Leadership Insights : Jonno White on Team Success

Leadership Insights. Jonno White on Team Success. We’re going to explore executive leadership challenges, particularly dealing with difficult people in your business. And we’ve all dealt with that, haven’t we? Be they suppliers, be they staff, be they even your clients and wannabe clients. We all know how difficult that can be.

So this is a big topic we’re going to cover. With Jono, who is a leadership expert. He’s an author. He’s also a podcaster much to explore lots of great tips and insights for you. You don’t want to miss this episode of Biz Bites. So hit subscribe and then get ready to listen in.

Welcome everyone to another episode of Biz Bites. And I have a guest today that we are going to uncover a whole lot of things, including a book that sold over 10, 000 copies that we want to hear more about. But firstly, let me introduce Jono to the program. Great to be here. Thanks for having me, Anthony.

And first of all, I guess what I like to do with all my guests is get them to introduce themselves and tell me a little bit about you. Yeah, absolutely. So I’m based in Brisbane, Australia. Co founded Clarity Group Global with my wife, Liz coming up on nine years ago now, and we specialize in facilitating executive team retreats, leadership team offsites.

I coach CEOs, school principals, executives, and as you mentioned in the intro I’m the author of a book. Called step up or step out how to deal with difficult people, even if you hate conflict which has sold 10, 000 copies around the world. And I host the leadership conversations with Jonno.

White podcast with listeners in 150 countries and 234 episodes so far. Ah, congratulations. I love that. We’re not quite that far. We’re about half way. The amount of episodes, but, charging along. And what’s fascinating about that for people who are listening in as well is that that definitely puts you well into the top 1 percent of podcasts because most people in business, when they start a podcast, don’t make it past about six episodes.

Yeah. It’s, and I understand that. I remember hearing that when I started the podcast. And so what I did, it was around COVID. Everyone’s got their around COVID story, right? Isn’t that funny? But I started my podcast probably four years ago now. And so I just decided I’ve got a bit of extra time. People weren’t.

Obviously weren’t meeting face to face. A lot of my work is with teams. So all of a sudden I had a bit of extra time to work on the business and I thought that’s it. I’m going to do a podcast where I have conversations with leaders and I just booked. I went, you know what? I’m just gonna, I’m going to go to my network and book as many great leaders as I can.

And I remember one day I just booked leader after leader into my schedule. I think I had seven interviews in that day. And these are often, 45 minute. Anyway, I learned from that. I was like, wow, that is one of the most exhausting things I’ve ever done in my life. But it did mean that in the first few months I was able to get through a lot of interviews and.

I learned more from that. I’ve learned more from my podcast than anything else I’ve ever done in my life. There’s just something about sitting and listening intently to a leader, tell their stories. That, when you do that hundreds of times, I feel like there’s so much now that I talk about in leadership that I link back to, during an episode of the podcast.

I love it. It’s exactly the same thing for me. It’s such a privilege to be able to talk to people like yourself, but I think one of the great things is that you’re constantly learning as a leader and what a wonderful opportunity to be able to do that through the art of podcasting and sharing those conversations with other people.

And those that have been listening to my podcast for a while will know that we’ve had some amazing leaders from all over the, around the world as well as part of the program. And I learned just as much as everybody who’s listening in and you do make those little things. And it is amazing how now, when you start to talk with people, you do think, Oh, gee, that came from an episode of the podcast.

Yeah, I was talking to such and such. Which is a wonderful thing to have. So let’s talk a little bit about about leadership. But firstly, frame it for me a little bit. How did all of this begin for you? Yeah the story for me is I feel like some leaders. story where they come out of a career or they come out of a time where they’ve just done everything right.

They’ve just made every, successful move possible. And then it’s, Hey, come and listen to me, tell you how amazing my amazing philosophies of leadership. Whereas for me I always start when I’m, presenting or anywhere is telling my story, which is that my background was business development and marketing, but I had this opportunity to work in a nonprofit and I had.

30 volunteers. I was leading and working with young people. And so for me, that was my first opportunity. I had direct reports before, but it was my first opportunity where I really felt, the weight of leadership. There was something I was really pioneering. I was running. I had a group of people that I felt I needed to, envision and inspire.

And so I wouldn’t have articulated it this way back then. But what I now realize is I walked into it going, you know what, if I can just do an amazing job at all these, everything that I’ve already learned so far, and I had great mentors around me and I was learning around dealing with young people, working with families doing a lot of speaking, and I thought if I can just nail each one of those and do these exceptionally well, then everyone’s going to follow me into the sunset and away we go.

