Why Good People Quit: The Leadership Failures We Don't Want to Admit

Good people don't quit suddenly — they quit slowly, one ignored piece of feedback at a time, while leadership mistakes pile up that nobody wants to own. Brad Hauck names four of them: feedback that goes nowhere, appreciation that replaces development, uneven standards that reward the wrong people and leaders who blame attitude instead of asking what changed. If someone on your team has gone quiet, this episode is probably about them.

Transcript

0:26

Welcome to Leadership in the Line of Fire with your host Brad Hauck. Join Brad as he dives into the heat of leadership challenges where the flames of business uncertainty meet the hard earned lessons of firefighting Embrace change, master agility and become the trusted leader guiding your team through the smoke. Get ready to ignite your leadership journey. So why do good people quit? Not the uncommitted ones, the reliable ones. The ones who used to put their hand up, speak up and carry more than their share and then one day they just stop. In this episode, I'm going to look at the leadership failures we don't like admitting ignored feedback, uneven standards, poor development and culture that expected loyalty but did not return it. Good people rarely quit in a single moment. They quit slowly. The real question is not why did they leave, it's what did leadership ignore while they were still there? By the way, if this episode triggers something in you, remember that we all make a mess of things. But as leaders, we need to learn from our mistakes more than anyone else before we dive in. If you want to go deeper into the fire ground leadership lessons, grab a free copy of my book Run towards the flames@tinyurl.com firefighter book. It's packed with stories and strategies from over 20 years of firefighting in business and leading a successful business. That's tinyurl.com firefighterbook so why do people quit? Well, people quit when feedback goes nowhere is the first thing I'd say. The most dangerous sentence in any team is there's no point in saying anything. We've all been there. We've had that situation when we weren't in charge. Where we've gone, it's just not worth saying anything. No one listens anyway. I'll just get on with my job and hopefully things will come right. Once people believe that their feedback will be ignored, they stop helping the organization itself or the business improving. In other words, they stop giving back that little bit of extra that everybody gives when they believe in what they're doing. And you'll see this everywhere. I see it in the volunteer fire service because people give and give and then after a while they realize it's not really making any difference because the people above aren't listening. And that can be within your crew, your brigade, your unit, your district, wherever it is. It gets to a certain point you feel like what you're doing is not going any higher. And this is especially true when people have an issue with something. They see a problem, they see that there's a fix, but nobody will take the steps to implement the fix. And because of the position they're in, they can't implement the fix. It needs to be organization wide or business wide. And so many times I've been there myself where I know that as a business owner I could have fixed this problem within a day. And yet five, 10 years later, I've seen the same problem within the organization, within the fire service, and it greatly annoys me. And when we're dealing with people who have held jobs, other places, who work for themselves, who run businesses, all those sorts of things, it drives them nuts because they're forward moving people, they're progressive, so they expect their feedback to be listened to because they're trying to make a difference, they're trying to help the organization. Now we all understand that not all feedback we give is useful to the leadership. Okay? Sometimes it's little things that are going to go away. Sometimes it's something that's been around a long time and we all know while it appears to be a problem, it actually isn't. For example, there might be a better way of doing something, but we only do that something twice a year for an hour. So yes, we could implement a change to make it better. But is it really worth all the effort to change something that you do so infrequently? And that's one that I certainly come across as a leader. I understand what people are saying, I understand why they want to change it. But. But as I explained to them, yeah, but this is only a problem that happens once a year or twice a year. And so it's not necessarily worth the trouble. But I think the key thing there is to acknowledge the feedback and then explain why it probably won't change or why you won't change it, or if you really do feel like it's worth a change and they argue a good reason. As I always say to people, don't come to me with problems, come to me with solutions. I'm not going to do all the work. Just because it's a problem doesn't mean there's not a solution for it. Just whingeing changes nothing. So if there is a solution, I'll sometimes let them implement it and we'll see how it goes. But as a leader, you need to be actually listening to your people, listening to that feedback. And I know it's frustrating sometimes because you've been around forever, you understand how things are done, but that doesn't mean things can't change. So the reason people quit is definitely when they don't get any good feedback for things that they've put forward. Retention is not solved by appreciation posts. Such a good point. Thanking people is useful and is extremely important. I try and do it as much as I can. I try and thank people for what they do on an ongoing basis. Not just because it's something that I need to do as a leader, but because it's the way I was brought up. If someone does something, you thank them for it. It's polite. It's manners. And I think manners are missing sometimes from organizations. People forget that a simple thank you is often all people need or want for doing something. They're not expecting a big party or anything, it's just a acknowledgement of the effort they put in. But just saying thank you and acknowledging people and giving them pizza parties or barbecues or putting their name in a social media post doesn't help them stay okay. They stay when they feel useful, they feel heard, they're trusted, and they get ongoing development. Nobody wants to stay stagnant. So it's great to say thank you, but are you recognizing people after the fact or building a place that they