Why Employees Quit and What Great Leaders Do Differently

 Today's guest is Rustie, founder of Lead Forward, a leadership framework helping organizations improve retention, strengthen culture, and lead more effectively in high-stress environments. Over the last 15 years she's led operations, developed teams, and helped organizations achieve remarkable retention and performance improvements. Her story goes beyond business success. After losing everything during Hurricane Ian while helping rescue others, she gained a perspective on resilience and leadership that few people ever experience. Today we're talking about leadership, culture, burnout, resilience, and what it really takes to lead people through difficult seasons 

You can find me as David Monsour a.k.a. Disco Davo on most social media applications as well as my contact 
davidmonsour.com.

Transcript

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So, all right. All right, here we go. So, today's guest is Rusty, founder of Lead Forward, a leadership framework helping organizations improve retention, strengthen culture, and lead more effectively in high stress environments. Over the last 15 years, she's led operations, developed teams, and helped organizations achieve remarkable retention and performance improvements. Her story goes beyond business success after losing everything during Hurricane Ian. While helping rescue others, she gained a perspective on resilience and leadership that few people ever experience. So today we're talking about leadership and culture and resilience and what it takes to lead people through a difficult season. So, Rusty, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. Hi. All right. So tell me about Lead Forward. That is the name of your is it is it coaching? Is it a training? Tell me about lead forward. What is it and how'd you get started? It's training. It is 25 years of management all wrapped up into a 90-minute training session. It's all of the things that I've learned in various aspects of my career wrapped up into a nice little basket. I find that simple works better. And sometimes when we don't regulate ourselves and we don't step back and pause, that's where we create chaos and we are ineffective. So it's training, training the basics and training people to understand that it's a cause and effect. If you are a micromanager, for instance, your team is gonna, you're gonna have high turnover. It's training out of that. We're not trained to be calm and thoughtful. We have to train ourselves to do that. We're trained to be in fight or flight, the saber-toothed tigers coming around the corner, you know, impulsive, reactive, boom, boom, boom, boom. And so this training takes you a step back to go, okay, what can I do better? When can I, you know, intervene? And how should I intervene? It's a combination of organizational leadership and behavioral psychology. So I've heard you use the word chaos in our conversation earlier, and then a couple other videos that I listened to. So, and I don't know how this relates this. I might be asking two different questions at the same time, but I feel like you're leading a little bit into mental health or meant just the mentality of what it takes to be in leadership and the effects it has on groups and maybe personal. So it you may do both. Are you diving into both how your leadership's affecting other people or just your own psychology of how it affects you and how what you're doing affects other people? I think that's I think that's a sword. You know, there's two sides to that sword. So your behavior spreads, your attitude spreads. And so if you aren't able to recognize and regulate that, then your team is going to be reactive. And so that's when people have high turnover. That's when you have bad customer service, that's when you have disgruntled management. And because we are a fast-paced, busy, we're just fast-paced, busy people. We don't necessarily take a minute to step back and go, oh, I I need to think about how I'm going to respond to this. Normally we're just and that's a traditional, you know, we've got girls at home, we've got kids, we've got spouses, we've got cousins, we've got marriage, you know, all kinds of life things on top of walking into the office with work things. And so it's really, really acknowledging and recognizing that and understanding that the people that you're managing or leading also have things. And so acknowledging the human part and and not being reactive. I think that's the largest thing. So, was there an event or anything in your life that made you decide to create this organization? Or was it has it always been a passion? It's always been a passion. I love I love training and leadership. I think that there's so much that we all can learn every day. And so it excites me to be in a position to do that. I was with a coach, myself, a business coach, and so we created my passion, which is lead forward. And the success rate is phenomenal, I think. And so she encouraged me to create an entire workshop to share with people and get companies back on track. You said the success rate. What is what are you measuring, or what is what is successful? So for let's say, for instance, retail retail. That's the largest turnover in aside from teachers now. That's one of the largest turnovers in the country, right? Retail sales. You get go to Walmart or 7-Eleven or you know, all of that's retail sales. For the most part, you get maybe 27% retention. So you what is retention? Is that like a year? They're there for a year, or what do you consider retention? Just one year, okay. Yeah, so on average, statistically, it's 27% retention. And for what I do outside of my coaching and my training, I