Archive for category: Leadership

Amanda Hammett 0:01
Hi, my name is Amanda Hammett. And I'm the host of the Next Generation Rockstars Podcast. So today we actually have a special edition for you. For 2020, we decided that we wanted to tackle some of the bigger ideas and concepts in the global workforce and those things that are affecting us every single day that maybe are just below the surface, or maybe things that we just don't think about. So in honor of Women's History Month here in the United States, today's topic is women, particularly women and the intersection of next-generation talents. So my guest today is Jeffrey Tobias Halter. Now, some of you might be a little surprised because to talk about women, I brought in a man and that's very true.

Amanda Hammett 0:47
However, Jeffrey is the president of YWomen and he is a gender strategist. Now Jeffrey didn't just wake up one day and decide, hey, I'm going to be a gender strategist. No, Jeffrey actually led Coca Cola, his early initiatives in the diversity and inclusion world back in the early 2000s. So he has a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge in this area. But Jeffrey and I took it a little bit further, we brought in both of the women of our world for him, next-generation talent for me. And we talked about the broken ROM, which was a term coined by the McKinsey study that they put out in late 2019, in conjunction with the alien organization. And it was a really fascinating study, because all this time, we've been talking about the glass ceiling and breaking the glass ceiling for women. But really, we need to address a parity issue at the very beginning in those early career talent issues. And so, Jeffrey and I spend a lot of time talking about some best practices and things that you can do today to make that happen. So join us take a look at this interview and I would love to hear what you have to say about that. Don't forget to share this and comment below.

Amanda Hammett 2:03
Hi, this is Amanda Hammett. And I'm the host of the Next Generation Rockstars Podcast. Today we have a very special guest. His name is Jeffrey Tobias halter. He is the president of YWomen and he's a gender strategist. Jeffrey, why don't you tell us a little bit about you?

Jeffery Halter 2:20
Yeah. Thanks, Amanda. Thanks for having me on. So basically, my day job focuses on helping companies create an end to end women's leadership strategies, specifically focused on engaging men in the process because we're not going to drive long term systemic change for women without active male engagement.

Amanda Hammett 2:46
Exactly. Perfect. That's amazing. And I love that you're doing that. But I would imagine definitely, you didn't just wake up one day and say a Great idea. I'm going to do something about this. Or maybe you did. Once you tell us a little bit about how did you act doing?

Jeffery Halter 3:02
Yeah, certainly so know if you had told me 20 years ago, this is what I'd be doing. I would have laughed at you. I'm a career sales guy, Procter and Gamble Coca Cola. And in 1999, I was actually doing a staff or patient assignment. I was working in sales training. Before I went back out in the field as a regional vice president. And Coca Cola had a very famous $200 million discrimination lawsuit. We laid off 8000 people. And overnight, I went from working in sales training to leading the diversity education initiative at the company. Now my first reaction was, I'm a straight white guy. What do I know about this diversity thing? What meeting did I not attend to get in charge of this? And then the last thing was, you know, I've got two years' kids, I really need a job. So I'm going to kind of do this diversity thing as long as I can. And so we were charged with training 4000 people in diversity education. now realize it's 2000. And if you've ever seen that episode of the office with the really bad diversity training, this was kind of my project. And I would sit in this program, literally as a hostage and it's my program.

Jeffery Halter 3:53
But I heard stories everyday stories of racism and sexism and homophobia from people that I knew and genuinely respected. And I had what they call a white male epiphany. And a white male epiphany occurs when you realize what white male privilege is, and the world revolves around you. Were always the default, largest number in most meetings. Our voices are always heard. And at that time, I was not ready to be an advocate. I just chose to get curious.

Jeffery Halter 5:07
And so I started having conversations, I would go out and talk to women and African American colleagues and I would say, Hey, I heard this in class. Can you validate? Is this true? And what happens when you have these genuine conversations, you quickly realize that women and other underrepresented groups are having completely different experiences than I'm experiencing as a white male. And so I chose to get more and more curious. Tom Peters had just come out with reimagine it was now 2004 and he was talking about the business case for women. And so this really clicked for me because I had for a time being seen diversity and inclusion kind of a soft HR thing. And what I realized is, in fact, it's a business imperative women buy everything in this country, and yet most sales teams are still made up of men. Women are getting more degrees than men are, whether it's bachelor's, masters, PhDs, Jadis. And so over the course of the last 20 years, I have evolved to a position now where I consult with fortune 500 companies and executive teams and work primarily with men on how to move from not just being an ally. I actually think that term is overused nowadays, I think it's kind of soft. We need to move men to advocacy, because I know you've seen the research that says women are under sponsored and over mentored Well, in my mind, this is the same thing a man mentoring a woman as an ally. I certainly want to congratulate all the men out there who are our allies. We've reached a point in time 2020, where we need advocates, visible vocal men, senior leaders, demonstrating to the organization why this is important.

