No Jerks Allowed: Real Talk on Leadership
Leadership isn’t rocket science, we just overcomplicate it. This podcast delivers real talk on building trust, tackling brilliant jerks, and developing leaders who coach and develop others with integrity, with practical insights for talent and HR leaders as well as external coaches and consultants.
No Jerks Allowed: Real Talk on Leadership
Containing Leadership Risk At The Top
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What do you do when a toxic or ineffective leader is causing harm, but cannot be removed immediately?
In this episode of No Jerks Allowed: Real Talk on Leadership, Stephanie Licata is joined by Ellie Holbert, founder and principal advisor of Empact Advisory Services, to explore how organizations can contain leadership risk at the top.
We discuss why damaging leaders often stay in place, the difference between an underdeveloped leader and a power-protective leader, and why coaching is not always the right strategy.
This conversation is for CEOs, CHROs, talent/HR leaders, coaches, and consultants navigating leadership behavior that everyone can feel, but few are willing to name.
Host: Stephanie Licata, M.A. A.C.C. | Learning & Leadership Consultant
Contact: stephanie@stephanielicata.com
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Guest: Ellie Holbert | Founder & Principal Advisor, Empact Advisory Services
So before we dive into this episode, I just wanted to share uh with anyone who's listening uh if you are a trainer, if you're a coach, if you're an HR practitioner, uh, and if you design or deliver uh live virtual trainings, I wanted to share with you, I'm gonna be hosting a live virtual training on uh Thursday, June 25th, 2026, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. And it's really for anyone who does not gun designs and leads live virtual learning experiences. And it's really about how to keep people engaged, how to use all the different dynamic uh features of different platforms uh to really keep uh different uh modalities uh going so that you can keep people engaged in a training, um, how to integrate outside tools like Slido, how to make breakout rooms less awkward, more useful, um, how to really improve pacing transitions, how to make sure you keep that energy up, um, how to also convert, maybe you have in-person sessions and you want to say to yourself, how do I convert these into compelling live virtual sessions? So uh I did kind of a different topic of how to actually just create content. Uh, I led a coach to facilitate training uh and I got some really great feedback. Uh people said some things like, hey, I loved your energy, well done. Thank you so much. This was so eye-opening, such great information. Uh someone said, Hey, your presentation was a great example of how to do a presentation. So um people said I'd love to see you live. Great energy, insightful topic. I'm reading straight from my SurveyMonkey results here. So um, if you would like to join us again, this is uh Thursday, June 25th, uh from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. This is all gonna be live virtual. Uh this is a low-cost training, it's $47. I'm gonna put the link in the show notes. Um, or you can email me at Stephanie at stephanielicata.com. Uh and um also if you do register by Sunday, June 14th, uh, you can use the code ERLYBERD, uh use the code EarlyBirdAllCaps, and you can save $10. So um, if you are a practitioner who just wants to understand how do I keep those live virtual trainings really compelling, uh, making people want to turn their cameras on and really engage with me, just uh check out in the show notes if you're on Apple or Spotify and see how to register. So, welcome everyone to today's episode of No Jerks Allowed, Real Talk on Leadership. Today we are going to be talking about containing leadership risk at the top. So, you know, in a number of different episodes, we've talked about, you know, what do we do when we have this toxic leader that, you know, maybe we need to coach up, maybe we need to develop, maybe we need to ask ourselves, is this the right person? So sometimes a toxic or ineffective leader can't be removed for whatever reason, or they can't be removed immediately. And this episode focuses on what CEOs, CHROs, uh, you know, head of talent, people in that, in that field, and also people that are external consultants that partner with CEOs, CHROs, uh, heads of talent in initiatives of you know, culture change, of cultural enhancement, of leadership development so that you can help understand how to support an organization that might be dealing with this. So, what do you do in the meantime? How do you understand, help the organization understand the impact? How do you sort of build sort of an evidence-based case for why this might not be working? How do you also contain the harm without enabling it or without turning a blind eye? One of the worst things you can do is pretend it's not happening because people are smart and if people are being mistreated by somebody, they know and they know that other people know. So, how do we support the executive team through this reality, whether you're internal or external? Uh, and so I am not going to explore this topic alone. I love to bring experts in to support uh with uh any kind of discussion so that they can share their perspective and their sort of ways that they've handled these problems. So, this idea, this topic really came from uh someone that I'm about to welcome to the podcast. And so I'd love to welcome Ellie Hobert to join us. She is the founder and principal consultant of Impact Advisory Services, and she advises executives in the people and culture space to build high-performing cultures within remote and dispersed teams. So, Ellie, please introduce yourself, say whatever else you'd like to say to help uh our listeners get to know you.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Thank you, Stephanie. I'm Ellie Holbert. As Stephanie mentioned, my work is primarily with leaders in the people and culture space, although HR in general as well. And I work with executive teams to identify the specific observable leadership behaviors that create healthy work cultures in remote and dispersed teams. It's so different working in a remote and dispersed team and leading effectively, creating a sense of followership and belonging and high performance. It takes a very different approach. And so my work involves leaning into that, working with executive teams to really set the standard for what leadership looks like at their organization and then cascading that through functional teams. What are the ways of working, the team norms, the processes and support that teams need so that they can do their best work in a repeatable, high performance manner?
