Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
Join James and Coby from Roman 3 as they diagnose issues and prescribe solutions to today's most important workplace challenges.
Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
Why Does Fixing A Bad Leader Feel Impossible?
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This episode touches on the theme of Strengthening Culture.
In this episode, we explore the difficult reality that a lot of organizations face when the person in charge is the wrong fit for what the organization needs. We dig into the Business Law of the Linchpin and how we can sever the dependence we unintentionally create on our leaders.
Our prescription for this episode is to understand the root cause of why we end up with bad leaders, and that there are solutions and steps we can take to address it. Ideally, we can do that before we end up in the situation to begin with.
Past Episode Referenced:
S2 E21: What Is The Technical Founder Paradox?
S3 E7: Are We Sheltering Toxic Leaders?
S3 E19: Are You At Risk From The Business Law Of The Linchpin?
S4 E17: Is Comfort Making Us More Productive or More Complacent?
To talk more about management training, reach out to us at info@roman3.ca or through our LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/company/roman3
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About Our Hosts!
James is an experienced business coach with a specialization in HR management and talent attraction and retention.
Coby is a skilled educator and has an extensive background in building workforce and organizational capacity.
For a little more on our ideas and concepts, check out our Knowledge Suite or our YouTube Channel, Solutions Explained by Roman 3.
Breaking down everyday workplace issues and diagnosing the hidden sickness, not just the obvious symptom. Our hosts, James and Coby.
[COBY]:Did we lose a patient?
[JAMES]:No, that's just my lunch.
[COBY]:Hey, thanks for joining us. I'm Coby, he's James. And let's get started with a question. Why does fixing a bad leader feel impossible?
[JAMES]:yeah, largely because the person who's usually responsible for fixing a bad leader is often the bad leader themselves. let's look at any business that's not governed by a board of directors, the CEO or the owner president, whatever title they choose to give themselves is the ultimate authority. And if they are, as is unfortunately quite often the case, the cause of bad leadership or the bad leader themselves, then it really becomes a vicious cycle of the only person who is really able or has the authority to solve the problem is the problem themselves. It not like all hope is lost, but it does illustrate why it feels, feels so impossible to fix bad leadership at the highest levels when we look at it from an internal problem or an internal perspective. Because if somebody lacks the self awareness to critically reflect on their own behaviors and their actions or lacks the emotional intelligence to be able to hear, and receive feedback that they don't like, then they're going to lash out.
[COBY]:All right?
[JAMES]:They're going to. When somebody shines a light on their bad leadership habits, it they're going to lash out and respond in a bad way. This destroys psychological safety and warns the next person to not even bother. And we're going to talk a bit about the individual and the importance of self awareness in leadership. But what I really want to get to with this conversation of why does it feel so impossible to fix back bad leadership? I want to talk about the business law of the linchpin because I think that plays a big role in how we, how and why and what. I want to look at why, like the impact of hiring the wrong leader, the major root causes of bad leadership and ultimately what can we do to address it?
[COBY]:Yeah, no, I think that it's really important for us to be talking to us to be at least be referencing kind of like, you know, the fact in most private sector business the you know, unless the CEO or the owner is governed by a board of directors or group of shareholders or whatever like that there is no person above them to kind of like identify the problem. So there it does kind of rely on that leader to have a bit of that self awareness like you said, and have a bit of that desire to you Know, like to improve themselves. And again, and that's kind of what is, you know, like business coaching is really heavily, ah, a great solution for and those types of things. But I do think that again it's going to be a good topic for us to talk about outside of that scenario. In the other scenarios where there is a board, where there's a board, there is a group of shareholders, there's a, there's somebody that is responsible for resolving a problem with leadership. How, you know, how is it that we.
[JAMES]:Or there is self awareness and critical reflection.
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:Like, because sometimes, I mean sometimes people get to a point where the problems have compounded to a point where it's like, okay, even if I don't know that I am necessarily the problem, I know that a problem exists and I need to seek help for it. that's at least a better starting point than what we often see of there's a problem. But it's not me. It's, you know.
[COBY]:Yeah. I mean the other scenario that we do see sometimes in private sector businesses that have an owner CEO is that sometimes that they have surrounded themselves with confidants that will actually talk to. Maybe it's people that work beneath them or maybe it's mentors that work beside them or other people that can actually help shine a light on that. But yeah, I do think that kind of, that preface. I think that it is going to be really good for us to talk about the impact of like hiring a bad leader. and that sense of like what happens if the leader is the one that carries all the responsibility and everything's really dependent on that one person. What do you do when the person everything falls onto is the problem? And I think that's really kind of at the heart of this conversation, which is why you're right. I think we should have a little bit of a reintroduction or at least a summary of the business law of the linchpin. So we did an episode on the business law of the linchpin, I think last season, and where we kind of broke down what it looks like in different categories. But here I want us to really focus on what happens when the leader is that linchpin.