So a couple of months in, I remember after being on the tools in that, working hard, feeling like I’m improving in lots of areas of my own. Skill set in this role and then I go, I remember standing in the room with these 30 volunteers and I had this feeling that I think a lot of leaders can identify with based on my, my, my conversations with them is I just had this sinking stomach feeling like in the pit of my stomach, just this.

Disappointment, discouragement, just Oh no, what have I done? We hope you’re enjoying listening to the Biz Bytes podcast. Have you ever thought about having your own podcast? One for your business, where your brilliance is exposed to the rest of the world. Come talk to us at Podcasts Done For You.

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Come talk to us, podcastdoneforyou. com. au, details in the show notes below. Now, back to BizBytes. And I had this feeling that I think a lot of leaders can identify with based on my, my, my conversations with them is. I just had this sinking stomach feeling like in the pit of my stomach, just this disappointment, discouragement, just Oh no, what have I done?

Because I looked around the room and I saw these 30 people who are highly competent, extremely passionate about what we were doing. But as I looked around the room, I realized, Oh my goodness, I have no idea how to get a bunch of people going in the same direction. I’ve got this amazing group of people, but I think everyone’s running in their own.

Towards their own sunset. There’s no alignment and unity rowing in the same direction, and it really scared me and it really overwhelmed me because I felt like maybe I was a bit on my own. I felt yeah, I just really didn’t know what to do. And so the as often happens in those moments, a couple of weeks went by where I was really low, just not sure how to move forward.

And then my wife went away for a for a couple of weeks and we, this is before we had kids. And so I remember one night thinking, what am I going to do? And someone had recommended a book to me, Patrick Lencioni’s, the five dysfunctions of a team. And so I had this book sitting there and I picked it up at 7 PM.

I thought, Oh, you know what? I’ll have to give this a bit of a read. And then at 2 AM, I put it down and I just read it cover to cover. And I don’t know if it should take that long. I just absorbed that book. It was like Patrick Lenz. He only was had written it for me. And I think it’s I just realized, like I was saying before, that many leaders I hear stories of, you know how they just took to it really naturally.

But for me, particularly when it comes to building a team, I found so much of that counterintuitive. And I found the natural things I would lean in or lean out of. I had to overcome and learn, and I was reading this going in. I have built the most dysfunctional team and it’s on me. We’re not meeting like it’s the one on one stuff.

It’s the, Oh, how can you have a healthy team if you don’t even have any clarity around what people are doing? We’re not meeting. And so that really was the start of a journey over a couple of years where there were some highs, there were some lows, lots of mistakes made. But as I just started reading and learning more about how to build a high performing team about how to get a bunch of people rowing in the same direction, how to cast vision and inspire people.

I found myself at the whiteboard taking my own leadership team on and offside. And more and more every time I did that, I just felt like I was in my sweet spot. And a couple of years later, to cut a long story short, I was in that same room, but our team of volunteers had grown to 45. And we, and I remember having a similar moment.

Where I looked around the room, but this time the word that I felt so strongly at the time, I just felt such relief because this weight of leadership around, how do you get a bunch of people going in the same direction? I just remember looking around and just feeling this lightness, just like this relief going, you know what, this bunch of people, it’s not like they were really any different, but what had happened over a couple of years is I knew that I had their back.

I knew they had my back. And I knew we were all going in the same direction and I wasn’t on my own and that for me was a real pinnacle moment. And I think that also speaks to a lot of what I now do with other leaders is how do you get, yeah, how do you go from feeling like you’re pushing a rock up a hill by yourself to creating that stampede of momentum in your team, in your organization where it’s like, Yeah that it is possible.

But and probably my favorite quote that I use almost the most is a Lencioni quote. I love Patrick Lencioni or Patrick Lencioni, if you’re gonna be, but I say Patrick Lencioni , and he says Always correct. Yeah, , he talks about building a team, but I found it’s true for really most leadership and whether it’s building a team, an organization culture self-leadership.

And he talks about, he says, to build a healthy, building a healthy team is. It’s both possible and remarkably simple, but painfully difficult. And that’s been my experience of leadership to this point. It’s such a, it’s so poignant really, because the truth is that most businesses begin with an individual starting something up.

And so you’ve got this whole idea of letting go at various points. Bringing in extra people into what is your little baby, and it’s a difficult thing to bring those people in. But it’s a difficult thing then to steer people in terms of a vision and allow other people to bring vision to the table as well.