Amanda Hammett 7:19
I love it. I love that. And I couldn't agree more with everything you said. You're preaching basically to the choir here.

Jeffery Halter 7:27
Of course.

Amanda Hammett 7:28
Let's talk for just a second. You and I have had some conversations today. And Mackenzie recently put out a study they annually put out a study on women in the workplace, partnering with LinkedIn, or I'm sorry Lena, and for quite a while to do this. But the 2019 study was really interesting and you actually pointed out that it would be a very interesting study in my work as well. specifically talking about that in just above the entry-level for Women, then actually I'd like to quote a little something from the intro to this study. So this is lean in 2019 study on women. An increasing number of companies are seeing the value of having more women in leadership, and they're proving that they can make progress on gender diversity. Still, women continue to be underrepresented at every level. To change the numbers, companies need to focus on where the real problem is. We often talk about the quote, the glass ceiling that prevents women from reaching senior leadership positions. In reality, the biggest obstacle that women face is much earlier in the pipeline. At the first step up to manager fixing this quote, broken wrong is the key to achieving parity. Yep. So let's talk about this broken wrong. I think that this is huge and it is something that really we don't hear a whole lot in The vernacular of the DNI space or just in my everyday work. So what is the broken rung mean? Exactly what is...

Jeffery Halter 9:08
You've got to look at this intersectionality of race and women to see really gross underrepresentation. And, and a lot of people might be sitting there thinking, Well, you know, that doesn't happen at my company. McKenzie research is based on 600 multinational companies. So this is very well documented research.

Jeffery Halter 9:08
Yeah, and this is fascinating. The Broken run basically is that first promotion whether that pardons me, individual contributor to senior individual contributor, team member to Team Leader. And what's really fascinating is, most research a lot of the McKenzie research a lot of the lean and research for years is focused on what we would describe as choke points, which we always thought were a director to VP, VP to SVP, SVP, the C suite, right. And what we're finding is and this is the first time they've actually reported on this, the broken rung exists at that first position. And for every 100 men promoted seven Two women are promoted 58 women of color are promoted. And so this isn't just a, a women thing.

Amanda Hammett 10:36
Absolutely.

Jeffery Halter 10:37
And then you have to start to, to unpack what this looks like. Because think about this. Oftentimes, your first promotion in a company comes by another fairly young, possibly not well-trained leader, you know, we tend to focus I know certainly we did a Coca Cola on training directors. And sales leaders and that first level leader gets very little support get very little training. And oh, by the way, in 2020, you know, 10 years ago, that person may be had seven direct reports. Now they probably have 14 because organizations have been flattening, no support, no training. And now we're asking them to make what seems like a pretty routine decision.

Jeffery Halter 11:32
We need to promote someone right into their first job. And yet they've had no training in how to interview unconscious interview to mitigate unconscious bias. Maybe they aren't aware of concepts like diverse slates or more importantly, diverse panels. So slates are ensuring you have, you know, a minimum of one but ideally Two to three candidates who are women are underrepresented groups. Diverse panels are doing the same thing. Because what we're finding is diverse slates don't necessarily work when you as a young female command in your face by three older men. Yeah. And so that's why the interview panel has to also be diverse. And so this one simple thing. Picture this, if we promoted women in their first job at the same rate of men, we would have one more million women move into leadership in the next five years. So we keep thinking this is this huge struggle. And in fact, it starts very early and we can actually do something about it.

Amanda Hammett 12:52
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'd like to circle back to something you just said about those diverse panels and so for those of you who don't aren't aware, Jeffrey is also an author. This is his book. It's called "Why Women" and it is phenomenal. You can see I have maybe left it a little too. But I actually went through and I was thinking about this very thing going into our conversation. And here's something that I've highlighted. I'd like you to talk about it. Many hiring managers often have a preconceived notation of what they're looking for someone who fits their definition of leadership, which is most often based on a traditional mock male model of leadership. I mean, and that is so so interesting because we don't think of it that way. Like this is just leadership. But...

Jeffery Halter 13:45
Yeah, so I'll give you and I can certainly share this with you on your website. So I do a training activity, and I list 30 words associated with management and We asked people to just check off their top 10 words they would associate with managers. She checked them off, no big deal, says what makes a good manager. And then I asked them to put a gender to that word.

Jeffery Halter 14:15
Now, it would be easy to say, you know, these terms are genderless. But I don't let them do that. You've got to pick the first one that pops in your mind. And what we find out is, and this is, this is based on a Google study of 80,000. leaders, and what we find is that two thirds, as many words are associated with men, as with women, the words much stronger things like an analytical risk-taker, assertive, the women words, much softer, much as you would imagine. And then they were asked when you think of a leader, how do you rank the words and instead of two thirds, four-fifths of the words 80% were associated with men, only 20% were associated with women. So this is a great simple exercise. And here's one more caveat on this.