[JAMES]:Yeah. So just in quick summary, really what we're talking about is a linchpin is kind of that, that critical role. It's a dependent. We've created some sort of dependency on a person. And in previous conversations we've talked about how it can often happen with like high performers in sales or in other roles, that create dependency on one person and when that person disappears, the whole house of cards comes crashing down. In a leadership perspective, oftentimes the CEO, the owner, the, the highest executive in the organization is a linchpin by default and by design. Because that position carries a tremendous amount of responsibility, it carries a tremendous amount of authority within the organization. And when that linchpin is removed, when it's not effective, when it's broken, that causes significant impact throughout the entire organization.
[COBY]:Yeah. And we talked it's funny because like we've, I mean we've said this a number of times in the podcast about just how critical leaders are to organizational stability and sustainability and growth and how like you know, just how vital both your again how a lot of your middle managers are. But you, but your, but your, your executive, your top executives are just make or break for ah, any kind of, whether it's, whether it's government, whether it's non profits, whether it's private sector, regardless whether it is just so fundamental. Because leaders, they shape the entire system that the organization works in. They are the captain steering the ship.
[JAMES]:And that's a hallmark of a good leader. Right. Like if we, I know they, that we are focused on kind of bad leadership with this conversation but it's important to also highlight the inverse. Right. Good leaders are going to shape systems. They're going to create systems that run independently from them. They're going to create levels of autonomy and responsibility within their management teams and within different levels and layers of organization. The challenge is that we unfortunately see this far less in smaller or medium sized businesses than we do in larger corporations or companies that have the, let's the money to recruit a really effective, really strong leader. Right. or that it's not owner leader led.
[COBY]:Right? Yeah, but I mean actually I'm going to push back a little bit on and say it's not just good leaders at shape systems, bad leaders or even mediocre leaders still shape systems. Right. I mean it's a matter of how dependent they are on them. Right. regardless, it's like we often culture
[JAMES]:either shape it with intent or you shape it by default.
[COBY]:Well that's just it. Like the way we talk about culture. Culture is built in your, is defined in your organization. It is reinforced, it is established. But it's often done as by default or by accident or by cobbled together from decisions that maybe had no strategic plan around them. But it happens, it's made regardless of your intent and A good leader knows that and plans to shape the culture and shape the systems with some kind of, again, strategic intent. Mediocre leaders maybe have some plan. Bad leaders are almost kind of divorced from the idea of what. Of the natural consequences of their decisions and their actions.
[JAMES]:And. Yeah, I mean, let's be clear. Bad leaders are not bad people. No. there are a lot we've seen, unfortunately. Just, the nature of our work puts us in contact with a lot of problems because we don't get hired when the ship's sailing smoothly.
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:yeah.
[COBY]:Well, just like we talked about in the last episode, that we have to go in for growth, which is often because a good leader has brought us in and want and wants us to help them get more of what they're doing. Or there's a merger and we're trying to like, help shuffle the cards. But, But.
[JAMES]:Well, there's some, usually some sort of crisis or some sort of, trigger event that has caused significant disruption. Yes.
[COBY]:Yeah. Disruption is probably the majority of our work. and it's something that, you know. Yeah, usually things have gone wrong, like we stepped in, kind of like after a problem has happened and not before. So we're usually trying to, you know, kind of help. Yeah, course. Correct is a big, It's a big part of what we do. It's all that we do. It's definitely a big part of what we do. But I mean, we've seen and we've had like, organizations come to like, talk to us that they feel like they're in like, an existential problem when they have this leader that they are so dependent on that is shouldering so much weight. And they, as, a board or as an executive team or as, you know, or whatever it is, council knows that this person is not a bad person, but they are the wrong person for this specific situation. And, but they just don't know how to like, untether all of these things that this one person is holding together. It just seems so overwhelming to them.
[JAMES]:And oftentimes from like this, we see that type of scenario happen after growth.
[COBY]:Yeah, right.
