Robert Glazer | Rethinking Two Weeks’ Notice

I always say that how you exit an employee from your organization is just as important as how you onboard them. In this episode of the Creating Superfans podcast, I sit down with Robert Glazer, award-winning entrepreneur and author of Rethinking Two Weeks’ Notice, to explore a better way to handle employee transitions. Robert shares the concept of an open transition program (OTP), a collaborative approach that fosters honesty and ensures smoother exits. 

You’ll also hear us talk about:

• How to give performance feedback that focuses on behavior, not character
• Why you should stop doing performance improvement plans (PIPs)
• How negative departures can damage your company reputation and talent acquisition
• Practical steps for building trust and managing transitions effectively
• The long-term value of turning former employees into superfan alumni

Whether you manage a team of two or two thousand, this episode is packed with actionable advice that can elevate your leadership and transform how you think about employee relationships.

Buy Rethinking Two Weeks' Notice on Amazon
Subscribe to Friday Forward
Follow Robert Glazer on LinkedIn

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About Brittany 

Brittany Hodak is an award-winning entrepreneur, author, and customer experience speaker who helps businesses turn customers into superfans. She’s delivered keynotes to hundreds of organizations around the world, including American Express, Benihana, and Keller Williams. Her trademark SUPER Model™ framework has empowered teams in every industry to transform customer apathy into advocacy. 

Enjoying the show? Subscribe, leave a rating and review, and share this episode with someone who wants to create more superfans.

Subscribe to Brittany's biweekly newsletter
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Transcript

Brittany Hodak [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Creating Superfans podcast. I'm Brittany Hodak, an author, speaker, and entrepreneur obsessed with all things customer experience. Something that I have often said on this show is that if your employees aren't super fans of your business, it's very hard and sometimes even impossible to turn your customers into super fans. That's because apathetic employees don't create super fans. Today's guest is Robert Glaser, and he wrote a brand new book that I think everyone with employees has to read because it it addresses not just apathetic employees, but what can turn into angry former employees. The book is called Rethinking Two Weeks' Notice, changing the way employees leave companies for the better. And in the book and in today's episode, he's going to lay out a plan that you can use to manage the transition that will inevitably happen for every employee you hire. Instead of pretending they're gonna work for your company forever or ignoring the elephant in the room that at some point, they may not be a great fit for you or vice versa, Bob lays out a plan that you can follow from day 1.

Brittany Hodak [00:01:08]:
So Robert Glaser is the founder and chairman of the board of Acceleration Partners, a global leader in partnership marketing. He's a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about helping individuals and organizations elevate their performance. He also happens to be the author of one of my favorite weekly newsletters. It's called Friday Forward. It's incredibly inspirational. It comes out every single Friday, and it is read by nearly a quarter of a 1000000 readers, including yours truly, all across the world. I think you're gonna love this conversation, and I promise you will walk away with strategies that you can use right now whether you have 2 employees or 2,000 employees. So let's get right to it.

Brittany Hodak [00:01:47]:
Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Robert Glazer [00:01:49]:
Thanks for having me, Brittany.

Brittany Hodak [00:01:50]:
So what inspired you to release this book now? I know this is a book that you've been thinking about and working on for a while. Why was now the perfect time to put it in the

Robert Glazer [00:01:59]:
world? Now is the perfect time because there is no perfect time. I think that's the answer. I I I wrote this book actually in before the pandemic, and I had a TED Talk and an HBR Talk, and I was gonna, like, come out with a book that's like, okay, here's the all the stuff. And then the pandemic happened, and we laid off, like, 20% of the workforce. And then the great resignation happened, and it just seemed like we were in these, like, power dynamics between employee, employer, and back and forth. And the problem still didn't change, though. And so I was I was like, look, it's kinda now or never. But but, you know, things happen for a reason.

Robert Glazer [00:02:33]:
It forced me to I went back in. I probably cut about a third of the book and focused on best parts and rewrote it and sort of detached it from our our business. You know, at the time, I was more involved in the business, and now I'm not the CEO of the business. But I had had so many people who just would cursory watching the TED talk or hearing me speak about it, who decided to try it and had a really good outcome without any sort of playbook that I really wanted to get sort of that playbook out to people, figuring that, like, the only reason why they were doing was what they were still doing was because they didn't have a better way.