Jeffery Halter 15:18
The New York Times in November of last year did an article and they asked fifth-grade girls to drop pictures of leaders. And literally every little girl drew a picture of a man. And so what it says is this predisposition starts very young. And so it's not just men who are thinking that leaders are men, to women also carry an unconscious bias. So this is just one element of what do we think a leader is? And in my book, I talked about the double bind. dilemma. And this is so critical, particularly for men to understand when you're interviewing women because women face a double bind dilemma. So Amanda, if you're too tough, you know what you're called?

Amanda Hammett 16:15
Yes, I do.

Jeffery Halter 16:16
And if you're too soft, you know what you're called?

Amanda Hammett 16:19
Yeah.

Jeffery Halter 16:20
You're never just right. It's the Goldilocks effect. Men. If you think about a continuum, you know, where assertiveness is at the one end, you know, men can be 90% profanity using pounding the table, you know, aggressive to down a 10%. Quiet, introvert, finance-oriented, but they're still respected as leaders. I don't have research on this, but I believe women fall into about a 45 to 55% narrow band where you know, you're not to a certain If you're not too soft, you're just right. Yes. And so it's a tightrope. It's a huge tightrope, and when we're evaluating talent, or more importantly, the performance reviews leading up to you being promoted, you know, so so assertive is a great word, or aggressive or emotional, you know, women are often called emotional. And that's everything from raising your voice. Oh, by the way, men raise their voice and no one judges them on it.

Jeffery Halter 17:33
Now, many times women are raising their voice because they're not being heard or they're being ignored in a meeting and I interpret that as, you know, oh, she's so emotional about this. Whereas when Ron pounds his fist and and, you know, drops an F-bomb, it's no big deal. And so these little subtle things really factor in and then I'll put one more out there. And it's really a tendency to see ourselves or someone like us in that candidate. This is a huge blind spot for companies that tend to recruit at the same schools. You know, when someone walks in the door, you know, if I went to Georgia Tech and you went to Georgia Tech, Does that just raise you up a notch? You know, in my eyes? Certainly, certainly. Do I, and this is a common one for men.

Jeffery Halter 18:36
You know, do I see myself in you 30 years ago when I was starting out? And so that's much harder for me to look at a young woman and say, Well, you know, gosh, can she really do this. So all of these biases are critical. And so smart companies implement, you know, programmatic elements to eliminate some of these But none of it makes it back down just going full circle down to that first level manager doing the first round of interview. And so I've got one simple solution. One simple solution doesn't cost any money. Every time you have that first level interview, right? I want the managers' manager to just ask a question.

Amanda Hammett 19:24
Okay.

Jeffery Halter 19:25
How many women do you have on the slate? And if the answer is none, then you have a responsibility to look that manager in the eye and say, What are you doing to get some ready? And what are we going to do next time? Because it's just not acceptable, that you don't have any women ready? And oh, by the way, that simple question needs to be asked at every level of leadership because I've seen it in the C suite, where an EDP job comes open and We're sitting in talent review. And Jim puts forward the same three guys he's put up before. And then the CEO never looks at Jim and says, Okay, I'm giving you a pass this time. But what are you doing to get a woman ready? And that simple question is never asked, and it drives me crazy.

Amanda Hammett 20:23
Absolutely. And it's, you are so right, it starts so early. This is actually something that I have ongoing conversations with teams about. So in our company, we do something called the collision course. And it's the collision between leadership and next-gen talent. And there are various points along the way. And this is something that I'm always asking, you know, at these frontline leaders, are they ready? And are they willing to help identify what are you doing to identify these next, next leaders? And the question is always met with deer in the headlights like, you know, no process. And the process that they do have is inherently flawed.

Jeffery Halter 21:04
You know, and being a generational expert, you know, this, you know, I was raised in an era of command and control. You know, in the 90s, it was very easy to be a leader and a manager today. I need to manage Amanda differently than I managed Jim, and Terry, and Monica. And that takes a high degree of skill. And it takes so much more time and so much more investment. But it goes full circle to what do millennials want? What a Gen Z want? They want feedback. They want a challenge. And by the way, they may lead differently than you. Yes. But that's okay. You got to give them a chance. And by the way, they're going to make mistakes. We know we made mistakes, too.

Amanda Hammett 22:01
Yes, it seems like that idea of mistakes. It's just like don't talk about it. Don't talk about it.

Jeffery Halter 22:05
Yeah.

Amanda Hammett 22:06
Absolutely. Yeah. So what would be your suggestion for a company that is just they're really struggling at this first frontline level of preparing women, especially those early in career women to get up to that next to that first level of frontline leadership, what would you suggest to them?