[JAMES]:which kind of ties in a bit with the, another concept that we've talked about on the podcast, the technical founder paradox. And this can happen from an owner, founder, context. It can also happen from a, hired CEO executive, context where the, the. The skills that they. That made them successful in the role, that made them successful in growing the company and growing the organization. Now that the organization is in a different phase of its life and development. Those skills are actually holding them back. And that is very common in after significant periods of growth. And it places this weird dynamic where you have somebody who has been so effective and so critical to the success of the organization that has performed well for potentially years and helped really shape and turn the organization into what it is today. And yet suddenly they're missing things, they're dropping the ball, they're creating more problems than they're solving. They don't seem to have a good grasp or reality on the situation. And it's not the person, it's not even that they are necessarily, I wouldn't classify them as a bad leader. They're ill equipped, they have the wrong, there's a mismatch in the skills and that they require. And it's our responsibility as organizations, as leaders, as executives, as boards, councils, whatever accountability, structure. You have to make sure that we put the right supports and systems in place to support that individual and get them the skills or get somebody in there who has the skills to support them.
[COBY]:Well, I mean, I think it's one thing that we should just make sure that everyone is perfectly aware of is that especially when you're going through growth, it is completely understandable for there to be a organic change to where the leader, it becomes a bad fit. They organically become a bad fit. And that is just like, that's because they've stayed the same, the organization has changed. Right. So I mean that's just a natural consequence of when that scenario happens. Right.
[JAMES]:But it's why, it's why leadership development, professional development at the leadership level is so important.
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:It's why leadership coaches can be a critical resource to you. It's why you always need to be searching for it. I mean it comes down to often you don't know what you don't know, but it's your responsibility to find out.
[COBY]:Yeah, absolutely. So I think I just want to have us get a little bit into kind of like some of the impacts that we see of the wrong leader and then, and then touch and then get into a, more of a discussion into the causes of it. But.
[JAMES]:Right. we need to actually get through the pieces we were going to talk about, not just ramble as I tend to do.
[COBY]:So I mean the thing is, is that again, like I said, it does feel again like we, we do see these organizations coming to us when we're, you know, onboarding a new client or we're having some of our discovery conversations that these Problems do feel like. So they do feel existential, like they rarely, they, they, they feel trapped once the organization has become dependent on this person and they just don't know what to do because often what they're seeing and why they recognize that this is a bad fit, that this is, that this is a bad leader for this situation is things like informal power becomes almost like the go to piece rather than creating formal accountability, rather than being checks and balances and trans and kind of like transparency in how stuff is done. It's about power consolidation and it's about the, the you know, not allowing people to kind of like, you know, be able to kind of question decisions and because it's almost like decisions get made in a black box and there's no accountability for the, the need for there to be other perspectives or things like that as well. Right.
[JAMES]:Well it goes back to the statement earlier of you know, leaders shape systems, right? Regardless of good or bad. A good leader is going to shape systems in a way that creates more accountability, more autonomy, that empowers people. A bad leader or the wrong leader is going to create systems that create more dependency on themselves, that consolidates that power through not structured, formalized, articulated systems but more of a. Well this is just the way that I'm going to hold on to this. I'm going to keep this authority myself.
[COBY]:Right? And that creates these decision bottlenecks and that creates the. All this, all these slowing down pieces because it's fun. One of the most common things that we see when there is a bad leader or the wrong leader in the scenario in the situation is they have they have, they have protected their longevity by creating, by almost like insulating themselves with the dependency. So by bottlenecking decisions and by making everything run through them and by this power consolidations like it almost becomes almost like a defense mechanism of like I know I'm out of my death, I kind of know I'm a bad fit. So what can I do to protect myself from this job? I'll make everything more dependent on me, which, which again makes that the resolution of whoever it is that's trying to resolve this situation and trying to like you know, be able to kind of allow the organization to act because even harder, because they feel more and more trapped because it's almost like, it's almost like leaves getting more and more like embedded in and rooted into, you know, getting under the skin of the organization so that they're harder to get out.
[JAMES]:And I think if you're Looking for what are some telltale signs or what are some, what are some, the very least yellow flags, if not red flags. Decision bottlenecks is a big one, right? If there's that consolidation of you know, everything needs to go through, through the CEO or the owner, you know, there isn't a decentralized authority, decision making structure, thing, everything gets slowed down as it moves up the chain. Those are telltale signs that you have some structural problems and that you have potentially a bad leader in place or at least an ineffective one.
[COBY]:Communication bottlenecks are the same thing.
[JAMES]:Like we talked about bottlenecks. Decision making bottlenecks. yeah, yeah.
[COBY]:Ah, like we talked, we talked about communication bottlenecks in an episode we did, I think in season two. We talked about about toxic leaders. About how if all the information like to a board or to a council or to the shareholders only goes through the one person, then they shape the narrative. Right.