also run a seasonal retail, which is even harder because now you're dealing with seasonal employees and that I have to interview 350 people for one position. And that's a lot. So my time is sucked up on that too. So having a higher retention, which this year coming into this next season, it looks like about 90% will be coming back for a seasonal position. That's ginormous. But there's a reason for it. And the League Ford training outlines the entire reason why that's been successful. Last year I had 78% come back. Anything above 30, I'm I'm happy with because that's less interviewing I have to do. Yeah. Because it's 300 training or a lot of things, yeah. Right. And I need at least 100 employees for all my locations. So if you do the math on that and you do the hours, and then you do the hours of how much it costs the our owner, our franchise owner, to pay me to come up with that's a ginormous number. And so for retention, we want to retain our good employees. We can't retain our good employees if we're not regulated. We can't retain our good employees if we're yelling at them. And the one thing that is really the key to all of this is to sit down with your employee and just be there, be present. You don't have to say anything. Just be present with them. Not like creepy sit down and stare at them. You know, but be present and allow them to grow and develop. I tell everybody that I'm training you to take my position. And those are big shoes to fill. Yeah. So if you can do better than me, if you can do do this job, I will be so happy for you because you're developing. And I want my team to develop and I want them to move upwards because you can't grow a company effectively without having that attitude, I think. So how does any idea what Chick-fil-A's retention is? Because we know that they're known for having great customer service, but is that the same as retention? Do you think they go hand in hand in a way? Because those employees clearly buy in because they're very consistent at their locations. I would think that they would have really good retention. I haven't personally looked up their statistics specifically, but they do fall in the same category as retail. So generically, they would fall under that 27%. They are very well known for having an established base. So I'm assuming the retention is really good. So it's it's yeah, Dan Cassney lives here, and and Chick-fil-A just is on every block here. But you know, they have the college incentives, they just I you know it appears that they work really hard there. It's not a padded comfort job, but I guess it's a respected job. So I don't know if that's a good resume builder or they teach, treat them well. I don't even know what they pay. I have no idea. Well, I would think I was a GM for a competitor of theirs, and the reason why we had high retention at that particular location was the same skills that I'm I built and lead forward. It's respect. You you can't bark orders at somebody. That doesn't that doesn't win. If you allow your staff to have ownership of what they do and explain to them the reason why they do what they do or need to do, and what what if they're an octopus, what arm are they in the swimming and catching of fish, right? We all have a role, we all have a reason. I hire employees to do specific things. You hire employees to do specific things, right? I have a call center now, so those employees I hire specifically to do calls and incoming, outgoing. Why? I don't just say, hey, make calls. I get them involved. Well, if we do this amount of calls, I believe in 10%. So whatever you put out, you get 10% back. And from that 10%, you're only going to get a stash of 10%. Right. If that makes sense. And that invigorates them because now they feel like they're a part of something. And I think that's where Chick-fil-A has really been successful because they involve their staff in all of the things. Yeah. There's a lot of ownership and self, hey, I get to do this because. And and that in any subject, whether it's your marriage, whether it's your being a parent or being a child, you get excited because you feel like you're a part of something. There is a large portion of the population that comes from a very old school, maybe 1980s, late 70s, where you just do the work. Right? You just show up, do the work. And I think from that we have created this melancholy. You know, the IBM generation's gone. That doesn't work anymore. And if you're my age, you you know exactly what I'm talking about. And if we look at the customer service now as of today, people just they don't want to work. And it's not that they don't want to work, they don't have the passion to work. And that's a very different thing. You can be in a loveless marriage, you're still married. But if you're in an exciting marriage and you guys are doing things, and that's a very different perspective, and you want to come in and you get excited about coming in. So that's really the component that I navigate. There's a lot of there's a loyalty issue where I think even I'm probably on the closer to the other end of the the IBM generation, but I could see how young people now would see this company's not loyal to me. So I'm not gonna be, you know, there's all these memes and jokes about it's five o'clock, I'm gone. Don't don't call me at home and ask me to do work, and you want to go, oh, that's so lazy, do it for the team. The team don't care anything. If they got to cut somebody, they're not, they're gonna do whatever they have to do to make sure the CEO gets his full bonus and commission. So I think it's so clear to everyone that's starting out or whatever, that there is no loyalty. It's all about bottom lines and numbers. And I