Why Your High Standards Are Silently Killing Your Team

Are your leadership standards too high? In this episode of Success Is Not Convenient, Bernie Gallerani explores how high expectations in business can destroy team culture, increase employee turnover, and stunt company growth. Discover the difference between high standards and high pressure, how to develop a people-first leadership style, and why the habits that made you a successful entrepreneur may be the very thing holding your business back. Topics include leadership development, employee retention, scaling a business, entrepreneur mindset, and emotional intelligence in leadership.

Transcript

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Hey everybody, this is Bernie Gallerandi bringing an episode here of Success is not convenient. I've got a really fun one for you today. It's one that really affected me because affects me, I should say, because it's who I was, and I'm trying to work out of this type of behavior within my company. So when I found this as a topic and I started reading and researching it, I thought, man, there's probably a lot of people that may be very similar to what it is that I have done over the years past. And then the lessons that I learned from it. And so I want to go with you through you guys today and talk with you a little bit about the pluses and minuses. The topic today is high expectations drive results, but they also can drive away your people. That's painful. I think as solopreneurs and we build companies, we have a lot of things that we have succeeded in in our business and businesses, and we expect high things from other people. See, high expectations certainly drives results, but they can also drive really great people away from your business. And so hopefully can help you guys not to have the same kind of experience that I have had. So, and if you don't have high expectations, you don't really build anything that great. And so I've always looked at it that way. Like if you don't have high expectations for your business, yourself, your family, and your goals, how are you ever going to accomplish it? But if you don't know how to manage the people, you might end up just building the company yourself. I'm going to say this again. If you don't learn how to work and leverage through really good people and manage them right, then you might be trapped in being the only solo person inside of your company. See, we all have high expectations. We want to create excellence within our brand, right? Within our company. We want to have really high standards. I think every company wants to have a level of standards that what they say, um, rising tides raise all ships, right? So that's kind of the standards that you're creating within your company. But here's what's interesting is just because you have high standards in your company and you have a high level of drive doesn't mean that you're gonna find all these really great people that think like you do. And this is important because we're gonna go back to this. Just because you have really high standards doesn't mean that you don't have really good people. They might just have lower standards. And is that okay? We're gonna go through that. Your goal as an as an owner or entrepreneur, right, is you drive innovation in your company, you demand high growth, but in that way of behaving, you have a high level of tension in your organization. Boy, I can tell you, I can go through 20 years, and especially the last probably call it 12 years, 15, 13, 14 years, where this has been a factor in my company, and I'm recently starting to understand where it doesn't work. See the same expectations that built your company might be the reason why people quietly leave your company. I'm gonna say this because I want to say it again, but a different way. How driven you are, you have an expectation in others to be that way, right? We're cut from a certain cloth. If we're entrepreneurs and we're any have any set level of success within our business, we want to see those same standards in others. But what would happen secretly is you drive them right out of your business because they don't think like you do, which is why they're working with you, is they want you to take all the risk, which then acquires the drive that you have. It's not really about lowering your standards at all, it's about understanding leadership at a deeper level. Because what we're doing, in order for us to scale a company, we have to leverage through really great people. And if we hold everybody to the same standard that we're in, it's gonna be very, very difficult for most people to want to work for you because they'll have this high level, you'll have a high level of expectation for them. They'll probably have a high level of expectation for themselves. But is your message a little overpowering? And so here's the question is why do high expectations work, right? High expectations are powerful because they create clarity in our business. Nobody grows inside of comfort and they attract ambitious people. Top performers want to be challenged and they create momentum. Low standards create slow companies. If you want elite outcomes, you cannot operate with average expectations. See, it's interesting. We have high standards and we really want to drive people to those standards, but we also understand that we're different. So our here's the question maybe we can write down are our standards and our expectations so high that almost nobody can fulfill it. This is where this message is going today. This is why founders win early, is they push, they demand, and they don't tolerate mediocracy. But here's the challenge when it's only you and you're fighting you, these are your standards. And that actually works for you until it doesn't. And so what's really fun is at some point it works for you, but does it work for the