Brittany Hodak [00:03:09]:
And I love that. I I had an event a few months ago, and there was a divorce attorney in the audience. And he said, you know, it's so hard in my business to get referrals because everybody just assumes that every divorce experience is gonna be terrible. And whatever attorney you get, it's gonna be terrible. And people have just sort of accepted, like, oh, every every divorce is gonna be awful, and and, you know, there's no such thing as a good divorce attorney. And I thought back to that when I was reading in the book where you said, it seems like as a society, we have just sort of accepted when you transition from a job, it kinda just sucks for most people involved. Like, it's kinda gonna be bad for the company. It's maybe gonna be bad for the actual employee that's moving.

Brittany Hodak [00:03:51]:
It's gonna be really hard on on teammates. And the idea that it took so long for finally somebody to come along and say, not only is there a better way, but here's a road map to the better way feels like one of those obvious omissions. Like, as I read your book, I I couldn't help but think, why did nobody, you know, put this

Robert Glazer [00:04:12]:
And and people that they could work. I think people have you know, my unique thing is I I tend to do and also write and and come up with these frameworks. And so in talking to CEO, I think there are people who've done elements of this. But, like, they weren't in the business of trying to to communicate it. The problem

Brittany Hodak [00:04:31]:
it broadly. Like,

Robert Glazer [00:04:32]:
this makes sense. Right. Right. They were doing it for themselves. And someone told me about this guy, like, they joked that, like, Hatchet Billy, like, at the company. And he had, like, all these people. And you would think he was firing people left and right. But, like, Billy just was like, look, if you're ever not happy, come talk to me and we'll figure out something.

Robert Glazer [00:04:49]:
And, like and and Billy got rid of all the low performers without ever firing anyone. Like, it was, like, a whole interesting story because he really, like, cared about them. I I think the problem is we're we're we haven't moved away from this. We're not in a lifetime employment model anymore. If if you there's no pensions. There's there's more liquidity in the job market. You're not stuck in that job for your whole career. And the job is not making any lifetime promises to you, and you're not making any lifetime promises.

Robert Glazer [00:05:14]:
So even though that's changed the and if you went on Glassdoor's best companies to work, you'd see, like, 2 and a half year duration, like, particularly for people maybe under 35. So even though that's changed, we haven't changed our psyche when it actually happens. We still lie and some of that's the most of that's the company's fault and and do this, and we still are pissed when people leave. And so, like, we haven't, like, brought our mental thinking into reality with a job. Like, we know it. We know over here, like, you're in a management meeting, and it's like our average, you know, tenure is 2.8 years, but we're still acting like it's this act of divorce or treason every time it happens.

Brittany Hodak [00:05:55]:
Yeah. And so okay. Let's go through it. The book is called rethinking 2 weeks notice. This is the part of, like, in an infomercial where somebody looks at the camera very frazzled and says, there's gotta be a better way. Walk us through this better way. Introduce this concept of OTP, what it means, and why it's so powerful.

Robert Glazer [00:06:12]:
Yeah. So the concept of an open transition is a program, and ours was called mindful transition, and then we called it the career engagement program eventually. But it's this notion of of having a process for people to leave. Either the employee or the employer identifies that something isn't working. They want to do something different. The psychological safety exists in the organization and with management HR to start those conversations and you come to a conclusion around, okay. Great. Like, we're going to start figuring out your backfill.

Robert Glazer [00:06:41]:
You should start to go look for a job. We'll try to help you, and here's the timeline that we're gonna do it under. So it it it it is sort of done. Oh, do you have people working at your company anytime that are actually on their way out? And, again, it could have been initiated by the company. It could have been by the employee, but you still treat them the same. You still try to get to a good outcome, have a lot of respect. One of the things, the misperceptions, there are a lot of misperceptions I talk about them in the book. But people are like, well, that'll never work.

Robert Glazer [00:07:09]:
You can't take a toxic person and keep them around and they'll steal stuff and otherwise. And I was like, yes. But, yes, I agree with you. But most of the problems were, like, if I if my if I'm now firing or Brittany is quitting in December of 2024, you know, when we're when we're recording this, Like, there were some stuff that happened 9 months ago that I could have dug into a little bit. Right? Brittany was a great employee. Suddenly, she's showing up late to work. She's disengaged or otherwise. So I can either just write her up on a bad report and Brittany, you need to do better.

