Why Good Leaders Matter More Than Ever: The Real Cost of ‘Unbossing’

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Jordana Cole: At the end of the day, the research shows over and over again, that one of the biggest predictors of employee engagement is that my manager or somebody else at work cares about me, that people are much more likely to leave bosses than they are to leave organizations. And if we are building systems where we’re unbossing and we’re removing layers, you’re having a one to one with a manager every three months. Do you feel cared for? Is that a place where you really want to do your best work?

David Rice: Welcome to the People Managing People podcast. We’re on a mission to build a better world of work, and to help you create happy, healthy, and productive workplaces. I’m your host, David Rice.

My guest today is Jordana Cole. She is the founder of leadership coaching and consulting firm Ignited. We’re going to be talking about the changing hats leaders have to wear, declining interest in leadership positions, and why the idea of unbossing might just be a terrible idea.

So Jordana, welcome.

Jordana Cole: Thanks so much, David. I love that. We’re jumping right into it.

David Rice: I was like first tell us a little bit about you, how you got to where you are, what are the big challenges you see right now that are inspiring you to help leaders?

Jordana Cole: So I’ve had a windy career and I won’t go through all of my backstory, but I feel like I’m on the third iteration of my career.

So I spent the first part of my career actually leading teams in a number of different places. So I was very fortunate when I graduated college, I worked in a very small nonprofit where At 24 years old, I’m managing 30 interns and then managing six full time staff members and national programs. So I got a crash course in leadership super early on and wound up sticking with leadership up and down for the first half of my career in higher education, in software service companies, education technology. And realized I really like bringing out the best in people and I wanted to do it in broader and bigger ways and was able actually to make transition into learning and development and have spent the last decade of my career before moving on my own internally running learning and development departments, building learning and development from the ground up.

I went back to school, got my master’s in positive psychology, which is all about the science of wellbeing and particularly What makes people thrive at work and I was really fascinated to determine what are the unique factors of cultures and leadership that enables people to thrive holistically and work life beyond and contribute to growing businesses, growing teams.

So leadership’s been a passion of mine and all of my L&D focus has been on leadership and a variety of different industries over the years. And I’ve decided once again to get beyond just one organization. And in the past two years have really branched out into my own thing. And the reason I’m so passionate about leadership is because with all the differences that we have as human beings, we all have leaders, whether in our community, in our homes, in our schools or in our workplaces.

And it’s fascinating to me that leadership is, I think, the only role that I can think of where other people are in your care that requires no training, no certification, no licensure, no education. Teaching, healthcare, financial advising. Anything related to law, right? Accounting, all of these roles have that and leadership doesn’t.

So that is, has been the driver of how do we create better leaders? How do we create habits and behaviors that don’t just stick, that they spread to others and through the organizations that we all support, because at the end of the day, we all have leaders in our lives, and I think there’s a lot of challenges happening right now when it comes to leadership, and a couple of them are being in leadership and not really having the resources to, to learn how to do it well.

I think one of the other challenges is the expectations on leaders are growing heavier by the day, both in expectations from the business and expectations from the people that you lead. Sadly, the leadership is becoming not as glamorous a thing as it once was.

David Rice: That’s where I wanted to start this conversation is around the sort of declining interest in management and leadership positions from people who could ascend into those roles.

There’s been a lot of interesting data in 2024 on this, but a couple of stats that like jumped out to me recently, right? A third of employees say that they never want to become managers ever to almost 40 percent have no desire to be promoted. And three leaders who have received more support over the course of their careers were less interest in, this is like managers, right?

They’re less interested in executive director level roles. While respondents who faced more challenges in their career were more likely to pursue top leadership positions. So when I look at these three things, I’m curious, there are some things that emerged for me as potential explanations, but Some of which are backed up in the surveys that they come from, but I’m curious, what you think is this says about the state of leadership right now?

Jordana Cole: Yeah, I’m curious to hear also what your assumptions are and I’ll say, look, this is not a scientific study that I’m doing. This is, entirely just my own thoughts and hunches with the leaders that I’ve worked with and what I’m seeing. I think there’s a couple of things that are happening all at once.

One, I think values have shifted since COVID. We were all stuck in our houses for quite a lot of time. And for those of us who were not stuck in our houses and still required to be in work and in locations where we were putting ourselves and others that we cared about at risk, it gave people a lot of time and space to think about what was important to them.

