Transcript (Part 4 of 4)
Letting People Go, A Painful, Yet Necessary Step
Ms. Louis
If we’re discussing the seven-step process, what would be the last and final step in the process?
Mr. Smith
Step seven is not necessarily a sequential step. I put it at the end because it is something that can happen—or needs to happen--
at any point and at any of the other steps in the process. It’s one that, in terms of culture, is very important to highlight, particularly
at the end of these steps, so that’s why I put it there. It’s letting people go. We, as leaders and managers, have the tough job of
assessing our team and team members that work for us and deciding whether they’re continuing to be a good fit for the organization.
They may have been a good fit five years ago, ten years ago; but maybe the organization has changed and now we need something new.
What I would say is not to just yank those people and fire [them]. That’s not what I’m advocating at all, but what I am advocating is
being aware of how the dynamics can change over time and how one person might have been a good fit a number of years ago,
but may not be the right fit that the team needs and the organization needs to keep moving forward.
I recommend you to try to work with those people, try to repurpose them or move them into a role you think is better suited for them
and backfill somebody else into that role. Sometimes that’s possible; sometimes it’s not; and I do recognize that.
These are all very difficult questions to answer. There’s no easy answer. There’s no way anybody could come in your organization
and say, these people need to change or these people need to stay. This is a very subjective part of leading and managing people
and developing that culture, but I think it’s one that we often overlook.
One of the quotes that I try to live by is to “always sacrifice the one for the many, not the many for the one.” Sometimes we have to
sacrifice for the good of the team. Sometimes, that one person or a couple people aren’t the right fit, and if we don’t address that,
it will not only decrease the productivity of the team, but it will decrease the effectiveness of the team and it will frustrate the team.
I can promise you the top performers on your team know who the low performers are—whether or not you recognize that.
When you choose to identify the lower performers or the people that just aren’t the right fit anymore, the first step is to try to work
with them and try to give them ample opportunity to change and to work into that new direction that the company is going.
If you’ve done that multiple times, given them repeated chances, and they make either the same mistakes or they’re causing the same
problems in the organization repeatedly, [you need to make a change].
You must take the time, clearly communicate multiple times, and make sure they understand the new expectation, but then once you’ve
done that, you do have to make a decision at some point, I have to make a change. That’s very hard. I don’t enjoy letting people go,
but I know that it’s important for the good of the team at times. Ultimately, I have to take that burden on myself, of making sure there’s
the right mix of people on the team to help us to continue to be successful. If I don’t, I’m not being compassionate, even to that one person.
The reality is we think, that person’s not doing all that great, but I’ll just deal with it. I don’t want to get rid of them because I want to be
compassionate and kind toward them. What we’re doing is, we’re saying to the rest of the team—to the 90-some percent of the team,
especially to the top performers—your high performance doesn’t matter. We’re willing to accept mediocrity or somebody that just
doesn’t fit anymore. Eventually, over time, if you don’t address those low performers, your high performers end up leaving the organization.
It creates dysfunction and even, at the extreme, chaos within an organization.
Ms. Louis
Let’s switch topics from talking about developing a culture in an organization to talking about your newly released book,
Why Leadership Sucks. What was the inspiration for writing this book, and I just have to ask you how you came up with the title?
Mr. Smith
I’m not even sure where I came up with that to be quite honest, but I do have this cold side of me, and it’s something that I’ve often
wondered and really struggled with as I’ve gone through my own leadership journey. I think all of us tend to think that going into
leadership or into a management role, we look through rose-colored glasses. We want more power, prestige, money, and control.
By being in a leadership or management role, we think that [having a leadership role] is the way to accomplish that. When we get into it,
[we realize] that it’s very complex. Dealing with people, people problems, and those sorts of things is not easy. A lot of times,
there’s no real simple or clear-cut answer.
Oftentimes, we don’t have the leadership development training when we get put into these roles. It’s really a realization that there are
parts of leadership that do suck, and I just have to be okay with that. That’s part of being a leader. That’s part of the burden
(or the mantle of leadership) that we have to accept and realize that going into leadership. [A leadership position] is something
that is going to require, certainly, more hours of us. It’s not going to be easier; it’s going to be harder than just being in a producer role,
let’s say, for instance, where you’re only responsible for your own work. It’s going to create a lot more complexity to your world
and to your job, because you’re not just responsible for yourself. You’re responsible for everybody else and making sure they get
their work done in addition to your work, and then dealing with HR issues that come up.
