What You Should Expect From Your Employees (And What You Absolutely Shouldn’t)

In Episode 35 of The Business Fix, Chrissy and Josh dive into one of the most frustrating and misunderstood parts of being a business owner or manager: employee expectations. What should you realistically expect from your team—and what is completely out of line?

They break it all down with a candid, hilarious, and deeply practical discussion, laying out the 3 E’s of a healthy team member—Engagement, Ethics, and Evolution—and why these non-negotiables are the baseline for a thriving workplace culture.

You’ll also hear about:

• What to do when employees miss deadlines
• How to know if it’s a skill gap or a will gap
• The danger of “freestyling” (aka ignoring SOPs)
• Why mind reading and “owner-level obsession” are completely unfair expectations
• The truth about asking for help—and why it should be celebrated, not punished
• Why psychological safety and radical ownership must go hand-in-hand

This episode is packed with hard-earned leadership insights and actionable strategies that will help you create a high-performing team without burning them—or yourself—out.

🎯 Perfect for small business owners, people managers, team leaders, and execs who want to build a culture of accountability and growth.

👉 Got feedback or want to share how this episode hit home? Leave us a comment, review, or shoot us a message over at thebusinessfix.com

If you're looking to get help with your culture, or to help out an entire group, reach out to Josh and Chrissy today!  We would love to see how we can help you, your business, or your event. Contact us!

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Transcript

0:30

I hope it never comes to this, but I don't expect my employees to take a bullet from me. What? To something you don't expect from your employees. Chrissy. Miracles, miracles? Yeah. No, that's. That's a good one. We are going to talk about what you can and what you should expect from me. Did I go too far? No, we got that. That was really good. Okay. Yeah. What should you expect from your employees? Stay tuned. She's the CEO. He's the marketing and operations guy. If it's broken, you need. The business fix. It's holiday season. It's the tail end of the holiday season. It's the tail end of Q4. Yes. The big part of open enrollment is over. How are you? I'm fine. Better for the better. Question is how? It's the team. Right? Did you expect them to survive this? Yes, they are still. They're still smiling. We have some holiday stuff coming up. Is that. Induced or. No. No, they're doing good. Oh, they're they're doing all right. So. Good, good. Glad. I wouldn't expect anything less. No, not from them. They. And we know it's it's 45 days of really rough weather. Look, it's it's the same as what accountants get. They know January 1st through April 15th. You're just there. November 1st to December 15th is awful. No, thanks. No. No thanks. And you throw holidays in the middle of it, so, you know, it's fun. You know, there's there's so many reasons why I don't want to do what you do. I know, nope. No, thanks. People don't. Yeah. Yeah, you can talk about it all you want in here. Because I want nothing to do with any of that nonsense. Yeah, it depends on the day. If you're going to ask us if we want to do it either. But we do. Good. Well, so someone has to. Someone has to ask. Yeah. Nice. For us, it's always interesting. The end of the year, because of the holidays, we do some work with some, like, retail establishments, things of that nature. So it gets kind of busy. Yes. I kind of looking forward to January's one of those months that I always like, look forward to, but hate. No one has their marketing budget. No, no, no one has their marketing budget to, like, usually, like they don't think about that till the end of February. Really? Oh, yeah. Oh, and they're like, oh, crap. We we need to do marketing. Sales aren't what we like. We're off targets for the year. Okay, so they spent November and December coming up with ten and 15% increase goals. And then March is when they're like, oh crap, we have to do marketing to get this, don't we? Oh, we should do a podcast. Right. Right, right. They're brainstorming it in January. So what you're telling me is that I need to max your calendar, and I need to get all my podcasts recorded. Yes, January is the month I. There's a number of other video and like, content, companies that I talk with. We all kind of talk in a group and we always say we're like January, we should just go to Florida. Yeah, I like that idea. Just turn it into a big party for content creation companies, because that wouldn't be a disaster or anything. They're the nice thing is, is because it's what we do. There wouldn't be a camera in sight. Yes, it would be like growing up in the 90s again. Gotcha. Last week we talked about, like, as leaders. Yeah. What our employees expect of us, what our team expects of us. Employment is a two way street. Isn't that a shocker? I know, I know, there's there's many people out there that I know that are hearing this that are like. What? Yes. Yeah. No, it's a two way street. Once we've delivered the stuff that we have, ball's in their court. Yeah, but we have to make sure that, like, once again, we are having reasonable, non-negotiable expectations that we need to hold them to. Once again, as you mentioned, kind of like in the interim, they're like, unless they're Secret Service, taking a bullet for me is not one of them. No, no, no it's not. But then we also have to realize, like