majority of the people that you work with? See, here's the hard truth. High expectations without emotional intelligence becomes pressure. And what happens is pressure without support becomes fear. And then fear kills all the initiatives. And this is where um I think leaders lose people. People feel like they can never win inside of your structure or organization. No matter what they do, it never is enough. Now, guys, I'm gonna tell you I live this because I had a high level of standard in production with my company. And then we really made elite diamonds out of those people. But what we also did was we ran people out of the building because not everybody was an elite diamond. And so, what as a leader, you have to kind of focus your energy on saying you're here to meet people where they are and move them into different stages. Not everybody needs to be a diamond. See, what happens is when you do that, when you when you treat people that way and you have these high levels of standards, then what happens is, and then they can't really fulfill it. They feel judged, they feel not developed. Uh, correction without coaching feels like criticism to them. And so I'm doing a lot of research on this right now about where people are and how we empower them. That'd be a question for you is how do you empower your people and meet them where they are? And what it does is when we behave this way, it actually shuts them down and their creative thinking. And if the cost of missing is embarrassment, they stop taking risks. They just kind of curl up and they just go, you know, hey, listen, I mean, I can't meet these levels of expectations. And what they do is they detach emotionally from your company. They might still be there, but they detach emotionally. They stay physically, but they leave mentally. And so they're they're not, even though they're there, they're not really there, and which is why their production goes down. And you know what's really fun and interesting? And I've seen that where they'll go here, um, the meaning that their level of success is here. And then what they do is you keep pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing, because that's how we are as entrepreneurs. And you know what happens? Then all of a sudden they start doing this. You ever have salespeople now that they're an organization and they're kind of going like this and they start to tip down? Just a just a suggestion is you may want to look at maybe your structure, your level of accountability, how you're talking to them. If your standards are just too high, but your empathy is very low, you don't understand them very well, or you don't have empathy for them, or not going to perform, and then they won't stay because they can't make any money and they feel like they're always in a situation where they can never win and they're always in disappointment. And that feels like a trap to a lot of people. High performers assume everyone is wired like them. I can tell you, guys, I'm type A, right? And so I have a high level of um drive for myself and my life. And I have felt like everybody should behave that way. That has cost me more problems moving forward than I ever get wins. It's a win for me, but it's not a win for my company. So if you're a higher performer and you assume everyone should be like you, you're gonna be in a world of hurting because most people aren't like you, especially if you're a high-producing um entrepreneur. But most people don't even have your risk tolerance. They don't, they don't you you don't realize how successful and how talented you are because your level of risk talent. Most people don't have that. But we as entrepreneurs can't see that. We think everybody's like us. It's fun, right? You look at it and go, I don't understand. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense. They don't have your emotional intensity, and that's okay. They don't have your obsession. Like I'm obsessed, right? For growth and and helping people grow. And if that's you, you can relate to this probably a lot. But a lot of you people don't have your obsession, they don't process pressure the same way. And here's the deeper issue: when you build something from nothing, you forget what it feels like to not be you. Your internal dialogue might be like, um, just figure it out. I I've said that by the way, a ton of times. Push harder. It's not that complicated. Do you know realize how many times I'm like, listen, this is simple. It's not easy because you're fighting you, but it's not that hard. Do you know what degrading that is to people? Because to somebody else, it is hard. You might not think it's hard because you're cut from a different cloth, right? And so we have to just understand that we need to be focused in on developing people. Their internal dialogue might be like when you treat them like this, they might be like, Man, I'm always failing. I'm always disappointing people. I'm really not cut out for this type of work, let's just say, right? Or or even this kind of leadership, meaning they don't really like how you lead. Hey, by the way, I can never get ahead. I can't, I can't ever feel like I'm fulfilling the responsibilities that I have. And then they get disconnected from your culture. They get disconnected and it just totally fractures their level of development because they feel like they can never uplift themselves at a level that you expect from them. See the difference between high standards and high pressure. High standards say things like, I believe you can do this. And high pressure says, You better not fail. High standards comes with coaching, and coaching comes with belief, and it comes with clarity, and it comes with a level of accountability and support. High pressure comes with tension, lots of tension. Can you imagine how they must feel if they feel like they can't perform at the highest