You’re not going to change.

You think you are.
You think it’s all going to suddenly turn around.

You’re lying. And choosing to believe your own lie.

I’ve seen it happen a thousand times before.
You say you’re not happy in your job.
You’re not happy in your relationship.
You’re not happy with your weight or your fitness or your finances.

You’re not happy with something.

You promise to do things differently.
You’ve already had the conversation a hundred times.
In the shower.
In the car.
Lying awake in the middle of the night when your mind just won’t stop moving.

You tell yourself you’re finally going to say it.
You’re going to climb out of the hole. And you’re going to do it this year.
Maybe even this month.

But here we are and you haven’t done a damn thing about it.

You want your life to be better. But as far as I can tell, your only strategy to achieve that is hope.

Hope isn’t a strategy.
It’s an excuse.

I know this, because I used to do it too.
And trust me, hope isn’t going to get you a new job, a new partner, or a different life.

Hope is like the last life preserver on the Titanic. You can hold on to it as tightly as you want, but the ship is still going down. And you’re going down with it.

If all you have is hope, you’re not ready to change.
Life doesn’t suck enough for you to change.
Not yet.

Change only happens when the pain of changing is less than the pain of staying the same.

If you were really done with your situation, you’d already be doing something about it.

You’d have sent the resume. Had the conversation. You’d have made the call you’ve been rehearsing for six fucking months.
But you haven’t.

So either shut the hell up about it, or do something.
Do anything.

Because from where I’m standing, you’ve already decided that staying stuck is easier than changing. You’ve decided that guaranteed unhappiness is better than a chance of being happy.

And that’s absurd.

But you keep justifying it.
You say “it’s not that bad.”
You claim you’re just “being patient.”
You compare yourself to people who have more pain just so you have an excuse to deny yours.

You said this was the last time.
You said that last time too.

Now none of it feels like a crisis to you. Because if it were a crisis, the decision would happen on its own.

A job in crisis gets you fired.
A relationship in crisis ends itself.
Your health in crisis forces the diet.

You’ve been waiting for something to get bad enough to do the deciding for you, so you never have to be the one who chooses.

That’s not patience.
That’s avoidance.

Here’s the thing you need to understand: when your problem turns into a crisis, you’ll always end up with fewer choices than you have now.

All you’re doing is trading the version where you’re in control for the one where you have none.

The job you leave on your own terms is not the job you get fired from.
The relationship you end with your eyes wide open is not the one that suddenly abandons you.

Every year you wait for the pain to get big enough to force your hand. But you don’t need a bigger crisis. You need to stop lying to yourself about the one you’re already in.

So stop saying it’s fine.
It’s not.

I’m not telling you that it’s going to be easy. I’m not even telling you to make rash decisions.

I’m only telling you that you have choices right now and if you continue to wait, eventually your choices will disappear.

So do me a favor and, for just one honest minute, think of all the ways your life is being held back. The emotional cost. The professional cost. Even the financial cost.

Now compare that to the thing you’re afraid of. The hard conversation. The resignation letter. The truth you have to finally admit to yourself.

Which is worse?

You see, you’ve been focusing on the fear of making a change. Stop that.
It’s time to focus on the regret of not changing.

Change is never about becoming braver or more disciplined. It’s about seeing your life clearly enough that the status quo is no longer the safe choice.

You already know what you have to do.
You’ve just been very good at not looking.

Look.

In fact, according to a study that Forbes did, between 48% and 64% of new employees consider leaving a new job, or at least are less likely to stay at the job, after experiencing a bad onboarding process.

More than half the people consider leaving a job after a bad onboarding experience. It’s crazy.

The Six Months You Just Wasted

So you’ll spend 6 months trying to hire somebody.

You interview them 4 times, maybe 5 or 6. Check the references, negotiate the salary, and convince the person to leave a company they already know. People they already know. And a boss they may actually like. In order to take a chance on you.

Sometimes they’re even turning down another offer to do it. It’s not like it’s a small decision.

And then they show up for their first day at work and you’re like: “Welcome. Here’s your laptop and temporary password. That’s your desk. Get comfortable. The benefits orientation is at 10.”

What the hell are you doing?

You just spent months selling this person on the idea that joining your company could change their career. And your first act is to teach them how to fill out an expense report and submit for vacation time.

Come on now.

The Jane Story

I was talking with a client recently about a hire she made that she was really excited about. Let’s call the client Jane, like in The Jetsons.

This was a great hire. This was somebody Jane really wanted. It was the kind of person where the whole leadership team was excited. They thought: if we can get her on our team, that’s going to change everything.

They got her.

And her first week was filled with HR paperwork, laptop setup, benefits, org chart, a meeting about meetings. Somebody gave her a tour of Slack, which I’m sure was thrilling.

By Thursday, she pulled a colleague aside and asked if it was normally like that there.

That’s not a question you want your brand new employee asking in their first week at work.

Not surprisingly, 6 months later she was gone. Refer to the Forbes study I mentioned earlier.

It wasn’t because this woman couldn’t do the job. She could.

It was because in her first week there, she had already started wondering whether taking the job was a mistake.

The Question Nobody Answers

Most companies think onboarding is about getting someone set up. It’s not.

Getting someone set up is logistics.

Onboarding is something completely different.

Every new employee, from the second they walk through the door on their first day, is asking one question. And most companies are too busy explaining the health benefits to even consider the question, let alone answer it.

Here’s the question every new employee asks.

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Ideas I was truly excited about.
Ideas I was absolutely convinced were going to work.
In retrospect, they were ideas that probably would have been a huge success if somebody else had been in charge of them.

Unfortunately, I was.

Because when it comes to your next big goal or project, there are a thousand things that can screw it up. Bad timing. Bad assumptions. Other people. The economy. Money. Your horoscope on the day of the big meeting.

It could be anything.

But there’s one potential problem that you probably aren’t spending nearly enough time thinking about.

You.

You bring the same person, the same thinking and the same identity to every new project.

Your need for control. The way you get bored halfway through. Or how you expand one simple concept down so many different roads you’re not sure how to even get started.

Whatever your thing is, it comes with you. Always.
It’s like those leech-like sucker fish that attach to sharks. Wherever you swim, the sucker is still with you.

This is why I love the idea of a pre-mortem.

A post-mortem happens after something dies. You look back at the body and try to figure out what killed it.

A pre-mortem is much more helpful for people like you and me.

The basic idea is that you assume the thing you’re about to do has already failed. An embarrassingly spectacular failure.

Then you work backward and figure out what is going to kill it while you still have time to avoid the problem.

That’s what this week’s AI prompt does.

But wait… there’s more. Because isn’t there always?

The prompt doesn’t just ask AI to figure out what could kill your project. It asks AI to figure out how YOU are probably going to kill it.

And then it will tell you what to do before you even get the chance to screw up yet another great idea.

So don’t take one more step towards your project or goal, run this prompt first. Before you start. Otherwise, you’re just going to regret it and come back to me to tell me how you should’ve listened.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.👇🏽

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Every sports team you’ve played on has that one person who won’t pass.

It doesn’t matter the sport. It doesn’t even matter the score.

You’re wide open. You can score if you just get the ball. But that person looks at you and, even though you’re clearly open and have a much better shot, they take it themselves.

Because if they don’t take the shot, they won’t get the credit.

The teams that actually win are usually the ones where nobody’s individual ego is more important than the team win.

That’s the whole idea behind one of the most quoted lines in leadership.

“It’s amazing what we can accomplish when nobody wants credit.”

There’s only one problem with it.
It’s wrong.

The Experiment That Changed How I Think About Teams

Max Ringelmann was a French engineer in the early 20th century. In 1913, he set up a little experiment.

It was a tug-of-war.

And I’m not saying “tug-of-war” like it’s some complex scientific process. I mean he put on a regular old playground tug-of-war, complete with rope, and people on opposite sides pulling it.

