Decoding Influencer Marketing

0:28That's what leadership looks like. it might be fun for us, not fun for them, but I thought it might be fun for us to kind of break down what went down and maybe give them some advice because I think there's a really good chance that pretty much everybody who's listening here, if you have team members, that you're going to have a similar experience. So here's what happened. They kind of found out through the grapevine that some of their team members were basically talking a whole lot of smack about them, Right. And so I think we all know that there are times when our teams will disagree with certain decisions and things like that.

1:03But in this case, you know, apparently a number of team members went out for, you know, you know, for some drinks after after work one day. They got together and they were talking and they basically just spent the entire time, you know, bad mouthing the CEO, bad mouth and the boss. And one person who was there kind of felt bad about it and then essentially went and ratted on everybody else. And so it kind of creates this weird dynamic because, you know, obviously there's an issue that's taking place. You know, obviously there's some people aren't happy. And, you know, these are folks that the CEO values, you know, from a team perspective.

1:39They were surprised by it. They were understandably hurt by it. The word I felt betrayed, the word betrayed was used a little bit, you know, in this. And having been in this experience myself, I know this can really, really suck because you feel like you're doing everything. You know you're not doing anything right, but you feel like you're doing the best that you can and you hope that your team feels that as well. And then to find out that not only do they think that you kind of suck, but they're also going to kind of talk crap about you behind your back. So what do you do about that? Right. How do you handle it?

2:15How do you make sure that, and now you got this other person, you don't want them to seem like a total narc, right? Now everybody's going to hate them. So it's a challenging dynamic. It seems like doing nothing, you know, is kind of tough. So I had some feedback. I had some ideas. I'm just curious what you would do in that instance. I mean, it's really uncharted ground for me because, I mean, I'm generally loved by everyone. Well, you would first have to make a mistake, which has never happened. Yeah, I think that it's we had this with one of our friends, Sam, who I don't know if you know this or not, but he had he has a real estate company and an escrow company.

2:58And the escrow company, basically, he found out through one of the people that the entire escrow company was not only unhappy, but leaving to go work for his biggest competitor. and wasn't going to say anything to him. And so I think that you have to understand first that people are going to do what's in their own interest. And so I get the feeling betrayed, but you just have to understand the people that work for you. Anyone you pay to be your friend is not your friend. And so you have a relationship that is a business relationship with everyone that you pay to do something for you, including the people that work for you.

3:39And so you have to understand their loyalty is first to themselves. And that's how it should be to themselves and their family. They got to take care of that. So I think if you understand that, maybe it makes it hurt a little bit less. It's never fun to find out that people were saying, you know, nasty things behind your back. But unlike what I used to do, which is, you know, where can I go on the dark web to hire a hit team to kill them all? Uh, now the slightly more mature version of me says there must be a failure of leadership if the entire group is doing that. And that falls to me, how can I improve to fix the situation?

4:18And so I think that's like, truly, that's how I would try to look at it in between the, you know, pepperings of contempt. Um, but you know, and I'm like, you know, Hey, these people used to be a value to me. I'm just kidding again. But so I think that for me, it would be, I would approach them each individually and say, listen, I'm trying to figure out how to do things better. And I'd love to get your honest, sincere feedback off the record. No, you know, no strings attached to it. Tell me how you think, you know, what do you think we're doing wrong? And what do you think we're doing right? And what specifically do you think we could do to improve it?

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7:05I'll see you there. What are you, what, what are, what is our friend doing and what are you thinking? Well, I'm not quite sure what they're going to do yet. They're still swirling around in the emotional aspect of it. And I do think, I love what you said there. It is important that you give yourself, if this happens to you, you've got to give yourself enough space to kind of let just the emotion of the, probably the dopamine or whatever the chemical is that just got unleashed into your bloodstream, you kind of got to let it fade. So they were ready to fire off some emails. I was like, you have to sleep.

7:41And it was a Friday, right? I was like, please do not do this on a Friday and have it lingering. I remember you and I having conversations about not sending an email. I have learned this from the best. And so, yeah, I think that is the first thing is you have to pause, right? That is thing number one is you just have to pause. And in that pause, I love what you said, I think. And I asked them. And it's funny. I did have this conversation with Sam, who's not the person I'm referencing. And so we know two people that this has happened to literally in the last couple of weeks. I'm embarrassed to say that this has happened to me four times that I can remember, where I've heard through the grapevine that people that I trusted.