And I can imagine having also. Spent some time working in the not for profit sector. I understand totally how difficult it is to lead a bunch of volunteers because, of course, by nature, they’re volunteers. So they’re very self motivated to wanting to help and often with the best of intentions. They’re not necessarily towing the company line per se.

And that’s it’s actually, one of the greatest, I think, learning grounds for people to become a leader is to actually lead a group of volunteers. Yeah, I agree. I think. I think I didn’t realize I was diving into the deep end, but I think when you do take away that paycheck and you have someone volunteering.

It does. I think it forces you to explore things like casting vision or how, even more because that’s what you’ve got. That’s all you’ve got to actually work with. Yeah. And I think what as a little side note, I think what a lot of not for profits forget. Is that and not even the not for profits.

I think it’s often the people who are dealing with the not for profits forget that it’s all very well to have a group of volunteers. But unless you have someone that is employed, that is a leader of those people. The volunteers can do more harm than good because the best of intentions, they can pull things apart.

Yeah, it’s so true. I think It’s one of the starting points. It’s probably why I’m so passionate about leadership teams and why I once again, something that I really agree with Linceone on is, he says, if I could go into one place in the company to know whether they’re healthy or not, it would be to go into their leadership team meeting.

And I think this is really a challenge for for nonprofits because it’s very easy to get into the space where you’re too desperate to keep your volunteers. That you allow I guess mission drift, you allow inappropriate behavior that wouldn’t be accepted elsewhere. And if anything, it’s, this is where the counterintuitive side of it really hit me is in a nonprofit.

I think with volunteers, you almost have to have a higher standard because you want to attract the best people who, and those best people they won’t put up with. low standards and poor behavior, particularly if they’re volunteering. If I’m gonna be generous with my time and give, I want to be somewhere where I know I’m making a difference and things are run well.

And so it becomes this two edged sword where if you allow those standards to drop, I’m desperate. I’ve got to keep all my volunteers happy. And yeah, I don’t want to have difficult conversations with them because they are giving up their time. Then you allow really bad behavior to fester and continue.

And sure, that’s bad. But the real hit that you take Is that your best people? They go, you know what, if you’re not going to take this seriously and deal with that stuff, then I’m out. Yeah. And I think that one of the flip sides as well for me was always seeing, you would see companies that would come in and say, we’re going to have a day where we’re all volunteering and we want to paint.

And you going as the organization, you’ve got to work out is that actually in the best interest of. Anybody do we really need the paint? Is the paint going to be up to standard? And how much management is it going to take for us to actually get this done in a reasonable fashion?

There’s lots of pretty photographs at the end, but does it actually raise the bar for the organization? And I think often again, businesses that deal with charities Often forget that they need to volunteer with open arms, but also be prepared that there needs ongoing assistance. I’ve also seen that in many cases where you’ve had businesses of different sizes come into an organization, a non for profit volunteer to do something, that might be in their ballgame.

I’ve seen it done with with a brochure even where there was a company that came in and designed this brochure. And then it once it was designed, it was no longer a priority. But the problem was they designed it without actually really talking to the organization properly. And then this Piece was so impractical.

It was one of these fold out ones. You don’t see them that often anymore. That’s you don’t fold it into something smaller than you fold it out, but actually to fold it out, you had to turn it upside down and back to front. Like it was just the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen in my life. And it made no sense for the organization.

And when I came in as a, at the time as a consultant, actually paid. And I said, with all the best of intentions for this, you just got to throw this out the window. Like they meant well, but it was no longer a priority for them. And I think that. That’s where it’s really interesting as well is that I think there’s a lot that business and not for profit can learn from one another, particularly in the area of leadership, because being able to say no is also a very difficult thing as a leader, no matter whether you’re a small business or you’re a large corporate or a not for profit.

Yeah, I agree completely learning to say no. I think it’s a challenge a lot of us have in our lives in general, but definitely organizationally. I love there’s a great book by Robert Cialdini called Influence. And he talks about different psychology and sales. And I love it because he takes some I guess some ideas around the human psychology and boils them down into ways that are really applicable in business and leadership.

And a couple of things he talks about. In that book, which is just understanding human psychology and what draws us to things, which we all hear about in marketing, but it’s this idea of scarcity, the more scarce something is in supply, the more we want it and and I think for me, it’s, this is one thing that I found that a lot of leaders across business, across nonprofit forget is that, and and if I put it another way, and there’s another author, I love Daniel Priestly, I love his work, and he talks about in his book oversubscribed, how when businesses I guess to use an example in businesses, Want to create more supply.