[JAMES]:But it also reinforces that it's impossible to get rid of them because they're so crucial. Right. They create, they've turn themselves into a lynch pin that through fear. Through fear that if we pull this pin, the whole thing's coming down. Right. Which is why it feels like such a crisis to have a ah, bad leader or if you are trying to figure out how do I address this problem. because if, if I fire them, what's going to happen? Is the entire organization going to go under? you know, do I have. Because it, it's not like you can let somebody go one day and necessarily have somebody lined up ready to take over the following day.
[COBY]:Right?
[JAMES]:There's going to be recruitment, there's going to be onboarding, there's going to be a lot of steps and potentially a not insignificant period of time where you will be quote, unquote leaderless or.
[COBY]:Well, let's be fairly clear, sometimes we step into that gap when the leader has been removed and we step in as a, as a transitional, temporary solution.
[JAMES]:There are solutions to that. No, I was gonna say but like that's, that's the fear that drives, the lack that, that holds people back from making that decision.
[COBY]:Oh yeah, but what I'm saying is, but like even though they, there is someone lined up to step in, on, on the next day, but usually it takes us like sometimes it's eight months to a year to try to like, you know, to try to like sort out all of these broken pieces, trying to decentralize, trying to just break the bottlenecks. Trying to move from the dependency. Because it's. It's.
[JAMES]:If not if we're brought into, like, rebuild. Fix the damage that's been done. Yeah. It can be a lengthy process. If we're brought in to, steer the ship while they bring it. While they find their next person, it can be significantly less. But I mean, these problems haven't been created overnight. You can't expect that you're going to get out of them overnight either.
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:There's a process. There's a structure. There's reinforced behaviors. There is fear, there's a lack of psychological safety.
[COBY]:Trauma.
[JAMES]:There's a lot of institutional trauma that comes with it. Like the impact. The longer you leave a bad leader in their position, the. There's a multiplier on how long it's going to take to fix that problem.
[COBY]:No.
[JAMES]:Fix the problems they've created.
[COBY]:Yeah. And that's just it. Like, there's so much. Yeah. That has to be, like. We've often compared it to, like, you know, like, letting, like, mold grow in a, in your house, you know, fixing it early on because it's a much smaller rent.
[JAMES]:While it's surface mold, it's easy to deal with.
[COBY]:Yeah. Yeah.
[JAMES]:But, like, when it gets into and behind your gyprock, you're.
[COBY]:Yeah. We've gone into places and we've had to tear everything back to the stud. Down to the studs, metaphorically. To help. To help. Because this is one of the things that we often tell organizations when we step in and we say, let's be clear, you can't bring somebody in with how broken everything is. Like, it's going to take a while to fix all this stuff. Just like, you know, they can't sell the house while it's tore down the sides. You're going to need to, like, do the renos first. Then you. Then you can start, you know, like, courting, buyers. Right. It's the same kind of idea.
[JAMES]:Well, it's because you don't want to fall back into that same technical founder, paradox where you hire somebody. If you were to. If you were to just tear things down to the studs and hire somebody to replace it, that's a certain skill set. And that skill set is different from the skill set that you're going to need for once the organization's been rebuilt, how do they take it, the. The company to the next level? Right. So there's understanding what you need. And I mean. Yeah, you have to understand what the context is in which you are bringing Somebody in. So if you want somebody to come in and fix, then it's probably going to be a short term. Well, I say short term, but shorter term, project. If you want somebody to come in and grow, you don't want to bring them into a situation that, they have to renovate the entire company before they can do any growth.
[COBY]:Yeah. And. And again, like, because otherwise you're trying to recruit a unicorn. And then, and, and Yeah, and those are. And that's just always a setup or failure.
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:All right, so.
[JAMES]:Yeah. Your business strategy cannot be based on finding a unicorn.
[COBY]:No. No. All right, so let's talk about kind of the root causes. Why is it the organizations fall into this role? Why is it that, that again, like, it's, it's, it's painfully more common to people than they realize having the wrong fit or a bad leader into the role. And I think one of the biggest causes is the urgent hires.
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:Because I mean, like, you know, whether it's through, like, you know, again, like a, retirement that kind of happened a little bit sooner than expected or someone, moved on to another job and they, and they just put somebody into the role temporarily and then they just made them the, the CEO or whatever it is. Those are often again, like hiring urgently and then, and not having strategic intent with do we have the right person? Or like you said, were we in a situation where we needed, where this, where the organization was going through a transition for a year, so we hired the perfect person for that transition, but now they're still here three years later and they, and they're. We've hit the ceiling on their skill set.