Jeffery Halter 22:26
I think it's important to have programs and processes. You know, this is where HR meets the business. And you've got to have leaders understanding the purpose behind the HR programs and accountability and accountability being the big one. And again, I'll share this with you for your reader or Watchers on the website. But there are 10 things we need to hold leaders accountable in this space. And this is huge. Again. This came out of a McKinsey study delivering through diversity, but it's just as powerful. 86% of companies say they can articulate the business case, but only 16% hold people accountable. And so, you know, I was in sales for 20 years and I had a quota every quarter that if I didn't meet, I would be replaced. We yet we talked about setting goals and metrics for women in leadership and immediately we go, Oh, no, we can't count that we can't track that. We track everything in business, you have to track it. And so it goes back to holding people accountable for some of the things we talked about already. Diverse slates, diverse panels, regrettable losses is a big one. How are you identifying top talent you know, this whole notion of my big point is having a conversation on a weekly, weekly, monthly basis about our differences? And that's as simple as this.

Jeffery Halter 24:16
We all work really hard, but we really don't have time to understand each other. And it goes back to my very first premise around how I came to do this work. And so what I encourage organizations to do, and you can do this at every level, is pull something out of the newspaper, watch a YouTube video, watch a TED talk, and then just talk about it. You know this is we're in the middle of Black History Month, we're going to have Women's History Month, next month, you know, watch a video and then just talk about the concepts. You know, I know we're focused on you know, millennials and women, one of the best things I've ever seen And it's called the American sun. It's a stage play that's now on Netflix. And it stars Kerry Washington. And it's fabulous to show at a team meeting to start a conversation around race. And quite frankly, the things we don't understand about race. But there's great, you know, there are great movies for women, this representation is another one. But they don't have to be big. You know, once a week, the USA Today polls and publishes at least two or three articles on women, or millennials. And so just read the article and talk about it. So that so those are just some of the things I think companies can do.

Amanda Hammett 25:44
Absolutely. I think just opening up those lines of communication is basic first-level stuff that's free, and it can just, it's amazing what it can bring out of it not just seeing people's different perspectives, but also building trust and building those foundational items that you need for a team

Jeffery Halter 26:01
Yeah.

Amanda Hammett 26:01
Absolutely. All right. Well, Jeffrey, this has been really enlightening and eye-opening. Where can my audience find you?

Jeffery Halter 26:10
Yes. So a www.YWomen.biz, the Y being the Y chromosome, pretty easy to manage, and understand. But please go to my website, I have three white papers, I have a free assessment your leaders can take one is quality gender advocate profile, and one is called a male advocate profile. And it has 20 questions that cause you to think about how you become an advocate, but more importantly, the 10 steps and actions you can take to become an activist or an advocate. And so just go out and look around. I've got all kinds of free materials and we'd love to continue this conversation.

Amanda Hammett 26:59
Absolutely. Also, another plug for the book. If you get a copy of this book, you can mark up your own coffee. I like coffee. But again, Jeffery thank you so much for being here for sharing with us and enlightening all of us. Your work is phenomenal. And I am a big fan. So again, thank you to the audience for sharing your time with us. And we look forward to seeing you in the next episode.

Amanda Hammett 27:23
Thanks so much for joining us for this episode of the Next Generation Rockstars where we have discussed all recruiting and retaining that next generation of talent. So I'm guessing that you probably learned a tremendous amount from this week's rock star leader. And if that is the case, don't keep me a secret, share this episode with the world. But really share it with your friends with your colleagues because they also need to learn how to recruit and retain this next generation of talent because these skills are crucial to business success moving forward. Now, of course, I want you to keep up to date every single week as we are dropping each and every episode, so be sure to subscribe to your favorite podcast platform of your choice. And you will see the next generation rock stars show up just for you.

[00:00:00.060] - Amanda
Welcome to the Next Generation Rock stars podcast. If you are trying to figure out how do you recruit and retain this next generation of rock star talent while you are in the right place.

[00:00:14.940] - Amanda
So today's episode is gonna be a little bit different than what you're used to seeing from me today. I've partnered with my hubby right here my hubby, my business partner Gene Hammett.

[00:00:25.590] - Gene
Well glad to be here with you. I run a podcast called Growth Think Tank and I work with the founders and leaders of the INC 5000 companies growing fast as one percent of companies in the world.

[00:00:39.510] - Amanda
Absolutely. So we are going to be taking a look at where our work collides and that happens to be in the world of employee retention. So this episode today is talking about the five types of workers who are hurting your employee retention. So follow along with us as we tell some comical stories from our own personal work experience or maybe from some of the companies that we've worked with previously where we talk about each type of the employees and how it's actually hurting your employee retention. But in there we're also going to be offering up a free framework that Gene and I have perfected over the years through our own work as entrepreneurs but also in working with other companies.