what? Expectations like we have as business owners. That may be unfair for them. Clear vision, clarity in your vision? Yes. That's the way I should have said that. Not clear vision. Clarity in your clarity in your vision thing. We should get a thing sound effect every time. Which one of us says clarity? For clarity of vision. Healthy environment. There's got to be a return on. Why the hell am I doing this? Unless there's a return on investment? Yes. What should leaders expect from their people? And then what are the baselines a baseline for like attitudes, behaviors that like you're like full stop non non-negotiable. This is what a healthy team member has. Okay. So you know we talked about those three C's of leadership a while back. We talked about the clarity consistency and care tending to return. You should expect from your people. I would say what you expect from your people is expectation. So e for expectations. And we're going to talk about the three E's of a healthy team member. Because because we need things to be in threes. And we need them to have the same letter because alliteration matters. That's the piece that I was going for the alliteration matters. Iteration matters. Yes. So it's really important. So when you show up with stability and direction, you earn the right to expect these three things these three expectations okay. The first is engagement all right. Yes. Not forced enthusiasm but presence which is really curiosity and effort. So when the leader eliminates confusion, when you're clear employees can show up mentally, not just physically. An engagement is the baseline of presence. Ooh, we're here to do the things, and we're here to do the things and be curious about how to do the things better. That's engagement. Yes, yes. Totally agree. So the second one is ethics. And this is the alliteration for honesty and integrity. All right. So if I'm being transparent with you, I expect you to be transparent with me and employees. Again, we don't need employees to be perfect, but we do need them to be truthful. And ethics is really what protects your culture. Yes. 100%. And then the third is evolution. And evolution is really it's coach ability. So it's the willingness to grow to try to take feedback without spiraling into defensiveness, which is a big component. Evolution says I'm here to get better. So when leaders invest in coaching and professional development for their teams, the employee invests in evolving. Look at that. So it's the ability to learn things new. So when a leader provides clarity, consistency and care, the healthy team member responds with engagement, ethics and evolution. The fact that you came up with this ethics engagement or engagement, ethics and evolution goes to another piece that we have talked about. Yeah, consistency. It is. Holy crap. Are you consistent with these so threes. And it's like Christy I don't know if this is how we do or not. But yeah the the consistency piece I. Think you nailed. Well, when you've got those three things, it shows that a team's present honest and it's growing and that's really what you want. Yeah 100% 100%. When you how do you judge that? How do you know those things are happening? There's a lot of different ways that you can do that. Part is, you know, what are our core values? What are our mission and our purpose and our team members? Do they understand it? Do they live by it? And are they learning by it? And you can. Yeah. I mean, the those are things that you should be able to see unless your core values are just wall art, crappy wall art, shitty ballers. Yes. I'll know. Yeah. You spy. You should be able to see it. I think it's really they should be quantifiable and they should be very easy to ask a yes no, yes no question or A123 rating. Do I see these in my team members? Are they coachable? I mean coach evolution is a really big one. If I present something new and they're always like, no, we don't want to do it, we don't learn new things. Now, we always say that we don't learn new things in fourth quarter because we're doing all of the things in fourth quarter, but that's a little bit different. When we've had that conversation. Yes. But if if you're bringing in like if you're bringing in innovation, you're bringing in new education, new training and development around a tool or around something new that we're going to do for our customers. And all of your team members are going, we don't do this. We don't want to take feedback. That's telling you very quickly that you have an issue with employees that don't want to evolve. That makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. The honesty piece. Where do you see that appearing? Oh, a couple things. One would be if they're hiding mistakes or they're not wanting to tell you things, there's that one. That's the big one. To me. That is the big one. It's hiding it. Being afraid to be imperfect. So the other is when you've got you have your core values, they're like, oh, I don't think that I don't really care about teamwork. Well, if you don't care about teamwork as a core value, then we've got a problem with your ethics. So the perfection one. Is interesting. And the reason why I say that is that's circular. Yeah. Because our last topic was what your employees expect from you. Yes. And if they get the honesty and transparency from you they're much more likely to reciprocate that. Correct. If they don't, there is not a snowball's chance in July that they are going to be honest with you. Yeah, well, and I feel like authenticity and ethics are