First he had one person pulling on either end. Then he turned it into groups.

In what seems a fairly logical move, Max assumed that a group of five people should pull the rope at the force equal to the sum of their individual outputs.

Imagine Ringelmann’s flabbergastedness when that didn’t happen.

In fact, he discovered that, as the group got bigger, each person pulled with less effort.

Egads!

It wasn’t because people were getting more tired. It was because something in their brain decided it just wasn’t worth trying as hard when they were in a group.

As I think back on my tug-of-war days, this all makes a lot of sense. I definitely didn’t pull as hard when I was on a team as I did when I was tugging solo.

But when we fast forward a few years from Max’s study, things got more interesting.

Multiple psychologists repeated his experiment, first with clapping and shouting, instead of rope yanking.

And they got the same results as good ole Ringelmann.

They even tried to be sneaky with it. They blindfolded people and told them they were acting in a group, when they were actually alone the whole time.

But their effort was still less than if they knew they were doing it solo.

In other words, Just believing you are part of a group is enough to make you try less hard.

That, my friend, is what is called the Ringelmann Effect - or, as you probably know it - social loafing.

And here’s where it gets complicated, as it relates to that idea of accomplishing more when nobody wants credit.

The idea of social loafing has proved that people lessen their effort when they believe their individual contribution won’t be seen or given credit.

The entire purpose of trying hard is to get recognized.

The Part The Quote Gets Wrong

Let’s read the quote again:

It’s amazing what we can accomplish when nobody wants credit.

But since Ringelmann discovered that people work less if they won’t get credit, it seems we’ve got ourselves into a little bit of a pickle.

There are two ways to hear this quote.

One is about humility. Everybody mutes their own ego, even the person who did most of the work.

The other is just confusion. Everyone’s effort is so tangled together that nobody can actually tell who did what.

Unfortunately, to the part of the brain deciding how hard to pull on the rope, both explanations sound the same.

And Ringelmann already told us what that produces. Less rope.

When nobody gets singled out, people won’t try as hard.

And that’s where the quote is wrong.
Kind of.

Somebody Was Always Watching

If you study every example of a team where something extraordinary happened without anybody looking for credit, they all have one thing in common:

Somebody was still watching.
And counting.
And giving credit where it was deserved.

The leader knows exactly who did what. Maybe they don’t say it out loud. They don’t always have to verbalize it. But they know. And everybody knows they know.

Just the belief that someone is watching is enough to change how hard people pull.

Team members won’t take personal credit as long as the person who matters is paying attention.

In other words, “nobody wants credit” is not nearly the same as “nobody is paying attention to who should get credit.”

That distinction is critical.
And this is the part where it becomes about you.

The Question You Actually Need To Ask

You’ve probably told your team, at some point in your career, that credit doesn’t matter.

That’s fine. Feel free to keep saying it.

But do you actually know who did what?
Because their effort was never about them getting credit.

It was about you paying attention.

And if you take that away, you don’t get a team full of selfless players. You get a bunch of people standing wide open, while the ball hogs try to take every shot they can.

That’s not a humble team.
That’s just a rope where nobody is going to try to pull hard.

If you or your team are having challenges reaching your full potential — and you feel you should be pulling harder on the rope — you’ll find out the reasons why in the free Leadership Diagnostic Workshop. It’s fun. It’s free. It’s proven to unlock your blockers. Reserve your seat now.

P.S. Think about the last time your team delivered something exceptional. Do you know specifically who did what? If you’re not sure, neither do they. And that’s exactly why it won’t happen the same way twice.

When I talk to people about this - and I talk to a lot of people about it - most of them think about how to use artificial intelligence as if they’re trying to answer the question: how do I do my job faster?

And that’s a damn fine question. Don’t get me wrong. I love that question. It is a great starting point. It’s like AI 101.

It’s just not the question that’s actually going to change anything for you.

If you’re somebody who has a lot of work to do and you think AI is going to reduce it, you’re in for a mighty powerful punch in the pancreas.

Meet Gordon

I was recently working with a head of marketing as his coach - or mentor, or leadership therapist, whatever you want to call me. He’s a really smart guy. Great instincts, I have to say. He’s another one of those exceptional workers that turn into leaders. I tend to work a lot with people like him.

Let’s call this client Gordon, because he kind of reminds me of Gordon Ramsay in a way. Even the hair. But not the cooking talent. Not that I’ve been to his house. But I digress.

Anyway, Gordon had been using ChatGPT pretty regularly, but mostly he uses it as a replacement for a Google search. And he decided he needed to better leverage the power of AI, and he was really excited about that. The kind of Gordon Ramsay excitement where he just keeps talking about it and tries to get everybody around him excited about it too.

The Faster Report Trap

I asked what he planned to do with ChatGPT to use it differently. And he said, without any hesitation: “Faster report writing. I hate doing those reports.”

He continued talking about it. “It takes far too much time.”

His team helps him write these weekly status reports, and he feels that AI can help the entire team do the reports in half the time.

I nodded and said that seemed like a good idea.
Sure, it’s a good idea.

But then I asked him a different question.

“If you were brand new to your role, would you keep creating these same reports?”

He paused. For only a second. Then he responded in a way that made it clear he had thought about this before.

“No, I wouldn’t. I don’t think they’re helpful.”

So I asked him why he still creates them.

He told me that his bosses want them. That they’ve been getting the reports for years and they want the information.

And that’s it. That’s the whole thing right there.

Gordon wasn’t trying to save time. He was trying to automate something that was a complete waste of time.

And that’s where we get to the really important thing that you need to know about how to best use AI.

It’s this…

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Somewhere in your life there’s a thing you’ve fully figured out.
I don’t know what it is.

Maybe the new hire isn’t going to work.
Or the strategy’s off.
Maybe it’s time to change jobs.
Or maybe the relationship that you’re pretending is still working hasn’t really been feeling good for a long long time.

You know what it is.
You’re just not saying it. Not even to yourself.
Because the second you say it out loud, you have to do something about it.

So you stay busy. You gather more evidence.

But you’re just trying to sweep something under a rug that’s already been swept to death. Nothing more can fit.

I once kept a senior leader two years past the point I knew I should fire him. I told myself that things could turn around.

But I knew it wouldn’t.
And I realized that the very minute after I fired him. I was just two years too late.

This prompt uncovers the thing you already know and won’t admit.

It’s time to run the prompt. No more stalling.👇🏽👇🏽

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“Hansel and Gretel” is a highly disturbing German fairy tale from 1812. It’s maybe not the best bedtime story for your kid.

Here’s the basic gist.

Hansel and Gretel are young siblings when their parents abandon them in the woods and leave them to die.

And that’s just the setup.

The kids wander through the woods in utter fear, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs so they don’t get lost. Smart, sure. Until the birds eat the breadcrumbs. Because that’s what birds do.

The kids stumble upon a house that’s owned by an evil witch, who takes the kids as prisoners and tries to burn them alive.

But the kids trick the witch, push her into the oven and burn her alive instead.

Great story. Sweet dreams.

I have to admit, I’m fairly traumatized just retelling the story. Meanwhile the witch is dead in a most gruesome way, the parents will no doubt go to jail once social services catches up to them, and those children? They’re brutal murderers. Assuming they can find their way back to civilization before being killed in the forest, they will, at best, spend the rest of their childhood bouncing in and out of the foster system between stints in juvie.

I tell you all of this, because the same thing is happening to you. Probably right now.

The Raise You’re About To Get

Your boss maybe told you that you’re going to get the promotion.
That was six months ago.

They promised you’re going to get that raise, but “now isn’t a good time.”

Whenever you bring up the subject, you probably get a big compliment, followed by some version of “we’re working on it” and a vague reference to “touch base again” in a few months.