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you so much for being here and for giving your time today. I really appreciate it. Uh, we also connected in a group called Troop HR, which if anybody's listening or wants to know more about, you can find them online. Uh, they are an amazing HR networking community for people that are either internal people leaders or external partners of people leaders like we are. So let's just frame the problem for people so we can kind of understand how we get how we get here, right? So, what does it look like from an organizational perspective when a toxic or ineffective leader is kind of stuck in place? What does that look like? What's happening around the organization?
SPEAKER_01Yes, what is so fascinating is that this can look like many different things depending on the nature of the challenging leadership norms that are being exhibited, also the nature of the company. But in general, what I find is that we would find pockets within an organization where teams are not operating as effectively as is possible. There could be a pocket of a higher degree of turnover than is normal, lower performance than is normal, a high rate of errors, or no errors reported at all. Both of those are indicative of potentially problematic leadership behavior. And so we would want to see are there pockets within the organization where we are observing some kind of deviation from the baseline of what we would expect to see? That can be a signal that something is wrong. If organizations are conducting engagement surveys or employee satisfaction surveys, that is a great place to look as well. And then also, interestingly enough, the most consistent signal that I see when looking for these challenges is silent meetings. Silent meetings are one of the best indicators that there is a leadership problem. It generally speaking means that teams don't feel safe to contribute or they may not know how their contribution is needed. But if you are seeing silence stagnant, the absence of a heartbeat on a team, that's a sign that there is a leadership challenge, most likely.
SPEAKER_00So it sounds like there may be a lack of collaboration or exchange. It also could be people have tried to contribute, but they've gotten shot down. So now they're gonna just keep their mouth closed, but like stay off the radar, keep my head down, do what I have to do. And ultimately, I mean, it that that lingers, like what could happen, right? People, people leave, right? People are just gonna like they're not gonna stay. We people used to stay in jobs forever, right? That does not happen. We know that doesn't happen anymore. So what are some of the reasons why can't organizations always remove the leader immediately? What's happening? Like, even if they're conscious of it, maybe they know it's a problem. What are some of the reasons why they can't sort of take action to remove the person?
SPEAKER_01Yes, I will touch on two reasons that I see most commonly. One is a challenge in how performance is being incentivized in that organization. Another one is a lack of succession planning and creating a structural dependency on that leader. So when we look at the metrics that organizations use to reward behavior, especially leadership behaviors, often what I find is that many organizations will use performance metrics that are almost entirely individualistic. By that I mean sales targets for individuals, not teams, not functions, or meeting certain performance criteria where there is an absence of collective behaviors being identified, measured, and reported out on as part of the performance management process. When we look at leadership performance management, it should not just be, it should not be on the people to always throw a flag on the field. Leaders should really be in the position of proactively demonstrating with evidence that they are exhibiting consistently the observable leadership behaviors that we want to see. It's not that the proof of a negative that should call attention to there being an issue. It's the absence of evidence that the leader is creating a collective culture. That stands out to me. A lot of organizations, they're measuring performance in a far too individualistic manner. The second piece that I touched on is this structural dependency. Succession planning is something that never seems to be a priority until it cannot be ignored any longer because there is an issue and a structural dependency, and often a toxic leader that has created risk for the system. That is something that we want to avoid. Very often, organizations are simply not thinking about ensuring that there are potential candidates within each function that can mature into a leadership position. And so I have seen in several organizations in recent memory situations where a leader was not necessarily exhibiting the type of leadership behaviors we want to see, but the organization did not have perhaps the technical expertise or the industry knowledge or a professional network that was needed for introductions. The organization was simply put way too dependent on a single leader. And that leader was able to have a bit more leeway than perhaps would have been otherwise given had that dependency not been in place. Right.