8:19So I say that just so that you know, if you've had this experience as a CEO, it doesn't mean that you're fundamentally broken or that you're a failure. I don't know a single CEO who is operating a team at any scale that isn't going to have this happen to them. I think the first thing, again, is pause. The second thing is to ask very sincerely after you've paused, how much of this do I own? And I remember chatting with Sam and being like, well, are they right? Excellent first question, right? And it was the same question I asked this person. I was like, based on what they said, are they right? And I think that's a really important question to ask because look, if they're right, even 1%, then I think your follow-up posturing needs to be at least in the beginning to own 100 % of that.

9:07I think that's really, really important. 1 % is 100%. That's what leadership looks like. That's what extreme ownership looks like. If any of it is yours, it is all yours. Now, clearly they have their own mistakes that they've perhaps made in the communication of it. We talk about that. But I don't believe that those mistakes would perhaps invalidate the overarching kind of issue challenge, which may just be kind of a cultural one. So we can come back to that. So I do think that those are the first two. You have to also understand that they are, or it helps to understand, that they are, at that point, they have lived with whatever it was for long enough that it's percolated to the point where they feel a need, generally in a spontaneous explosion of emotion, to vent.

9:50And that's okay also, because people say things that they don't mean when they're venting and people can be unnecessarily mean when they're venting and they're frustrated too. So that's the other thing is that, you know, think about your worst thought that you've had in any situation where you were unhappy. and if you had it articulated, because clearly those comments were not meant to reach the ears of that CEO. However, it also is indicative that maybe there could be a better communication structure put in place for feedback so that it doesn't get to the boiling point that causes that explosion.

10:26Yeah, and if anybody's ever been guilty of doing this yourself, then you gotta provide, you gotta have some empathy for the person doing it to you. It's hard in the moment, that's why you gotta sleep, but I think all of us have been guilty of saying things that we didn't mean, because very often we think thoughts and it's not until we hear ourselves say them that we put them to any kind of truth test. And then we hear ourselves say them. And now if we say them in a group, you'll have people in the group who don't necessarily agree with you, but just to not make things awkward or just to be kind of, they'll go along with it.

10:55And we know this happens. So I think it's also important to acknowledge we can see this as like this almost conspiratorial betrayal, like, ah, everybody's against me. And very often the other people who were there were just trying to like deescalate the situation, you know, agreeing just to sort of move on. So I think it's really, really important just that you have this context in mind that you give everybody the benefit of the doubt. And then you're advocating a head of the snake kind of strategy, right? Then you find the ringleader and then terminate them like with a police escort out of the building.

11:27And you could call it head of the snake. You call it a prison yard strategy as well, where you show up and just the first person, you just beat them to a pulp. yeah well that yeah yeah that's true i guess i'm thinking that no here's let me tell you so that's a good translate here's what i yeah here's what i don't think that you should do um that i have i've never done this but i've been tempted to do it and this person was was considering it they were like i really think that i probably should just fire the people that were involved um and and i'm going to encourage you don't do that that firing people is always an option which is why you shouldn't do it first, right?

12:06So don't just get there and fire. You need to get the full, even if you're quote unquote, right. Even if there is an illegal liability, culturally speaking, it sends a message to the rest of the team that if you speak ill, you're going to get fired. So we don't want that. So just going in and firing people, obviously violence is never the answer. If anybody wasn't sure we were joking ahead of time, here's another thing that I have done that you shouldn't do. Don't send a passive aggressive memo to the entire company. I've done this. I've been like, it's come to my attention that some of you in the team aren't happy about certain things.

12:43And just know that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, here's what happens. Everybody pretty soon figures out exactly what's going on, including the people who never would have known, never would have been impacted. and it winds up causing weeks long kerfuffles and doesn't actually address the real issue. So please don't send some kind of passive aggressive memo. Also, and I think this is just as important. I've tried this before too. You can't just act like nothing happened. And that's something that I have attempted multiple times. You know what? They probably didn't mean it.

13:16You know what? Everybody's busy. You know what? It's stressed out. You know what? Some of this is my fault. I'm just going to let it go. I'm just going to let it slide. Every time that's happened, the situation wound up getting worse, you know, not better. So I don't think you should do any of those things. What I would do, and you kind of said it, you've got to go out, reach out to the individuals directly, right? I think that's, I think that's really, really important. You got to go out to them directly. You've got to go out to them individually. I like to do it via email so that they have time to process it and not get defensive.