think that is what's changed. Where people are like, I want to do enough to get my paycheck and maybe be considered if I'm not if I'm not at all considered for promotion or advancement, then why would I do anything more than what is required of me? Because you know that you can be snapped off anytime. And I know that's not a great way to to think, but I understand why they do. So here we here we're mic went out. You went on mute. Did you hit the mute button? There you go, you're back. Here we are at this precipice, this really amazing time. Yes, politically it's all kooky and and you know, there's all kinds of things coming at us. However, if you take a step back and you really look at the landscape, we're in a beautiful time frame, especially as business owners, to encapsulate something that will help us generate and keep keep revenue consistently. And I mean that very seriously. Everybody's afraid of AI. Yes, AI is a thing. It is coming at us, it's been coming at us for God. When do they really start auto autobots on the phone? 97, back in the 1900s, right? That's how old I am. And so we're in this beautiful place where yes, AI exists. Yes, there's all kinds of kooky other stuff going on. Yes, we're very distracted. But as a business owner, take a step back and look at the advantage that you have, because there is nothing more important than having a face-to-face conversation with somebody. Right. And I've I've read, yeah, I've read that that is becoming even more important because of AI, because now AI is, I feel like I can still tell for the most part, because most customer target people don't speak very clearly. So if I have someone that's speaking very clear and enunciates and all that on the phone, then I'm like, oh, that's a bot. So that is making that face-to-face connection even more important. People are going back to where, you know, they wanted to avoid face-to-face. Now they're like, no, I want to go back. I want, I want to talk to somebody, I want to meet with you, I want to see you. So that'd be interesting how how that changes or evolves if people will go back to a lot more face-to-face transactions. I think that's how you're going to maintain revenue. I think, you know, there are so many things that we've tried over the years, like the QVC 1999 try this, you know, what was the CD Columbia House, right? Back in the day where you'd get 20%. Probably do too. College, man. So, you know, we've tried a lot of these things. We've tried a lot of automation. I mean, even Netflix, Red Box. It's all gone now because they weren't able to encapsulate, sorry about that. They weren't able to encapsulate the the human aspect of it. And we are wired to be social. We are wired to be human. So if you look at your staff and say, I need to get here. I need to grow this by X amount, Y, and Z. And be very honest with your staff. And I've worked for companies that are like, nope, you just do this thing. That's it. I don't need to tell you why, you just do it. And that's very, you leave. You don't feel connected. And now at this point in time, and COVID was a great generator for this. We need that human connection. Yeah. So involving your staff, that's where you're going to grow. And that they're going to work for you. Yeah. You know, they're going to work hard to make this happen if if you do it right. And I think AI, yes, it's a it's an automated Wikipedia, as it were. There are advantages to it, but I think it's going to be like Columbia House or Red Box or some of those other things that just we hit it really hard and then eh, we don't need it. Yeah. That that would be interesting because I've heard I've been watching a good bit of the diary of a CEO podcast, and he's had people on from both sides. He's had people on that said the whole AI, everyone's losing their job, is all created by these people that own AI. They're just trying to sell subscriptions to their thing. So they're creating this massive amount of fear. And he related it to the same way, I don't know what years it started in the 90s or 80s, where they started telling everyone, you have to go to college or you're not going to be able to get a job. It was the same thing. And who created that? The universities did. And then the universities just slowly have increased their the price of college. And now you're looking at it's like you don't need college, especially now with access to so much information online, you don't need it as much. If you're specializing doctor, nurse, things like that, yes, you need continuing education. But for somebody like me that came out and you know, I got a business degree. I don't know anything about accounting, anything else. I'd do mortgages, I'd, you know, I'm in sales. So did I need a college education? You know, with student loans, I probably paid $40,000 for the whole thing. I don't had Pell Grants and things like that. So, but that cost now, if it be $200, would it be really worth it for somebody like me that really didn't specialize in anything? Yes, I would say yes, at least the first two years, and there's a reason for that. But we'll peg that and don't let me forget. Oh, yeah. Well, I love the experience of it. Like if my son wants to go to college, he's he's super smart, so he probably will. I want him to go for the experience. But anyway, yeah, we'll come back to that. So are you familiar with Andy Stanley? I would have to see a face. I'm horrible with the experience. He's a he's a preacher of a mega church all over Atlanta, but he does a leadership podcast. And he he had a guy on there that does the five, he said, I think it's the five geniuses of the workplace. Okay. Yep. And it was very interesting because he talked about hiring and