partners. So, sure, people want you to be authentic and you want them to operate with high ethics. And so having those be together, being able to be transparent, being who you are, I think it just makes sense. It 100% does. 100% does. For sure. Yeah. I've got some interesting operational pieces on this because. Yeah. Okay. There's we talked roadmap. Yes, we talked list. Yes I have expectations. Do you. Oh look do you do. Yeah I got a, I got a whole list of them. Oh wow. You've got a lot of expectations here. And not taking the bullet is not on here. No I like this okay. It's not alliteration though. Or it's not. I like your phrases. This is good. It's not words. Yeah. No surprises. Yes. We owe employees clear due dates in in. And once again, I'm going to frame a lot of these. Like, we give you this, and therefore I. This is reciprocal. Reciprocity. Reciprocity? Yes. That is the word I was looking for. It's been a long week. A long week. Right. And it's we're recording on a Monday. Yes. Oh it's it's quarter four. Yes. Fourth quarter. It we say like leaders. Oh. Employees. Clear due dates. Clear. Clear. Things like that. Yeah. In return, I expect communication before the crash. Oh, I like that. The other movie quote say movie spy game. Go look it up. Yes. When did Noah build the Ark? Before the flood? Yes. So I don't expect perfection either. I do expect to know about a delay before the due date. Yeah, if you're going to. We were just talking about this. Or. Now if if something's do and you're swamped. If it's due in a week, I need to know today, not Friday. What an. I don't want to know. You missed the deadline. After you missed the deadline. Correct. I'm it if if it's hard. If the if we know before the deadline, we can fix it. Yes. After the deadline. That's tougher to fix. Same thing. If you had a roadblock, tell me immediately. Don't be like. I'll let this sit and come back to it doesn't work. The other thing is, is hiding bad news is just hiding bad news until the deadline is a failure of expectation. I mean, it's telling. It tells you something about your culture. If someone's hiding that deadline, it is. And you have to look at, is this an individual employee issue or are they just worried or scared, or is this a culture issue? In some cases, if it's a new or employee especially, they came from a culture where if anything, like had a hint of going wrong, it takes a while to break them of that. Well, hiding a deadline is something I will forgive, usually once, because then it is. I didn't clarify expectations. Or again, you had an issue with a past employer or a past situation. It may be something that you've struggled with. So I mean, I will allow that usually just once because after that it speaks to integrity. But I agree with you 100%, right? If they and I mean the same, I always make analogies between relationships and work because there's so many ways it past trauma. Right. If you've got this past trauma like okay if if you I mean if you got screamed at and berated and any time something went wrong, you're going to try and sweep that under the rug and just hope it goes by. If you're shown in a new relationship, a personal be a business, that's not going to happen. You need to adapt to that. Yeah. Radical ownership of how is something else. Now to me, like we discussed that servant leader question how can I help? Yeah. And I expect you to bring me, like, not always the solution. Well, let me back this up. I hate it when I hear people say, I expect you to bring me the solution, not just the problem. Because I tell you what, if an employee is bringing you a problem, they can't figure out the solution. No. What I do want is you to come to me and say, I'm having a problem with this. I've looked at A, B, and C, yes. Yes I'm. Stuck. Yes. Because to me that shows me that is my expectation is you're going to do some research as the employee, you're going to do some research, you're going to put in some effort to try and find the solution. I've had bosses come to me and say, don't bring me problems, bring me solutions. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, I'm here because there's a problem I can't figure or you're you're the problem. I brought that to them before too. And been like, no, you're the you're holding this up. Yes. And they're like, I want solutions. Well then get the hell out of the way. If if someone comes to me and says, look, I've looked at A, B and C a solutions, I can't figure this out, then great. At least show me that you've put in some effort. And I think asking for help needs to be celebrated, especially in organizations, when we're trying to deal with innovation, when we're working on on building psychological safety. Another thing, when you've been talking about missing deadlines, if you are inconsistent as a leader and you constantly miss deadlines, I don't think that you should be ever be mad at your team members if they miss a deadline. So, when it comes to, you know, radical ownership, I think it's really important that you, you praise individuals for even being willing to walk to you and say, hey, I can't figure this out. Asking for help is is absolutely something that we should be praising and performance. I always do my best to make sure to say, okay, great, let's figure this out. You don't need to buy them flowers. You don't need to send them pizza. You do not need to like have birthday cake in the. No. But you can say thank you for telling me. Thank you for telling me about this issue. Let's work on it 100%. A simple thanks and honest and earnest