13:47So if you, you know, walk up to them and you're like, hey, I understand this happened, good chance that they might get defensive and be like, oh, so, and it becomes very unproductive. So I like to send an email that's just like, hey, just want to make you aware, kind of heard through the grapevine that you're unhappy about some things. I just want to be clear, everybody in this company is entitled to their own opinion. Also, having given it some thought, I'm sure that I own a lot of this. I would really appreciate the opportunity to have a conversation with you and maybe share the why behind why we're doing what we're doing or why we've done what we've done.

14:19And so I think it's important. Individual outreach. Let's have a conversation. Share the why. Now, you might be thinking, because I've dealt with this before, with fairly low-level team members. And it was a little bit frustrating because it's like, I don't really want to have to spend time in my day talking to essentially entry-level folks who don't even report to me. But I felt like it was important. And when I've done it, it was really, really effective. And it was positive again, to sort of reset and to establish kind of a cultural piece. So had the one-on-one meeting said, I want to hear you out.

14:56You know, I don't care about like what was said or how it was said, not really worried about that right now. You know, I want us to kind of come to a general, you know, agreement on what's going on and why, you know, why things happened. So just that's what I've done. That was my recommendation. Agree, disagree, changes, nuances. nuances. I think that because chain of command is so important that if you're going to reach out directly to do that, that it could jeopardize that. And so my suggestion would be that you would have a conversation with the supervisors or whoever the direct reports were to you to get to those people and say, I got a little bit of a breakdown in culture and employee satisfaction.

15:49This is what is kind of, you know, I heard, I want to fix it. I need, I want to collaborate with you to figure out what you think is the best way for us to, number one, improve our communication so that you feel comfortable telling me if you know, if you didn't know, how do we make it so that the employees feel comfortable telling you so that you know? And then what are we going to do based on your recommendation using a 131, which I'll let you explain in a second, to fix it? Yeah, I was going to say that is what I did. Yes, if it is, I failed to mention that because the assumption in this case, everybody is this person's direct report.

16:30But yeah, in the example that I gave, if they are not your direct report, you've got to loop in their manager. They need to be looped in as well. Even if you're the one that's having the conversation, don't be like, you go talk to your people and ask them why the heck they're saying these things about me. Don't do that. But they should be in the loop. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for mentioning that. Sorry. Go ahead. Yeah, that's it. I think if you do that, then you have that collaborative approach. It becomes a learning opportunity and ability to improve the overall culture and communications channels of the company, fix whatever it was that was wrong, get better feedback.

17:04And at that point, then once you've gone through that, if you have somebody that's just a troublemaker, then let them go. But at least you've gone through a process to determine, have I done everything that I can to remedy the situation? And the only problem isn't me or the company or the things we're doing. It's just this person's going to be unhappy, which there are people like that, right? There are people who get joy from pointing out all the things that are wrong and telling other people about them behind your back. And those are generally employees you don't want. Yeah, they're the political types.

17:38I can tell you, so I'll give you the structure of how I've held this conversation, how I encourage our client to do it, how I encourage our listeners to as well. So when you have the conversation, kind of the first aspect of it is let them talk. Say, I just want you to vent. And again, like we can have a conversation and break everything down, but I just want you to vent. I want us, I want to, you know, you to have the opportunity to share with me what you're thinking, feeling. And then I would like to have the opportunity to kind of explain the why behind maybe we did what, what we did. Right.

18:11Cause, cause usually this happens because, you know, you made a strategic decision, you made a move that they just fundamentally disagreed with because, you know, maybe it impacts them negatively. And, and, you know, more times than not, this comes from a lack of clarity in the why behind it, why the decision was made. And so because they don't have the context, because they don't know, they just think the whole thing was dumb. And as a result, they kind of think that you're dumb. So I let them go first. Then I take the time to explain, well, just for context, here's why this decision was made.

18:44Because one of our core values is at all of our companies is seek the why. That's really, really if you don't know why something is being done, you can't say because that's what somebody told me or because that's the way we've always done it. You know, if you are unsure about something, it isn't coming upon you. And we talk about this in the interview process and the onboarding process for you to seek out, to understand the reason why something is happening. And so kind of my final thing is, thanks for bringing this to me. My only concern in this situation is the way that you sought the lie wasn't the most productive manner.

19:20I hope you can see that. In the future, if you're this frustrated, I would appreciate it if you would run that up the flagpole. Talk to your manager, come to me directly, send me an email. But seeking the why is a big, important aspect. And so that's kind of where the conversation goes. The way that I end it though, and I've found that this really does provide a good reset. Because normally when I give them the opportunity to speak, they're typically very apologetic. They're typically a little bit embarrassed and they're typically a little bit scared. So they look for opportunities you know, to understand.