And I believe that this might have shifted people’s priorities when it comes to their careers and what they need and want in a way that maybe before was in search of progression, in search of title, in search of more money. So I think that’s one thing is people’s values are changing. I think at the same time, people are seeing how exhausted leaders are, right?

They see what they’re asking of their leaders. They’re demanding of their leaders. They’re getting a glimpse at what’s being asked of them and demanded from them elsewhere and they’re going, I don’t really want to do this. That doesn’t seem like fun. Gosh, why would anybody want to do that?

And I think we’ve also wound up in an environment, and this isn’t true in all roles or all domains, but there are a lot more individual contributor paths and progression in that than I think used to be, particularly in things like tech companies where you can actually move up as an individual contributor and in some cases make potentially the same or even more money by continuing to progress along that path without the responsibility, the burdens of leadership.

So it’s not necessarily this lucrative thing anymore. And I believe that people are seeing that there’s stagnation when it comes to that career progression. The funnel gets smaller and smaller as you go up. So there’s only so many places for you to go once you’re past a particular level. So they’re starting to weigh, is the time cost, is the lifestyle cost?

Is all of that worth me investing into a leadership role for myself? The one about the support is interesting and I’m curious what you saw in that article. I’d love to hear your thoughts. My hunch on that is twofold. One, people who are getting the support are getting a little bit more of a peek behind the curtain of what the reality actually is.

And right now we’re in a state of layoffs, and I know we’ll talk about that more in a bit, where it doesn’t matter how high performing you are, it doesn’t matter what level you’ve reached, in fact that for some people they feel that makes you more of a target, so I’m going to stay away from that. And if you’re hearing a little bit more under the curtain from somebody above you of what that life is actually like, you don’t have rose colored glasses, instead they’re, I don’t know what the opposite of rose colored would be, but like brown tinted glasses, I don’t know, and you’re going, I don’t really want to do this.

And then I think maybe there’s the flip too, where sometimes in the support, they’ve been overly coddled. We definitely, there’s a ton of research out there around resilience, where people who do face challenges, people who grow from challenges are much more likely to be resilient, and much more likely to pursue challenges in the future.

So that’s something I’d be curious to dig into was it an overextension of support? Or was it actually the fact that They just get more clarity on what it means and they’re going no, thank you. So what did you see from that?

David Rice: Yeah, I think it’s a couple things. I think one of it is, like you said, it is a clarity.

And when you’re engaging with a manager all the time and you see what they’re going through, the reality of their situation, it doesn’t look so enticing or glamorous, right? You’re like, oh, I don’t envy him or her. The other thing is if you’ve had, it depends on how your manager’s going, right?

So if your manager is doing really well and the way that they’re engaged with the senior leadership of the organization, it may feel like the shoes are too big to fill, I don’t know if I could do that or if I’m the right type of person to do that. We all suffer from imposter syndrome to a certain extent.

Cause I’ve had a manager in the past where I thought. I just don’t know if I can do his job, like that’s ridiculous, but then I’ve had other manners where I’ve seen how it wore on them and just beat them down. And that’s the ones where you’re like, I don’t want to do this just because I don’t want to end up like him or her, right?

This is a disaster. So I think it’s a little bit of that. That’s probably driving a lot of that in terms of the, like the one that, people don’t want to, I think you’d hit the nail on the head to a certain extent with terms of the management positions aren’t as lucrative, but I also say they’re looking at middle management and seeing that they’re not that well supported.

They’re oftentimes left to just figure it out on their own. It’s not a very glamorous position, right? It’s not about what work can I do that will make an impact necessary? It’s trying to help all these other people. And then you just are left to figure that out on your own. It doesn’t look enticing and a lot of managers have struggled over the last four years, right?

With the different work models and everything. And I think that a lot of people are looking at that and going if there’s not, like you said, there’s not a lot of money in it. Why would I do that? I would have put myself, it’s not appealing. And they believe that there’s another way forward.

That’s the other thing is that a lot of people are looking at it like, I don’t think I have to do this and I don’t want to be put underneath all these pressures that he or she is under. Managers are getting under, I would say, an increasing amount of pressure from more demanding executives, whether that’s through RTO orders, things like that.

It’s just been a lot on managers and I think people look at them and they don’t envy it and they don’t want it. Does people management mean that much to you when you’re 23? Probably not.

Jordana Cole: Yeah, I think the demands like that is the crux of it. Like the demands are increasing and they’re coming from everywhere, right?