thanks. Not like great. Thanks for bringing me this. Oh, no. No, no. Tone is important. Don't screw it up in your tone. Right? And you have what's what's difficult for many leaders in this is there are times where we're frustrated with something and someone brings you in another problem. You're like, damn it, this is the last thing I want to do, and I want you still have to put on the happy face and be like, thanks for bringing this in. Yes. And to me, it takes practice to be in that gratitude mindset. But you, you have to practice that in order to make sure that when someone walks in the door with a problem, yes, you can be thankful that they walked in the door with a problem and not handed you a big bag of flaming dog shit. Two months? Don't know. This is what we signed up for when we decided we were going to lead a business 100%. That has more than you, correct? If you're not a suck, sometimes you was the toughest one to manage. That's true, I agree. I am the hardest person to manage, but. Till your damn job, start looking at other stuff over here. Speaking of that is there's a process for things. We talked about talked about documenting processes. Yes. To me, I expect an employee to follow the agreed upon process until we agree to change it. Yes. I love when people explore other opportunities. I was just presented one on how we do podcasts shown like, hey, this tool starting to work better than that tool. Awesome. I really appreciate you. Like looking at that. Yes, I appreciate you test. These are the types of things why I love the people that work with me. But it's it's that not like, hey, I've completely scrapped everything that we've done and started something from scratch. Don't come at me with that. No, there's usually a reason why we do it the way we do it. Correct. And what's tough is, is explaining to people like the way you do your thing may affect the way someone else does their thing. And making sure that the problem is, is so many people don't explain those connections. Yes. And making sure you do explain, like, hey, I realize this may be a hair easier for you. This may save you ten minutes, but it costs Bob down the hallway an extra three hours when you do it this way. Yes. So I need you to spend the extra ten minutes. Well, and as you become a leader in an organization that is continuing to grow and may have spaces for silos, it's really important. Especially as late as a CEO, as an executive leader, that you're able to fill in the gaps for your leadership team so that they can understand where the impact is. Because I see that a lot. In fact, we just dealt with it. In an issue at AUI, we're working on a new CRM for the marketing component. And so, one of the individuals on my team came back and said, why do we have five different names for the same carrier? And I went because they're five different products. And this is how this works. And he's like, well, the CRM company wants to change it. And I went, the CRM company has to go through Ellis to change it. He's like, oh, never mind. So it's that conversation about understanding why things are the way that they are now. This enables us to service our our clients better because it gives us the understanding and the information. And now you cannot change that simply because a program developer thinks that's a good idea. Now take your web development away from my insurance products. The one, the the one that's a deal breaker to me is quote unquote freestyling. Yes, I want people. Oh gosh. Find new ways. I want people to look at new things. I want people to find inefficiencies, and I want people to talk. But we don't do that on critical operations. Not only that, but when they just start doing it on their own. I've fired a number of people I have to for just that where they're like, no, no, no, I've got to get. My processes better. We don't understand what your process and no. Right. And I'm happy to sit down and talk about this, but don't just go off the reservation and expect us to come after you when stuff goes sideways, because we don't know what happened. We don't know how you did it. We don't know why you did it. And therefore you've you've kind of caused a whole calamity in itself. Exactly. If there's an SOP. Yes. If there is a standard operating procedure, my expectation, you follow it. Yes. That is very much to me, a non-negotiable. Now, once again, the only the only way that I have a wiggle room on this. If there is a problem, we need to know. So and this, this to me, is the operational piece that I always loved is when we had a problem, I'd always look at it. First off, one time is not a problem. Yes, but second off, I always look at it and be like, is this an opportunity for us to change things and do them better? Is this an outlier or is this just someone screwed up? Yeah. If you don't have this documented, if if you don't talk about problems when they happen, you can't get better. You can't fix things and you can't adapt to things. And if you don't adapt to things, you're just gonna die. That's all there is to it. So to me, it's that, that, that, that, that adherence to the process is just such a key for me. And 90% of the time I find that when we have something messed up, guess what? We forgot to step in the process. We didn't follow our process. And I don't think there's anything wrong with we're going to discuss. We're going to debate them. We're going to decide if we need to innovate in our process, but we do that as a team. No one gets to go rogue. No including the business owner. Correct. Don't do