[00:01:24.360] - Amanda
And this framework is called the "Stay Framework" and it is super simple. It's something that we use to keep employees happy fulfilled and motivated at work. And let me tell you some of these things are so easy that you can implement them to day and see major major results out of your employees because that's all what we want. We want our employees to be productive. We want them to be efficient. But we also want them to stay. So sign up to get the free stay framework and with it we'll be offering up a free training that we've partnered with a company called Velocity global.

[00:02:01.950] - Amanda
Now velocity global CEO Ben Wright will be on doing this training with us. And Ben actually runs a PEO company which is a employee benefits company. And this is global so companies that are small medium sized that are struggling with those benefit pieces those are pieces that can trip up any company Ben's company velocity global will swoop in and help you fix it.

[00:02:26.400] - Gene
So where do they get that report?

[00:02:27.540] - Amanda
So if you go to AmandaHammett.com/Stay you can download that report to day. All right here's the episode.

[00:02:37.260] - Gene
Employee retention I really love this conversation because it really is one of the biggest things going on in our workforce. What do you think about employee routines.

[00:02:46.200] - Amanda
This is something I hear over and over and over again. Anytime I'm at a conference speaking or if I'm working with employees there are companies they're always saying how can we keep more of our employees.

[00:02:58.680] - Gene
There's a war for talent. You probably feel it because you want to have the best workers You want to have the most talented. You want them to to be a part of the culture and you want to make sure you're very intentional about creating a kind of work experience that makes it so that they really love to come to work. But employee retention is something that a lot of people kind of like it's too fluffy right. Because it's not something that is on the balance sheet or the panel. If you had a number on your financials that said exactly what it's costing you because of employee retention you'd be surprised and you'd pay a lot more attention to it.

[00:03:37.770] - Amanda
Absolutely. The cost of employee retention is staggering. If CFO knew exactly how much this was costing it would change the way that companies around the world would operate because right now employee retention is broken up into so many different buckets whether it's training or management or recruiting cos it's it's all broken up so it's not one specific number. But the thing is that actually according to Gallup they estimate that every single year the cost the American economy over a trillion dollars just in employee turnover.

[00:04:16.290] - Gene
Let me jump in here because that's a big number. Like a trillion is really big. But you know let's talk about it from a sense of what is it costing you right now.

[00:04:25.780] - Amanda
So sure, which is the society for Human Resource Management estimates that it actually costs between one and a half and two times that person's salary in order to replace them. So that is the recruiting cost that is the more soft cost. So like the manager training time getting that person ramped up. But let's be honest a lot of the industries that I work with they have employees that have been there 30-40 years. They are that amount of corporate knowledge that walks out the door. It's going to take years and years and years to replicate that into a new person. So that to you know two times their salary I think is easily done.

[00:05:07.640] - Gene
That's really for knowledge workers. Like if you had someone that was an hourly employee it's going to be less but there still is a cost to to employee return.

[00:05:16.070] - Amanda
Oh absolutely. But even in the hourly space you know there are a lot of situations where you have people that have been there 20, 30, 40 years and so they're taking with them a lot of that knowledge. So it is an ongoing issue.

[00:05:29.750] - Gene
I had a workshop a few weeks ago that you attended and one of the clients in there talked about losing. Things at twenty five employees in one month. Yeah. And I said know what do you think that cost you. He goes I know exactly what it cost me because I had to get temporary workers. These are hourly paid. And it cost him a quarter of a million dollars.

[00:05:49.360] - Amanda
In one month.

[00:05:50.040] - Gene
In one month. So It is costing you a lot of money not really understanding this employee retention. So that's the reason why we put together this episode we've come together. You know I focus on a different set of clients which you've already explained and Amanda has the corporate side of this. But together we've seen this and we want to share with you and make this a little bit fun. So we're going to talk about the five types of workers that are hurting. Your employee retention. So. You're ready.

[00:06:21.050] - Amanda
Your lately. Yeah. That's her. These are some good ones. And we've all seen each of these. Play out in our own careers. So the first one is the micro manager. I mean come on we have all seen this time and time again.

[00:06:36.610] - Gene
I'll be honest I've probably been a micromanager from time to time. It's easy to be a micromanager because if you're an A player if you've done the work before you know exactly what to do and you can actually just tell them and that's the easiest quickest thing for you to do is to tell them the exact steps. Is that right.

[00:06:59.430] - Amanda
Right. But I think a micromanager there's there's more to it. It's standing over. It's like constantly like in their face. What are you doing now what are you doing now. And it gets to the point where the employee can't even do their work because they're so focused on responding to you or answering to you that they end up having to spend a lot more time and anxiety invested in just calming you and dealing with you.