[JAMES]:Yep.
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:And that's really common. That's really common where you, like, organizations go, you lose some, you lose a critical leadership position. And it's a scramble of, we need somebody in this position. We need somebody who can stabilize somebody who can be, who can work, you know, with the staff, rebuild relationships, address the structural issues. So we're going to find that we found a great person, we're going to hire them and they do a phenomenal job because you've hired for the right skill set, but you've hired somebody who can do what was necessary a year ago or two years ago to get you back to a place where you can grow.
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:They may, they probably don't have that same, that next set of skills that you need to take the company to the next level. And then you're into this situation of, well, we've just hired this person do we fire them?
[COBY]:Well, the other thing that I've seen a lot too is they, they like. I've talked to a number of boards that have, like, like that, like nonprofit boards that have lost their, their ED or their CEO and they go, okay, well, we seem to hire the person who, who. The one that we lost wasn't like, like, like the upgrade of that person. But they, but they ignore the, the fact that they're in this messy transition period where the new person can't come in and hit the ground running because the organization is not ready for them to do that. And you hired for this growth skill set. But you're in this, but you're in this messy transition period and the person doesn't have the skills to handle the mess. And you've set them up to fail. Because one, I can't think of any nonprofit that you and I are actually, or any, municipal organization or I can't think of any business that we've talked to about that's been in this period that somebody at the table we were talking to wasn't pushing. Let's just hire someone now. Let's just recruit them right now. And they hate it when we say slow down. You need to make sure that you can hire the person that you need when you need them. And most organizations don't love that advice because they want this to be over. So they force speed over rigorous. And that is a fundamental mistake when you're in these messy situations.
[JAMES]:And this is where acting roles can become problematic. Yeah, I've seen it many times. I see it. I think I've seen it. I've probably seen it more so in non, in NGOs than I have in private sector. But I've seen it in private sector as well, where somebody will be appointed, as a, you know, we lost this critical manager leader role. We're going to, just appoint somebody from the team, to serve in that position until we figure out what's going on. And then, okay, we were six months down the road and the house hasn't burned down around us. So let's take away the acting title and just make them the full time, later in the role that I haven't seen. I have not seen that work out well. Often I've seen that. I've seen the reverse far more common where. I can think of a couple pointed examples that I, I'm trying to not make it obvious, but when somebody is brought into that role, it's usually with. It's usually A stretch for them already in an acting position. This is a new set of responsibilities. It's a new way of doing things. It's a new set of skills that you're going to have to develop and you can keep it, keep things together fairly well, you know, for a short period of time. Over time that lack the gap between the skills required for long term, sustainability and growth are very different than the skills required to just keep the ship running in the same direction in the short term.
[COBY]:Well, I mean, you and I have said that there's a big difference. People really need to understand almost like what an act, what is the definition of an acting role? And, and what's the definition of an interim role? Because an acting role is, is you are. So if you become the acting CEO, you still have your main job's worth of duties and you're taking on usually 60% of the of the acting role. So you're, so you're just doing the stuff to keep the lights on, you're keeping the place from burning down. Is your, is, is the ceiling that you're, that you're looking for. Right. So them just kind of treading water is success in an acting role. Which is why it's so dangerous to think, well, if they were successful in the acting role, they'll be successful in this role because they were only able to tread water.
[JAMES]:Yeah. And the problem that I've seen is that it's not, it's not even necessarily that the person wasn't, couldn't have been a good fit. It's that we stopped supporting them.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:We didn't invest in their skills. We didn't invest in making sure that they would be set up for long term success, not just the immediate stability success.
[COBY]:Right. Yeah, we, we said, we said tread, tread water for a while and then we'll check back on you in six months. Oh, you traded water. You're doing this job well.
[JAMES]:Yeah. You haven't drowned yet, so keep going indefinitely.
[COBY]:Right. But the reality should be, okay, you're gonna, we need you to tread water for the, for the first three months. Then if you do well, we'll start investing in your development to see if you could actually swim full strength, you know, like become the person that we want.
[JAMES]:We'll get you a life preserver, then we'll get you a, boat. Right. Like.
[COBY]:Yeah, exactly. And whereas so, so again, an acting role is usually they step in and they're doing 60% of the job for a short amount of time. An interim Role is they step in and they're doing 100% of the job, but they're doing it under a much tighter timeline or, sorry, a defined timeline usually have a specific mandate. It's like, get us to this point, then the job ends. And that's usually what an interim role is. Usually interim roles are, a year, maybe, maybe two at the most. But they're about, they're about going through a transition and having 100% of the job for a transition, and then that job ends and then someone new or if that person could be hired, if they, if they've shown the growth. But like it's a defined scope and they nail that defined scope. But that, but that defined scope does not mean that they have the ability to work, to do the job indefinitely because they just had to hit that scope.