something you don't want to. I mean, if you want to see people totally disrupt your processes, do it to them. Yeah, it's funny you say that because I've had it. I've helped out with some editing recently, and I'm going through our process sheet like, oh yeah, I got it. Because when the process sheet has greatly evolved from when I was doing a lot of editing, because when it was just me, I set up the sheets and I'm like, okay. And then as we've talked and as tools have changed and as things have changed, I'm like, oh, I did it the old way. This would be all sorts of screwed up. So I have to adhere to that. Yes. I've got to make sure that I do that because otherwise, once again, I'm going to turn out some just absolute garbage. And I got to make sure that it's my responsibility is opposite. I get pissed at someone if they did that to me. Well, guess what? I if I do it to me, I got to get equally as mad at me. Yes, you do. Take myself out back and punch me in the face a few times. The things that you cannot expect. The mind reader. Telepathy is not a skill you screen for. Oh. No. Okay, I get no, we're done here. Yeah. No, I it always upset me when, as an employee, someone is like, why didn't you do this? And I'm like, you didn't tell me what you should know. No. Obviously. Didn't tell me. I shouldn't know, I didn't. We don't have a procedure for this. And you didn't tell me what this is. What's. It's right there. No, it's not I. If I don't get mad at me, if I didn't do something you didn't directly tell me to do. No, Don't get mad at your employees if they don't. And just because you think you told them to do something unless it's documented, you can go back and say, see where it says, do the thing. It's not. There. Well, research says it takes ten times for someone to truly understand. So that's something else you have to tell I know. Wow, it's hard. Wow, wow. And we've done 35 episodes. Boy? Oh, yeah. I'm just trying to do the math here real quickly in my head. There's only 315 episodes left to go before it's really pounded in. Exactly, exactly. The other one is is to is, is. I am going to stare at you directly in the eyes. As I say, this one. Yes. And you know what it. Is I do. Owner level obsession. No one is going to care as much as you care. Nope. Never. Don't expect you worked 80 hours. Congratulations. They do not give a shit. Nor will they do it. No, they may do it if on the occasion. If it's needed. Yes, but don't expect them to do it. Doing it every day, every week. They're not going to do it out of the kindness of their eyes. And you don't want them to. Oh gosh. No. You know what to do with yourself. No, no, we don't want to deal with ourselves. That's why we work on our businesses for 80 hours a week. Exactly what they have lives. You have a legacy. Yeah. To not expect them to care about the business as much as you do. No, they should care about the business. They should care about the results. They should care about the people around them. The business as a whole, they. Are not the same way that you do. No, no, no, it's the same thing. Don't expect someone to care for your kid the same way you do. Exactly. Expect them to treat your kid well and with respect and all those other things. But don't expect them to do the same things for your kid that you would do. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Oh. That being said, how do you determine if a missed expectation is a training issue, meaning it was the leader's fault or an attitude or maybe an employee issue? Okay. So I would say you ask yourself, is this a skill or a will issue? Oh yeah. We were I'm now so. Are we at it. Are we going to start to get it. Yeah. God help you. Do. I can do all of the things I will. Just I can rhyme to. I can rhyme with the best of them. And I can do insurance abbreviations. So just just know it's going to get interesting if that's what we're going to do. So I'm going to tap out. Now you win. So is it skill or. Well. So if it's a skill gap that's on leadership. So we didn't train well enough or we didn't set the person up with the right tools. But if it's a will problem that's attitude. And so that employee has to meet us halfway. Skill gap gaps I believe are fixable. Yep. Always. But will gaps really are. I it's funny. I agree with that. And it's that there's with the will gap. There's always other signs to yes. There's you can see that this is a cumulative thing, not just oh, they're missing that one piece. They're missing the chunk. Well, they are, and I mean, leaders get in trouble when they treat well issues like a training issue because you cannot coach someone into caring. No. And I know that there's some and you're not. Jesus. You can't do it. When you try and do that. That typically pushes them the other direction. It doesn't. It becomes really strong. When you say, read the handbook, you know, and read our core values until those set in. No. No, no, they are going to have a bonfire with your core values and that's it. They are going to turn that into. Kindling and you just need to exit them quickly. Someone doesn't meet standards. How does that affect the high performance on the team? Oh gosh. It hurts the high performers. They're going to miss it. They're absolutely going to exit. When you allow underperformers to coast, I mean your high performers feel punished for caring. And then they start thinking, you know, why do I care so much? Why am I working so hard? If nothing changes, you want your high performance to exit. You maintain that low performance standard for somebody