SPEAKER_00So just to help like unpack it for like leaders that may be listening that, you know, don't know all the terms that we know, right? So the structural dependency could literally be like, I'm holding a lot of institutional knowledge, I'm holding the context, I'm holding the acumen that we need, and there's nobody else available right now. And launching a search, you know, outside the company takes time, takes money, you know, all of those things, right? So it becomes this like, oh, we'll we'll tolerate this, right? We we need to, we know there's a problem, but we might be tolerating it because we're not set up to replace it.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Exactly like that. And the judgment call that I see being made is I consistently CEOs underestimate the impact that that leader remaining in place has on the health of an organization. It's not the impact of this challenge is not contained within that organizational branch. It spreads and it calcifies and it is very difficult and takes a concerted effort sustained over time for an organizational culture to heal when a leader like this is left in place exhibiting this behavior over time.
SPEAKER_00And and I want to make clear that ever everybody who's listening goes back to what you said about measuring in these individualistic performance metrics. So somebody may have on their desk metrics that make it look like everything's going great, but they're not measuring for the impact of what's not working, right? And pretty soon people will start to exit. Yes. And and we're often not showing people the actual expense of that turnover. They don't realize the expense of that turnover turnover and it has an expense to it. So people then sort of get like defensive, like, oh, well, if they don't want to work here, that's fine. That's costing you money. And that's also employer branding that's now living out in the world called this is what it's like to work there.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00This is who they keep in place. You get tortured, right? So you don't want that employer branding out there either. Like people under yes, of course, we know there's disgruntled employees. I get it. But when you have toxic leaders that are really not providing safe environments for people, and when I say safe environments, I'm like, it's safe enough to ask a question without getting your head chewed off. So I'm not talking about anything, when I say safe environment, I'm talking about anything therapeutic. I'm talking like literally like we can have a conversation. I can challenge an idea, and I'm not gonna get my head chewed off, right? So if that's not being provided at some point, if you if you look at all the data of like what people say they want in organizations, they want growth and development. So if they're not getting that, it's not gonna be long before they move on.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And what we see too is that the people that move on the soonest are the high performers. They're the people that have the most options available to them, generally speaking, because of prior performance in different places. So it is most likely that the highest performers will often leave very quickly. And that creates so much risk that, you know, when you look at that one leader remaining in place, a lot of CEOs and other executives will say, well, we can't risk losing them. But can you risk keeping them in place? Because look at all the talent that you will lose. And that's why having those performance metrics not only measure individualistic success, but capture the impact of this person within the organizational ecosystem. A leader, especially an executive, should be able to demonstrate with evidence that they are creating an environment of continuous learning, of innovation, of informed risk taking. If we want innovation and top performance, those are behaviors that we need to see measured and incentivized. And those are collective behaviors. It's not about having, you know, well, we know that he's a bit of a handful, but he has great numbers. He meets his tricks. He's a top performer. You are a leader, is not a top performer if they're checking all of the boxes, but behaving in a way that prohibits others from checking their boxes. Right. We need to expand the radius of what we're measuring. Right.
SPEAKER_00So what is that data? What do we, whether we're internal or external, what's the data that we need to put in front of the CEO or a board to understand the real cost of leaving these toxic leaders in place? Like what do we have to show them data metric-wise?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Well, I think you touched on something very important, which is the turnover data, the cost of hiring key positions. It can be a challenge because not every organization is at the maturity of tracking some of the numbers that are the most compelling to make this case. But if at all possible, tracking turnover in different functions underneath different leaders, tracking the cost to hire, the time to hire, acceleration of delivery or rather delay of timelines. Are there teams that are underperforming and projects are dragging out or revenue isn't being generated that was expected? There are different ways that you can track this data. If you're at a smaller organization, it can be challenging if you don't have that plethora of data in front of you. But I would also say I would never discount anecdotal data that is given in good faith and to keep in mind as well, it takes a considerable amount of bravery for employees to throw a flag on the field, especially when, you know, we are looking at but someone's income, their health insurance, if they are risking this to raise awareness that there is a challenge, even if it doesn't necessarily fit in the realm of data metrics that we we can track over time. I highly encourage leaders to believe those people because they are trying to share that information at great risk to themselves.
SPEAKER_00So in larger organizations, we might see uh, you know, data around engagement shifts, uh internal transfers, people asking to get off this team, right? Exit, we might see the exit themes, we might see the retention go up. Now I know you mentioned in smaller organizations, we might not have mechanisms for capturing all of that. So I want to make sure that people understand that anecdotal data is not something they overhear in a break room or something that they get in a team's message. It's when someone actually makes, like you said, comes forward in a brave way with a formal complaint about a problem that's not just affecting them, that's likely also affecting other people. And I want people to consider, you may say it's just one person. No, it's the one person that was brave enough to take the risk. There's probably 10 more that are terrified.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So we really need to be then looking and listening for, you know, what else might be there. So you mentioned looking for meeting level, like thinking things in meetings, like silent meetings. And, you know, when we're looking at, you know, when we're looking at evaluating leaders in effectiveness in general, what's a positive sign when a leader welcomes team interviews about leadership effectiveness? Like if we're going to measure that, like what should we be seeing? What's a positive sign?