Robert Glazer [00:07:44]:
Or I could actually engage in a relationship. And if we have that trust, like, Brittany, like, what's going on here? Like, you've been one of our best employees. And then that that I talk about digging in the roots of the book. You might find 1 of 3 sort of outcomes there. Brittany lost her childcare and has didn't share that with her boss and has been stressed and working these hours, and it's something that she needs to fix, but I could help with or the manager can help with temporarily, but she's gonna have to fix it. And it actually doesn't have to do with the company. It has to do with kind of, like, outside stuff that's impact. Still loves her job just exhausted and overwhelmed and stressed.

Robert Glazer [00:08:20]:
Number 2 might be Brittany moved from marketing to sales last year, and she's really not loving sales. And, you know, she would like to go back to marketing and maybe that's there. Or maybe she knows that everyone else was just hired at a higher level, and she's late in being promoted. And we look at it. We're like, yeah. We should have promoted her. We should have given her a raise. Like, this so this cures the problem.

Robert Glazer [00:08:40]:
Maybe or the third thing and that's the bucket that the company can and wants to fix. And then the third problem is things that aren't gonna be fixed. So these are tech like, structural or core value. You say, look, I really I know with this a fully remote company, but I want an office to work in. Can we open offices? And the answer is, like, we're not gonna open offices. Why don't we help you kinda find a company? So it the the the most common form of right before you wanna get rid of someone is this performance improvement plan, which is done extensively to save you from a lawsuit. It does not do that. It it it it in fact, I think it can make people angrier saying, we're gonna put you on this plan.

Robert Glazer [00:09:19]:
We actually don't want you to succeed. We just wanna document your failure so that that that we're we're protected. A PIP is like a Tylenol, right, to to a headache. But but you then you can have a headache because you're dehydrated. You can have a headache because you're gluten intolerant. You can have a headache because you're, you have a brain tumor. Right? The Tylenol is not gonna make that go away. And this is what the root stuff is, is having real conversations and figuring out what solvable or unsolvable problems are.

Robert Glazer [00:09:47]:
And by that point, if you're toxic and pissed off now, if we rewind the tape, we had this conversation. We actually we we went over to the sales team. I said, look, marketing team, they're actually not gonna be able to have you back. Like, so if you want them what but you know what? Like, why don't we help you find another marketing job? And and how about we set, like, a 3 month time frame on this? And I'll make some recommendations. And I know some people that are hiring for marketing, and I'd be happy to tell them you were rock star at marketing here. Your performance is probably gonna actually improve in the short term because you're like, alright. Like, I can I I can do this job for 3 more months? I'm not sitting around worried for when the shoes gonna drop. Like, I mean, how many times have we someone gone to fire someone and they quit the day before or they look like this huge sigh of relief because they've been suffering.

Robert Glazer [00:10:36]:
They know they're doing a bad job. No one actually wants to do a bad job. So it's just kind of like creating a little more adulting around this. And and these are, as I say, book mutually beneficial outcomes, like, better for the company and better for the employee.

Brittany Hodak [00:10:51]:
Well and you share so many stories in your book and examples of this working within your company and for other companies. I particularly loved the I think you called it David meets Goliath where you talk about what you just said, sort of helping somebody who was a great member of your team, but just doesn't have a role on your team that they love anymore going somewhere else. I I think the really profound idea that you introduce here is we have to stop pretending like every hire is forever and pretending that there is this perceived because

Robert Glazer [00:11:20]:
it's not. We're we're we're not even pretending. We're it's just cognitive dissonance. We know it on this side of our brain. We're just ignoring it on this side of our brain. Yeah.

Brittany Hodak [00:11:30]:
Well, and then how bad it is for teammates of I mean, I know I've been in situations, Bob, you probably have too, where it's like somebody from your team is gone, and then it's just like they they're Voldemort. You can't say their name. Like, don't don't talk about that person. They don't exist anymore. Right? There's this, like, fear or sense of, like, something is not the same on the team, and you just don't talk about them. Or you wonder worse. You're like, what do they know that I didn't know if they're getting out of here? So this idea of introducing from day 1, hey. We think this is gonna be a really great fit.