want to keep contributing to? Thank yous have their place. Recognition has its place. There's no doubt about it. But we have to look at it from a leadership perspective. Think back to when you were younger or when you were a junior member, or when you were the first person in the company. What did you appreciate the most? And that was just being part of the team, being recognized as a trusted member of the team, being appreciated for your opinion, for being thanked for what you do. Those things are great. But there's more to it than just being appreciative, as I've said already. So people won't just stay because you're telling them how good they are all the time. They want to see all these other elements useful, heard, trusted, and developed to keep them in the loop and to keep them involved in your business, your organization, your brigade. One thing I would say is stagnant leaders create stagnant teams. And I've said this before on the podcast many times, as a leader, you need to be growing, and not just growing externally. So going and reading books like how to Win Friends and Influence People is one way to grow. But also going to courses, developing new skills, applying those new skills is also really important. Some leaders keep their roles forever, but they stop growing. And I've seen this many times in the fire service where people reach a certain level, maybe officer in charge or something like that, and they stop doing courses. Now sometimes it's because there's actually no courses available. And if that's the case, then they need to look outside their organization and see what other courses they could apply for in the area of, say, leadership or something like that. Help them continue growing. They rely on their rank, their history and their personality rather than developing themselves in an ongoing basis. This becomes a major problem certainly in the fire service, because younger, more capable people can't move up. Now, there's two sides to that story. One is you want the experienced, capable person in charge, but younger people need to be able to move up. And sometimes that's not so easy. And I know certainly with volunteer firefighters there's only a certain number of leadership roles, but I think you can always find positions for people who are showing leadership. And as a leader yourself, you should be looking for that in people and as well as looking for opportunities to grow yourself so that everybody lives. And sometimes, just because you're the officer in charge doesn't mean you can't have someone who sits with you, who works with you to help you to grow their skills. Because eventually all the roles in a business, in a fire service, all need to be replaced. No one can be here forever. And if we don't develop people, then we can't move on ourselves because there's no one to replace us and we can't leave because there's no one to replace us. So just be careful that you're not stagnant, but also that your own leaders aren't stagnant. I think implementing change, such as having someone to oversee the training of your more senior members is really important because everybody needs training and often we focus on our junior people, our new people to the business, new recruits, whatever you want to call them, we see it about their training. We need to make sure they reach a certain minimum standards and that they're getting all the training. But we forget we've got people that have been with us for 10, 15, 20 years who also need training. They'll become stagnant. And if they're not doing a lot of hands on work, they'll also get slack at doing that work as well. So they need to be involved in training. So not just delivering training, but also maybe actually getting involved and going hands on to demonstrate stuff to run through, just like every other person does. Once they get in there, they're going to find out it's a lot of fun and they're going to remember how much fun it was when they were a recruit or a junior member of the staff. So don't let your leaders get stagnant and don't you get stagnant too. It's really important. Another area that I see is when good people leave because the standards that are expected are uneven. And I've seen this many times where you know, this person can do it, but that person can't, or this person gets away with it and that person doesn't. And it happens in every organization. We all have seen it in our business life, in our volunteering life or in our service life. Some people seem to get away with everything. And that's a comment I've heard more than once. Nothing destroys the culture of your organization faster than watching poor behavior get ignored while reliable people continue to keep up their standards. Eventually it's got to come to a head and you've got to draw a line under it. There is a level of free flowing that goes on in every organization where you try to as a leader, keep things moving forward, keep everybody balanced. But eventually, if you don't step in along the way, you're going to hit a point where you're going to have to draw a line in the sand and tell people that if they cross that line, there's going to be serious consequences and provide those consequences for them because otherwise everything just drifts along. Nobody likes to have to draw that line in the sand. And it's that very hard balance between being fair and being strict that is hard for leaders to find. We all suffer from this. So we go through times where we think everything's running well. I have that theory that every time things are running really well, something bad's about to happen. It, it's very fatalistic, but honestly it's quite true. You know that if things are running too well, that something is coming up over the horizon because it's in Yang. Good, bad, everything is balanced in life. So, you know, make sure that you work with your dependable people. They're always asked to do more while difficult people managed around. And then you get that resentment growing. You must get the balance right across your whole team. And sometimes that's really hard to do. Other times you'll find you can balance it really well. You need to take feedback well yourself as the leader on where things are going. Now sometimes you'll get feedback and you take action on that feedback and you get more feedback. You take action on that feedback and you are doing the right thing. But it's not necessarily having the effect that you need to have. You need to go further. You'll realize that point and you'll work out what you need to do, but understand that everybody needs to be on the same playing field, the