But nothing seems to actually be happening. Ever.

There’s no promotion. No raise. No forward movement. There’s only just enough hope to keep you from looking for another job.

And this, my friend, is the world of workplace breadcrumbing.

What Breadcrumbing Actually Means

The idea of breadcrumbing originated from that Hansel and Gretel nightmare of a fairy tale. Today the term is mostly used in dating.

It means when someone is giving you just enough attention to keep you emotionally invested, but not enough for any actual commitment.

It’s not ghosting.
Breadcrumbing is worse.

The person doesn’t disappear. Instead, they drop just enough crumbs of interest to keep you waiting.

So you stay. And wait. And hope.

You can waste years of your life on someone who was never going to choose you.

As it turns out, the same thing happens at work more than you think.

What Breadcrumbing Looks Like At Work

Your boss tells you a promotion is coming. Then it doesn’t.

They say they’re advocating for you behind the scenes but there’s absolutely no evidence that it’s actually happening.

They promise a raise “in the next budget cycle.” But the cycle comes and goes and your paycheck has the same amount on it.

Maybe they schedule a one-on-one to talk about your career. But the meeting gets postponed. Three times.

They finally bring up a future leadership role and tell you that you’re doing all the right things to get it. Six months later, you’re still doing your same damn job.

Each crumb keeps you hopeful. Each crumb keeps you working harder. And, more importantly, each crumb keeps you from interviewing somewhere else.

You’re not wrong to feel strung along.
You are being strung along.

Why You Stay Anyway

But you stay.

You stay because you want to believe your boss. Because the crumbs are real. Because you got the promises and you really want to believe they’re telling the truth.

Besides, if you left you’d have to admit that the last six months were wasted. And that’s a tough peanut to swallow.

That’s the trap of breadcrumbing.

You can’t quite tell if it’s happening to you or if you’re just being impatient. The doubt is always more powerful than the certainty.

So you give it more time.

And more time.

And then more time.

Until you finally realize the breadcrumbs were being eaten by birds before they ever led you anywhere good. This entire time you’ve been trapped in a prison cell hoping you’d get out one day instead of being burned alive.

Proverbially, of course.
You know what I mean.

You’re Doing It Too

Here’s the catch:

You’re probably doing this same exact thing to someone else.

Not maliciously. Of course not. Not you.

You’re most likely breadcrumbing without even realizing it.

Someone you know is sitting at home tonight wondering when you’re finally going to come through on what you said.

The plan you said you’d create.
The new responsibilities you mentioned.
The opportunity you said was coming.
The thing you promised to do for them.

You said something. You meant something.
But nothing happened.

Why You Do It

If there’s anything I know about you it’s that you have good intentions. You don’t breadcrumb others because you want to hurt them.

You breadcrumb them because you don’t want to have the hard conversation.

[Editors Note: ooh, that one might leave a scar]

You don’t want to tell them the reality that the promotion isn’t going to happen. Neither is the raise or whatever it is you’ve promised.

You genuinely want the thing to happen. But you know it won’t any time soon.

And instead of telling them the truth, you say “I’m working on it.” Or “I’m pushing for you.” Or some other similar nonsense.

You think you’re being kind by leaving the door open.

You’re not.
You’re being a coward.

With every conversation that strings them along, you’re eroding trust.

If you were actually kind, you’d be telling them the truth. That way they can make their own choice about what to do.

But all you’re doing is protecting yourself from their disappointment, while forcing them to live in yours.

Stop Feeding Them Crumbs

If you can’t deliver on something, don’t hint at it.

If a promotion isn’t coming, say it.

Tell them that the thing they really want isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

Be specific. Be honest. Be clear.

It’s not about being harsh, it’s about being respectful. And sometimes being respectful feels really uncomfortable.

They deserve to know whether the breadcrumbs are leading anywhere or if you’re just holding them prisoner.

The oven is already hot. If you don’t do the right thing, somebody’s going to get burned.

P.S. Think of the person right now who’s waiting on something you promised. I know you can think of one. You’ve been meaning to address it. That’s the crumb. Address it today. Don’t become the evil witch.

Avoiding hard conversations - and why you keep choosing a breadcrumb over the truth - is exactly the type of behavior that the free Leadership Diagnostic Workshop will uncover. It’s time to learn why you do it. Learn your blind spots..

Think about that.
It’d be a shit show.

The Brilliant One (Elsa)

Let’s start with Elsa.
She’s the quiet one on the team.

She’s brilliant. But when shit starts happening, when things get even a little stressful... she goes quiet.

She calls it focusing. She says she’s just trying to let it go.

But there’s nothing there. It’s like her brain is frozen.

Her teammates rarely have an idea of what she’s thinking, which is annoying because she’s probably more capable than almost anyone there, but she wastes her energy making sure nobody can get close enough to really understand and experience it.

The Enthusiastic One (Anna)

And then there’s Anna.

She’s the one who volunteers first.
For everything.
Before anyone even finishes explaining what the project is about.

She moves fast, talks fast, and occasionally realizes, halfway through doing something, that she really has no fucking idea what she’s supposed to do.

Her enthusiasm is real. It’s too bad she’s not really listening, because her follow-through is complete crap.

The Perfectionist (Rapunzel)

Oh, and Rapunzel.

She gave an absolutely mind-blowing presentation. It was insightful. Everyone who saw it was impressed.

But she hasn’t sent the follow-up email yet, and that was three weeks ago.

She says she’s still working on it. She’s only going to send it when it’s perfect.

That’s typical Rapunzel.

The Organizer (Snow White)

Snow White, on the other hand, shows up to every meeting with a printed agenda and color-coded notes.

She reorganized the shared drive three years ago and is now so ridiculously frustrated when people don’t use the structure and naming standards that she set up.

In fact, the person who named a file in ALL CAPS nearly sent Snow White into a tizzy last week.

She’s not wrong about her systems, maybe just a little too intense about it.

The Imposter (Mulan)

And then there’s Mulan.

She’s the hardest worker on the team. She’s always the first one in and the last to leave. She volunteers for everything that Anna didn’t get to first.

She says she’s dedicated. She acts like she’s dedicated. But if you look close enough, you can tell she’s really driven by fear. And it’s the fear of feeling that she doesn’t belong.

The Important Question

Now I’m guessing some of these behaviors sound familiar to you.

Maybe you thought of specific people who act like specific Disney princesses.

And I suppose that leads me to the main question I have, which is this:

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They’d already raised a pretty hefty Series A (an amount that rhymes with “men tillion”), they had at least a couple years of runway left and their product was headed in the right direction. Needless to say, I was a bit surprised to hear about the worry.

I asked him what he was afraid of.

“If we can’t raise the money,” he said. “I’d have to lay people off.”

And so….?

“They’d think I failed them,” he admitted.

OK. And what if they did think that?

He paused. He either had to think about that one or had to consider how vulnerable he was ready to be.

And then he spoke.

“I guess it would mean that maybe I’m not actually good at this after all. Maybe I’ve just been lucky.”

Ka-POW!

That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
A five minute fear-of-funding conversation finally revealed the real feelings: He feels like a fraud.

That’s how it always goes in almost every one of my executive coaching relationships.

The thing you’re worried about is never the thing you’re afraid of.

The worry is just the symptom. The deadline, the conversation, the number - none of that is the actual fear.

The fear is three questions down.
It’s hiding in a dark corner and hoping you won’t notice it’s there.

But it is.

And the sooner you uncover it, the more confident you’ll feel.
And the more productive you’ll be.

This prompt dives down and finds the fear underneath the worries.

Strap on your seatbelt.
We may hit some turbulence as we descend into your psyche.

Run the prompt. 👇🏽👇🏽

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Like it or not, those Aztecs may have been onto something.

Because everybody worships some god.
And every god you worship has to get fed.