Brittany Hodak [00:12:00]:
And as long as it's a really great fit on both sides, great. But we wanna create, as you say, the psychological safety to acknowledge the fact that at some point, statistically, it it all it is almost certain

Robert Glazer [00:12:11]:
that you're not gonna die in this job.

Brittany Hodak [00:12:13]:
Yeah. To be. Exactly. You're not gonna die from this job. And, you know, I I had an event a couple of weeks ago for a really great company called Eaton Park, and they were honoring employees that had been with them for 25 plus years, 30 plus years. They had 4 people at their company who had been with them for more than 50 years. And hear the story from those teammates who have had, you know, 25 different jobs and worked in a lot of different roles within those jobs are are such cool stories, but part of why they have been so loyal to the company and stayed so long is because of a lot of the things that you advocate for in your book. Being able to say this position is not working for any me anymore.

Brittany Hodak [00:12:46]:
What would it look like if I were to transfer into another department? Or what would it look like if I were to help open another location or mentor people in this department? So

Robert Glazer [00:12:55]:
Right. And if you don't have the safety to have those conversations, then you might not match up these opportunities. We've there's some stories in the book. We shifted someone. You know, they're like, I don't wanna do client and service anymore. I wanna do operations or whatever. And we they didn't know that we were thinking about a training and operations, you know, role. And they might have quit and left before, and now they've been with us for 10 years in that role.

Brittany Hodak [00:13:17]:
So let's talk about that. You one of the things that you mentioned in this book is this sort of pyramid or hierarchy of things, and I know that that's pulled in from some work that you've you've written about and and and taught on previously. But the base of the pyramid, which I think is so, so important, is this idea of psychological safety. So talk a little bit about how we build that specifically with the manager. Because one of the points that you make that I think is so poignant is you can't just say that this is a thing, and you can't just expect that you're

Robert Glazer [00:13:43]:
taking No employee should listen to this in a company that frequently just marches people out the door the day they're leaving and say, I'm gonna go be honest with the company. Right? The company has

Brittany Hodak [00:13:52]:
to decide my boss as well. Like, talk about my psychological safety. Like, this is not a Yeah. This is not a top up thing. So talk a little bit about what this means and how we establish it in our Yeah.

Robert Glazer [00:14:01]:
Psychological safety is trust at scale. I think it gets modeled downward. The 2 biggest ways in an organization is showing that you're open to feedback and criticism and, you know, the emperor has no clothes. I mean, I was I was coaching a a team or speaking at their annual off-site and I happen to sit through the meeting. And they did kind of an elephant in the room exercise. And, like, there was some tough stuff said and some tears and something like but everyone felt comfortable saying, and the CEO was thanking people, and they were so so there was both the feedback and the vulnerability. Like, that's, I think, the 2 things. And and being willing to, you know and the the CEO was talking about personal difficulties he was going through.

Robert Glazer [00:14:40]:
And I was, like, whatever tough business issues you guys have to talk about later, I I can tell from this opening exercise that, like, this team's comfortable about talking about any I mean, they weren't even talking about, like, when they wanted to quit the company and retire in whether it was 5 years or 10 these are things that are normally, taboo. And this company has dominated its industry for for almost a decade now, and it wasn't it wasn't hard to see why. So I think those are 2 of the big principles are, like, a culture where you can see that feedback and ideas are safe and where people are vulnerable and kinda show up as as their authentic selves.

Brittany Hodak [00:15:17]:
And you advocate for managers asking some questions to their team on a regular basis to help with that. Are you able to share some of those questions?

Robert Glazer [00:15:25]:
Yeah. So, like like, in your check ins, right, this happens on the the execution of it's kinda like a radar. We need we need we need radar up around the organization collecting warning signs and problems. Right? And you can do some start stop exercises. You can do some other things, but managers are the primary radar and check ins. And, know, saying, hey, like, how is it going? Sometimes just that open ended. You can and you can tell the difference between what someone says. Like, I was just on a podcast earlier with a friend of mine today.