It’s just something that we—all of us, myself included—tend to think that leadership and management is the way to go. We need to
get there so that we can be in charge, we can make more money, and we can have more control over the situation and make
better decisions. All of us that go into it find that a lot of it is not fun.
We have a responsibility in leadership too. I view my role as stewardship of the people that work for me and the resources that
I have underneath my control. I hold myself to account for the people that work for me—and not just what they do, but what I do to
help them grow. I look at their personal development as 50 percent their responsibility and 50 percent my responsibility.
I have to engage them and make sure I’m doing my part so that they can continue to grow in the role that they work for me,
knowing that they may move into another role within the organization or they may move out of the organization and work at another firm.
It’s still my responsibility, while they’re working for me, to help them grow. Sometimes, that involves tough conversations when you
have to address issues they need to work on. There may be areas of weakness for them—i.e., areas where they’re just blind to the
fact that they need to grow. I really view that as partly my responsibility, partly theirs.
Dealing with people that work directly for me is challenging. It’s something that if we understood more of what it means to go into
leadership or management and we understood the challenging—the sucky part of it—we’d be better prepared. That’s, ultimately,
why I wrote the book—to help others learn from what I’ve learned in my journey so that they’re better prepared and they start at a
higher level in their career when they start in a management role than I did. I had to learn mostly on my own by trial and error.
A lot of us do learn that way and that’s okay, but my passion is to help others, particularly younger leaders, help them grow and
start at a higher level so they can go farther faster.
Ms. Louis
There are two concepts you talk about in your book. One is servant leadership and the other is Level 5 Leadership. How do you
define each of those, and what’s the correlation between them?
Mr. Smith
I consider those terms to be synonymous. I’ll talk about Level 5 Leadership first. That term comes from Jim Collins’ book. I’m sure
many of you have read that book. It’s called “Good to Great.” It has to be the number one business book of the last couple of decades,
or if it’s not, it’s really near the top. I think nearly every business professional that I’ve talked to has read it or heard of it. It is a very good
book and I do recommend, if you haven’t read or if you’ve heard of it and still haven’t read of it, you should get that book.
In that book, he talks about research done for very large corporations and determined what are the traits of what they call Level 5 Leaders
of companies that had sustained stock returns over a 20-year period. Many companies can have a couple good years, a couple bad years,
but [very few can] sustain high returns to their investors over a 20-year period. They analyze those companies.
It’s a very data-driven study that they did. Out of those companies that they identified that accomplished that, they selected the attributes
of the top leaders in those organizations. Five of those attributes they actually talk about. The first one is drive for sustained results;
number two is set up successors for success, meaning success isn’t success without a successor; number three is modesty and humility;
number four is taking responsibility. I call it seek the blame, give away the fame. As a leader, we get to take responsibility when things fail,
and when things go well, we get to credit our team for that; and then the fifth one is being organization-focused as opposed to having personal agendas or trying to doing it for personal gain. [Leaders should] try to do what’s best for the
organization in the long-term interest.
That’s, in a nutshell, the five attributes of Level 5 Leadership, and I believe those dovetail into servant leadership.
Servant leadership is certainly somewhat of a buzzword today. Robert Greenleaf was the guy who coined that term of servant leadership,
and I’ll just give you a quick quote on what he defines as servant leadership.
“The servant leader is servant first. It begins with a natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings
one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual
power drive or to acquire material possessions. The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them, [there] are
shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.”
Most people don’t think of the term servant as having a very positive connotation. It has a very negative view of that term.
I don’t want to serve anybody. I want to be in charge. I believe it requires humility to lead effectively, because ultimately,
I don’t know everything, and leaders who say they do, they’re lying. They don’t. We all have something to learn, even leaders
who have a lot to offer and have a lot of experience. They still have ways that they can grow and continue to learn.
I remind myself that I am serving the people that work for me, I still lead them. It doesn’t mean I still don’t make tough decisions
and have to be direct and be firm in areas, but it is a different mindset to choose that I am serving them.
I am partially responsible for their personal growth and development while they work for me. It’s just a very different mindset
than the typical top-down leadership approach that’s been pretty prevalent for the last 50 or 60 years.
Ms. Louis
Where can people get your book?
Mr. Smith
It’s currently available via online retailers. You can get it on your Kindle, as an audiobook, or you can order it on paperback there, as well.