[00:07:23.880] - Gene
This reminds me of a story of one of my clients who you know before he became an entrepreneur was talking about. You know his manager and this this guy was the traditional micromanager. He was hired to do some marketing for the company and the the owner of the company knew a little bit about marketing enough to be dangerous as they say. But he would second guess everything that that was suggested as important or the next steps. And he would you know. Talk about the newsletter and the open rates and why did it happen. And I remember one specific details he was like well I didn't get it and it was back and forth back and forth and he's like Did you check your spam folder.

[00:08:03.540] - Gene
He goes It's not in my spam folder. And then all of a. Guess what it was in the spam folder. So you know there's a lot of different types of managers out there but the micro manager. Probably is one of the worse because you think you're doing the right thing but usually you're not.

[00:08:20.170] - Amanda
Yeah absolutely. So you know I do a lot with the younger employees those under 30 early in career and this is something I hear consistently over and over again is this micromanager and how it's just devastating to your career in a lot of ways. I had a young lady come up to me at a conference recently and she told me about her manager her former manager. She said that he's basically. Had her sit down at the end of the day not during the actual workday but at the end of the day.

[00:08:54.070] - Amanda
And she had to write out everything that she did that entire day broken down into 15 minute increments. Now keep in mind this young lady was not an hourly employee. She was a salaried employee and he expected this to come to his email box no earlier than six 15. Now the office closed at 6:00 but she was not to work on it during the day. And she had to do this every single day. And if she didn't I mean there was consequences the following day. And now I don't think it's going to shock anybody to tell you that she did not last even a year at this company before she was gone and it all had to do with this micromanager.

[00:09:35.080] - Gene
I want to make sure we connect the dots here because the micromanager you may thinking you know how is that hurting retention. Well you may have heard this before. I think it's just so appropriate but people don't leave jobs they leave managers. Absolutely. And we probably all had bad managers that we reported to. That caused us to leave companies. And that is the reason why it's number one in the list. It is probably one of the most common. And it really is something that we wanted to kind of draw you into this because some of the others are gonna be a little bit more maybe even fun to talk about because you when we came together we had a lot of fun putting all these together and just for you.

[00:10:18.760] - Amanda
All right. So the second one is not a micromanager but a clueless boss. Now I want to talk about this from my own personal experience. I had a boss one time and I'm not going to name names. However. Every single day or every single interaction I had with this person I would just sit back and ask myself How in the world did you become a manager. How are you in charge of leading people and not just one or two. I mean 50 or 60 people and I was flabbergasted daily. You remember those days.

[00:10:55.670] - Gene
I do. They were stressful because you cried a lot. But I I've been through this too. I mean mine was a little bit different. I've I respected this manager but the way they showed up had no regard for the company growing and moving forward. It was just a place for them to kind of I was more like a hobby than it was anything else and I say clueless because it really did feel like I'm pushing forward the business harder than the owner of the business was. And it really. Really allowed me to reflect on what kind of boss I wanted to be in this whole thing and I wanted to be the exact opposite.

[00:11:35.380] - Amanda
Absolutely. But I think in that situation I mean she actually had personal shoppers coming in. She had no clue literally what was going on in the day to day.

[00:11:44.860] - Gene
She she said she did but she was just checked out the most of it. You know it's hard to get that kind of work done in a couple of hours. It was a small operation. I grew a lot because I was forced to think self which was good for me because I had that drive but it really is just as clueless bosses is. The people that you really have no respect for.

[00:12:06.970] - Amanda
Yeah.

[00:12:07.270] - Gene
Is that fair?

[00:12:07.880] - Amanda
Absolutely. But in my case I mean he was smart in a certain way. But he would ask questions of me and meetings or of anybody and everybody was just staring at him and you could tell that they were like. Kind of an idiot here and I felt really bad but at the same time I eventually just had to start saying hey this is how it is. This is this is the decisions that we need to be making this is the direction that we need to be taking. And he actually asked me in the exit interview if I had listened to you would would you be leaving. And I said. Probably not.

[00:12:42.150] - Amanda
At least not now.

[00:12:43.290] - Gene
Well I'm thinking about this right now and we could put this together. We we talked about stories that could fit along with it and we we picked two personal stories here because. We thought you could relate to them but also we we left both those jobs so we quit. And that really drives into you know you want to make sure you pay attention to this clueless boss character if you will because it will impact your employee retention.

[00:13:11.910] - Amanda
I will actually say that this particular boss situation that I was talking about the turnover there was enormous. I mean it was a constant churn of employees in and out in and out in and out some roles. Obviously a lot more than others but it was like you you almost got to the point where you didn't want to invest in getting to know somebody new because you knew that they'd be gone within you know six months at the most.

[00:13:39.500] - Gene
Let's hold up here for a second because we're talking about these types of workers that are hurting your employee retention if you want to be a better manager and you want to really create the kind of leadership that people admire then you want to have a simple framework that we've developed over a few years of working with leaders that will help you increase the employee retention. We call it the stay framework.

