J: Welcome to Slingshot25 Shotcast, a series of bite-sized podcasts that will feel like an espresso shot to your brain. I’m Jackie.
C: And I’m Courtney.
J: Something we’ve been thinking about is what it feels like to work for your company. Mm. Yes. Your company, each and every one of you. It’s kind of creepy that we, we know where everyone works and we’ve been thinking about your workplace. It turns out that what it feels like to work for your company is what it feels like to work for you. And by the, you we’re talking to all of the yous out there who are a leader in your organization that.
C: Is profound and very, very true. ’cause if you think about your best work experience and your worst work experience, a person’s face comes to mind because your experience was based on what it felt like to work for them. That’s right. What did we just do?
J: I know. So what really getting at here, of course, is that leaders have an outsized impact on the employee experience. I mean, let’s be serious, there’s other things going on here, but. We really wanna focus in on the fact that, um, how you behave as a leader affects the people that work for you. I know there’s other stuff happening. I know other things go down in their day, but how you treat that person is a big deal. You are probably the most important input in terms of what the environment is like in your workplace for your team members
C: And yep, I think people who are leaders are always looking for. If at some level I get that right, like I wanna be good at this leadership thing, I want to do a good job with my teams. People are like, well, tell me the formula. Mm-hmm. So that I can like just, you know, just Google best leaders and what are their skills and what are their attributes. And we talk about this a lot on here, but it doesn’t work like that.
J: No, I Googled it. I think I told you this back in the day when you did Google things before you ChatGPT things. Um, and I got 494 million responses. Of how to be a good leader. So the sky’s the limit, and that leaves us in this place of understanding leadership as something that just really happens in every minute. It was Tom Peters who said, um, excellence is the next five minutes. And we say, we borrow that and we say it in leadership. Leadership is always what happens in the next five minutes, and there’s no formula for that. There’s no checklist for that. There’s certainly practices and skills and things that we teach that can make that next five minutes a much. Much more likely to be a better leadership moment, but it’s impossible for us to say exactly what you should do.
C: Yeah, I think people are sort of disappointed when we, when we share this a little bit, like it’d be, we’d like it too. Mm-hmm. Like it was just that easy. But here’s why, you know, it’s true that it really, it just depends and you have to sense and respond all the time. Really good leaders just constantly sense and respond and do the next thing. Like think about people that you’re really good friends with. Do you guys always like the same people? Do you always not like the same people? Do you have a really good friend that you’re really surprised with some of the choices they make in friends?
J: Mm, yes. That would be you, Courtney.
C: Oh, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, this is not okay. That’s good point. Sorry, I was just 86. This whole thing. I’m No, no, you’re good. So it’s how can that be right? If I’m a person of substance, if I’m a person of values, if I’m a person that shows up a certain way and I’m friends with you. And I really don’t like your friends. It just, it’s just evidence, right? That we are all different and each experience is different. You can, you can work for people and say, who’s the best boss you ever had? And someone will say, oh my gosh, I love so-and-so. And they’re like, what? Hmm? They were awful. Well, what’s true?
J: Right?
C: And what’s, what’s really true is that the best leaders, if you wanna be effective as a leader, you have to know your person in the moment and. Listen and pay attention and respond in a way that helps them feel valued and cared about all the time. That’s the only thing that works, ever. That’s right. And then they’re still gonna tell a story about you and might say, you were the worst boss they ever had, or the best boss. We don’t know. ’cause it’s complicated and it’s complex and it’s hard.
J: That’s right. Which, you know, let’s also just. To be completely and fully fair to all those leaders out there is it takes two to tango, as they say. Mm-hmm. Um, and so there are going to be people who don’t bring their best to work every day on your team, and despite your best efforts as a leader, it may still not work out. And we’re, we are, um. We are very quick to say that there’s no such thing as unlimited loyalty or unlimited patience.
We’re not saying hang in there with everyone because you have people on your team who, by their actions, are causing significant harm. And so it’s your job as a leader to deal with that. And if that ends up in them, no longer working there.
Um, yeah, I can imagine the story they’re gonna tell about you. This may lead us to another topic for another day, which is the idea of why it’s not a good goal to set as a leader to be liked by everyone. Hmm. That’d be a very good topic, but we’re also gonna talk about why, if you’re actually talking about that, you’ve kind of missed the point.
So we’ll talk about how that misses the point and how to think about it instead. But I think, I think we’ve said enough for, yeah. For now to fill your mind with your little shot of espresso. I like it. Okay, so I guess that’s all for this episode of our Shotcast, but we always have much more to say. And if you want more, you can drop us a at Slingshot25.com.
Until next time.