I think we hear phrases and I don’t know about you, but I hear this a lot and talks about younger generation, like they don’t want to pay their dues. And it’s funny because I remember similar things when millennials were first coming into the workforce. And I kind of wonder, is this the same refrain anytime someone’s a junior employee?

Yeah. But at the same time, my kind of thinking behind that is, there might be some truth to that, but also it’s because there’s no guarantees anymore. I think that in the past, if you paid your dues, you knew that you could rise. You knew that you would make more money. You knew that you would be able to buy a home, care for your family.

You knew that you would potentially have a organization that you could work for and retire from. And there actually aren’t any guarantees anymore. And I think that’s making people question whether or not it’s worth it. And, it’s interesting as you were talking, one of the other things I thought about, even maybe 10 years ago, I think a lot of people were getting into leadership because they wanted to influence change.

They figured I will have more of a voice the higher up I go in the organization. And, then they would get there and realize, oh, I actually just have a sliver more of influence than I thought I did. But at least that like mystique and that belief was there. And I don’t think that belief is there anymore.

People are realizing, oh, I see how little influence my leader or even two leaders above me has. I’m seeing that they’re finding out about this change at the same exact time that I am. So I won’t actually have much more influence. But I will have more responsibility and demands on me. I’ll have more pressure and leadership can be a thankless job.

You very rarely hear the specific thanks from people. I’ve been fortunate in my career and that I have. And I think oftentimes you have to go more on the faith and recognizing I’m making a difference in people’s work lives, I’m making a difference in people’s personal lives if I’m being a good leader, even if I don’t hear it from them.

And that can be exhausting after a time.

David Rice: There’s one more that kind of comes to mind as we talk about younger folks, right? And it’s maybe not something that they’re conscious of when they say we give feedback. I don’t want to do that ever. But what is the number one thing that this younger generation is criticized for or the skill that they say that Other generations in the workforce say that they need to develop always comes back to soft skills, right?

What is the number one thing you need in a manager position? They may consciously realize like I don’t have those skills and then they don’t feel like they could do it. They may just not prioritize that. Either way, it feels like a bad fit for them and they’re just following their gut maybe.

Jordana Cole: Yeah, it’s interesting because I think we’re at a time where and it always goes back and forth and how important and how invested in soft skills are to me. They are the critical skills. I’m not a fan of the term soft skills, although I’m reclaiming it. They are the critical skills and to me, leadership skills are just human skills.

It’s learning how to have better interactions, better working relationships, better communication, better influence. And it’s interesting because I think previously there’s been a history of promoting people into management roles because they’ve been strong individual contributors. And the assumption is Oh, they’ll just be able to get the same results from other people.

And it’s a totally different skill set. Gallup’s done some amazing research on this and they have found that like only about 10 percent of people of employees actually have the skills and the motivation needed to do manager level work yet. That’s not actually what we’re looking at oftentimes when we’re promoting people into managerial roles.

And to your point of whether they prioritize it, or it might just be that they don’t see their organization prioritizing it. Maybe they’re recognizing, oh, there are different things here, but I don’t actually see the investment in those skills, the incentivization of those skills or the teaching of those skills.

David Rice: Feels to me like we’re in a bit of a moment here where the strong man type of leader is again, having its big moment, right?

There’s an extreme amount of attention paid to the C suite across every industry to the point that sometimes I feel like we’ve basically fetishized it. And I see, you and I, we live in a country where we’ve just elected a strong man type. And he’s going around pointing executives to top level roles in government.

And if you start to think of this trend at a time when we’re hearing about things like the unbossing founder mode. It feels like we’re setting ourselves up for a period where we’re going to learn some lessons the hard way. I’m curious, what are your thoughts about what we’re seeing and what does it mean for the future of leadership?

Jordana Cole: I agree with those lessons the hard way. It’s interesting. I’ve had a couple of thoughts of this come to mind. And One is we are really good as human beings of over investing in the short term and thinking about the cost in the short term without thinking about the long term ramifications. And especially in the phase of we are in capitalism right now where it’s very much focused on quarterly metrics and investing in Profitability increasing, the bottom line, fixing EBITDA, right, in order to have that healthy look quarter over quarter. And a lot of the good leadership stuff takes longer tail to actually execute upon and see the results on.

And it seems like also and, the government’s one thing, but there’s a lot of private equity right now, and it almost feels like we’re in the stage of house flipping, but in corporations. Where, you the aim is to come in, lean it out, get it into ship shop shape, make it look good so that you can get out, you can make a profit and the next buyer can figure out what to do from next. So just like in a house, you flip the house, you don’t plan to live there long term. I’m gonna, put on the nice coats of paint.