19:54But what I say at the end is great. So in the future and in this time as well, you know, now that you didn't understand, you know, we talked about the why behind it, you sought out the why I've given you the why you have three choices. You can option a is become a true believer. Having heard the why behind it, having heard the additional context, you are fully bought in and you know, you're going to go around and tell everybody how you think that this thing, even though you disagree with it before, you now think it's the best idea and here's why. So that's option A. Don't have to come to that one.

20:27Option B is disagree and commit. And disagree and commit is you still disagree with it, but you trust me, you trust the leadership of this company enough to, as far as anybody's concerned, you're all in. You're certainly not going to say like that you think that it's stupid or do that because you know that's unproductive, right? So it's possible to disagree with something, but still say I'm a part of this team. I'm going to go with it. That happens in teams all the time. So disagree and commit is option B. Option C is recuse, quit, right? If you having sought the why and heard the why, if you disagree and you can't become a true believer and you don't feel in your conscience that you can disagree and commit, then you got, you got to just quit.

21:10You got to let me know. Now, bitching and collecting a paycheck is not an option. And I say it just like that because I want to drive the point home that you are free to disagree here, but you're not necessarily free to disagree in the way that you did that isn't productive to the team as a whole. It sounds kind of aggressive and maybe I can get away with it more than others can because I'm not necessarily the most intimidating figure. but um but i have found that giving giving people those three options and explaining that you know we can't keep doing it the way that we did it before that tends to get it set and it creates a really nice cultural um redirect a reset so what do you think about that i i like it i don't know that i would um that i would let them know that i heard about the bitching um i think that that's a back channel that I would be interested in probably keeping open.

22:07And so I would probably, I don't know. I mean, what I would be weighing would be the opportunity to say what you said, which is, you know, hey, that's not the way we do things. And then weigh that against the let's just fix it and not worry about it because it is a bit confrontational and it does create defensiveness. And I think that you're less likely to get, you're less likely to get the answers that you actually want when they're scared and intimidated or called out or embarrassed or whatever than you are if you just said, I'm going to see if I can fix this thing that's wrong. And then if I hear that that didn't work, I don't know.

22:59That's a tough one for me. I would have a hard time. Yeah, I should nuance that a little bit. If in fact, what they said was dead on and you did screw up and you haven't been community, then yeah, you own all of it and say, look, I want to be clear. Thanks so much for this feedback. Next time, please bring it directly to me. I'm going to look to improve on this end in the same way that if you mess stuff up, we're going to look to give you the room to improve. So I'd appreciate your grace on this. Thanks for bringing it to me. Next time, come and let's have the conversation and look forward to working together productively.

23:27If that is a thing where you really do own a significant chunk of it and you can do things to fix it, the situation I'm referencing, the stuff that people were mad about, they were just off. They were just wrong. We had made a shift, I think, in pricing or something like that. And they felt that it was unfair to the customer or something like that. It happens all the time. You are a leader. You have to make decisions. The people that work for you are not necessarily going to agree, but everyone has to just understand it's your company. You're the leader. You make the call and you try to get buy-in.

24:03And if you can't ultimately agree and disagree and commit or disagree and quit, that's kind of the options. Well, I like it. I think that's a helpful topic. Hopefully you guys found that valuable today. It is something that maybe you'll be fortunate enough never to come into your world and have that experience. It'll happen. but it probably will happen. Okay. And so then they're just kind of pondering it right now to decide what they're going to do. I believe they're going to follow. They're going to do the kind of individual outreach. What they're trying to weigh is exactly what you said, how much, you know, they don't want to throw the kind of the reporting party under the bus.

24:43So I think they're figuring out, you know, how to do that. But at the end of the day, what I said to them is tell the other person, hey, I really think that we should bring this directly to, you know, in this case, the boss lady, I think we should bring this, you know, to the to the CEO, I bet we'd be heard. And, and say, like, and if they're unwilling to do that, say, like, I'm going to let them know that, like, that some people are unhappy, I'm not going to say everything, but just say, hey, there's some stuff going on. And we should probably have a conversation about like, so I'll go if we won't.

25:14And so I think they're going to hope that this person's hope right now is that the other person who reported it will convince everybody else to come to them so they don't have to do it. But I think the only choice, if you see that there is some people who are disgruntled in your organization, you've got to take the first step if they're unwilling to do it. You've got to reach out to them. You got to reach out to them with humility. You got to reach out to them with curiosity, a sincere desire to know and understand their position with the goal of everybody being better because of it. So I think that's where they're going to wind up.