[JAMES]:Well, it's like we've been saying all along, it's getting the organization to a point where they can hire the skill sets that they need for, for the future, not just the skill sets that they need for the immediate.
[COBY]:Right, absolutely. So we see again, we see a major cause of the wrong leader in the wrong position because of the urgent hires. Right. So, and again, often the urgent hires are a immediate appointing of an acting or an interim and then just taking away that interim or acting because they didn't drown. so that's one of the major causes. But actually I want to touch on that too. Another cause that we sometimes see is that they, that they didn't get the, they didn't recruit for the right skill set that they were looking for. They recruited for sometimes the safest skill set or the people that were hiring were acting on limited information and didn't have the full scope of what they actually needed. They just hired the wrong skills because they were misunderstood. The actual skills that they needed for the roles. They hired the safest person or they hired the one that, with, with an antiquated skill set or whatever. Right.
[JAMES]:Yeah. And this is unfortunately common if there's a disconnect between those who are hiring and the operational reality. Yeah, it's why we strongly like we, we really push investigations, because you need the context to understand what you need in the short term, what you need in the medium term. And then it's the strategic vision, the goals, the strap planning, that's going to determine what we need in the long term. But those things are often not the same, especially when you're going through crisis, or going through growth or going through, you know, a loss in leadership. positions. It's really. I know, I, we keep harping on the same thing, but it's really important to understand the context in which you are operating today and the context in which you want to operate tomorrow. Because if you hire somebody who can only focus on today, you're, you're shooting yourself in the foot for tomorrow.
[COBY]:Yep. Yeah. So, I think that one of the things that just to kind of almost like take that point but adjust it a little bit is the idea of, One of the other kind of root causes tends to be when we almost like conflate competence with leadership. Like when somebody is really good at their current role and we say okay, because they're really good at this current role, then we end up over promoting them into, into, into a role that the Peter Princip. Exactly. Yes. So that's another side of it too. They think, well, this person's been around for a long time. They know everybody, they're really good at their current role. So then was, well, you know, then they would be a good fit to become the new CEO. And again, that's just as broken as not having, as not understanding the operational realities that you need, that you need the person to work in. Right. again, it's trying to simplify a very. If you're trying to find easy answers to a really complex problem is. Tends to be where a lot of recruitment errors come from.
[JAMES]:Yeah. I think another big root cause of all of this is fear. Yep. It's the, especially if a, you have somebody in the role who's not necessarily terrible but you know that they're the wrong fit or they, you, you can see that they, you know, maybe they're not dropping the ball at every turn and maybe you don't have mass exodus of staff because of their terrible leadership or management practices. But there's a fear of disruption. There's a fear that, well, if we remove this person, how long is it going to take for us to find the next, the right person? What is going to happen in the meantime? How are staff going to react? it's, it. I think fear holds back a lot of decision making because, well, it's the devil you know, versus the devil you don't.
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:And we, we know that this person. It also complicates things when you have a, when they're a nice person. Yeah. When they're somebody who's pleasant, who maybe. And you know, maybe they get along really well with the teams. Maybe they've done a good job. In building some camaraderie and building a, an environment where people feel safe, ah, to speak up and engaged in their work. But maybe, but they don't have those skills that you need to take the company to the next level.
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:There's a lot of fear that will hold back decision making in terms of what's going to happen if we go down this road.
[COBY]:Because I mean like just to touch on what you said, because sometimes it's a matter of the leader, the CEO, the executive has good leadership skills. Like they are consensus builder. They do care about building people up and everything like that too. They've got those personal qualities that make them people, people want to follow them, but they're a bad manager. They're. They don't hit timelines, they don't know how to build systems, they don't know how to delegate.
[JAMES]:They.
