with that. I would say that in big corporate culture, every big company has the a harassment training. And you see stuff in the training about things that happen and you may not think that really happens in your work culture, but it does.
And I would say this is an example of you see somebody exhibit, bad behavior, they make some offhand comment that has offended the whole group. They don't realize they've offended the whole group. The whole group doesn't realize that everybody's offended. Maybe some individuals feel like, ah, I was offended, but I don't know if I wanna speak up.
But you as a manager, as a leader, It's important to recognize, look, that's toxic behavior. It will have an effect probably on the entire group in some way, and it's actually pretty quickly and easily addressable. Usually a quick conversation on the side saying, Hey, cut it out, or look, I know you're just joking. Some people don't handle it. Handle it well, and if people come back and say, well, that's their problem, they need to have a stronger something, it's like, well, the fact is that in this group, some people not being able to handle it well is gonna lead to lower performance and people are gonna start to resent you and then other people are gonna start talking about you.
So it doesn't really matter if people can handle it or not. The fact is it's gonna spiral downward. You can decide whether you want to keep having this personality of the group, but I'm telling you that I see an effect on the group and I'm gonna stop it. You know? Yes. I'd rather you make the decision.
And actually most of the time you don't have to go that far. Most of the people say like, you know what? Yeah, I didn't really mean it. I could. I can do better about that. I know. I mean, yeah, sure. I have some friends who could take that, but no, I, I get it. No problem. Most of the time that's the reaction I, in my experience.
Camille Rapacz: Yes. There's two things that came to mind, which is what you said about, you know, oh, I have some friends who could take this. But yeah, you're not working with your friends. So number one is do not show up and just treat the people you work with the same way you would treat your buddies when you're out having a beer or they're at your house watching the game.
That is not the environment for work. So that's one thing that came to mind. Yeah. The other one that came to mind that you were emphasizing that I really wanna call out is, our jobs are to do what's best for the team and then ultimately for the organization. My job is not to just do what's best for me.
So if somebody's response is, you know what, that's their problem, I immediately push back with, no, no, it's our problem because we're a team and we're supposed to perform optimally together. And that behavior is lowering our performance overall because it's not for everybody.
I do think there are cases where I have had people who they were just overly sensitive. And you know, they, they just felt like they had to, once they opened the door to, they could always call this behavior out. They just kept doing it and you're like, okay, you need to also slow your roll and not constantly be the martyr in the situation.
Right. Yeah, good point. You do have that. I don't think it's okay for people to just constantly be like, you know, upset about everything that is said. Either there is this fine line there, but more often than not, I will side with the person who is upset than the person who is making the state. There's, there's, cuz also if you look at what they said, they're like, is there really a reason to even say that?
No. Actually, if you got down to it, the reason for them to say it was they wanted to get a laugh. Maybe they didn't think it was gonna be at somebody's expense, but it turned out it was Yeah. Or they really were trying to take a jab at somebody. Yeah. It's one of those things and neither one of those is a good enough reason for them to be able to say it.
Because it's not for the better of that team. Those are my thoughts.
George Drapeau: I have a different, I wanna tell you a story, and it's a, a different angle on what I, what I think of as toxicity. Maybe people wouldn't think of it about this way, but, so I guess I'll put it in the category things that are a detriment to the team.
Mm-hmm. So I had a great team that I managed at Red Hat for a year. Just an amazing group of people. One time in there, I had a guy who was an amazing guy and then this person left and sometime after that I was talking to some people in our product groups and they would mention this guy that they were working with and I'd say, yeah, that's the guy reported to me.
And the, the reaction to sometimes would be what? Wait, that guy was on your team, he reported to you. And I was shocked when I heard that feedback. Like there, there was no connection between this person on my team and my team or even me. And I realized, oh, I blew it. I should have been clearer about standards for the group and made sure that the group all knew that, look, your individuals and you go and do your thing, but you're also part of a group and we have a brand.
And when you represent yourself as just yourself and you don't bother pointing out the connection to this team, it brings about problems. So we, we could have leveraged you and your positive reputation with that product group back to this team could have helped us in other ways. But you are only focused on yourself.
Only yourself. You self-aggrandizing. I consider that toxic. And I could have corrected that probably if I had been more proactive and saying to everybody, we represent. Yourself. Make sure that people understand you're part of this function will all benefit and you'll help each other. And if I had seen behavior from this guy just talking about himself, I should have talked to him and say, look, not cool.
I know you, you wanna good things to happen to you, that's great, but I also need you to make good things happen for the group. Or you will no longer be part of this group and then we'll see how well you are able to advance yourself without the platform that this group gives you. You know?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. Wow. What an amazing reflection for you to have. Yeah. I think it's easy for us to miss that in individuals who are really high performers. Yeah. You know, they're out there, they're doing their thing, they're driving the business, and so you're happy with what they're doing, so you kind of leave them alone because they're just, they're, they seem fine.