Robert Glazer [00:15:53]:
How's it going? He's like, I'm like, okay, I know how it's going. Like, I can tell by your 2 2 second breath. But that's the point to double click. So I like the, you know, are you happy? Are you present or engaged? There's some overlap in those questions, but people might gravitate towards one of them. Like, well, I'm happy, but I'm not really enjoying the work that I'm doing, you know, these days, or I'm really not happy for this reason, or I'm distracted, or I I, you know, I I think I made a mistake leaving sales. So I look, managers, like I said, when they know when something's off, the question is, are you actually gonna double click in and do the work, or are you gonna wait until it becomes sort of malignant and and unsolvable?

Brittany Hodak [00:16:36]:
Well and when it becomes malignant and unsolvable is when a lot of times that damage that's happening inside the organization is bad, but the damage happening outside the organization is worse. Yeah. Because then you have somebody who leaves your company, who is such a huge detractor, who will tell anybody who listens what a terrible experience they had, and now you're losing untold number of people who may have become a client or an employee or a partner in some way because you've got this person out there saying they are absolutely the worst people in the world.

Robert Glazer [00:17:06]:
Yeah. Super unfanned. Then, look, this goes into your world, but and and and it sort of backs us up. But why is this bad? Why are people annoying? It's bad for the employer because, it leaves them sort of an alert with a hole to fill. If the person leaves on bad terms, as you said, the first thing they do is go to Glassdoor and say never work at this firm. Why is it bad for the employee? And and and you want like, McKinsey is always you want it, like, think about your ex employees as an alumni, as group, or association, or something that is positive and super fans. Like, that is that is a much better connotation than ex employees. This sounds like people we don't talk to anymore, rather than people that don't happen to be employed here, anymore.

Robert Glazer [00:17:47]:
So then on the flip side, look, here here's the thing for employees, and I don't think they realize it in the time. Psychology would tell you that what happens at the end overwhelms the memory of an entire experience. And if you had a mentor or someone who guided you, you needed 4 years of great work, and then you've this this firm pressured you to leave quickly and you gave weeks notice and whatever and you blindsided your boss, like, that may tarnish their entire memory of your work experience. And you're gonna need a reference. You probably didn't need it now because you're getting this job. But down the road and that person might not be excited to give it. You might have lost a peer. The other thing is we live in the world of any smart company does back channel references.

Robert Glazer [00:18:27]:
And if you're not doing them, you're not smart because you can see, like, I've gotten tons of calls over the years for references of people who did not give me as a reference. Right? So you might have this, like like, person blocking your career that you don't even know that that's there.

Brittany Hodak [00:18:45]:
Yeah. It's so true. And I I know one of the people who endorsed this book was Joey Coleman, who's a good mutual friend of ours, who who wrote, a book called never lose an employee again, also another great book called never lose customer again. And one of the things that he talks about is managing the off board boarding process and just looking at it as another important moment. I would love to know either from your own OTP at Acceleration Partners or some of the ones that you've seen or studied or helped companies build, what are some of those great touch points as somebody is leaving or even after they've left that can continue to spread the goodwill? So now it's it's not just, you know, oh, I'm gone, but it's it's being proud to be an alumni of the organization.

Robert Glazer [00:19:27]:
Yeah. Patty McCord, I've interviewed who you know, she created the famous Netflix culture deck. It was always like, I want people to be proud to be from Netflix. This is a place you wanna come from. Right? So we use the term alumni. We talk about our alumni. When we when we're at industry events, we have I was at one recently. We had a we had a brunch.

Robert Glazer [00:19:44]:
We had more alumni than employees there, you know, who were at the thing because they were all over the industry. And we had brought 5 employees to the event. There were 20 alumni kind of at at different companies. So that I think that's one framework. Clearly, you can change that. I think, you know, opening opening your role at decks using your company's in house, like, hey, can we like, we'll look at your resume. Do you need interview like, how do we use the resources we have to help you? Saying that it's it's holding 2 ideas mutually concurrent, and that is that, like, this job isn't working for you. And you're a good person, and we'd like to help you because we believe you'll see successful outward.

Robert Glazer [00:20:24]:
In fact, I think I haven't named this cycle. Like, it's a it's a it's a offshoot of cognitive dissonance ones I'm fascinated with, and I haven't named this yet. But I think most of the problem that that that happens, goes something like this. I have a Brittany on my team. Brittany, you know, is is again, sales is easy. She has been at 50% of quota for 4 quarters now. Like, it's just not gonna work. I really like Brittany.