else 2%. They will start to perform at that at that same level as a low performer because like they can get away with it like at all. Well they're like, well we can't find anybody else to do this job. And it's really important. I bet you can't or I bet your your high performers will say, we would rather work alone than have to drag dead weight. I mean, like this boat anchor. Exactly. I mean, you have to think to that, you know, keeping the wrong person. And we've talked about this several times in other episodes, you know, but it hasn't been ten times yet. You know, it's always been expenses. Okay, maybe. We're going to need to talk about it 100 times. Yeah. I mean, you you keep the wrong person. It's almost it's almost always more expensive than letting them go with dignity and exiting them to a new opportunity is really it's sometimes it's the best thing you can do for the performer. Yes. And I mean 100%. It's the it's a good thing for them, but it's the, the biggest thing for you because like you, like you said, those other people aren't dragging along that boat anchor. And it's tough because the other thing is to sometimes that low, the low standard may just be an enthusiasm thing. And it does not take I mean, we're both enthusiastic people. I've been in rooms where you've got your, and it just sucks it right out of you. It does. It's exhausting. Yeah. We're just like, okay. I mean, if if everything first, if you look at some of the people, they're like, just get out of here. If this is so terrible, get the hell out of here. Yeah. But when you're around that it makes it very difficult to function at a high level. Yeah. It's it's be aware the room you're in. Well, I think. It's a really good conversation that you have with organizations that are working on accelerating their growth. It's having the conversation around, you know, you may have people that are in this organization that do their job, okay, but they are difficult to be around. What is that doing to your organization as a whole? And if you want to move faster, you need people that are in alignment with you. And we've we dealt with that over the last few years at ROI and clarity. We've had significant turnover, in part because we started managing and doing performance evaluations by our core values and saying, hey, these are our core values and and we need you to like them. Well, I don't really believe in community. Like, okay, well, we don't believe in you anymore either. So it's. Just. That's kind of how it was. It's no, I. I know it sounds heartless, but it's really important. You can't you can't grow fast when you're not in alignment with people. And now I walk into the room and I'm like, I love all these people. They're great. I love the the simplicity of what you said that, though, because here it's like we talked about fear a couple episodes ago, and here it's this seems like a big deal and it's really not. You're just not a fit. It's just not a fit. Well, and I will say for years there, I drug dead weight for a couple of different things with people. And specifically I'm like, I need you to love this as much as I. And it's like, I'm not telling them enough. I'm not selling it. I'm not being and I'm not being clear right now. I was being clear they were also being clear with their middle finger, and they didn't care what I had to say. It was like, you know what? We need to move on. Yep, yep. Something else like, how do you reset expectations when someone has been okay? Yeah. With 30 years and they're like, okay, I'm coasting till retirement. Yeah. So I think sometimes too, with long term employees, you know what, your expectations can drift because the business grows and you don't necessarily recalibrate the role. So they're like, oh, I'm still doing the same job I did ten years ago. No, you're not like you've you've moved up in the company or you move laterally or we don't even do the same things. And I was going to say it's not even the same thing anymore. That's it. Like we don't like what we do. And insurance has changed dramatically in the last 15, 20 years. Even in the last five years I not surprising. So I think it's really important that you you reset that implicit contract of like, you know, this is what the role requires today. This is where we're going. I mean, it starts with, you know, honesty delivered respectfully. Here's what the company needs now. Yep. Appreciate all of the work that you've done in the past to get us to where we are. But this is what we need from you moving forward. And this is what success looks like. Do you think you could do those things for us? Yep. And if they say yes, you go, great, let's add some more training and development. Let's work on things. Because what I will say to Josh is, as organizations grow, if you want the people inside the organization to grow as well, you have to be able to develop them professionally. You have to give them new skills, the ability to have access to new skills, which is why you also, as a leader, have to be adding new skills to yourself. A lot of times when organizations flatline in the middle and they're like, I'm when when a leader is frustrated with their middle management, I would say 99 times out of 100, it is because that leader at the top isn't developing themselves. Sure, you don't get to be ticked at your middle leadership because they're falling to the level of their training, which is below where you are, and you keep thinking that everybody needs to coast. They don't like it. I it's so funny how people so often promote someone