SPEAKER_01There are some great indicators for a leadership, a leader that is exhibiting healthy leadership behavior. One of them, people can disagree with that leader, even better if people can disagree with that leader in front of other people and there's no penalty. And that seems to be very open information exchanging. If there is a healthy spirited disagreement that can occur on a team with no penalties or pushback, that's a fantastic sign that that leader is a healthy leader. You would also expect to see that the abilities in those underneath this leader would grow over time. Very often with more problematic leadership styles, there is a desire to, or rather, evidence for not necessarily encouraging the growth of others or for the spotlight to shine on others. It's a pretty consistent theme that I hear. And so if we see a leader that is actively seeking out development opportunities for their people, they're not afraid of their people progressing in skill and expertise and getting the spotlight on them. Those are really positive signs that a leader is most likely a healthy leader. And then, like you said, what people say and not just listening for, oh yeah, so-and-so, she's great. That's not what I'm looking for. Right. It's you should be able to hear specific anecdotes for how that leader has bettered others.
SPEAKER_00So I want to talk about how, you know, some of the reasons that also prevent leaders, CH, CEOs, CHROs in addressing this. And it's something that we talked about as we were preparing, um, but that I speak about when I train people in conflict. And it's about our conflict origin story, right? So we come into workplaces with where whatever con whatever um narrative about conflict that we learned. And often that comes from our home. So for example, like I grew up in a very like loud Italian home where conflict just happened, right? And it was just, it was happening. And so my conflict origin story is take the bull by the horns, like deal with it head on. But there are other people and they grew up around like nothing happening in front of them, right? So, like, you know, keep everything, we do everything behind closed doors, or so that when conflict does occur, it's so jarring for them and they can't address it. And so we all grow up with these just different origin stories and it can't be it could be culturally related, it could be spiritually related. You know, we were taught to just like turn the other cheek and keep letting people abuse us, right? So we have to look at where that's coming from. So, what in light of that, what makes it hard for someone in a CEO or a CHRO to address this head on? And how does the conflict origin story show up?
SPEAKER_01That's a good question. That is such a good question. I mean, what stands out to me in your question, thinking about the perspective of the CEO, is that we can't take for granted the CEO also comes with a conflict origin story, right? And it can be so despite that utmost upper level of authority, it can still be so challenging to have a strong sense of inner authority at times. And I do see that in C-suite executive positions. It's it's more common than we would think. And so when thinking about exploring that, I think open dialogue is so key. But I do think it's important to take a look at what might we be looking at here when it comes to these tricky leadership styles? Do we think that this is a leader that is perhaps underdeveloped, under-resourced, having, you know, challenges navigating their conflict origin story, like you mentioned? Is it something we can work through or is it more personality-based? Is it more of a hard wiring that is very difficult to manage through? There's a special leadership style. It's called the power protective leadership style. That's a very challenging to address. But if it is more this bucket of perhaps there's underdeveloped leadership competencies, perhaps there, perhaps there are some challenging origin stories. Around conflict. I think that is the bucket of challenges where we can lean in and have dialogue through that. And I think it starts with sharing our personal experiences to the extent that we are comfortable or we think it's appropriate. I can recall a colleague of mine that said to me, you know, conflict in my home was very scary for me. When you have feedback for me, I'd really appreciate having a heads up that you have feedback to share, that we talk one-on-one and we just make sure that we feel really relaxed as we talk about this together. And that was something she shared with, she shared that with me proactively up front. It wasn't as the result of a conflict. It was, hey, I really value your feedback. I would like to receive it. This is what I need so that I can receive that feedback whenever it comes up. And that was so valuable because I was able to keep that in mind and give her that feedback in a way that was most beneficial for her to receive. And so that does lead that does stand out to me as an opportunity for us to lean into our conflict origin stories in a way that helps us hold each other accountable in a respectful, thoughtful way.