I’m gonna change the flooring, maybe do some lighting, get some good staging. I’m not going to invest in the highest quality materials and I’m also not going to invest in the real structural things because I know that I’m not going to reap the benefits of this. And if you think about a lot of the way that even our government works, it is short term churn.

And I think the same we’re seeing a little bit in corporate America. I think the other thing that’s happening is we have a tendency, I think, as human beings to look at things on a pendulum. So if something goes too extreme in one way or it’s not working, we tend to seesaw completely in the other direction.

And we just go back and forth, then back and forth. So I think what we’re seeing in this kind of return to strong man leadership comes from two places. One, unfortunately, it’s in response, I think, into the dialogue around “woke culture”, number one. So it’s the pendulum swing in the complete opposite way.

I also think it’s a response to what we saw around the great resignation where, employees were starting to ask for different things. So now we’re going back to return to the office, even though the productivity doesn’t signal that’s actually a more effective way to again swing in the other way.

It’s not too dissimilar from when a company focuses on enhancing engagement scores just to see performance suffer and then swings the other way on performance and then recognizes that they’re losing really great people. And now we got to focus on engagement and then swings the other way to engagement and it just creates this exhausting seesaw effect of what seems like polar ends rather than looking for where’s their truth in both.

Like, where do we need some of that tough decision making and stronger leadership? And where do we need more of these soft skills and care for people and how do we do both? And I think a lot of organizations struggle with it. My fear is that in over indexing on the strong man leadership, what we are going to wind up doing in the short term is maybe increasing productivity and profitability because people are scared, but in the long term fear is not a motivator.

And in fact, in the long term, when you focus on leading by fear and threat, what it creates is survival. So people perform to compliance and people’s brains are in survival mode, focusing on the things to just get by, not be seen, do things that don’t put them at risk, which means less innovation. Which means more siloed work, which actually puts companies at risk and societies at risk because people are less likely to speak up when something is risky or go in that whistleblowing type of mode and you wind up creating stagnation.

And I think you lose the people that do want more and do want to thrive to places that are going to nurture that.

David Rice: We were talking before this, you mentioned, the single point of failure. And I think that’s another big issue, right? You don’t have the multiple perspectives. We’ve spent the last 10 years talking about the value of all these different perspectives.

And now we’re just walking them out of the room. I don’t think it’s a good way forward. And it doesn’t apply the lessons that we’ve learned from that very well.

Jordana Cole: Yeah. If you think about anything that’s been built that’s been great, it’s not the result of one person. It’s the result of very people coming together with different perspectives, different experiences, different skills at different strains and combining in a force where it’s one plus one doesn’t add, it multiplies. And by putting those unlikely groupings together and creating an environment where they can experiment and try new things in feel like if we make a mistake or it doesn’t work out, it’s learning, it’s not failure, I’m not going to be punished for it.

That’s where great ideas come from. And I’m really nervous that we’re stifling that right now.

David Rice: I think, something interesting that I’ve seen is this may not be good for the strong man leader themselves either. CEO tenures have been decreasing for some time. They’re down 34 percent since 2017.

I think of the ramifications of that alone for building experience and expertise in those roles is significant. And I can’t imagine that a shift toward waning out layers of management is going to make their jobs any easier. But it seems like there is this impression that what this unbossing idea will do is eliminate unnecessary levels of sort of corporate bureaucracy or organizational bureaucracy.

But in reality, it seems to me like it’s going to eliminate the sort of stepping stones that generally you would use to learn how to lead within an organization and ultimately, it’s going to make succession planning very difficult, don’t you think?

Jordana Cole: Yeah. And I think it does more than that. So I would agree with that.

I actually think the hardest transition in leadership isn’t going from individual contributor to people manager for the first time. I think it’s going from managing individual contributors to managing leaders. And the reason being is that you’re one more layer removed from the work, your leadership has to focus much more on influence than direction.

And because you’ve been leading, it’s a little easier to make assumptions that everything you need to know, where it is different. And as your stakeholders change, as your span of controls change, it’s very different from leading a team to leading a function, your purview shifts the horizons and just overall things that you have to consider shift.

And if you are going straight from an individual contributor to managing a function, I see how hard it is to go from managing a team of 10 to managing a function like I can’t even imagine. That goes from like a jump to, to a Grand Canyon chasm. It’s massive, right? So I think that succession planning becomes very hard.