[COBY]:So all these things that are essential to the actual growth and operations get completely missed. But because they've got the great leadership qualities, it masks it or it makes the, the, the option of living with the, the, the damage a bit more, you know, seem less risky than, you know, than the correcting the bad hire. Right. I mean like, so it's one of those things where it's almost like it erodes it slowly and then you don't realize how far you've come because the person seems to be again, very surface level, have the right things in place. But then when you actually dig down there's, it's not built on anything. Which is why we always say again, going back to leaders shape systems and if that system is dependent on them, then it may seem like, you know, from a surface level that if they are, if they do have psychological safety and if they are very you know, like staff focused and they, and they are pleasant to talk to and, but everything's dependent on them. You as a board of directors, you as a shareholder may not know that this is not a good scenario, that this is bad because there's no system for them to operate on everything. They, they become this linchpin that is, is damaging the organization. But you don't realize it because you miss some of these yellow and red flags and then the fear of okay, well it can't be that bad to fix it. Let's just, you know, let's just kind of live, live with this rather than actually kind of correcting it is like you say, it's just that we don't want to disrupt things that are working. So we'll Just let it go. And that's just hit that multiplier effect where the problem, this compound to compound to compounds and by the time something does break, the fix is massive.
[JAMES]:Yeah. And sometimes it's. It's reframing the solution or the goal of what we're trying to do. Sometimes it's not only how do we get rid of this person.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:Because in some cases it's. That may not actually be, you know, the best solution.
[COBY]:No.
[JAMES]:Sometimes the. Maybe the reframing or the goal needs to be more around. How do we stabilize the system so that no single person can destabilize it.
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:How do we put the structures in place? How do we create more autonomy, more how do we divest, decision making throughout the organization? How do we de risk bad m. Leadership or ineffective leadership or a, mismatch in skill set in leadership?
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:This needs to be viewed from a risk management perspective. I think that's. That. That's one takeaway that I would encourage people to look at. Reframing this conversation through is risk management. What is the risk to the organization? What are the. How do we create systems and structures and supports that are not dependent on any one person?
[COBY]:Yeah. Because one of the things that we really want to also make clear. We talked about this in a recent episode. We talked about about, is comfort kind of good or bad at work. But we talked about the sunk cost fallacy. Yeah. The idea that, well, you know, if we already have this leader in place, you've already invested time in them, then, you know, we'll just kind of keep putting good money after bad. That is completely a, like, completely going against the value of risk management, like you said, because we really want to make sure that we are fully aware of the consequences that, you know, like that letting this stuff go, putting good money after bad. What. This really does hurt us. So it's really important for us to not fall into this on cost fallacy of just, you know, like we've already put the time into it, but you kind of have it in place. Let's just kind of, kind of let it go. We need to like you say, have that risk management approach. Because risk management should be something that we are always looking at, not when things go wrong. We should be looking at a risk management.
[JAMES]:No, you want to, you want to do your risk management while things are operating well.
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:So that when you hit the rough patch, you have a strategy, you have a plan in place and you can respond rather than react.
[COBY]:Yeah. So how can you do that? And I think that's probably, you know, the, the most, the most important question that I hope you listening are actually, we're actually waiting for us to get to because like you said, you only
[JAMES]:had to wait 40 minutes for.
[COBY]:Yeah, but like you said, we don't say just get rid of the person. We say, you know, if, if at all possible, if, if the person has, you know, if there is the ability for the person to come back from the situation, if you know, then training and those pieces like that too can be helpful.
[JAMES]:But a really effective leadership coach, professional development, with some clear expectations of what you want to see changed.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:Can be a first step.
[COBY]:Yeah. But actually even before that, that's usually a great action. But usually the first step is, is to have an external diagnostic of your organization to assess the risk, to assess the situations to again to bring someone in that will be able to kind of unearth some of the pieces that maybe are. Everyone is kind of blind to. Because it's just part of their everyday and data to.
[JAMES]:For your decision making.
[COBY]:Yes. Have an objective view about realizing, identifying the risks, realizing you know, being able to kind of like see the system that does exist, see the good and the bad and then give you options based on that. And that's the kind of thing. And that's why when we go into organizations, regardless of, of kind of what their, what their situation is, if it's growth, if it's merger, if it's crisis, we always do the diagnostic first because we want to have that objective third party view to kind of unearth stuff and ask the right questions so we can see what is the best path forward.
[JAMES]:Well, and part of it is we specialize in particular areas. And at the risk of sounding arrogant.
[COBY]:You're starting now.
[JAMES]:Okay. We're a little beyond the risk. right.
[COBY]:Sounding arrogant.
[JAMES]:Sounding arrogant. The data that we collect is usually better than the data that we're given because especially for the owner, CEO, founder level, it's really hard to have an objective view of something that you're very close to.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:And usually they know. Well, they know what they want to do and they usually have a pretty good sense of what the problem is. But where that problem stems from is sometimes difficult to assess on your own. And that's something that we do. And so the initial diagnostic or investigation gives us clarity to make sure that any recommendations that happen going forward are tailored to the outcomes that you want based on the reality of the situation you're In. Right.