[00:14:00.770] - Amanda
Absolutely. And this framework is super easy and it's super easy to implement and use every single day with your employees because again at the end of the day you want to keep them. So we have boil this down to one page one simple page you can just easily implement. So sign up and get it below.

[00:14:19.820] - Gene
There is one thing in there that we have seen that almost every manager is leaving out. They don't even know to include it. They're actually opposed to it but the power of this one little thing that's inside there that takes about five minutes is really a game changer when it comes to employee retention.

[00:14:37.580] - Amanda
Absolutely. I mentioned it when I spoke at a conference recently and it was just profound to everybody in that audience. So if you want to get the framework to help you retain your employees be sure to go to AmandaHammett.com/Stay and download that today. All right. So the third type of employee that is chilling your retention. It is the loafer.

[00:15:07.300] - Gene
The loafer is the person we all know that tries to seem like they're working. But they're never really getting anything done.

[00:15:14.380] - Amanda
Yeah. They are doing the bare minimum in order to survive in order to continue to collect that paycheck. And it's really frustrating for everybody else because they're actually having to pick up the slack because you know this person didn't get things done on time or they're wondering around the office drinking coffee and talking to people. And what are they actually doing. What are they actually accomplishing. It's fascinating.

[00:15:38.710] - Gene
Everyone knows that social butterfly. And they seem to never be really doing the work that they're supposed to be doing. I don't know how when a manager sits down with that person that they can actually. You know not just find them on the spot.

[00:15:52.860] - Amanda
I think what it is is a lot of times they're able to hide. They're able to find themselves into situations with managers who are not having these. Constant conversations about what's going on. How can we help you.

[00:16:07.050] - Gene
Well this reminds me of a story that I was involved in the company that went through a merger and you bring over two cultures and they combined together and that happens from time to time. And in this case this this founder was talking about you know bringing over a group of people that just didn't seem to fit and those people were told to to really operate in a different way than what they were used to. And it really taught cause a lot of them to just kind of switch off and so they just collected a paycheck.

[00:16:40.980] - Gene
They showed up day in and day out. They were at the meetings they were supposed to be at. Everything looked from the surface like they were doing what they're supposed to be doing. But we both know the truth. They were just loafing around.

[00:16:52.350] - Amanda
Oh absolutely. I mean you know I have. Plenty of stories about this. You know whether it's my own personal work history or dealing with companies that I've worked with. But one stands out in my mind and this person wandered around drank coffee checked Facebook regularly. I mean constantly was updating Facebook or social media and it was just it was fascinating because everybody knew who this person was and loved it when they stopped by and chatted for a minute. But at the end of the day what did this person actually accomplish. I'm still baffled by that.

[00:17:29.070] - Gene
So we're talking about employee retention. I want to be clear you want the loafer to leave.

[00:17:35.010] - Amanda
I was so frustrated with the loafer.

[00:17:39.860] - Gene
But that's exactly the reason why you need to be tuned into this because. That kind of person that loafer is driving others away if you don't have a high enough standard for the work then others won't take the whole job very seriously and they'll be looking for a place where they can can really be a self starter that can really be appreciated for doing the work and they want to be surrounded by others that are doing the work.

[00:18:05.310] - Amanda
Absolutely I mean this the low four wheel drive away you're eight players. Absolutely. They can't stand to see this. And so you know a players want to work with other players not with loafers. Got to lose the low.

[00:18:22.600] - Gene
All right so let's go into number four because it is this is a fun one. We had to put it in there because it happens from time to time. I think you've had more experience with this.

[00:18:32.930] - Amanda
I have.

[00:18:34.150] - Gene
But the fourth type of employee that is killing your employee retention is the hired. That one person that flies off the handle way too quick. They they really overexaggerate certain things. And I'll be cleared here. You want them to leave too. But you also want to make sure that you're creating a place and employee experience where these people don't exist.

[00:18:58.870] - Amanda
Absolutely. I mean for one in this day and age we need to you know employees sense of safety needs to come. It's paramount to everything else. And in certain situations these hotheads can get pretty extreme and can make you feel unsafe. Now I worked with a certain hothead and we found ourselves always walking on eggshells around this person constantly tiptoeing Oh how is he going to react to this. And you know some situations he would be great. In other situations it would just explode. One day he actually threw a chair in a conference room up against the window it bounced back and almost hit somebody.

[00:19:40.660] - Amanda
But that was actually the day that myself and a few other people decided we were out but cause of this hothead.

[00:19:47.500] - Gene
The one of the number one factors of team success is psychological safety. This comes from the air startle work at Google. It's done with many times over with companies looking at this. So creating a place where this hothead doesn't survive doesn't the last is a really important part of your leadership.

[00:20:07.870] - Amanda
Absolutely. And you know it really is up to the leaders to recognize this kind of behavior and nip it in the bud. Move that person out. This is not something that you want to continue because other people are. Are constantly thinking about. I've got to go. I've got to get out of here. I can't continue to work with this person.