and without prior training and without follow up training. Well, they were good at their job. So now they're going to be a good manager. That is not accurate. Peter Principle I see I still see it. We talked about it a couple of different contexts a little bit earlier off here. To kind of wrap all of this up, clear actionable takeaways. We always like to give these to people. So that way they can walk away and be like, I learned something today. Other than that, Josh talks too much. Not true. To me, the biggest one is like, what I should expect from my employees is when I tell them what done is I want them to get to done. Yeah, there's no ambiguity about that. There's no it's and I have them I have the expectation that they get there. They don't give it to me beforehand. It's here's what I defined as done. And that is what exactly what I'm going to get. Yeah. And I would say to defining done you also need to define the why. So if you want people to give you engagement they need to understand the mission. So if you assign your team a task you need to assign your team the why it matters of that. My other one is I talked about Noah built the ark before the storm. I mean, I'm not even a religious guy, and I still like that one. That's a good one. Is if a deadline's at risk, tell me. Yeah. The conversation happens before the client sending me that nasty email going, hey, where's my stuff? Yeah, where'd it go? What I would say to you, too, I'm going to steal it from you because you've talked about it before. It's normalizing that check in. Yeah. So you create that culture. We're speaking of early is in a sign of weakness. It's a sign of ethics. That other e. Yeah, yeah. Back to the ease. And with that, check yourself before you wreck yourself. Yes. We've all I know we've all done this. I did this a couple of times when I was younger. Run into the room. Dammit. You screwed this up again. Why the hell is that? Blah blah blah blah blah. And they're like, well, boss, this is what I was told to do. And you're like, oh, oh, sorry about that. Oops. Do you want lunch? I, I all right, we've all been there. And I mean instantly, like I say, you've my other analogy, you feel your esophagus and your large intestine swap places. You take that heavy gulp and then, yeah. Yeah. And I would say, and going with the checking yourself, you need to coach the next step. Yeah. So when those expectations slip you're going to focus on that evolution that last asking what's the next killer support. You need to hit this next time. So you have accountability and support. It moves people forward as opposed to being fearful. Yeah that and that will give you that expectation of that that accountability. They'll feel that. Yeah. They'll feel accountable for things and be proactive on it. To me, I know you've seen this hundreds of times. You've seen thousands of red flags. Some of them have been waving in this direction. What is the single biggest red flag that an employee has mentally checked out? And, oh, it's no longer like meeting like, weather, any expectation, but let's say cultural expectations. Yeah. When communication disappears, culture disappears. Oh, that's the biggest red flag. Silence is the biggest red flag. If they're quiet. Yeah. If they're. And especially if they suddenly go quiet. Yeah. It's it's, it's, it's very telling. What is the one operational metric that proves an employee is owning their role to me. I don't have to ask. I just know it's done. It's on time. It's it's that to me trust. Yeah. There's the there's never a question. There's never and I mean, I'm always like, we use a sauna. I'm always going to check on stuff on asana. Where are we at with this? What's the workload like? Because I want to be proactive in those things. But when I get, when I don't have to ask the questions like, where are we at with this? How's this going? How are you feeling when I just know what the mood in the room is without asking? That's that's when we know stuff is going right. Yeah. That being said, high performance is a two way street. Very much so. If if you want high performing people, you have to be a high performer for them. Yes. Not just for the business, for them specifically. Model what you want to see. Yes. Yes. Oh, I need to work. I got some work to do. If you want to find out some of the work that we all should probably be doing. Business ethics podcast.com. You can go get all the old episodes, all the new episodes. You can get them on YouTube. Also, go look at all the social medias. We've we've got the clips that are on there. We have a lot of fun putting those together. Lots of good antics in those also, especially if you're just like if you if you're sitting on the couch and your spouse or partner, whoever is watching something that you absolutely hate, scroll our entire feed. That's fine. It's it's fun. You're going to learn something and you probably have something to make fun of me for, so we'll take it. Also review subscription on any of the podcast platforms and let us know what you want to hear. We would love for you to tell us what topics you need us to, to address or to talk about. Next week A, B and C players. Who are they? Oh, and where do they fit in your business? We're all AA players, right? Everyone A, B and C players to me all have a fit in the business. Figuring out where, how and what's going to make the most effective. Yeah. We're going to talk about that next week. Do me a favor. Take care of yourself. If you can't take care of someone else too, we will see you very, very soon. Stay.