It’s almost delaying progress and growth. And it would be like putting people in those roles of C suite who are maybe more like remedial when it comes to their leadership, because they don’t actually understand how to lead a division, how to lead an organization. I think beyond that, it also creates in the moment challenges.

I’ve seen and I’ve worked in organizations like production organizations, for instance, where you have one leader for 50 frontline employees. Do you think that leaders having capable of having one to once with each of those individuals? No, right?

David Rice: No, definitely not.

Jordana Cole: So imagine that you have 50 employees, you’re not having one to ones with them, you might not be aligned on expectations, you might not be able to be informed or notice something before it becomes a critical error.

You also then wind up spending all of your time on those people that you’re performance managing because they’re underperforming, which means that you’re signaling that the only way that somebody gets time and attention from you is if they’re doing bad stuff and they’re not meeting expectations, which means that subconsciously we’re reinforcing bad behavior because that’s the only way that people get attention from us.

And you don’t have a relationship with anybody. And at the end of the day, the research shows over and over again that one of the biggest predictors of employee engagement is that my manager or somebody else at work cares about me. That people are much more likely to leave bosses than they are to leave organizations.

That having close relationships is likely to keep somebody engaged and providing discretionary effort. And if we are building systems where we’re unbossing and we’re removing layers, you’re having a one to one with a manager every three months. Do you feel cared for? Is that a place where you really want to do your best work?

That if you’re offered another opportunity, you’re not going to get up and leave or that you’re going to take a risk and share something hard that’s going on in a team environment, in your personal life. Something that you see that’s failing that might have impacts on overall success. So I actually think there’s immediate ramifications, whether it’s clear alignment around expectations, whether it’s sense of strong relationships and feeling cared for, whether it’s reinforcing bad behavior unintentionally because that’s who you’re spending time and energy on, that seriously impacts the short term in addition to the long term.

David Rice:  Yeah. When we spoke before this, you spoke about middle managers, particularly at that sort of upper middle level, right? The directors and the senior managers, or even maybe VPs at times, they’re crucial in that they sit at the crux of strategy and execution, and they’re extremely influential in creating cultural shifts.

But we don’t do enough to set this group up for success, right? I think that’s a common theme I encounter here on the podcast. So I’m curious, what advice do you have for companies who are buying into that idea of unbossing, but they are feeling like the layers of middle management aren’t serving them and getting to where they want to go?

Jordana Cole: Yeah. Hello, middle managers. If you’re listening right now, I see you. I love you. You’re undervalued and you’re my favorite group to work with. First off to those organizations, kudos to you. And I think there’s a couple of things that I’d say to that. One, get clear on what the skill set is and what the knowledge and experience is that’s needed for your organization in particular and broadly at that level to help shift the needle in where you need the middle managers to be.

And I think the tendency is also just to ask the executives to sit in a room and have that conversation themselves. Bring your middle managers into the conversation. What do they see the gaps are? What are the needs that they have? Are there people on your team that are outliers? So oftentimes we focus on what’s not working and we don’t actually look at what is working.

If there are some really great director level or VP that are really modeling the behavior that you want to see, what is it that they are doing? What is differentiating them from their peers and how did they get there? Have those conversations, diagnose what’s working there and then identify how you might be able to scale that out.

Thinking about middle managers in particular, middle managers have unique tensions that nobody else has and I think really focusing your education and your development on those unique tensions that they face of how do you balance present day needs alongside future growth and future strategy. How do you balance the needs of individuals while also balancing the needs of the business?

How do you influence up, down, and across effectively and change how you communicate to different stakeholders? So those are some of the tensions and questions that they should be really thinking about. And then ultimately, what are the experiences and the relationships that your middle managers need to thrive?

Too often we focus entirely on the classroom education and adult learning theory highlights again and again that we learn best through relationships and through experiences. So how are you providing the foundational knowledge, but then equipping these leaders to both have community with each other and community with leaders above them that they can learn from?

And where are you giving them opportunities to dive into experiences that enables them to showcase and build those skills in low risk ways before they are actually in a space where they have to do it in mission critical or business critical ways? So those are some of the kind of key tips that I would recommend.

David Rice: So just shifting gears a little bit. Your background is interesting because you’ve studied psychology, you’ve worked in L&D, and you’ve got this interest in wellness and motivation. I’m curious how you think the approach of leadership is shifting when it comes to employee wellness because And for a long time, what has it been?