So things going well, got lots of demand, but suddenly I’m creating more opportunities for people to work with us more spots in my webinars more client and sessions. I’m hiring some people to do more work so that there’s more available. And we think I’m expanding my business. I’m creating more.

But the problem is that if we are creating more supply than demand, we’re actually decreasing scarcity. And what happens I think in nonprofits is when you have things like volunteers, you think I want everyone, I want anyone with a pulse, a warm body with a pulse come and volunteer. And we think I’m going to get more people and it’s going to, it’s going to be amazing.

The problem is. As you do that and you expand your, opportunities that people have, you actually lower or, the scarcity and you actually potentially make things less desirable for the right people. And this is where I think this concept, which is why I love Robert Cialdini and influence how he unpacks this and many other things as well.

But I love that idea of saying, you know what, whether you are selling a product, whether you are selling a service, whether your heart, whether you’re hiring or looking to open up opportunities for volunteers, counterintuitively, if you can keep that quite narrow, if you can keep your supply quite limited.

You don’t want to take people through a rigmarole that’s really unnecessary or horrible to get a role. But what you do want to do is you want to say, hey, this is high value. We really value our people. We actually really value our volunteers. That’s why we don’t just let anyone volunteer, potentially.

That’s why when someone wants to, they need to go through this and this process. And that’s why we’ll then let you know if you’re a fit. And people get really, in the non profit, get really scared of this. You don’t want to offend those volunteers. But I think if you can do that, if you can use that authentically, once again, it’s not about manufacturing or manipulating, but if you can actually authentically limit your supply in a healthy way, so instead of just taking on 20 volunteers, if you’re starting a new thing, take on five that, you can manage really well and you might have 15 people who are keen and you say to 10 of them, I’m so sorry, I just don’t have the resources right now to bring you in.

And what happens is as you work with those five, Okay. Those other 10 instead of thinking, maybe someone, maybe one of them thinks you’re terrible. Sure, that always happens, right? But for the most part, they’re going to walk away going, Oh my goodness, I really want to volunteer now. Like the fact that they they pushed back and said.

Makes me even more keen. And so when you then can take on another 10 and you go to that, you go back to them and say, Hey, come, we’ve now got the capacity and now you have 20 people who are keen. I think that idea is very foreign to nonprofits, but I think that is one of, I think that’s probably one of the most misunderstood elements of human psychology that I see leaders.

Struggling with because it’s just we want to create more capacity, more opportunities. And I think sometimes people don’t realize that by just trying to do more, they’re actually decreasing the scarcity of what they have and therefore actually decreasing the perceived value for the people involved.

Yeah, I think it’s often, isn’t it? That people are thinking about got to get spread it further and further with the idea that, oh, it could become cheaper and cheaper when you’re talking in terms of products and spreading that. And it’s the same thing with people and bigger isn’t always better.

It can be, but it isn’t always and it’s funny. We were talking for everyone. We were talking before we came on air about the fact that you’ve got a newborn and anyone that’s had children that start to get older and always says to newer parents say, just bigger kids, bigger problems.

You enjoy it while you’re there. And it’s the same with business, right? It’s. Bigger business, bigger problems. It’s there’s and particularly when you’re dealing with people and we’ve been talking about volunteers, but the same applies to staff, doesn’t it? This is obviously what you’re dealing with.

Mostly with CEOs is around people who are paid to be there. And sometimes the best people in terms of their ability to do jobs is not necessarily the best for the team and trying to build that team culture. We see it in sport all the time, don’t we? That not necessarily the greatest group of individuals in their positions makes the best team.

Sometimes you need things to work in partnership and in sync so that you find that right blend for any given, opponent that you’ve got. Yeah, so true. I’m a Manchester United supporter and if you, for anyone who doesn’t follow the Premier League in England. They’ve just been the epitome, the past decade of a team with so many amazing players who have not been able to do anything significant as a group.

They’re like the great, and I heard, I can’t remember where I heard it. Otherwise I would love to give them, um, on a for it, but I can’t remember where I heard it. But I mean, recently, someone was saying that sometimes it’s not about which is really what you were just saying there. They’re not so focused on building the best team as they are on building the right team.