Robert Glazer [00:20:51]:
Right? My brain can't handle Brittany needs a new job or we need to get a Brittany, and I really like Brittany. It has to fix that disconnect. So what does it do? The easiest thing to do is to make Brittany into a bad person so that I can feel better about doing a bad thing. So now I'm, like, Brittany's lazy. Brittany's this. So I I I just emotionally distanced Brittany. And then when I finally, like, sit down to fire Brittany, she's already bad and she's a villain. So, like, it doesn't care.

Robert Glazer [00:21:20]:
What people can actually do in the opportunity is to hold both of those things constant and say, love Brittany. I wanna help her. Also, she's just really not doing well at this job, and I'm gonna lean into the relationship. Right? That's the conversation. Like, Brittany, love you. Obviously, like, we've seen that you're 50% of quota for 4 quotas quarters in a row. That can't happen. This isn't gonna work.

Robert Glazer [00:21:43]:
Like, talk to me. Like, what do you wanna do? How can we help you? Is there something else here you wanna look forward? Like, do you wanna be in sales? Right? This is just a much more human way to to handle the situation.

Brittany Hodak [00:21:55]:
Well and for anybody listening right now sort of rolling your eyes or having second thoughts and thinking, oh, it's such a nice thing to do to say I should love my employees more. I should care more about my employees, which for the record, I think all of those things are true and and absolutely worth pursuing full stop. But there's also a very real financial benefit to this, to anybody listening saying, you know, oh, I'm gonna keep somebody on that's not a high performer or help them transition. So I'd like for you to talk a little bit about some of those corporate benefits of doing this in a way that helps with those transitions.

Robert Glazer [00:22:26]:
Yeah. Look. Usually, when you have a problem and you ignore it and the person leaves, you are uncovering skeletons for a year. We've all had this. Right? You're like like, oh, it's even worse than we thought. They stopped working not entirely. Yeah. Yeah.

Robert Glazer [00:22:39]:
They stopped working a year ago, and their clients are all pissed and they missed the deadlines. And so, look, it's hard

Brittany Hodak [00:22:45]:
17 doctor's appointments they took off for weren't all doctor's appointments.

Robert Glazer [00:22:49]:
Right. And, yeah, that's a whole problem in itself. So I I I think, you know, look, it's hard to get someone that quickly. Also, you're paying 2 weeks severance for the person to do nothing. Right? So rather than, having this period look, I I'm in client services professional. Like, clients hate account turnover. It's the number one thing they hate. So when a person they love disappears in a week, just having those, you know, 8, 10 or 12 weeks to start, you know, you know, Brit so Brittany's on the account table bringing in Sam and Sam brings build some rapport for a couple weeks.

Robert Glazer [00:23:23]:
And we know that Brittany is going out and then Sam starts to take over more of this stuff. And then Brittany comes, like, that makes a big difference in terms of client, continuity. You know, even if it's just some some optical because you get the trust, you get the new person in there, you get to start hiring. And again, I would rather I would rather I mean, a lot of times companies are paying, you know, months severance. So I'd rather pay someone to be somewhat productive than to not do anything at all.

Brittany Hodak [00:23:51]:
Well, they're paying severance, and sometimes they're paying temp agencies a much higher rate to have somebody come in and just try to keep

Robert Glazer [00:23:57]:
all the

Brittany Hodak [00:23:57]:
plates spinning. But, again, while you're uncovering all of these things that have gone wrong. And and I love the point that you just made and something that you talk about in the book, which is the the client cost. If if you're in a in a in a in a client services or client facing role where it it does have an effect even if you don't see it, and I personally know there there's a vendor partner that I, had a great relationship with for years, and then there was so much turnover again and again and again. Yeah.

Robert Glazer [00:24:22]:
You just

Brittany Hodak [00:24:22]:
I I stopped sending them referrals, and people this is somebody who I've been a very public partner of, and so people reach out to me all the time, like, 3, 4 times a month. I've I've easily sent 7 figures of business to this company. And for the past few months, when people have asked, I've said, look. I gotta level with you. I don't know if the experience that you would have now is the experience that I have had, and here's why. And part of me feels like, should I, at some point, reach out to the leadership of the company and say, what's going on? But then the other part of me says, well, they've not reached out to me, so

Robert Glazer [00:24:53]:
it's Yeah.