It’s been you create a nice little wellness offering and you leave a link to it and the company intranet. And then it goes basically as from a leadership perspective, that’s where you leave it, but leaders, it’s starting to feel like they’ve got to be a little bit more proactive, you’ve got to get involved in creating environments where wellbeing is valued.

And that’s a different hat for many of them to wear. They didn’t exactly learn that in business school, right? So when maybe they’re not quite prepared for, what do you think some of the key factors are in helping them do that?

Jordana Cole: It’s so funny. Yeah, no, they didn’t learn that in business school, except there are a couple interesting business books like ‘Firms of Endearment’. And Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, his research is fascinating on the role of well-being and employee productivity and business profitability. So I’d encourage people to check that out. You’re right, and a couple things with that. One is, I actually think first it starts with defining what being actually is. So I think we conflate wellness with well-being.

Wellness is a part of well-being, but it’s not the whole story to being. I think we often think about, okay, here’s your calm meditation app, or here’s your pedometer, and you track your steps, and boom, wellness solved and well-being is much more holistic, and there’s a lot of factors that go into well-being.

But ultimately, I think one of my favorite descriptions of what is at the core of well-being comes from a researcher by the name of Isaac Prilleltensky, and it’s all about mattering. It’s about you mattering as an individual, and there’s two axes of that show up in life, but for sure in the workplace.

And it’s that you’re valued for what you do, and you feel valued. So that valued is you contribute to something greater than yourself, and you’re recognized for that contribution. So I think a lot of times managers struggle with the well-being aspect because it “isn’t” their responsibility.

I’m not responsible for your well-being, David. The only person who’s responsible for your well-being is you. And at the same time, my being, your well-being can be impacted by the environment that we’re in, and by the system that we’re in. And I think this is something that’s often forgotten, and it’s not that we don’t mean well, but when we say, okay, here’s your wellness tool or benefit, you go do it, it puts the onus 100 percent on the employee.

And while the employee, again, ultimately is responsible for their own personal well-being, there is an ownership stake. Within the leader, there is an ownership stake within the organization. I think that one of the simplest things that leaders can do is focus on what is actually in their sphere of control and influence when it comes to their team.

How are they creating an environment where their team feels like they’re contributing to something greater than themselves, that those are meaningful contributions, where their team feels like they’re valued? Where their team feels like they matter and too often and again, meaning well, we try and solve for people rather than solving with people.

There’s no way that I can know what makes you feel like you matter without asking you. I can make assumptions, but I’m not 100 percent sure. And the easiest thing that a leader can do to help impact the well-being of their team is take five minutes to have conversations with their team members and ask things like, Hey, what’s something that you’re proud of that you contributed to the team or to the business in the last month?

What made you feel proud of that? Where are places that you’re working on stuff that you might not be sure how it’s contributing to the bigger picture? What’s one thing that I can do outside of money, within my control to make you feel more valued? How do you like to be recognized when you do something well?

What makes you feel like you matter on this team or in our one to ones? And then actually acting on that. It’s not these huge, big, splashy stuff. It’s really just shifting the day to day interactions we’re having, asking good questions, and making change based on what people are sharing with us.

David Rice: Absolutely. When I think, about this topic, this idea that leaders are going to be more involved, more proactive. I think one of the things that’s driving it right now is the amount of layoffs that we’ve seen in the last two years and are likely to going to see going forward. There’s a lot of survivors guilt within organizations.

There’s, there are huge issues with organizational trust that we’re seeing come up. We hear about it in our events all the time, especially with younger workers. How much do you see a focus from leadership on wellness, helping rebuild that trust and helping people deal with that survivor’s guilt?

Jordana Cole: That’s a great question.

Trust is like the glue of well-being because relationships and trusting relationships are a key component of us having well-being. We don’t have well-being in a silo. Is well-being the solution? To rebuilding trust. I don’t think so. I think being is the output of rebuilding trust and we have a long way to go.

It’s interesting. I was at a company when COVID hit where 85 percent of the team was furloughed overnight, including myself. And I actually scrambled to put together some resources for those that were left behind around survivors guilt. And the reason that I had done that was not only because of my background in the science of well-being because I had personally been in their shoes before I was in an organization that had layoffs, and I was one of the ones that was left behind.

In fact, I was the only one remaining standing from my direct team. And I really struggled with that. And It’s something that we don’t talk about a lot because we’re so focused and understandably when it comes to HR and leaders, we’re so focused on making sure that the people who are leaving have what they need from the information standpoint, have the transition packages that they need that were set from a security standpoint, and we don’t think about the impacts of the people that are remaining and it.