[00:20:30.850] - Gene
All right. Number five I think this one's the hardest two to really get your head around but it is a game changer when you think about this. If you value your culture then this is the type of person that you must let go of. Number five is the toxic superstar. Yes. We we all have probably work with people that have rubbed us the wrong way but they were good at what they did.

[00:20:57.280] - Amanda
Absolutely.

[00:20:58.660] - Gene
I had a client once where we were sitting around with the CEO and the CEO of this small company about 30 people and we were talking about you know give me the name of two people that really give you frustration as a leader.

[00:21:13.780] - Gene
Well, two ladies came up the names came up I won't share the names but one of them cried all the time. And I get it. Like you don't want to have these conversations and it seems to me daily that she was crying and I asked why was she crying. Well that gets us back into number two which is the toxic superstar in this in their world. She was a high performer she was. She was in recruiting. She was really able to do the work of two to three employees.

[00:21:41.470] - Gene
Which is impressive. But if it comes at the cost of her being toxic and driving others away because it was truly what I listed through how many people had she drink driven away it was like four in the last like three four months really a very expensive decision to keep that high performer on.

[00:21:58.900] - Amanda
Absolutely. And not only that. Let's be very clear she was specifically named in exit interviews as this person is the reason I'm leaving.

[00:22:07.660] - Gene
I got I asked details because I was curious about this and there were some expletives that were discussed about how she showed up. There was also the fact that she lied to to get work and she would work extra hours on the weekend to cover this up. This toxic superstar is seducing in the sense that they are performing at a higher level than others but it is at the cost of the culture. You as the leader or a manager has to really make some hard decisions because. It is hurting your employee retention.

[00:22:40.900] - Amanda
Absolutely. And just think about the team or the people in her environment. I mean they are constantly thinking about I've got to get another job. I've got to get out of here because you know this is not an environment that they want to spend eight hours a day and plus. Every single day.

[00:22:59.830] - Gene
So these are the five types of employees that are hurting your employee retention. We went through this. We want to have fun with you because you probably got some of these in your workspace right now.

[00:23:10.760] - Amanda
Absolutely.

[00:23:11.460] - Gene
And I want you to think about this. You. Sit down maybe make a jot a few names down you know where do they fit in this. And are they really hurting the employee experience overall. And are they truly costing people to lead the company.

[00:23:26.410] - Amanda
Absolutely. And I think that when you're really honest about this and you really start thinking about the different people that would fall into these five categories. It might scare you a little bit. Honestly.

[00:23:40.770] - Gene
So you may be thinking about what do you do with all this because this is not our traditional episode where we're interviewing people and this is not your traditional episode where we're giving you the step by step because what we wanted to let you know this we've created through a partnership a training about employee retention and it really is something I'm really proud of. It comes along with the stay framework that we've mentioned that stay framework will help you be a better leader tomorrow. You can literally Download it today and use it in your next conversation and you will see impact right away.

[00:24:13.630] - Amanda
Absolutely, this is something that we have put together through trial and error over the years working with. Our own company working with other companies and really seeing what are these managers and leaders that are the highest performers that have melded together a team that is just trucking along and is just super efficient and really seems to just go at it every single day. What are they doing so what are some of their best practices. So we have pulled them together and let me tell you some of these are ridiculously easy. And it is shocking to me every single day when I see leaders and managers not doing this and then yet they're also complaining I can't keep my people.

[00:24:58.180] - Amanda
Well here is the answer and it is super easy. The Stay framework can be downloaded at AmandaHammett.com/Stay.

[00:25:06.190] - Gene
Well that wraps up this episode really excited to be able to share this work with you to come together with my beautiful wife. I really have a lot of respect for what she's done in the corporate world and really wanted to share something with you because I feel like you could be the leaders that you really wanted to be by understanding these types of employees. But more by getting that stay framework so make sure you go ahead do that.

[00:25:29.350] - Amanda
Absolutely. And of course join us for the free training that we will be doing along with that and we'll be including our partners velocity global. So thank you again for joining us. And we will see you in the next episode.

[00:25:41.250] - Gene
As always lead with courage.

[00:25:43.510] - Amanda
Thanks so much for joining us for this episode of The Next Generation rock stars where we have discussed all about recruiting and retaining that next generation of talent. So I'm guessing that you probably learned a tremendous amount from this week's rock star leader. And if that is the case don't keep me a secret. Share this episode with the world but really share it with your friends with your colleagues because they also need to learn how to recruit and retain this next generation of talent because these skills are crucial to business success moving forward.

[00:26:24.470] - Amanda
Now of course I want you to keep up to date every single week as we are dropping each and every episode. So be sure to subscribe to your favorite podcast platform of your choice and you will see the next generation rock stars show up just for you.