Brittany Hodak [00:24:54]:
Aren't caring about my experience, and I'm the one who's sort of, like, riding the waves of this, you know, tumultuous turnover. It's much easier for me to just say, gonna pick a different client next time. In the meantime, I'm not gonna send people there, or I'm gonna be very transparent.

Robert Glazer [00:25:07]:
And by the way, Hiale, when people start leaving suddenly, and let's say the superstar employee, Brittany, leaves suddenly, you know, then Jane's like, what do I not know? Right? So so it it it tends to cascade or maybe I should take that interview. I thought Brittany was super happy here. So it also, you know, it tend these things tend to sort of move in in in in circles, and it gives you a chance to sort of break that or slow that down.

Brittany Hodak [00:25:33]:
I'm curious. Have you ever had a really terrible transition out of a job as an employee?

Robert Glazer [00:25:40]:
I didn't have that many jobs. So I most most of these things are are sort of driven by pain. I agree. Like, so it's a right question to ask. My transitions weren't bad. They were just sort of normal. My pain was more like we were building this company. We were trying to build a great culture.

Robert Glazer [00:25:59]:
We're trying to have, like, a lot of these things. And and and and this 2 weeks notice thing just felt totally incongruous with that. Like, it just felt like, yeah, the doctor's appointments and, like, why are we do this isn't this isn't who we are. But I read this is all people know how to do. So, yeah, I've been an entrepreneur for so long that most of my jobs were early. I don't I don't have any traumatic, departure stories of my own, actually.

Brittany Hodak [00:26:28]:
That's great. Well, the reason I asked is because there I I noticed all of the stories in the book were either you as the employer or you talking about other companies who you've seen either do a great job or not such a great job.

Robert Glazer [00:26:40]:
I guess because I haven't I haven't been really an employee in this last couple decades of of of of this transition, so I've been outside of it. But I've I've seen a lot of them. I've heard a lot of them. I mean, there was a story in the book about this company. They won all these Glassdoor awards. They have great culture. You know, and I'm I'm like, so what what do you do when people, you know, give you 2 weeks notice? And they're like, well, we walk them out to the door that day. Well, why well, because we just, like, it's nothing against them, but it's just safer and it's better and it's easier.

Robert Glazer [00:27:09]:
And I was like, and you think anyone's gonna, like, come tell you that they're, like, having a problem or otherwise when you, like, basically walk them to the door that day? Like, it just hadn't even occurred to them the the cyclical of what everyone else seeing that would do to them psychologically. So you make sure you have the job, your stuff's all wet up, everything's stolen, and everything before you give notice. Like, that's all anything that you're training people to do, you know, with that.

Brittany Hodak [00:27:34]:
Yeah. And I think regardless of what your core values are as a company, regardless of of what you think your culture is, I think a really great litmus test is do we treat people as well on the way out as we do on the way in?

Robert Glazer [00:27:47]:
Yeah. And and it's hard to do that if if if, you know, it's toxic. I mean, back to our earlier example. So, this is again something so simple to be like, Brittany, like, don't worry about coming in at 8 AM. Like, you lost your job yet. Like, work these hours, do this. Obviously, we have to fix this in the long run. But for the short term, don't let this stress you out.

Robert Glazer [00:28:07]:
If we didn't get to the problem, Brittany, like, here's your thing, you know, this quarter, you are disengaged or whatever. Now, I'm giving you less projects. Now, I'm putting you on a PIP. Now, like, and now you're madder and madder because you're like, look. I can't do anything about this. Like, it it it just quickly turns into a vicious cycle where 4 months later, we both hate each other, and it's un and it's unrecoverable.

Brittany Hodak [00:28:33]:
Yeah. And and and I love you. You have some advice in the book of of when it is unrecoverable, and it's better just to sort of

Robert Glazer [00:28:39]:
part of

Brittany Hodak [00:28:40]:
it and and There

Robert Glazer [00:28:41]:
are truly toxic employees. There are truly toxic managers. There are bad people. We we've, you know, we had, we had to terminate, you know, someone's transition years ago, because they were just doing they were, like, doing something totally inappropriate. We got an email. They they were, like, solicit they were emailing partners from another business that they were involved in while they were in their transition. And so we just ended it. We're, like, talking the book about the expectations and plans.