In one hand, we’re asking them to do more with less. We’re not necessarily giving them anything more. So we’re saying, do more with less. We need your loyalty. But we just did this entire action that showcases that loyalty doesn’t go two ways. Once those layoffs happen, you’re always looking around the corner of what’s next?

When is this going to happen next? And it’s fascinating to me that layoffs are constantly being used right now as a cost cutting measure, particularly when organizations are having record profitability, because the research shows that organizations that undergo layoffs have decreased profitability over time.

And it’s because of the lack of organizational commitment because of that fear. It’s because of the lack of trust and leadership in the direction. And frankly, it’s because when a layoff happens, the employees that are left are going through a grieving process. It’s not just the people who leave that are going through the grieving process.

A layoff is a grief. It is a loss of the status quo. It is a loss of the relationships. Like somebody’s just, poof, taken away from you that you could have had a strong relationship with. It could be a new leader that you have coming in that you have to reform those relationships. It could be loss of beliefs that you had about your organization that are now changing.

It could be loss of faith in higher levels leadership, it could be loss of a sense of security. It could be lost in your role changing that, maybe you didn’t have a say in any of that, that impacts motivation and people can’t perform at their best when they’re distracted with those things. So I do think the key to rebuilding that is starting with trust in understanding where trust comes from believing in people’s character, it comes from believing in their competence, and it comes from having shared goals. When actions like that are taken, people start to question both character and competence. And how do leaders rebuild that trust bit by bit, knowing that it’s going to take a significant amount of time to rebuild that bank account, if you will.

And it’s small, consistent things done every day. It’s being a little bit more transparent and open about decisions and reasoning for decisions. It’s taking ownership and vulnerability for mistakes when they’ve been made. One thing I would love to see more and more senior leaders do is take ownership for the decisions that led to layoffs needing to happen.

I feel like that’s a huge miss right now. We talk about layoffs like they’re outside of ourselves like, Oh, we need this because the organization is right now operating at a profitability margin of X, Y and Z. And we needed to get to X, Y, Z for long term health. But where’s the conversation of, you know what?

We made some mistakes in that we hired X number of people, assuming that would be what we needed for the long term. And as technology has shifted, as the market has shifted, we are now staffed at a rate because of the decisions that we made that are going to make it harder and harder for us to operate as a profitable and growing business.

And that means that we are impacting the livelihood of many people. That means that we’re asking you to take on more work. That means that we’re impacting people’s day to days. We totally get that means that there’s fear there. We wish we could solve for that. We can’t. We’re doing the best we can with the information that we have now to set ourselves up, not just for success right now, but for success for the long term.

Can I guarantee that we’re never going to make a mistake again, or that everything’s going to stay status quo? No, but we feel good about the team that we have right now, and we need us all in it together to make that happen. I don’t know many organizations that have given messages like that, in particular senior leaders.

And while it’s not going to solve for it, I think it does start to rebuild it.

David Rice: Absolutely. Jordana, I want to thank you for your time today. This has been a great discussion. I love this.

Jordana Cole: Thanks, David. Yeah. I have I’ve appreciated the talking to you and the couple of times that we’ve chatted and I love the mission of your podcast because we’re completely aligned and We spend more time at work than anywhere else, and it’s time that we make our workplaces better for us.

David Rice: Oh, before we go we have traditions here on the podcast and we’ll give you a chance to tell people more about where they can connect with you and find out more about what you’re doing.

Jordana Cole: Connect with me on my website, ignitedbyjordana.com. You can set up some time if you want to have a little conversation, meet and greet there.

I’m also super active on LinkedIn. Thankfully, having a name like Jordana Cole means that there aren’t many of us out there, and you’ll know it’s me because it has comma, MAPP afterwards. So those are the two best places to get ahold of me.

David Rice: And the second thing is you get to ask me a question, anything you want, doesn’t have to be about the topic, but can. Go ahead and shoot.

Jordana Cole: My question for you is, so it is going to be about the topic. So we’ve been talking a lot about why people aren’t interested in leadership anymore. From your perspective, why do you think people should be interested in going into leadership roles?

David Rice: I think at the end of the day, you’ve got to test yourself in different ways.

And leadership does teach you a lot about who you are as a person. It also teaches you maybe you’re not cut out for it, right? But you don’t know until you actually give it a shot. Like you have to try being a manager, try dealing with somebody else’s emotions, their reactions, their ego, whatever it might be.