managing, and how he would go in and kind of do what you do with he would look at the personalities of these people, and they'd have five people that were creative that had this, it's kind of like the personality traits and all that stuff. He they'd have five team members that were creative, but no one that had the initiative or the leadership or the the other four geniuses to put those plans in action. And so, like a lot of these companies that he would do what you do, he'd go in and talk to them about it, and and they go, Okay, you've got nobody that's creative. Everyone wants to put the plan in, but you have nobody coming up with the ideas. So his whole thing was when you're building a team or when you're managing, you've got to make sure you have somebody from all five geniuses on your team, or you're not gonna get anything done. And I thought, I thought that was brilliant because I look in my job, me and my assistant are way too similar. I mean, and so there's holes and cracks that don't get filled because her mind is right where I am, she's happy, fun, charismatic, wants to talk, wants to do it. Let's just get it done, let's get as quick as go. And so, some of the nurturing that some people do when they get a mortgage, they want their hands to be held, they want to be told how beautiful their home is. Both of us, we should go right past that because we're like, hey, let's get this to the table. I need this, let's go. So reading that book, I hadn't read the book, I listened to his talk on it, and I plan to do the test and and read his book, but I just it made me realize wow, you know, to function as a team, you really need these different personalities. Well, think about it in these terms. You are young and you're building a house, and you are the kind of personality that I'm a go-getter, I'm gonna do this. And then you come to the blueprints and you're like, holy smokes, I don't know anything about plumbing. I don't know anything about wiring. I have no idea how to mud and tape. How am I gonna get these trusses up there? What is a tar, bitethane? What is that? So you have to have those people in that situation to build your house, right? Because if you try to do it yourself, all of those things, you're probably gonna either drown or electrocute yourself or burn the whole foundation. Or get stuck to the roof. Or get stuck to the roof. Mom, help. So that's as simple as it can be because I think people can understand that. Like, I'm I, there is no way I'm crawling under in a crawl space for anything. You could not pay me a million dollars, and I will never go under a crawl space. I have built my own house before, but I really learned what my limitations were as a person, and I accept that. And that's the key. You have to accept your limitations. You have to accept that you're not good at everything. And you have to really be excited about the person who is. You know, I'm not a football player. I am I was a great goalie in soccer, but when it comes to American football, forget about it. I can't throw. But there are people that are gifted that way, right? Like there's opera singers, they're they're amazing. In your business, you have to be the conductor. You're not gonna always you're not gonna be able to fill all of those roles. And I think we've gotten away from, and it's showing economically across the board that we've gotten away from the value of business and ownership. It's all fast, fast, fast, fast, make the quickest buck, get those numbers, hit those goals, and we burn people out and they go elsewhere. And then here you are, it takes $3,000 to $10, $10,000 to hire and train a new person. And that's on the lower end of salary. But that's the most common, right? Would you say that's the the biggest reason people leave is burnout? Absolutely. Like people leave companies. Well, I mean, if you if you're if you're not invested and you're not excited and you don't, you're just like, eh, I've got to pay my bills, so I have to do this. That is a huge red flag. As a business owner, that would be a huge red flag for me. I'd be like, oh man, what happened? What am I not doing? How am I not investing in this person? Because again, the whole goal is for you to move up. I always say, step in, step up, or step out. Those are my three steps. You step in, you step up, or you step out. And if you're not willing to invest and develop that person to take your place so that you can move on to a higher place, then that person's gonna leave because they have no, there's no excitement, right? So I I was just I just downloaded how to win friends and influence people again. I feel like I've read it a couple, and I feel like there's a lot of, I don't know if they're considered versions of people just do add-ons, because I feel like this version is different. Because a lot of the because it's an old book, right, isn't it? From the 70s or I think it's older than that. I think it's right, because there were references in the one I'm listening to that let me know that it was not written in the 70s, but it was talking a lot about leadership and a lot about you know, you need to let them for them to buy into the idea, you've got to allow them to feel like they were part of creating the idea and that they're part, it isn't your idea that you're just giving them and telling them to do it. And I was just surprised, I guess, because the the focus of it, I guess, was it was it's been very entertaining. Um I'm only an hour, I I do everything audiobook, I don't actually read, but I I was just I mean driving. I'm glad that exactly. I'm glad that I circled back to the book. And it's weird that it kind of tied into leadership, and that was all accidental with this. And I'm doing