And I thought, Oh, wait, that’s really challenging because it’s easy to say. You don’t want to just have a team of great people. You want to have a great team. Kind of everyone agrees with that, but to actually say, you know what, even the best team, sometimes it’s, that’s less effective than the right team, which might mean you make a really key hire in that team that goes against what you would say if you were just purely looking at performance and.

But you know that actually the way they’re going to work with everyone else may not be the best on paper, but it’s the right thing for what we need to do. And this is so much easier said than done. And I’ve been working with someone recently where we’ve had these exact conversations about two different people.

And one of them is just the best, a great opportunity to be part of the best team on paper. And even just when, when you meet them, you see there are, they’re amazing. But there’s another person who’s also who’s much, much less in your face performance. But what they do have is they’re extremely consistent, extremely teachable.

And little things like just the speed with which they communicate and the quality has been really surprising. And I’ve been saying to this leader, look, I think counterintuitively, that second person is the one for you in this season. And I think this is something as well that might be a little bit misunderstood for different teams.

And like you said, this, it’s like having kids versus having toddler versus a teenager. It’s the size of your company for this leader. I was chatting to her saying from where you’re at, you don’t need disruption right now. You need in this season. What really the next 12 months for you is you need consistency.

You need to, you need someone who’s going to come in and just coming back to a sports analogy. Just like that bowler and cricket. I’m a massive cricket fan. It’s like that bowler who sure they’re not pulling 150 k’s now they’re pulling 130, but they’re hitting the same spot every ball.

And that’s what’s that’s what that team needs for now. So, this is why it’s easier said than done. I think it really can be context dependent, and that’s something I’ve had to learn. I think as well. I wanted everything to be black and white, but over, the recent months and years, I thought sometimes you do want that disruption.

Sometimes you do want someone who’s going to come in. And who’s going to push all, just question everything and push it. You want that personality because that team is a bit stagnant. They’re a bit stale. They need that. Whereas probably a few years ago I would have tried to just make it a one rule fits all, cause it would be neater.

But I think that’s one of the things I’ve been learning as well is it’s very context dependent. And something that’s right for one ceo in one context might not be the right thing for another ceo in their context. Absolutely. I think that is so important, isn’t it? That you need to look at the context each time to fully appreciate what is the right move to make.

And, I found it interesting as well that, it’s not just this thing internally. It’s listening externally. I’ve dealt with an organization in recent times where they made a significant change in one of the high profile, if you like, people that front and center for the organization, and I know that the, the founder of the organization and He has known this person for a long time and really loves this person.

But the reaction that has been that I’ve seen from everybody else around it is completely the opposite. And I actually see people, moving away. Because of that person. So sometimes the difficult decision as well is that you might love the person. Do you keep them on board or not? And then also it could be that for all I know that you haven’t had this discussion with the founder to find out if indeed this is a decision about making a practical change in direction for the organization.

And therefore, getting rid of some people is not always a bad thing in terms of could be clients. It could be team members. In order to push the vision in another direction. So that challenge of what actually qualifies as difficult in terms of an individual is in itself a difficult one to unpack.

Yeah, it’s so true. Once again I think I had a stance that was probably more black and white on this, a while back. And then as an example, I remember chatting to a leader. Recently, who is a turnaround school principal, and he was saying how he went into a school, an international school, outside that was run by a school curriculum from, I can’t remember if it was Australia or US or UK, but it was in a different country.

And and he came in and their accreditation was, had gone absolutely down the sink, like they were in trouble and it was to the point where the school was going to have to close in six months if they didn’t turn it around. And the previous principals at the school had just hired people and run curriculum and different things that was just not up to scratch for years.

And he was telling me how he had to replace 90 percent of the people over, the first few months that he was there, not because just because they literally didn’t have the skills to meet the accreditation required for this school to function. And so I heard that story and I thought what do you do with that?

He really had to. Experience and lead a 90 percent turnover, and I think it’s just one of those circumstances where it breaks every rule. Like, how do you do that? I think you do your best to do that with kindness. You do your best sure to have clear communication, but Definitely leaders who confront situations like that.

It’s it really does mean that even books like my book, Step Up or Step Out, I think sometimes there’s circumstances where I go, Wow, yeah, this is going to work so well for your situation. And others where you go, Oh, wow, you’re, this is really different. This is. This would need its own book because your circumstances are so unique.

I want to come back to the book in a moment, but I just want to explore how you deal with that. It just give us a bit of an insight. If you’re the CEO of an organization and you’re dealing with. Difficult people. And again, defining difficult is that’s probably the first part, isn’t it? Is that is it difficult for the business?