If we’re discussing the seven-step process, what would be the last and final step in the process?
Mr. Smith
Step seven is not necessarily a sequential step. I put it at the end because it is something that can happen—or needs to happen--
at any point and at any of the other steps in the process. It’s one that, in terms of culture, is very important to highlight, particularly
at the end of these steps, so that’s why I put it there. It’s letting people go. We, as leaders and managers, have the tough job of
assessing our team and team members that work for us and deciding whether they’re continuing to be a good fit for the organization.
They may have been a good fit five years ago, ten years ago; but maybe the organization has changed and now we need something new.
What I would say is not to just yank those people and fire [them]. That’s not what I’m advocating at all, but what I am advocating is
being aware of how the dynamics can change over time and how one person might have been a good fit a number of years ago,
but may not be the right fit that the team needs and the organization needs to keep moving forward.
I recommend you to try to work with those people, try to repurpose them or move them into a role you think is better suited for them
and backfill somebody else into that role. Sometimes that’s possible; sometimes it’s not; and I do recognize that.
These are all very difficult questions to answer. There’s no easy answer. There’s no way anybody could come in your organization
and say, these people need to change or these people need to stay. This is a very subjective part of leading and managing people
and developing that culture, but I think it’s one that we often overlook.
One of the quotes that I try to live by is to “always sacrifice the one for the many, not the many for the one.” Sometimes we have to
sacrifice for the good of the team. Sometimes, that one person or a couple people aren’t the right fit, and if we don’t address that,
it will not only decrease the productivity of the team, but it will decrease the effectiveness of the team and it will frustrate the team.
I can promise you the top performers on your team know who the low performers are—whether or not you recognize that.
When you choose to identify the lower performers or the people that just aren’t the right fit anymore, the first step is to try to work
with them and try to give them ample opportunity to change and to work into that new direction that the company is going.
If you’ve done that multiple times, given them repeated chances, and they make either the same mistakes or they’re causing the same
problems in the organization repeatedly, [you need to make a change].
You must take the time, clearly communicate multiple times, and make sure they understand the new expectation, but then once you’ve
done that, you do have to make a decision at some point, I have to make a change. That’s very hard. I don’t enjoy letting people go,
but I know that it’s important for the good of the team at times. Ultimately, I have to take that burden on myself, of making sure there’s
the right mix of people on the team to help us to continue to be successful. If I don’t, I’m not being compassionate, even to that one person.
The reality is we think, that person’s not doing all that great, but I’ll just deal with it. I don’t want to get rid of them because I want to be
compassionate and kind toward them. What we’re doing is, we’re saying to the rest of the team—to the 90-some percent of the team,
especially to the top performers—your high performance doesn’t matter. We’re willing to accept mediocrity or somebody that just
doesn’t fit anymore. Eventually, over time, if you don’t address those low performers, your high performers end up leaving the organization.
It creates dysfunction and even, at the extreme, chaos within an organization.
Ms. Louis
Let’s switch topics from talking about developing a culture in an organization to talking about your newly released book,
Why Leadership Sucks. What was the inspiration for writing this book, and I just have to ask you how you came up with the title?
Mr. Smith
I’m not even sure where I came up with that to be quite honest, but I do have this cold side of me, and it’s something that I’ve often
wondered and really struggled with as I’ve gone through my own leadership journey. I think all of us tend to think that going into
leadership or into a management role, we look through rose-colored glasses. We want more power, prestige, money, and control.
By being in a leadership or management role, we think that [having a leadership role] is the way to accomplish that. When we get into it,
[we realize] that it’s very complex. Dealing with people, people problems, and those sorts of things is not easy. A lot of times,
there’s no real simple or clear-cut answer.
Oftentimes, we don’t have the leadership development training when we get put into these roles. It’s really a realization that there are
parts of leadership that do suck, and I just have to be okay with that. That’s part of being a leader. That’s part of the burden
(or the mantle of leadership) that we have to accept and realize that going into leadership. [A leadership position] is something
that is going to require, certainly, more hours of us. It’s not going to be easier; it’s going to be harder than just being in a producer role,
let’s say, for instance, where you’re only responsible for your own work. It’s going to create a lot more complexity to your world
and to your job, because you’re not just responsible for yourself. You’re responsible for everybody else and making sure they get
their work done in addition to your work, and then dealing with HR issues that come up.