[COBY]:Because most of the time the executive, the board, the leadership team, the staff are very aware of the symptoms.
[JAMES]:Yes.
[COBY]:But they often don't have the perspective or, or even know the right questions to ask to get to the heart of the sickness. Well.
[JAMES]:And they often all, each have a piece of the puzzle. Right, right. And so it's collecting all the puzzle pieces and putting it together in a way that makes sense, that tells a narrative of here's what's happening and here's why it's happening.
[COBY]:Exactly. So often. Yes. So the first thing that again, these, these organizational assessments are great. Identifying risks. And it's great to do these assessments while everything is working well. It'd be, it's. We don't get to do it very often, but we love when we get to go into an organization where things are working well and we can say here are the things that are going to be coming up that you may want to be aware of.
[JAMES]:We've got a couple of those. And they are, they're a pleasure. They are a pleasure.
[COBY]:Yes. As opposed to our usual. Which is, okay, so everything's on fire,
[JAMES]:the house is burning down, please help.
[COBY]:Yes, exactly. so that's the first one thing we say because often with those strategies that come from the assessments, because assessments are usually just the means to get the strategy and the strategy is usually ah, recommendation, let's say on leadership coaching, on kind of mentorship programs that can work on professional development, on new structures and organizations and stuff like that. Too often though, when you get that strategy it's like, okay, well we have this. But now what this is when the other pieces of advice are usually very helpful which are leveraging external, supports through either fractional executives bringing in somebody experience a perspective that can actually have the skill set to help implement the things that are needed to improve the systems without again, you know, without running the risk of falling into the, not
[JAMES]:hiring them full time. it's usually on a number of hours a week or a month. it's a way of accessing high level talent, with low risk. And I mean there's obviously a cost associated with it because you're paying for expertise. But fractional executives, fractional support can be a really important way to increase organizational capacity and skill.
[COBY]:Yeah. And then, and then once you know what has to be achieved and you have your plan for how long it's going to take you, looking at transitional leadership or interim leadership of someone else coming in to create space to fix the systems without kind of Triggering organizational panic. Right. You're bringing in somebody on like who's going to be creating a new position possibly or you're. Or you're replacing somebody with a fractional or sorry, an interim or transitional leader who's just whose job it is to move you from where you are to where you need to be that's stable. So that way you. They're either not needed anymore or you can bring on someone permanent. These, this messy transition period is something that you're going to be going through. So you almost need to just have the right tools to get through it and not expect everyone to help you navigate this messy transition off the side of their desk or assuming that they have the skill sets, because often they don't. These are very specialized skills sometimes. So you want to make sure you've got the right people in the right place to get you where you want to get to, which will save you time, money, talent, all the kind of stuff that you want. But you have to invest in it. Right.
[JAMES]:I think what I want to leave people with or the kind of last thing that I want to say is around. The most dangerous leadership hire isn't always the one that's the loudest or the most obviously the worst. It's the one that your organization becomes too dependent on to question.
[COBY]:Yeah, absolutely. It's. You're right, it's. It's the one that. Where it's too ingrained and too. And you're right, dependent is really. Is really key to it. Which is what the whole idea of the law lynch is about. But law enforcement is not about blaming someone. It's not about saying this person's a problem or it's about recognizing that there's a risk, there is a problem. There's a system structure that, that has to create dependency.
[JAMES]:Yeah. We have put our organization at risk because we are so dependent on somebody. This can even be somebody who is incredibly effective. But if your organization success lives and dies with one person, that is a massive risk that you need to mitigate and address.
[COBY]:Right. But the idea of recognizing these risks is to do the best scenario is to do it early enough. They still have choices that you still have options that you are not trying to only see the fact that there was a fire risk while the building is burning down. Right. So it's really important to understand that the law of the linchpin is just to say that this is something that's built into structures. This happens. This is an organic thing. It's a common stumbling block. Especially when it comes to growth. So this is something that is going to be in your organization. So if you need to find a way to de risk it and there are solutions that you can to do it, but it's best to do those things before the fire starts. All right, so I think that about does it for us. For a full archive, of the podcast and access to video version hosted on our YouTube channel, visit Roman3.ca/podcast. Thanks for joining us.
[ANNOUNCER}:For more information on topics like these, don't forget to Visit us at Roman3.ca. Side effects of this podcast may include improved retention, high productivity, increased market share, employees breaking out in spontaneous dance, dry mouth, aversion to the sound of James voice, desire to find a better podcast, M.
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