You don’t know how much you can grow from that experience and how much you might surprise yourself. Actually, you might not think of yourself as that type of person. But when in the moment, you’re actually one of the best people for it. And I’ve seen this happen before with somebody that thought they were an introvert, they just really didn’t see themselves as a leader at all. And their team did brilliantly and they got tremendous feedback from all the people on their team about the way that they led, but they never saw themselves going into management.

It just happened to be that somebody saw within them the potential to do that actually pushed them into the opportunity to be honest. Cause it took a little nudge, but once there, she did amazing. And I think that’s the thing about it is you should be willing to test yourself and just see, is it for me?

Is it not for me? Cause if it’s not, it’s no skin off your back. You just go back into what you were doing or the next thing, whatever that is. And if it is, then that might actually reshape your whole career path or your goals, your personal goals. And that’s, like the most satisfying thing is when you realize Oh, I think this is actually part of my calling.

So that’s why I encourage people to at least try your hand at it. See how it goes. Maybe it doesn’t go well, but it’s not the world.

Jordana Cole: I love that. It’s interesting just hearing you talk. I feel like there’s a lot of people that have that story of somebody saw potential in me that I didn’t even see myself and because they nudged me, I was able to try something I wouldn’t have, which I feel like is such a great definition of what leadership truly is its core. Can I ask a follow up question?

David Rice: Sure.

Jordana Cole: Who’s somebody that saw potential in you that you didn’t see in yourself?

David Rice: I had a manager, this was a while back, he Saw more potential in me, so he actually was like, you could go to the people management route if you want. And he’s if that’s what you want to do, I’ll help you pursue it.

But I actually think that your key thing is launching new stuff. He’s you’re supposed to lead the way and be the example of like, how to do new things. And I was like my initial reaction to that, to be honest, was like, you sure? Cause I’m pretty comfortable. Like I was okay. I really knew what my stuff was in my lane and I was all right with that.

But he saw within me the ability to work cross functionally and even lead cross functionally. And then he was like, you can use that to, here’s all these opportunities, these creative ideas that you’ve had, here’s how we make it connect. He was like a superpower at making connections. That’s one of the things that he did better than anybody I’ve ever seen was he could say, you’ve got to talk to this guy and be in a department that I didn’t even know we had.

So I’d start talking to that guy and then we get ideas and we’d start going on and that’s how we would launch a new product or a new initiative within the company. And he was like, you can be a spearhead as much as you can be a leader. They’re not always the same thing. And that even taught me that I didn’t realize that.

I didn’t realize that some people’s role is to be like, a fire starter, essentially. Other people’s role is to be a manager of fires. It was interesting. He’ll probably never hear this, but he was probably the best manager I ever had, so.

Jordana Cole: Hopefully he does hear it.

David Rice: Yeah, I hope so.

Jordana Cole: Have you thanked him for it?

David Rice: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Many times. Many times. Yeah. Before I, I moved locations, we met up for a drink and I, I had a chance to say some nice things, which he was like, you did it on your own, is that kind of person he was, it is I just, all I did was like, turn on the light.

Jordana Cole: That’s what leaders do though, right?

That’s why I love it. And that’s actually why my brand is Ignited because it is about turning on that light, right? And start in that fire. But each person takes something with it. But, you think about that. Had he never shared that with you, would you be where you are today?

David Rice: Maybe not, and I’ll tell you this, I wouldn’t be as bold in my approach to just trying new stuff.

It made me less intimidated to just say, I can do this. If I fail, whatever. There’s gonna be things that flop, there’s gonna be things that are great. You just gotta go for it. Just light the fire and see what happens. It changed my career in that sense and that it got me to just think outside of, the framework of my role and what I thought I was supposed to do and the templates that I was supposed to work in.

It was good in that sense.

Jordana Cole: What you just shared is the crux to me of why somebody should be a leader because leaders have the ability to really change somebody else’s, not just work, but life. We never know the imprint that we have, but you have that ability to do that in so many more ways than you do if you just keep with the status quo or you just focus on your own insular bubble.

David Rice: All right. This was a great discussion. Like I said, thanks for joining us.

Jordana Cole: Thank you, David. Appreciate it.

David Rice: All right listeners, until next time. If you haven’t done so already, head on over to peoplemanagingpeople.com/subscribe, get signed up for the newsletter. And until next time, go run around in the rain. It’s raining here in Atlanta and I want to go run around in it. So you should do the same.