good people and the bad people. And if the bad people are bad, get rid of them, encourage them to leave or sack them. If it's a business, whatever needs to be done to keep your good team together. Because I can tell you right now, when you lose your good people, that's a very expensive loss. Not just for paid staff, but for volunteers as well. It's difficult when you're in those situations, but we have to keep pressing forward. Get your team to work with you, work together. You're not going to get it right all the time, as I always say, but at least try. Leaders often blame attitude instead of asking better questions. I think that we often look at someone and say, oh, it's the way they approach it or it's the way that they speak. And in fact sometimes it's about going up to that person and saying, why are you speaking like that? Why are you saying those things? Now you can pull them aside in your office and have a chat. It doesn't have to be an official chat. I find it's really important to talk to people one on one and say, how are you going to. And that's hard when you've got 100, 200 people working underneath you. So you need to train your leaders to do the same thing. They need to build those connections just like you need to build those connections. You can't always manage top down through all the layers effectively. Sometimes you've got to manage your way through people and find out what it is that's going on at the grassroots or with that particular person. We've all seen it. We've had people we've worked with for years and suddenly they're just grumpy all the time. They're a pain in the backside to work with. We don't want to be around them and yet we know they're a great person. We've spent a lot of good time together. We've done some amazing work together. Whether it's on the fire ground or in the office. Take them aside and find out what's going on. You need to watch out for people and if something's going on, you need to report that up. If you need to report it up, whether that is officially or non officially, depending on what the issue is. But even making the rest of the team aware quietly, not everybody in the organization, but the team that works with those people, that they can give them a little bit of leeway on the other hand, they need to know that they may have stepped over the line or that they're actually gone from being a valued member of the team to being someone that nobody wants to work with. Because they may be so caught up in the problems. Whatever it happens to be, whether it's personal or a business or life, they're caught up in that they can't necessarily see their own attitude. And I'm sure you've been there where you get caught up in family problems at home and it drags across into your work life. You've got to realize that other people are seeing that, they're feeling that. And honestly, 99 times out of 100, they want to help you, they want to be there for you. They're your mates. That's the whole point of being in the fire service, being in business, is that we work together, we build these friendships. Whether they're just work friendships or service friendships, whatever it happened to be, doesn't matter. Those people want to be there for you. So as a leader, you need to be asking questions to people. You need to find out what the underlying problem is. And sometimes it's nothing you can do anything about except that acknowledge they're going through it and be there and just say, look, I'm here if you want to talk or I understand, is there anything we can do to help you? And it might be that they just need time, okay, but you need to work that out with them. And there'll be times when you say something and there'll be a flow on effect too, where you said something weeks before and someone's still upset about that, acknowledging that you said something upset them. Apologize. If you feel you need to apologize or say, well, I'm sorry that I upset you, but I needed to make myself clear. And I know I'm not going to get it right every time, but that's what happened. People also need to accept the fact that when they're criticized, there was a reason for it and they overstepped the line. You might have been a bit harsh, you might not have been, but they perceived it that way. You both need to find that point where you go, okay, let's draw a line under that and move forward. Okay, it's been dealt with, let's go forward. But if it's an ongoing problem, let them have time to deal with it and be there for them. So being a leader is never easy. And we do lose people. We can try as hard as we like, but we're going to leave people behind. We're going to lose people and other times we're going to want to lose people and they won't leave. And that's the one that you really got to worry about. When you've got people that you wish you could lose and they won't leave, then that's where your leadership skills really come into play. You've got to bring that person in the team. You've got to make them fit in the best possible way for them. So it's a positive experience. They're growing, they're learning, they're getting better, and the whole team gets better because it's so the biggest question that I'd like to leave you with is what changed in them and what did we miss before it changed? When people leave or they look like they want to leave, what changed in them and what did we miss? Because as leaders, it's our job not to miss those things. We can't see everything, we can't know everything. But we can go and talk to the people or have them talk to their managers or their own leaders. Find out why they're in such a state. Because if you don't, they will leave. And if they leave, that could destroy your whole team. Don't lose good people because of poor leadership or lazy leadership because you're scared to ask someone a question. You're the leader. You're there for a reason. Do your job now. If today's episode hit home, please take 60 seconds to share it with a friend you trust. These conversations matter and if you haven't already, subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. We've got more real world leadership tips coming your way. Until next time, stay sharp, stay safe, and keep leading from the front. Thank you for tuning in to Leadership in the Line of Fire. If today's episode sparked some insights, please share it with your friends and colleagues. Don't forget to hit like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Your support fuels this journey. Join us next time as we continue to explore leadership lessons from the fire Line. Until then, keep leading with courage and agility.