Robert Glazer [00:29:11]:
They're, like, this is just not okay. So I I I don't I don't think you should do anything if the person is a risk to your business or toxic or otherwise. Think of this as a massive time shift backwards from we're gonna start this process before we get to that point so that people are kinda still with us, and we're gonna try to get to a better outcome before, you know, they be become those toxic people. As someone once said to me, and it was, it was great. Someone said, you know, if you have people constantly, like, leaving your company with massive toxicity and stealing things and mess and whatever, you got to take a hard look at, like, either what your company culture is doing to them or who the hell you're hiring. Like, this should not this should not be a regular occurrence. You're either hiring horrible people or something about your culture is making them this mad to do this.

Brittany Hodak [00:30:05]:
Yeah. Well, I love that. And, one one last point that I would love for you to talk on because I think this is a really great advice. You talk about, you know, managing the transition or even before the transition, giving feedback as an employee. There's a huge difference in giving feedback on the performance versus the person. And I know that several times I've been sitting in that employee seat and felt like the feedback was very much directed at the person and not the performance. So I would love for you to talk about that nuance really quickly because I think this is a a great tip for every manager to hear.

Robert Glazer [00:30:37]:
There is there is nothing more damaging than criticizing people's character and not their behaviors. Right? Perfect example. We've all had someone on our team that's probably not very strategic. Right? It's always kind of a challenge. Telling someone they're not strategic, like, that's a character flaw. Like, they don't feel like they can fix it. You know? I telling just like someone, you never don't wanna tell a kid they were not smart or smart. Both of them have problems.

Robert Glazer [00:31:01]:
You wanna tell them that something they did was not smart or smart. So back to the first example. Hey. Look. We're just not seeing the strategy. It may be that they're not strategic. You just can't say that. Like, we're not seeing the strategy in your presentations and the clients aren't seeing it.

Robert Glazer [00:31:17]:
Like, this is what it looks like. This is what they were looking for. We need more of this strategic thinking in your outputs, And and everything really, like, I I have talked to people that have basically PTSD 5 or 10 years later of being personally attacked or told they were something or they weren't something. I've got mine. I've got a boss I worked for years ago who, you know, in in when I was suggesting an optimization, he'd kind of fit a rate to there is nothing that you don't wanna spend money on, like, you know, whatever. And and I was just like, alright. Well, like, I'm just trying to solve the problem that, like, we're trying to run a call center at a retail desk, and, you know, our customers are really frustrated when they're trying to check out, and then the person has to answer the call. Like like, this is the but, again, it was just sort of a personal attack.

Robert Glazer [00:32:06]:
You know, it had nothing to do with the context, and and people don't get over those in my experience.

Brittany Hodak [00:32:13]:
Yeah. Well, it's that becomes the the manager you wanna quit even if you like the job.

Robert Glazer [00:32:18]:
Yeah. It's very objective to say, look. We're you're 50% of quota for 4 quarters in a row. Like, we both know that, like, that's not gonna fly.

Brittany Hodak [00:32:26]:
Yeah. That's so much easier. What's wrong with you? Why are you you just stopped caring? What's

Robert Glazer [00:32:31]:
Exactly.

Brittany Hodak [00:32:32]:
Yeah. Well, thanks so much again for coming on the show, Bob. The book is incredible. It's Rethinking Two Weeks' Notice. Other than picking up the book, where can people go or what should they do to learn more about how they can steal some of this magic to put to work into their own organization?

Robert Glazer [00:32:45]:
Yeah. The so if you go to robertglazer.com, and you click on the Friday Foward, which is my substack, the first couple chapters are actually up there for free if people wanna read it. And there's info on, the TED talk and the course and everything on there. So it's robert glazer.com.

Brittany Hodak [00:33:00]:
And it is an amazing email. Anybody who's not getting Friday forward every week, it is one of the few emails that I look forward to getting and reading every single week either in my inbox or on LinkedIn. You did an incredible job with that. So Thank you. Make sure you, make sure you check it out. That's it for today's episode. Please help me out by leaving a review for the show or sharing it with a friend. Until next time, remember, don't settle for standard.

Brittany Hodak [00:33:24]:
Be super.