level of your expectation? It comes with uh high pressure, it comes with tension, but it also comes with comparison and also comes with frustration, and it also comes with emotional validity. See, the best leaders do not lower the bar, they increase the level of support. So I want everyone to understand you, as the founder of the company who has developed the standards, may not be the best person to lead the people. That's a really tough one. That's actually one of the things that I think I have found the most valuable is looking myself in the mirror and saying, am I actually the best person to lead these people? I might be really innovative, I might have some really great ideas, I might be out of the box thinking, I might be a high-level producer, I might be able to take high risk, but am I the best person to serve all the people within my company? I'll be honest with you, I have found that that's not me. I have a level of talent, but I can't scale a business on my behavior. And that's always an interesting one because you're like, well, I'm the founder and the developer of this great company, but you're saying to me that I'm probably not a people-centric leader? Correct. So evaluation of the leader, right? An early stage leader is driven by results, measures success by output, and pushes constantly, corrects quickly. Mature leaders develop people, they build confidence in people, they communicate contents really well to people, they separate identity from performance. See, we need to understand one thing, and that without having good people, we don't have a business. We're circling ourselves in, we're engaging ourselves into a job. By the way, I did a podcast on this, you probably have already seen it about putting a prison around ourselves based on our behavior and our thought mindset. This kind of goes with the one that you've either seen or going to see, and that you have to have people to have freedom. And the question is, do you have the leadership skills to scale through people? See, early in business, when you build, you built a business for results, but later in business, you build a business through people. The people actually build the business and cause the result. And if you're not a business leader through people, that's a big time issue for all of us who are entrepreneurs. So we need to understand that if you're not the right kind of person to lead people, it's important through scale that you find somebody who can be a great leader in people. You can still be the visionary, you can still uh be the leader in your company, the captain of your ship, but you're probably not the best person to serve your people. So here are some tactical shifts without lowering any standards, right? State the why behind your level of expectation. People commit harder when they understand the purpose. And you need to separate performance from identity. This is super important. They're not a high-producing salesperson, they're just a salesperson. So stop identifying who they are for really who they are. They're not who you want them to be, they are who they want to be. You correct their behavior by protecting their dignity. You praise publicly and you correct privately. You know, something uh what my growth leader, who is really eccentric in leading people, says, you know, I believe that if you're going to correct people, you do it in private. I never did that. I always kind of um called people out on the carpet. It made my complex company successful, but it made it small. And I would have a lot of turnover. And so high standards don't require public pressure. They don't. You can be very mindful in people, but you have to be mindful in people. You have to be mindful for how they feel and how they're receiving their message. See, as a type A, I might say something that doesn't bother me at all because my personality is that way. But most people don't relate. So what I'm gonna ask we all do today is try to be more sensitive to our message that's being heard by our people that we work with. So, what's getting in the way? Make growth visible, track improvements, not just outcomes. Track the improvements. You know, I there's a great book um out, and I think it's the 12-week year. I think that was the book that it was, and it talks about how much success you get out of somebody and how do you praise that? And it says something like, and I could be wrong, and you guys um have probably read this book, but it says if you get 75 to 80 percent of production out of your people, that's a rock star. So track their improvement, not just their outcome. Look at the small wins that they have. And I want to just say this in closing if you don't have high expectations, you don't build anything meaningful. But if you don't balance them with leadership and maturity, you'll build it alone. And the goal is not to be softer, the goal is just to be stronger in control. Control of your tone, your reaction, your delivery, and your emotional temperature. The best leaders don't lower standards, they raise people. And so I want to say this to you guys in closing today. Building a business is not easy. Managing people is more difficult. And it's not that the people are difficult, it's that our expectations are so high, nobody can ever meet them. Don't lower your standards. Create a system that people can thrive in, meet people where they are and grow through them with them. Lower your level of high expectations and work with the person to grow into the system, the great system, the great culture that you've developed. I hope each one of you guys have found value in this. Please hit the like button and the subscribe button. It helps our algorithm so we get more people to view our channel because we want to continue to keep bringing these things to everybody. Thank you. Thank you for watching, and I hope everybody has a fantastic day.