Everybody Worships Something

I was thinking about this while I was reading a commencement speech by David Foster Wallace. You may have read it - it’s been passed around the internet close to a kajillion times. These are the words that struck me:

There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

His point wasn’t religious. Neither is this rant you’re reading.

Just the opposite. The worshipping we’re discussing is about the daily decisions of adult life.

There’s no such thing as an atheist in adulthood.
We all pray to something.

You have a thing you would fight for, a thing you’d sacrifice other things to protect.

Everyone does.

The question is whether or not you know your god.

What Leaders Actually Kneel To

I’ve spent years working with leaders at all size companies, and now I can usually spot their god before they can.

There are the people who worship being needed.

They’re the ones who can’t delegate well. Heck, they can’t even take a real vacation. Their entire sense of self-worth is tied to feeling indispensable.

Other people worship being right.

They need to be the smartest person in the room. The one with the best ideas and the correct way to do things. People who identify with Imposter Syndrome often are the ones who kneel at this altar.

Some people worship the almighty number.

More money. More followers. More views. The number is a cruel god, because you’ll never feel like you ever have enough. That finish line that seemed so close constantly keeps moving further away.

None of these people think they’re worshipping anything. They think they’re just working hard. That they’re just driven.

That’s how you know it’s a god you pray to and not a choice you made.

Every God Gets Fed

The part that the Aztecs got right is that a god isn’t defined by what you love. It’s defined by what you’re willing to sacrifice for it.

That’s the whole thing. It’s the sacrifice that separates a god from a hobby. You don’t lay a beating heart (and soul) on the altar for something you kinda sorta like. You do it for the thing you serve.

So if you want to know what someone actually worships, don’t ask them what they’ve gained. Ask what they’ve sacrificed.

The leader who worships being needed sacrifices growth - both theirs and their teams.

The one who worships the number sacrifices connection with the people around them.

The one who worships being right sacrifices every better idea from every talented person in the room.

You are always sacrificing something.

The only question is whether you chose the god you idolize, or it chose you.

I’ll go first.

Mine Was Acceptance

For a long time I thought my god was money. I chased it hard, told myself it was the thing that mattered most. I built a lot of my identity around getting it.

Then the moment came where money would’ve cost me my relationships. And I found out it wasn’t my god at all because I simply wasn’t willing to make that sacrifice.

The altar was there, the sacrifice was right in front of me, and I walked away from it.

That’s how I learned money was never actually the thing I worshipped. I only thought it was.

My real god was acceptance.

I needed to be liked. I needed to fit in with every person I met. And I fed that god for years by continually sacrificing the one thing it always demands:

My authenticity.

I’d become whoever the room demanded I be. I’d shift my opinions, laugh at things I didn’t think were funny, agree with things I knew were wrong. I put my real opinions on the altar, and jabbed a knife through them over and over in an Aztec type of way, while telling myself I was just being easygoing.

Nobody made me do it.

That’s the thing about your god. Nobody has to hold the knife. You thrust it down yourself.

The Temple In The Middle Of Your Life

The Aztecs didn’t try to hide what they were doing. They built the temple in the middle of the city where everyone could see the sacrifices. They knew exactly which god they were feeding and exactly what it cost.

You’ve got a temple too. And it’s built right in the middle of your life. You’re just pretending it isn’t there.

I’m not going to tell you to stop worshipping. You can’t. Wallace was right about that.

If you take away one god, you’ll just find another to worship. But you can turn around and look at the thing you’ve been praying to this whole time.

You can acknowledge what you’ve been sacrificing. The relationships. The time. The health. The honesty. The people who trusted you and got sacrificed instead.

And then you can decide, with purpose and intention, whether that’s the god you actually want.

Because the sun is going to come up either way.
You don’t need to sacrifice your heart and soul to make it happen.

-

Figuring out which god has been running your decisions — and what you've been sacrificing to feed it — is exactly what the free Leadership Diagnostic Workshop is designed to reveal for you.

P.S. I still catch myself feeding the old god sometimes. Laughing at things I don’t find funny. Shifting my position to fit the room. The temple doesn’t disappear. You just stop pretending it isn’t there.

It was five stars, and the reviewer wrote, “The people here actually seemed to care about each other.”

That was the whole review. Ten words.

The leader who showed it to me was proud of those ten words. Probably more proud than anything else they’d accomplished that quarter.

And they should be.
Honestly.

You see, most leaders are wrong about how they define a good workplace. They think it means good pay, strong benefits, maybe a nice office with some natural light. Maybe there’s a plant or two.

Maybe they think a culture deck, a mission statement, and a Christmas party make everybody happy.

And those things matter. Don’t get me wrong.
They matter at least a little bit.

They help get people hired, and they keep people from leaving.

But there’s a difference between keeping people from leaving and making people wanna stay. They’re not the same thing.

I Left For Better Vibes

I had a client. Let’s call her Grace, because I liked that show Will & Grace, and I’m not gonna apologize for that.

Grace oversaw a 30-person team, give or take a person, and she couldn’t figure out why people kept quitting. She lost, I dunno, four people, I think, over a period of five months, which was a lot for her and her team.

People didn’t leave for more money. At least the exit surveys were vague enough that we could rule that out.

But one idea kept showing up, and it was best summarized by one person’s response, which was,

“I left for better vibes.”

Grace kind of chuckled when she told me that.
I didn’t.

Because better vibes is a real thing, and most leaders don’t take it seriously.

The Things That Create Better Vibes

In fact, the things that actually create better vibes are almost never what leaders spend time or money on.

Because it’s not in the benefits package, and it’s not in the office redesign. And it’s definitely not in that annual engagement survey where people answer what they like and what they don’t like, and then wonder why nothing ever changes.

The things that create better vibes at a company are smaller than that, and oftentimes weirder than that. And almost any leader can do them.

It doesn’t matter if you’re at a Fortune 100 or a one-person company. It doesn’t matter whether your team sits together in an office, works fully remote, or anything in between.

There are specific things you can do to build better vibes and reasons why they work.

The Way To Create The Best Vibes

I’ve spent a lot of time in a lot of different companies, and there’s something I’ve noticed about the best workplaces, the best vibes that I’ve ever seen.

It is this:

Read more

My mother is a family therapist. She’s worked a lot with children.

She told me something awhile back that has stuck with me. It’s this:

Kids get sent to therapy because “something is wrong with them.” But most of the time, the kid isn’t the problem. They’re just the symptom.

When treating a child, there’s always a secret patient. Someone who doesn’t even know they’re part of the therapy process.

The secret patient is always the parent.

Interesting, right?
I thought so too.
That’s why I remembered it.

And it’s why I’ve been thinking about it more often lately.
Mostly because I keep getting hired by HR leaders to save employees on Performance Improvement Plans.

The Worst Success Rate In Business

Somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of people who are put on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) either resign or get fired.1

You know what, let me say that in a way that is more impactful.

The entire purpose of a Performance Improvement Plan is to improve performance. It’s right there in the name. But PIPs are only successful between a measly 10 and 30 percent of the time.

That’s nutso.

If my leadership coaching work only had a 10 to 30 percent success rate, nobody would hire me. Ever. I’d probably be selling bootleg Journey CDs out of the trunk of a Camaro.

Something is clearly broken with the PIP process.
Fortunately, I know what it is.

The Five Reasons People Get Put On A PIP

There are five main reasons people get put on a PIP.

1. Failure to meet performance expectations

2. Poor quality of work

3. Missed deadlines

4. Lack of ownership

5. Communication problems

Every item on that list assumes the employee is the problem.

That should come as no surprise. I mean, they’re the ones on the PIP, right?

Wrong.

The Manager Who Doesn’t Listen

You’d be amazed how many people are on a Performance Improvement Plan because their manager doesn’t listen.