another leadership class. And so a lot of then maybe that's why I just set my algorithm to pop it back up, but it was really cool the way it it kind of talked from like the head of something, a leader, to you've got to allow everyone else to you know have the idea to create the idea, even make them think they came up with the idea if you want them to buy in and work hard. It also depends on what your ultimate goal is. What is you have to look as the owner or the person in charge of these other human beings? What is your end game as a person? Why do you get out of bed? Do you just get out of bed because you have to? You know, or you're like, I'm getting out of bed because I have this phone call today and I've got a meeting and woo-woo woo-woo like that. Like you're excited. You have to figure out why you show up before you can discern why your staff shows up. If you're not good with yourself and you don't understand why you're there every day, how are you going to translate that to your staff? How are you gonna realize or recognize that your staff need your help? And that's really, I think that's the largest key that we forget about. And it's not that I think people are malicious. I genuinely think innately we are delightfully messy, beautiful bags of water floating on a flaming space marble, right? And I just think that we get so busy in ourselves with all the things that we have to do, all the moving parts, you know, drop the kid off of daycare. Did I make sure the kid's not in the back of the car? I know I dropped them off a daycare. Did I get my coffee? Did I, oh shoot, I forgot my lunch. So that's you know, a very typical brain right now, because we just have so many components and the phone's dinging and you know, all the things. We have to be able to walk into our office door going, okay, I'm here. Why am I here today? Okay. Well, Jim, he doesn't understand how to do accounts receivable. I'm gonna show Jim how to do that for at least an hour and make him do it and make and see if he feels good about doing that because it might not be his suit. And as a as a manager, I have a term called repurposing. So I like to repurpose my employees. I don't like to fire people. And it's not because I'm afraid of firing people. I've certainly fired enough. It's because I think that sometimes that person might not be good at one skill, but they're really good at another one. For example, say Jim really is not good at accounts receivable. My books are all messed up because Jim couldn't do that part. But he's really great as a sales guy. Like he's a talker, he's a go-getter. So put him over in sales. I'm not losing anything by that. I'm actually gaining an employee who now acknowledges that I saw something in him that maybe nobody else did. And now he's excited and he wants to come to work. So there's a lot of value if you take a step back and a find out why you come to work because it's not just bills, it's not because it's comfortable. How you can pull that out of other people. Huh? That's awesome. Most people do enjoy going to work, I think. I think they enjoy that when they're productive and they're feeling good. So well, we got about two minutes left. Tell me, uh tell me about your company, lead forward. What is the number one thing that you try to convey to the people that you're teaching? Is there one problem that you see that you address most often, or something that you that's just important to you that you try to nail down before you're done? Yeah, I think we talked about most, I think we talked about it really at length during this segment. It's really the pause. Why are you doing what you are doing? Not your employees, not the company, not anything. Just pause within yourself and figure out what it is, what what your end game is as a person. And when you acknowledge that, then you are so much more powerful as a leader and a manager to your staff because you have that insight of who you are, what you're capable of, and what you need help with. That's something people should do every day. Like you're driving into work with a manager, that's a reflection you should do every day, or do you get to a point where you go, well, I know my mission now, I'm good. I don't think that, I don't think living on this flaming marble, you will ever have a firm 1000% understanding of what your day is going to be like. You get into your car, you have no idea what's ahead of you. We think we do, we plan, we do the best that we can to plan. We really do. But flat tires happen. You know, things happen. And so you have to be able to sit back and adjust and re-evaluate every day as to what today brings and what you bring to today. That's awesome. Well, we could talk. I didn't even get to have the questions on here. How can people reach you? Or I'm sure you have a social media and following your LinkedIn, you have a great presence there. What is the best way for people to to learn more about what you're doing and to reach out to you if they want to? So it's rusty r-us-t-ie-e dot info, and you'll be able to catch everything there. I saw that. I love your website and the great play, and I couldn't figure out what they were. Did you win that one? The I did not. I did not, but I I realized my daughter and I realized that it was probably because what I do is not tangible. Yeah, the other people have things to hand, whereas I recreate people. You were very likable in there though. So I enjoyed it. Thank you. Thank you. Well, thank you very much for reaching out and for joining me. I really appreciate your time. This has been awesome. And you know, we'll try to reconnect again. Thank you. Absolutely. That would be great. Thanks. All right, have a great day. You too. There we go.