Is it difficult for the other team members? Is it going to be difficult for your clients? Is there a direction to take? How do you go about unpacking that? What are some, tips and insights for people who might be listening in saying, Yeah, this is me. I’m dealing with this right now. Yeah, great question.

I think the first thing I’d say, and I get a lot of pushback from people on the title of the book, how to deal with difficult people, even if you hate conflict, because they say that it’s unfair to label people difficult. And I always say, I agree. But the reason I call, the reason I called the book, Step Up or Step Out, How to Deal with Difficult People, Even if You Hate Conflict, is because that’s the language that someone In a management role, a leadership role, who’s experiencing a challenge with someone they’re leading.

That’s the language they use. They don’t search how to deal with a person who has a different personality to me. They look at and they think, how on earth do I deal with this difficult person or maybe other language? That’s how it feels when you’re the leader. And so that’s why the first thing I’d say is often people aren’t difficult, they’re different.

And this is definitely the case with a lot of leadership teams where I come in and they bring me in to deal with the elephant in the room and there’s someone who is rubbing everyone the wrong way or they’re just and it can be personality, right? So you may have someone who has a really different personality or they just don’t click with the leader or with other colleagues.

Um, and so that’s where there’s a lot of nuances to as to what you’re dealing with, are we dealing with someone who’s just different and we need to understand each other better? And that’s going to actually solve the problem. Or are we dealing with someone who? When we talk about them being difficult, it’s a case of potentially dropping the ball on key things which could impact people, life or death scenarios.

It’s like there’s different levels. What I talk about in the book, which I think is for me has been one of the most helpful ideas around what makes the difficult person so difficult. So I talk about the four ingredients of the recipe for disaster and I’m What I experienced and the reason I wrote the book is that I was having coaching sessions with leaders and it would be like session, one in every two sessions.

This would come up. What, what’s the thing you’re wrestling with? What’s keeping you up at night? It’s this person. I don’t know how to deal with them. It’s this person. They’re just, they’re going behind people’s backs. They’re undermining. It’s this person. I just can’t seem to get them to buy in.

And it happens so much. And I was dealing with these people again and again. That I, when I eventually wrote the book, it felt like I’d written it, in a hundred coaching sessions because I, gone through this process with people so often. And so what I talk about in the book is how most of us, myself included, and I did this in, in a really shocking way that I look back at and just, I had the best intentions and mostly just do.

I had some, I had a couple of people that I was finding difficult and I thought. Like I said, had the best intentions, but the four ingredients, the recipe for disaster, which ends up blowing up in our face when we’re dealing with a difficult person is the first thing is unclear expectations.

And what often happens, and I’ll get to the fourth one, which answers your question around what makes it to be a person so difficult, but I just thought I’d give this for some context. So what usually happens is a leader has someone come into their team. And everything’s great at the start, and so it’s Oh, I could clarify this.

I could clarify that, what they seem like a good person and I think they’ve got their head around it and I’ve got 50 other things to do. And it could be a bit uncomfortable to talk about this or that. And once again, best intentions. I don’t want to create conflict. I don’t want to create issues.

I want to support this person. So I’m not going to go there and be really clear at the start. And then the second ingredient is that we pick big battles. And so what happens is little things come up. Oh, okay. That’s Oh, wow. That behavior. That’s the third time I’ve heard about that now. But I don’t want to put them out.

I don’t want to micromanage. I’m not going to go there. I’m not going to have a conversation. And I see this all the time and over three months, six months, two years sometimes. A leader doesn’t go there, but it’s snowballs. And so finally, something happens, whether it’s something circumstantially, whether it’s one of your best people going, Oh my goodness, you need to deal with this, or whether it’s, there’s some light, there’s some trigger in the leader where they just hit a point where they’re like a volcano and they’re like, I have to deal with this.

And so what happens is this three months, six months, two years of little things turns into a big one off meeting, a big one off battle. And that leads us to the third. Ingredient, right? So the first ingredient we’ve got, we started with unclear expectations. They’re not as clear as they could be, to be really clear.

The second thing that we’ve got is we’re picking a big one off battle. Not intentionally, but that’s how it ends up happening at Snowballs. And then the third one is We just throw in there the element of surprise and the problem with the element of surprise is any time and I’m getting more and more sure of this for leaders This is one of my ultimate litmus test for any leader you walk into a meeting with one of your people and you say something do something ten minutes in and They have that look on their face or say back to you like oh, whoa I had no idea where this is coming from and they’re shocked and they’re surprised and You’ve got a problem.