At least I’m always surprised by it.

I was contacted by the HR lead of a company awhile back, and hired to work with a woman who was put on a PIP. Let’s call her Emily, because that’s the name of my niece.

Like my niece, Emily is smart, highly capable and had ten years of experience. Her PIP said she “missed deadlines and failed to take ownership.”

When I first spoke with Emily, I asked her what happened.

She told me, with clear frustration, that she’d warned people about the untenable timeline three separate times. Her manager told her to “just figure it out.”

So she figured it out.

To do that, she cut the scope of a project. That caused something else to not get accomplished. And that impacted a client, in a big way.

That’s why she was put on a PIP.

She’d tried to warn people three times and nobody listened. Now the paperwork said it was her fault.

It wasn’t.
Or at least not fully.

I understood why she was frustrated.

Her manager wasn’t a bad person. He wasn’t even lazy.
He was drowning in his own deadlines, and every time she brought him a problem, he heard it as a complaint, got overwhelmed, and shut down.

She wasn’t failing to communicate.
He was failing to listen.

And that brings us back to the five reasons people get put on a PIP.

The Five PIP Problems From The Secret Patient’s Perspective

Let’s look at that list again, but this time with the assumption that every behavior of the employee is partly a reflection of the manager’s patterns.

Failure to meet performance expectations
Expectations only exist when somebody defines them. As it turns out, 85% of managers don’t clearly define priorities for their subordinates. Was the PIP-ed employee aware of expectations or were they supposed to read their boss’s mind?

Poor quality of work
Poor quality is often code for “that’s not how I would have done it.” Did anybody explain to the employee the expected level of quality? Did anybody help them achieve it? Hmmm…. sounds like a secret patient issue.

Missed deadlines
Accountability always starts at the top. Who set the deadline? Were there competing priorities?

Lack of ownership
Very few companies teach employees how to make decisions, and fewer are clear about which decisions are theirs to make in the first place. Oftentimes a lack of ownership is because the person never knew they owned it in the first place.

Communication problems
Effective communication takes at least two people and there are two parts to it: the talking part and the listening part. Sometimes a person is on a PIP for not listening, when the problem is really that the talking part wasn’t done effectively.

—

As you can see, the PIP doesn’t always define the real problem. It’s usually just a smoke signal.

And when there’s smoke, you need to find the fire.

As I’ve discovered, the fire rarely starts with the person on the PIP.
They’re just the one getting burned.

The PIP Is The First Time Anyone Has Actually Managed This Person

Here’s the thing about a PIP that makes me roll my eyes, and not in the way that my wife and daughter do with me.

In order to help the person on a PIP, the manager has to do four things:

• Define expectations.

• Meet regularly.

• Coach and mentor.

• Document progress.

That’s not so much a remediation process as it is the expected behavior of a manager.

Which means the moment I’m hired to help with the PIP, is oftentimes the moment when effective management actually begins.

That’s not an employee problem, it’s a secret patient problem.

Why My Track Record Is So Different

My track record for transforming people on PIPs is substantially better than the 10 to 30 percent standard.

It’s not because I’m a genius. Or because I have a secret 90-day framework.

It’s because I don’t treat the PIP as the diagnosis.
And I don’t treat the manager nor the employee as the enemy.

The PIP tells me what somebody did. It doesn’t tell me why.

It could be due to a fear that narrows thinking.
Or a broken relationship between the employee and manager.
Or a number of other reasons.

But whatever the reason, I always bring the manager into the work. Not as the problem.

Mostly as the secret patient.

Because if the manager doesn’t change, the employee will walk back into the exact same environment that produced the problem in the first place.

You can coach someone all you want. But if the environment and behavior stay stagnant, everything else will too. (that’s the pattern-environment loop)

The Thing To Do Before Putting A Person On A PIP

Next time you feel a need to put together a Performance Improvement Plan, I want you to do something else first.

Don’t ask what’s wrong with the employee. Ask who the secret patient is.

Ask whether anyone has actually managed this person in the last year, or whether they’ve just been left to flail on their own.

If this employee walks back into the same room, with the same manager, and the same dynamic that got them here, what exactly is supposed to change?

Let’s be honest, the PIP is never really testing whether an employee can improve.

It’s testing whether the secret patient is willing to.

- If you want to talk through a specific situation, maybe a PIP you’re about to approve, or a manager relationship that’s clearly part of the problem, reach out here. I work with HR leaders on addressing this all the time.

P.S. My mother figured this out with families a long time ago. You can’t fix the child by treating only the child. The kid goes home to the same house, the same parents, the same patterns, and within a month you’re back where you started.

A PIP is no different. The employee goes back to the same manager, the same room, the same dynamic.

They say, “I don’t really have a filter.”
And neither one is trying to be mean.

Neither one wakes up in the morning thinking, “Hey, I wonder who I can offend today.” In fact, they’re both really good people.

The problem is that when something pops into their head, out it comes.

And when people get upset, they defend themselves using the same sentence they always do: “I’m just being honest.”

I don’t think they’re being honest.
I think they’re confusing honesty with leadership.

Because here’s the thing: just because something is true doesn’t mean it needs to be said.

The Three Questions

That’s a lesson people have been trying to teach for over 2,000 years, and you’re gonna be surprised with who started it.

Read more

I prided myself on being direct and efficient.
I’d give feedback in a few words and move on, proud of not wasting anyone’s time.

In my head, I was respecting people enough to skip the fluff.

Eventually somebody on my team told me that people found me “hard to read, and a little scary.”

Scary?!
Me?!?!
WTactualF?!
I’m the guy who is always being helpful. How could I be scary?!

Here’s what eventually messed me up about it: I wasn’t wrong about my intentions. I really was trying to be respectful.

But my intention lived in my head, and everyone else only ever experienced my behavior. It turns out they couldn’t read my mind - and I didn’t realize they needed to.

The brief, efficient feedback that I felt was helpful, felt to them like I just slammed a door in their schnoz.

I’m not the only one who has this gap - the one between what you think you’re communicating and what other people hear.

The frustrating part is that most people blame others for not understanding what was communicated.

“They’re too sensitive.”
“They took it wrong.”
”They’re not paying attention.”

This prompt finds where you’re most misunderstood - and the thing you’re doing that causes it.

Turns out it’s usually not them.
Run the prompt now.

👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽

Read more

I was watching a weekly standup as they tried to agree on our top priority. Here’s what happened:

One of them thought everything was the priority.

Another was so focused on something that might matter three years down the road but didn’t matter in the slightest that week.

A third poked her head in, made brief eye contact, and left, for reasons that are still unclear to me to this day.

And the fourth just pitched, with total confidence, the exact idea I threw in the trash the previous week.

These are the people running the company.

And I’m the one who built this zoo.

Let me introduce you to the pack of leaders.

The Dog

I hired the Dog first, because the Dog interviewed like it was the best day of his life. All energy, all heart, he wanted the job so badly you could feel it the moment he leapt into the room.

Everything I loved about the Dog in that interview is real.

The Dog is loyal beyond belief. He would run into traffic for this company, and honestly might, one day, by accident.

He genuinely wants the whole team to win and celebrates like a lunatic when they do. There is no better teammate at 8am on a Monday.

There is also no worse teammate at 8am on a Monday, because the Dog can’t tell a real threat from the mailman.

Everything is an emergency.

A competitor launched a feature? He barks at somebody. Someone reschedules a meeting? He barks. A stapler falls in the other room? The Dog has already alerted the entire Slack channel and is now standing at my desk to confirm I saw the alert about the stapler.

I originally wanted someone who cared this much, so I suppose I should be careful what I wish for.

And that explains my next hire.

The Cat

I hired the Cat because, after the Dog, I needed someone more low-maintenance. Someone who’d just, you know, handle things on their own.