And then it's easy to miss some of these things like, oh wait, yeah, we're missing this great opportunity. Or they're starting to undermine us as a team, even if that's, doesn't have to be their intention. Yeah. It's just the way they happened to be going about the work. And maybe if you'd highlighted it to 'em, they would've been like, oh, I didn't even realize that.
Of course, I want to help drive things for the team as well. So just giving people the opportunity to see something they might not see, I think is really important. And it, as a part of helping people to learn and grow as well, that's part of their development is giving them some insights into seeing how their behavior is affecting the whole Yes.
And helping to either, you know, hold people back or, or it could be driving things forward. Really important to be able to see that and give feedback. But we all miss it too, and we all miss it. All the time. Cuz it's a lot to have to pay attention to as a leader, it's a lot. Yeah, it is a lot.
But that's why we bring these things up because maybe we just brought something up on the podcast today. You're like, oh, you know what, I haven't really been paying attention to this part of the business at all. I should put some more focus to it. So hopefully we sparked some little idea in you for improving on your team's performance.
George Drapeau: I hope so.
Camille Rapacz: All right. Let's wrap this puppy up. So all. In summary, I would say your job as a leader, as a manager, as a business owner, you've gotta be the one creating the nurturing work environment for teams, for if it's one person or 50 people, I don't care how many people we're talking about, that's your job.
Your job is to make sure that that environment exists, and that's starting with the culture of the company and just all down the line, all the things that we talked about and, and plenty more. By the way, there's certainly more things to people could add in here, and it's not just about making people happy.
It's not just about I bought pizza or brought snacks into work. It is about making people feel valued and fulfilled, and also setting clear expectations and boundaries for people to work within. Right. It's not a free for all. Yeah. It will lead to reducing turnover and increasing productivity. It's been proven.
I probably should have pulled some of those studies out. I did not. You can, you can do your own Googling and research, but it's, I mean, we all know this, like we've heard it enough, right? We know. Yeah. Because when people feel valued, they do perform better. That's really what the point is. And they're not your friends.
They are valuable coworkers. And there's a whole different level of respect and teaming that has to happen there. And you are the one that sets the tone for that. So that's all I have to say about this. What about you?
George Drapeau: I, I second that when I occurring to me, as you're talking about this, is the perks and benefits that, that companies do to make a work environment feel happy and fun, like free foods, snacks, stuff like that.
It's really great, but the, the core really is everybody knows that they're going to work. Most people, if they had a pile of money, didn't have to work, wouldn't, they wouldn't go to a job. They, most people go to a job because they need the money and they need the money. They have basics.
They wanna know clearly, how am I earning my money? What are the expectations of me? How can I get through this and not be stressed every single day at work? And having free snacks in the break room is not gonna relieve my stress in that way. It's not gonna do that. The core things that you mentioned here that we've talked about, having clear expectations, having an understanding about the company culture and all this stuff.
Those, those are basics. And you, you gotta get them right. And if you get them right, you're gonna solve most of your people problems.
Camille Rapacz: Yep. You will. And again, I know that this requires time and energy, but the people are the lifeblood of your business. That's what's making it go. So yeah, you should spend the time and the energy to invest in making sure your people are gonna be able to work optimally and that they're gonna stick around.
Yeah, it's really hard for people to do the math and the ROI on this whole thing, but you can, and you really should be tracking, especially as a bigger company, you really should be tracking your turnover and what's happening and paying attention to that because it is costing you a lot of money.
All right, well, that's it for this episode. Cool. Let's check outta here. All right. Thanks for listening everybody. If you would like to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, we would love it. Please do that. It is a tiny little sentence, I think that just says, write a review, but you can find it.
You're all smart cookies. Please leave us a review or share our podcast with other people who might want to, you know, get some different perspective on tips and things. And I don't know how different our perspectives are, but it's our perspectives and I, you know, as least nerdy as we can be.
George Drapeau: Yeah. If you've left position. And it's is on your mind. We'd love to hear why you left. What, what were the reasons, the main reasons that you left the position. I'd love to hear about that. Either contrast with what we said or reinforce what we said. Love to hear it.
Camille Rapacz: Yes, we would love to hear that. And we do have a way you can do that.
You can go to the belief shift.com and you'll see there's a little widget where you can leave a voicemail. So we'd love to hear from you if you wanna do that. Otherwise we're outta here and we'll just be back in your ears next week.
George Drapeau: Hope you have a good week. See everybody.