That’s a big red flag to go back to the beginning to unclear expectations because there’s this great word someone on my podcast shared with me and I can’t remember what the word is in Korean, but it means it means a combination of surprised and ambushed and it’s like that feeling when I’m, yes, I’m surprised, but also you’re ambushing me on this.

And so you can imagine you’ve got the leader, myself included. When I did this, I start with some unclear expectations. I have the best intentions, but I end up getting to a point where I’m like, that’s it. I’m going to sit them down and have a chat with them. And then I completely ambush them with my, which to me, it might not be a big deal.

And I think they should they must know that they’re doing this, right? Come on. They’re the three, but the fourth ingredient is the difference between someone that is really easy to run this process with. And I’d say 95 percent of people that you do the process from my book with will either step up and change their behavior or step out and actually leave the organization within four weeks.

And I know that seems really fast, but that has a lot to do with the human capacity to handle accountability. Like we just won’t put up with someone calling us on our behavior in transparent, kind, clear ways. It’s way shorter than we usually expect, but what makes a difference is the fourth thing is unrealistic expectations and unrealistic expectations, not from me, but from the other person.

And I believe this is ultimately what makes truly difficult people so difficult and any leader or any person who says, no, there aren’t difficult people. It’s just all about how you work with them has never worked with a truly difficult person. I’m convinced because they are out there. And this is where you start looking at things like a victim mentality.

So you’re going back to family of origin and someone who turns every situation into I’m the victim. You start looking at things like potentially personality disorders. There’s a great book called High Conflict People. And I was just like, Oh my goodness, this is so true. I’ve never thought of it this way.

But there are people that just everywhere they go, you look at their Henry Cloud, an author talks about the wake that people leave behind them like a boat. And it’s like you look at the wake that a leader has and you think, or even a person in team, you’re like, wow, the water behind you is choppy.

Like there, there is a massive wake behind you versus someone who is smooth and look back and you think, wow, they’ve really dealt well with people. And the problem with unrealistic expectations is that someone who has unrealistic expectations often gets triggered very easily and if someone’s getting triggered very easily, then when we’re triggered, we’re irrational.

And so anyone who’s tried to rationalize with someone who’s in an irrational state knows how stupefying that is and how frustrating it is because, and the reason it’s so frustrating is you cannot rationalize. With someone who’s in an irrational state, like it, it says it in the title. So when someone is, the thing that makes people truly difficult is if there’s really unrealistic expectations there.

And that for a leader is incredibly challenging because they’re seeing things through a lens that seems completely irrational and probably is completely irrational. And so my ultimate advice to leaders, wherever you can is not to hire difficult people as much as you can, because truly difficult.

If you can, if you get that gut feeling or you hear some stories, I remember this happened to me once where another leader who’d led someone shared. Oh, I did find that they did this and this, are you sure you want to hire them? And I was like no, they’re going to be great.

And I ignored the warning signs that there was some unrealistic expectations. I’m not talking about different personality. I’m talking about really. Like I said, sometimes personality disorder someone who’s just not seeing things in reality and they’re looking at things irrationally.

That what makes, that’s what makes someone truly difficult and that makes the whole process.

Some amazing advice there. We’ve got to wrap things up shortly, but there’s a question I wanted to ask you. And this is a bit of a question without notice in some respects, but how many times have you dealt with a, an organization where the person that is the difficult one turns out to be the CEO? And how do you actually.

Manage that process and do people have a realization that, hang on, whether it is the CEO or someone else, but have that realization that I am being the difficult person. Can I turn that around versus the, as you talked about, within four weeks leaving? This is such a good question.

And I’m going to give it a little bit of a controversial answer. Because it’s such a good question and I think there might be listeners who may be their boss, their CEO is the difficult one. So the first thing that I’d say is unfortunately, I’ve come to the conclusion more and more that an organization, the leader is the ceiling of that organization.

So the CEO so if you’re working with a CEO where they have a really low ceiling of emotional intelligence they’re very threatened by people. So they won’t put people around them that are that will challenge them. That will be the ceiling for the organization. And I wish it wasn’t but I’m just more and more certain that’s the case.

That’s why it’s so important that we have great emotionally intelligent, teachable humble, CEO’s leading organizations, right? The problem with a difficult person in that role, someone who has unrealistic expectations, is that this often plays out, one of the biggest ways this plays out is emotionally, a lack of emotional intelligence.