It’s just something that we—all of us, myself included—tend to think that leadership and management is the way to go. We need to
get there so that we can be in charge, we can make more money, and we can have more control over the situation and make
better decisions. All of us that go into it find that a lot of it is not fun.
We have a responsibility in leadership too. I view my role as stewardship of the people that work for me and the resources that
I have underneath my control. I hold myself to account for the people that work for me—and not just what they do, but what I do to
help them grow. I look at their personal development as 50 percent their responsibility and 50 percent my responsibility.
I have to engage them and make sure I’m doing my part so that they can continue to grow in the role that they work for me,
knowing that they may move into another role within the organization or they may move out of the organization and work at another firm.
It’s still my responsibility, while they’re working for me, to help them grow. Sometimes, that involves tough conversations when you
have to address issues they need to work on. There may be areas of weakness for them—i.e., areas where they’re just blind to the
fact that they need to grow. I really view that as partly my responsibility, partly theirs.
Dealing with people that work directly for me is challenging. It’s something that if we understood more of what it means to go into
leadership or management and we understood the challenging—the sucky part of it—we’d be better prepared. That’s, ultimately,
why I wrote the book—to help others learn from what I’ve learned in my journey so that they’re better prepared and they start at a
higher level in their career when they start in a management role than I did. I had to learn mostly on my own by trial and error.
A lot of us do learn that way and that’s okay, but my passion is to help others, particularly younger leaders, help them grow and
start at a higher level so they can go farther faster.
Ms. Louis
There are two concepts you talk about in your book. One is servant leadership and the other is Level 5 Leadership. How do you
define each of those, and what’s the correlation between them?
Mr. Smith
I consider those terms to be synonymous. I’ll talk about Level 5 Leadership first. That term comes from Jim Collins’ book. I’m sure
many of you have read that book. It’s called “Good to Great.” It has to be the number one business book of the last couple of decades,
or if it’s not, it’s really near the top. I think nearly every business professional that I’ve talked to has read it or heard of it. It is a very good
book and I do recommend, if you haven’t read or if you’ve heard of it and still haven’t read of it, you should get that book.
In that book, he talks about research done for very large corporations and determined what are the traits of what they call Level 5 Leaders
of companies that had sustained stock returns over a 20-year period. Many companies can have a couple good years, a couple bad years,
but [very few can] sustain high returns to their investors over a 20-year period. They analyze those companies.
It’s a very data-driven study that they did. Out of those companies that they identified that accomplished that, they selected the attributes
of the top leaders in those organizations. Five of those attributes they actually talk about. The first one is drive for sustained results;
number two is set up successors for success, meaning success isn’t success without a successor; number three is modesty and humility;
number four is taking responsibility. I call it seek the blame, give away the fame. As a leader, we get to take responsibility when things fail,
and when things go well, we get to credit our team for that; and then the fifth one is being organization-focused as opposed to having personal agendas or trying to doing it for personal gain. [Leaders should] try to do what’s best for the
organization in the long-term interest.
That’s, in a nutshell, the five attributes of Level 5 Leadership, and I believe those dovetail into servant leadership.
Servant leadership is certainly somewhat of a buzzword today. Robert Greenleaf was the guy who coined that term of servant leadership,
and I’ll just give you a quick quote on what he defines as servant leadership.
“The servant leader is servant first. It begins with a natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings
one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual
power drive or to acquire material possessions. The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them, [there] are
shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.”
Most people don’t think of the term servant as having a very positive connotation. It has a very negative view of that term.
I don’t want to serve anybody. I want to be in charge. I believe it requires humility to lead effectively, because ultimately,
I don’t know everything, and leaders who say they do, they’re lying. They don’t. We all have something to learn, even leaders
who have a lot to offer and have a lot of experience. They still have ways that they can grow and continue to learn.
I remind myself that I am serving the people that work for me, I still lead them. It doesn’t mean I still don’t make tough decisions
and have to be direct and be firm in areas, but it is a different mindset to choose that I am serving them.
I am partially responsible for their personal growth and development while they work for me. It’s just a very different mindset
than the typical top-down leadership approach that’s been pretty prevalent for the last 50 or 60 years.
Ms. Louis
Where can people get your book?
Mr. Smith
It’s currently available via online retailers. You can get it on your Kindle, as an audiobook, or you can order it on paperback there, as well.