The Cat definitely handles things on her own. She is completely self-motivated and never needs managing. She always radiates the confidence of someone who has never once doubted themselves.

That attitude was a relief to me and is exactly what I hoped for, right up until I realized it wasn’t the Cat’s preference to not be managed, it was her demand.

The problem is you can’t get the Cat to do anything the Cat didn’t already decide to do on her own.

When I schedule a one-on-one, the Cat will decline the invite for no apparent reason whatsoever. When I finally corner the Cat, she’ll listen to my carefully prioritized talking points, looking me in the eye the entire time, and then, with one paw, slowly push the entire list off the table.

The moment there’s real conflict or things get a little tense, the Cat is suddenly, mysteriously, called away for the rest of the day and it’s almost impossible to find her.

I said I wanted someone independent. I probably should have been more specific.

So I hired the Giraffe.

The Giraffe

The Giraffe is a visionary.

This animal can see things further down the road than anyone else I’ve ever met. When the Giraffe says “big things are coming,” big things are usually coming.

I hired the Giraffe because of that vision. That was the whole point.

The catch is that the Giraffe’s head is so far above the ground that she genuinely has no idea what’s happening down there.

“I’m seeing incredible opportunities on the horizon,“ says the Giraffe, while eleven feet below, the building is on fire, payroll didn’t go out, and two engineers just quit.

“Do you smell smoke?“ someone asks.

“I smell,” says the Giraffe with a pause, gazing into nowhere like an omniscient seer. “I smell the future.”

On her first day at work I told the Giraffe that I wanted her thinking bigger. I’ve never regretted a sentence more.

I needed somebody more grounded in the present, and that brought me to the porcupine.

The Porcupine

I hired the Porcupine to protect the team. To say he’s protective might be the understatement of the year.

Nobody sneaks anything past the Porcupine. It’s impossible. And nobody messes with the Porcupine’s people.

The Porcupine makes his boundaries so clear they’re like a barbed wire fence. And that’s the problem.

You will never, ever be able to get close to the Porcupine. Nobody will.

If you try to give the Porcupine even one piece of feedback, you’ll end up bleeding.

You’re not sure how. You only gave one small suggestion and the next thing you know you’re in the parking lot pulling quills out of your forearm for an hour.

The whole team has learned to maintain a safe distance when communicating with the Porcupine. You gently lob over your suggestions and then quickly cower for cover.

Which brings us to the Raccoon.

The Raccoon

I was awed by the Raccoon in his interview.

I realized that he is scrappy and resourceful. If you give him a broken process, a tight deadline, and a dumpster, he’ll come back forty minutes later with a working solution and something shiny.

What I didn’t realize is that the shiny thing used to be yours.

You had an idea last Tuesday. You mentioned it in passing but decided it didn’t quite fit, so you dropped it. Two days later, the Raccoon presents the exact same idea in the all-hands meeting. He had washed it off, polished it up, and delivered it with total confidence and zero indication of where it came from.

And it works.
The Raccoon gets complimented for it.
That’s the crazy thing.

I hired the Raccoon for being resourceful. And he’s extremely resourceful. Just with other people’s resources.

The Elephant

The Elephant has been here longer than anyone. He remembers everything. And I mean everything. His memory is insane.

Whenever a problem shows up, the Elephant knows exactly how the company handled it last time. He knows who to call, what they said before and which folder the spreadsheet was filed in.

At the same time, the Elephant is the reason nothing new ever happens in the company.

When someone pitches a nifty new idea, the Elephant slowly raises its trunk and says, “Umm…We tried that in 2019 and it didn’t work.”

That’s it. That’s the whole contribution from the Elephant.

Not “we tried that in 2019 and here’s what we should do differently.” Just the memory, dropped like a guillotine.

I keep the Elephant for his ability to remember everything. Turns out, that memory also includes the reasons not to do something new.

The Sloth

And then there’s the Sloth, who I almost didn’t hire at all.

The Sloth interviewed slowly. Verrrry slowly.

Everything about the conversation screamed “this animal is going to hold us back,”

I hired her anyway, though for the first month I was sure I’d made a mistake.

The Sloth is slow. She takes forever to respond to anything. You send an urgent email and the Sloth gets to it whenever the Sloth gets to it.

The Dog, for all his flaws, can have five calls and two meetings before the Sloth finishes a single email.

But as I watched what was actually happening, I noticed something surprising.

The Sloth never makes a panic decision. She doesn’t freak out when everybody else is in crisis mode. She doesn’t reverse decisions twice a week, and she doesn’t set a company priority on Monday only to kill it on Friday.

While the rest of my zoo sprints in six different directions, the Sloth moves purposefully in one, and is somehow always holding the right branch when she gets there.

It’s the best hire I almost didn’t make. Which is something I’d tell the Sloth, but I’m not sure she really cares. She seems to be sleeping.

The Zookeeper

Every one of these animals is here because I picked them. The Dog’s panic, the Cat’s disappearing act, the Giraffe’s head in the clouds… all of it.

I didn’t just hire these traits, I promoted the exact traits that now drive me crazy. And here’s the thing I realized throughout the process:

A zoo takes after its keeper.

The team is anxious because I’m anxious.

They stopped bringing me new ideas because they saw what happens to new ideas when I hear them.

And that’s the thing nobody tells you about the zoo.

You’re part of it.

I’m the Dog when I’m fired up and can’t stop pinging people. I’m the Porcupine the second someone touches my work. I’m the Raccoon when I see an idea that I think I can make better. And I’m the Giraffe when I’d so much rather talk about the bright future in front of us than the ugly present sitting in my inbox.

The best leaders aren’t necessarily a particular animal. They’re the ones who can sense which animal they’re being, and pick a better one when it matters.

And the best teams bring all the animals together. You want the Giraffe to see it, the Dog to rally around it, the Sloth to stop everyone from doing something stupid, and even the Raccoon to build something shiny out of garbage at 2am.

That’s what a real team looks like.

The only real question is whether you built a functioning team.

Or did you just build a food chain, with you sitting at the top and wondering why everyone keeps acting like animals.

P.S. I showed this article to the Cat before publishing. She read it, made eye contact, and walked away without saying a word. I’m going to assume that means it’s approved.

Figuring out which animal you default to - and why you do it - is exactly what the free Leadership Diagnostic Workshop is for. Save your seat now.

Someone comes by and says, “Your baby is beautiful.”

You say, “Thank you.”

But wait.
Stop.
Think about that for a second.

What exactly are you being thanked for?

You had sex. The baby happened.
If you’re the male, you contributed about seven minutes of effort and one cell. The female did the other nine months.

The baby’s looks came from some genetic roulette that started a few hundred thousand years ago.

But you say “thank you” anyway, like you painted the kid’s face yourself.

My Cute Dog

The same thing happens to me with my dog.
People stop me on the street and say, “Oh my God, she’s so cute.”

And I almost say, “Thank you.”

But thanks for what?

I didn’t design her ears.
I didn’t choose the color of her fur.
I don’t deserve credit for her face.

It’s not like I have a super sophisticated eye for adopting rescue dogs.

It seems weird to say “thank you”, and more than a little shallow too.

Now, I’m not judging you if you do it, ’cause I do it too.

It’s polite. It’s reflex. It’s just what you do when someone says something nice.

But it got me thinking about how often in our work lives we accept credit for things we had nothing to do with.

The Leader Who Takes Your Credit

I saw this recently, where the team hit their quarterly number. The all-hands happened, and everyone looked at the leader.

He smiled. He nodded. He said something like, “We really worked hard this quarter.”

But he wasn’t the one staying late on Tuesday.
He wasn’t the one on the phone with the unhappy customer at six o’clock on a Friday.
He wasn’t the one fixing the bug until 2:00 a.m.

He was just a warm body in the right place.