And so a lack of emotional intelligence, the problem with that is that emotional intelligence is so directly linked to self awareness. And so someone who really lacks emotional intelligence or has very unrealistic expectations, Often lacks, has a severe lack of self awareness. And if you follow this through, therefore the person with the least self awareness is the least likely to be aware that they need the help.

And it’s, it really does create this spiral where you have someone like that means, and as a result to answer your question is, I almost never work with someone like that. I almost never am approached by someone like that. I remember maybe one person who approached me. One time and said to me, John, I want the hard feedback.

I want you to come in and sit on our sitting on our leadership team meeting virtually. And I did that, and it was a bit earlier on in clarity, and I took them at their word. I was like, they want it, man, that’s awesome. Good on them. So I did this. I sat in on the meeting and they ran this leadership team meeting that was just I had to do list check.

There was no autonomy, no empowerment to anyone in the room. And I thought at the time they said they wanted the honest, hard feedback. So when we caught up again, I was like I think with that meeting I felt it wasn’t really a meeting. There was no real discussion. It was more of just, you were checking everyone’s to do list.

And they were so deeply offended. They were so deeply offended. After that, they wrote me a couple of emails that kind of felt like I’d done the wrong thing by them and I realized, ah, they thought they wanted the hard feedback. But they actually didn’t have any of the self awareness where I had just come in like a bull into their fragile little China shop of the way that they think about themselves as a leader.

And I just given some really simple and I thought very gentle. Feedback and it completely they completely couldn’t handle it and we never worked together after that. That’s one of the only ones that comes to mind. So to answer your question, the people who have this and probably are having the biggest challenges in this area as a CEO are probably the least likely to seek me out because they just don’t see it in the mirror.

And if someone can grow through that and learn to see it in the mirror, I have let more respect for them than almost anyone else in leadership. I think that is. Shockingly, like I’ve seen it. I have seen, I’ve met people where they go, yeah, 20 years ago, this is what I was getting. And I got, I had to get fired by that board or that job.

But since I’ve learned this about myself. And I just think they’re amazing people, but they’re very rare. I love all of that. And I think you’re right. We could trade a few more stories on those things. You might have to do that off here. But I wanted to just remind everyone the book, the details for how to get a hold of the book.

We will it’s a step up or step out and we will include all those details. Course in the show notes as well as how to get a hold of Jono as well. But just to wrap things up, the question I like to ask all of my guests is what is the aha moment that people who come to work with you have that you wish more people would know about in advance that they were going to have?

Oh yeah. That’s a, that’s another really good question. I love your questions. The biggest aha moment I’ve seen people have, which surprised me, I don’t know if you’ve found this, but when I do content, I often think I’ve got the most amazing idea and then people. Barely react. And then something else that you say in passing, people say, can you go back and do that again?

And that is that. The aha moment that people have is about, it’s usually leaders where they’re leading a team and I talk to them about the team being like a ship. Sorry, it’s a, give me a minute to just explain the aha moment. But this is the thing that I get the most response from people on.

And I say, look, your organization is like a ship and there’s Fiji and there’s Antarctica, Fiji, everything is warm. You’re on the beach, you’re achieving everything you want to do in your mission as an organization. And people love working there. Antarctica, everything’s dead. It’s cold. And we all know. In our ships as the captains, the leader, we all know we want to go to Fiji and our people do too.

But sometimes you start drifting towards Antarctica and so you say everyone throw out the heavy stuff or get send out the lifeboats and pull us towards Fiji. But to go with the ship analogy. That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Because we all know what we really need to do is just get that tiny little rudder underneath the ship and to move it towards Fiji.

And if that’s going well, then that will take us there. And the rudder for your ship is your leadership team. And if your leadership team can get a little bit more aligned and a little bit more clear on where they’re Then that makes all the difference in getting to Fiji rather than all the other symptoms we try to solve.

I love it. It’s very much in line with a a mentor of mine who’s fond of shape fond of asking everyone, will it make the boat go faster? And that’s the it’s a perfect analogy to end on. So thank you so much for being an amazing guest. We’ve covered a difficult subject and in a fun way, which I love doing.

And thank you because I, I think all of these things, and I think to the point that you were making just a moment ago, if you can make these little changes, they’re more significant sometimes than coming in with something big and exciting, because yes, people love that big, exciting idea, but often it takes a lot of energy to make that actually happen.

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