I see this constantly with leaders. They mistake being present for being responsible. They accept the applause and forget the entire cast of characters that created it.

What they don’t realize is that the team notices it every single time.

They’ll Remember Everything You Didn’t Say

I have a client. Let’s call him Ted, because Ted Lasso. Need I say more?

Ted ran a sales team that had a genuinely great quarter. They had a big number to beat, and they beat it. The CEO praised the whole team in front of the company.

Ted smiled and said the right things about how proud he was of everyone.
What he didn’t do was name a single person on the team.

I asked him about it afterward. He said he didn’t want to single anyone out.

That sounds generous.
It isn’t.

Because his team watched him stand in the spotlight for three to five minutes there and heard their names exactly zero times.

And every single one of them will remember that. Maybe not consciously, but I guarantee you they’ll remember.

The Important Thing About Giving Credit

Here’s the thing about credit that most people get wrong:

It doesn’t divide when you share it. It actually multiplies.

When you say, “Thank you. Maya led that whole client relationship,” you’re not losing credit. You’re gaining credibility.

You’re proving that you’re paying attention to exactly who did what, and you’re showing that you’re not the kind of leader who confuses your presence with their performance.

Because nothing erodes trust faster than a leader who takes credit for someone else’s work.

You’ve been there. I’ve been there. It sucks.

Say My Name, Say My Name

So here’s the small thing I want you to try.

Next time someone praises a result that other people were involved in, say the names of the people who actually did the work.

“Thank you. Maya led the whole thing with help from Alex and Janice.”

That’s it. That’s all you have to say. That’s how easy it is to become the kind of leader people actually want to work for.

Because leadership isn’t about collecting credit.
It’s about giving it.

So next time somebody tells you that your baby is beautiful, don’t just stand there. Own it.

And then give the credit to the person who did the actual work.

If you wish you or your team communicated more effectively, I put on a free Leadership Diagnostic Workshop that addresses that exactly. Reserve your seat now.

My father keeps score.

Not with money.
With people.

When he tells me about someone he knows, the first thing out of his mouth is what they do and how much they have in life. A doctor. A lawyer. A dropout. Whether they made a fortune or lost everything. How many houses and cars and all the things that bling when you let them.

Everyone he’s ever met is ranked in his head on a scale of “successful” and “interesting.” He knows exactly where everybody stands.

Including himself.

His worth isn’t something he defines. It’s something other people assign him. If the right people are impressed, he’s somebody. If they’re not, he isn’t.

As it turns out, he raised his kids the same way he ran his own head.

What I Learned From “Good Job”

I don’t remember getting a lot of feedback when I was growing up.

I remember trying to impress my parents - trying to get their approval. I remember I got told “good job” every now and then.

It was usually a warm and well-meaning “good job,” but it was also fairly empty, as “good job’s” tend to be.

It rarely came with a reason. It rarely told me what was good or why. It was more like a generic stamp of approval. A verbal smiley face on a proverbial report card.

From this upbringing, I learned that feedback is what matters most. And feedback always comes from someone else.

I Lost My Sense Of Self-Worth

By the time I hit my twenties, my entire sense of self-worth had been farmed out to others. Every interaction I had was like a live testimonial, giving me feedback on whether or not I was worthy as a human.

I needed everyone to like me.

Every time I walked into a room, I read the room, adjusted myself, and became whatever version of me that could best fit in. I was a chameleon and I was really damn good at it.

I’d become a master of reading expressions and body language. I could change my tone, my stance, my being, just to be accepted.

What I didn’t realize was that doing all this was slowly eroding my confidence. Assuming of course that I had any at all.

The Art Teacher Who Taught Me Something Different

A couple of decades later, I found myself in my daughter’s art class when I noticed the teacher never said “good job” to the kids.

Not once.

When a kid held up a painting, waiting for the teacher’s words of approval, she didn’t give it. Instead she pointed to a specific part of the design and said, “Tell me about this part.”

It required the kid to look at their own work and explain a choice they made. It made the kid the authority on the thing they created, not the teacher.

The teacher wasn’t withholding warmth. She was doing something better. She was giving the kid the one thing my parents rarely handed me when I was a child: The ability to judge their own work without waiting for someone else to do it for them.

Praise teaches a kid to look at you.
Curiosity teaches a kid to look at themselves.

One of those builds confidence for a lifetime. The other one turns them into me at 27, changing my personality for every conversation.

This Is The Part Where It’s About You

This is the part where it’s about you.

If you’re like most managers, you hand out “good job’s” fairly often. Maybe it sounds like “nice work,” or “good going,” or “thanks for that.”

However you say it, you think you’re being encouraging.
You’re being my dad.

“Good job” with nothing behind it does the exact same thing to a grown adult that it did to me as a kid. It tells them you approve. It doesn’t tell them what worked, or why. So the next time they do the thing, they’ll just be watching your face to see if the approval comes again.

That’s exactly why it means nothing.

“Tell me how you got here” is impossible to fake. You can’t ask it unless you actually looked at the work and listen to their feedback. The question itself is proof you pay attention.

That’s the part that gets remembered. Not the approval. The attention.

“Good job” is not acknowledgement.
It’s acceptance.

And everybody knows that but you.

I’m sure you say it the same way my father did. With warmth and good intentions. But it costs you nothing, and teaches them even less.

So stop.

What To Do Instead

Do me a favor, don’t turn your team into me. Don’t make them have to be really good at reading you to feel some sort of smidge of approval.

You don’t have to stop being warm. I’m not telling you to permanently withhold approval like some kind of drill sergeant.

I’m telling you that the next time someone hands you work that’s genuinely good, don’t just say “good job.”

Be more like my daughter’s art teacher. Point at the specific thing that worked and ask them to walk you through it. Make them articulate the choice. Make them the authority on their own decision, even if it’s just for a second.

You’ll feel the difference immediately. More importantly, so will they.

“Good job” always ends the conversation.
Curiosity always opens it.

My father didn’t learn that.

He spent most of his life waiting for feedback that was never going to make him feel good enough, because it was always coming from the outside.

I did the same thing until well into my thirties.

You’ve got a whole team who may be looking for approval from the outside as well.

Don’t turn them into me.

Turn them into the kid holding up the painting, who already knows which part is good, and can tell you exactly why.

P.S. My father still keeps score. I still catch myself wanting his approval on things I don’t need. Old patterns don’t just disappear, but sometimes they lower their volume once you know what to listen for.

The patterns causing you (and your team) to look for approval from the outside are exactly what the free Leadership Diagnostic Workshop addresses. Reserve your seat now.

Let’s get back to my client Sharon.

Sharon is a VP at a relatively fast-growing company. I looked at her calendar the other day and it is so colorful. Like a stained glass window that is designed by somebody who doesn’t want any breathing room. Every single block is filled. Meetings are stacked on meetings stacked on meetings. Even her focus time has somehow become a group activity.

She keeps telling me she doesn’t have time to think. And there’s just enough pride in the way she says it to make me think she doesn’t mean it the way I would expect her to mean it.

The Con Job

You see, we’ve somehow decided that being too busy to think is proof that you’re important, instead of proof that something has gone really deeply sideways.

So I asked Sharon: “If we looked at everything on your calendar this week, how many of the things are actually moving you closer towards your goals?”

She paused for a while. Looked at her calendar. Thought about it.

Then she said: “Honestly, maybe one meeting. Everything else is just stuff.”

And there we have it.

Being busy is a con job. It makes you think you’re achieving progress. It looks productive. It feels responsible. Other people actually reward you for it. And you can end the day completely exhausted and point to that exhaustion as proof that you actually accomplished something.

But activity and progress are not the same thing.

Heck, you can walk on a treadmill for 15 minutes. That’s activity. But you’ll end up exactly where you started. There’s no progress beyond a feeling that you made progress.

Which you didn’t.

What Busy Is Covering Up

Here’s the thing. Your busyness is probably covering something you don’t want to confront.

That’s okay. Everybody does it.

Maybe it’s that important project you keep getting ready to begin. Or the decision you’ve been avoiding for a month. And of course there’s always that conversation you keep rescheduling because the timing isn’t quite right — which is fascinating, because apparently the right time is a day after never.

Busy is usually what we do instead of the thing we’re actually afraid to do.

Being busy is also an amazingly convenient form of avoidance because it actually comes with compliments. No one questions the person who’s slammed at work. We admire them. We call them committed. We tell them we don’t know how they do it.

Meanwhile, the thing that matters most keeps getting kicked down the road.

The Kayak Question

If you want to know what your busyness might be hiding, I have a question for you.

If you decided tomorrow to circumnavigate the world by kayak — no phone, no laptop, no opportunity to send your team a quick thought, nothing to do but keep paddling and don’t get eaten by the sharks — what on your calendar would still move forward in a good enough way without you?

Think about that.

And then pay attention to whatever discomfort or defensiveness you feel.

This is actually better if I ask you in person. But I want you to actually do it yourself and pretend I’m there. You probably have a lot of reasons why your situation is different and you’re actually needed.

That reaction is exactly what I want to talk about.

Let me explain.

Read more

“I’m just not good at this.”

Business.
Leadership.
The whole vulnerable-human-being thing.

I said it so often that nobody questioned it.
Including me.

It sounded humble. Like I was just being honest about my weaknesses.

Until a decade or so later when it all hit me like a ton of spiraled zucchini.

I wasn’t describing myself.
I was protecting myself.

If I wasn’t “naturally good” at something, then it was ok to fail.
By claiming to not be good at something, I was lowering everyone’s expectations. Including my own.

It wasn’t humility.
It was a wall to protect my fragile ego.

The scary part wasn’t that I believed it.
The scary part was that I never bothered to wonder whether it was actually true.

(Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. I’m actually pretty good at the stuff I said I wasn’t good at)

That’s what happens with the stories we tell about ourselves.
Do you know what your story is?

• “I’m terrible with money.”

• “I’m not creative.”

• “I’m not a people person.”

• “I’ve never been good at conflict.”

• “I’m just not confident.”

At some point those sentences stop becoming opinions and start becoming your identity.

The problem is that most of them aren’t based on fact.
They’re conclusions you reached years ago that you never bothered to re-confirm.

This prompt is designed to uncover one of those stories.
The one you’ve repeated so many times that it feels like part of your personality.

Then I will challenge you with this simple question:

What if that story isn’t true anymore?

Be warned…

This prompt is surprisingly uncomfortable.
Run it anyway.
👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽

Read more

Their names are Sparrow and Willow.

I say “our” cats like I feel a sense of ownership.

Sure I feed the cats and I clean their litter box, but I’m not much of a cat person. I don’t need, nor want, their affection.

Don’t judge me.

Fortunately, the cats feel the same way. They are obsessed with my wife and daughter. My wife and daughter are also obsessed with the cats. The cats don’t care about me.

Everybody wins.

Three years ago, the wife and kid told me they wanted a third cat.

Nope.
No way.
Not gonna happen.

I told my ladies that we are never going to have three cats.

Three cats is the tipping point into “crazy cat lady”. And I will not live in a house with crazy cat ladies who will no doubt put this bumper sticker on the car.

If you want another pet, I said to them, let’s get a puppy.
So we did.
Say hello to Twiggy.

What I Didn’t Expect

The thing I didn’t expect was for my wife and kid to not care about Twiggy. I mean she was (and is) really cute, but they definitely like the cats better.

Soon enough, Twiggy became my dog.
I walk her, I feed her, I train her.
When I stand up, she stands up.
When I walk across the room, she walks with me.

For three years, my wife didn’t really like our dog.

She’d never say it in those words, but it’s the truth. There was a distance between them that everybody in the house could feel. Even the pesky cats.

I’m pretty sure it’s because Twiggy isn’t a cuddler.

She’s not the dog who curls up next to you on the couch while you watch TV. She’s not even the dog who rubs up against you so you keep petting her.

Twiggy is the dog who sits four feet away, facing the window, monitoring the perimeter for threats that don’t exist.

My wife wanted a couch dog. What she got was a security consultant.

And somewhere in the first year, she came to a conclusion about Twiggy.

Twiggy doesn’t really like me, she said to me one day.

She was pretty direct about that. And every so often she’d say things like “she’s your dog” or “she doesn’t care about me.”

I got three years of that.

The Week Everything Changed

Four months ago, for reasons I can’t remember, I decided to teach Twiggy a new trick.

Not sit. Or stay. Or shake. She does all those with gusto.
I taught her to kiss my wife.

Whenever my wife came home from work, I’d say “give mama a kiss” and then I’d reward her when she did it.

It only took a week, maybe less, but Twiggy figured it out.

Now, whenever I say “Give mama a kiss”, she hightails it across the room, or to wherever my wife is sitting, and gives her a smackeroo right on the face.

Every. Single. Time.

Lo and behold, my wife and Twiggy are suddenly best friends.

She loves the dog and the dog loves her. Twiggy follows her around the house like she does with me.

Three years of uncomfortable distance magically disappeared in a week.
All because of a kiss-on-demand.

Twiggy Didn’t Change. The Story Did.

Here’s the thing… Twiggy didn’t change at all.

Twiggy’s feelings about my wife didn’t shift. It’s not like she was secretly indifferent to my wife for three years and then suddenly warmed up because I gave her a command.

Twiggy always loved my wife.
She just didn’t have a behavior that proved it in a language my wife could understand.

My wife wanted evidence of Twiggy’s love. Twiggy didn’t know what to do with that.

So my wife built an entire story about who the dog was - all based on the absence of a behavior.

The Person Standing In The Middle

If there’s somebody that screwed anything up in this scenario, it’s me.

I knew my wife wanted affection.
I knew Twiggy had it in her to give affection.
I knew she was trainable, because I’m the one who taught her all the things.

I was the sole person standing in the way of two beings who liked each other and couldn’t figure out how to express it.

And I did nothing about it. For three years.

I had the ability to fix it the entire time. I just never considered that it was mine to fix.

Let’s Talk About Your Team

Somewhere in your company - or on your team - there are two people who “just don’t click.”

Maybe you’re convinced it’s just different styles or different personalities. Maybe one’s an introvert and one’s too blunt.

Whatever the reason, they’re like oil and orange juice - they just don’t work well together.

You’ve told yourself that story for so long, it feels like a fact.

But what if your story isn’t true?

Maybe there’s one person you’ve decided isn’t warm enough. They aren’t a team player and don’t care about the group the way the others do.

Usually the evidence for that belief is based on some behavior they’ve never actually demonstrated.

Not a behavior they refused to do.
A behavior nobody ever taught them how to do.

They don’t speak up in the all-hands. They don’t say thank you in front of the group. They don’t ask people how their weekend was. They don’t do the small thing that would make everyone stop wondering whether or not they give a damn.

And whatever it is, you’ve translated that lack of behavior as a character flaw.
You might very well be wrong.

You Already Know Who This Is About

In every one of those situations, you are the person standing in the middle. You know both parties. You know what one of them needs. You probably know the other one has it in them to fulfill that need.

So why don’t you try to fix it?

Because my story about Twiggy isn’t really a story about Twiggy.
And it’s not about my wife.

It’s about a guy who had the solution to a problem for three years and never once thought to do anything about it.

Don’t be like me.

-
P.S. Twiggy still monitors the perimeter. Some things don't change. But at least now my wife gets a kiss whenever she wants one.

The patterns keeping your team from connecting - the ones where two people "just don't click" - are exactly what the free Leadership Diagnostic Workshop addresses. Sign up now.