SPEAKER_00And I love that you brought that up. So first of all, someone has to feel safe enough to even share that. So you have to already have built trust to share that. So if someone's saying that to you, they feel like they can trust you. And the second thing is that what really is a sign of excellent leadership is customization, right? How do we we do have to customize? It's the same as teachers. Like I taught high school. I couldn't just say, I'm gonna only teach one way and you all better just learn. No, I had to understand there were different learning styles in my classroom. And I had to make sure that I engaged everybody at the same time. The good part about, you know, when you're in an organization is you can have these sort of, I didn't have one-on-one meetings with all of my students all the time. But as a leader, you can have these one-on-one meetings. So you might have to use a couple of different approaches in a team meeting, but you can have a one-on-one meeting where you can customize your approach because nobody else is there, right? So, you know, sometimes it may, in these situations where we've got this toxic leader in place, we have senior leaders who are aware of it. Why does it sometimes get worse before it gets better? And why might that actually be a sign of movement?
SPEAKER_01This question, I see this so often, and it is so important for more people to know that this happens. Often when we start to address the leadership toxicity in an organization, something very interesting happens. People receive the signal that, okay, now it's safe for us to talk about this. So there's a buildup of feedback and experiences that can kind of burst through the dam, if you will, and reach those in the C-suite or executive leaders in general. And so what happens is it appears that the problem has gotten so much worse so suddenly. And it can feel very concerning. It can feel like, oh gosh, what have we done opening this can of worms? We've made things far worse than they were before when we were kind of not addressing the situation at all. But this is a very important moment because your people have received the signal that they actually can talk about what they have been experiencing. And this is a very critical moment. How a leadership team responds to that moment will have such an outsized impact on their culture and their performance in the days to come. So leaning into that sudden surge of signals that there's a problem, open-ended conversations, open-ended questions, quality questions, listening sessions, one-on-one, all of that is a great way to respond to that surge in signals. And then hang in there until you make it through that critical time. It will stabilize. But yes, you are so right. There will be that surge of negative feedback. It doesn't actually mean things are getting worse. It means that people finally believe they will be heard and believed. And that is a very healthy signal in an organization.
SPEAKER_00So what I think what I also hear you saying is that they may like senior leaders may be giving feedback to this person who might be getting defensive and might be then even reactivated and acting like doubling down on their approach. Yes. So that just might be a sign of like, hey, someone's actually said something to them. Now, if someone says something to you and you double down versus you take a moment to self-reflect, that's already a litmus test right there. So I want to make sure we distinguish between two different things because we don't want to assume that someone who has exhibited a behavior in a vacuum, or we don't want to assume that everybody's, you know, that anybody who exhibits these behaviors, like we've got to get rid of them. We don't want to make that assumption. So how do we distinguish? It could be that person was put into the leadership role and they just weren't ready. And so they're responding to stress. And it doesn't, I'm not saying what they're doing is right or defending what they're doing, but they may need more support. So how do we distinguish from an underdeveloped leader who may need one, may need more support and can grow with time? Or someone who really is resistant to development and they're not, nothing's penetrating. What how do we distinguish between those two? Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01I think that looking at the history of this leader with the organization can be an interesting data point, exactly like you said, Stephanie, in terms of was there a recent change, perhaps a promotion and maybe too early of a promotion, a personal stressor, that could be at play as well. And often we don't know until there is a problem that is presented. And then we understand how much incredible stress an individual has been under. So I think there needs to be a degree of curiosity in terms of the recent history. Can we identify any contributing factors? And then an open curiousness of can we have feedback conversations? Can we speak to direct reports and understand are there consistent themes in their experiences? Are we hearing anecdotes where it's not just in the realm of clumsiness or underdevelopment, but we're actually hearing some disturbing stories? Maybe there's cruelty, maybe there's power and control being exerted. Are we seeing that the confidence and well-being of unders of others is being undermined, sustained over time intentionally? Those are some signals where I would be very concerned. And it's very important to before we jump into correcting and coaching this leadership challenge, to do a bit of deep digging and fact-finding, understanding what are the experiences of those that this leader has impacted, how far along on that continuum of behavior, how far along on that continuum continuum of challenging leadership behavior does this go? And I think that does change the direction. As we have talked about already, when we are looking at leaders that are underdeveloped, coaching is so beneficial. Feedback, 360 reviews, there's so many things that can be done. But if we are seeing signals that this is more of that power-protective leadership style, we need to take a bit of a different approach. That power-protective leadership style is typically someone that is not necessarily going to be responsive to coaching. It is a leader that instead is more so motivated by maintaining their standing within a power structure. This is a tricky leadership style because often this is the leader where the CEO or any leaders above this leader are not typically aware that there is a problem until it's gotten pretty bad. But people below that leader are aware that there is a problem. That's because this type of leader is very effective at managing up, less so effective at building relationships going down the organizational chain. I'm sure we've all run into at least leaders before. In that situation, what we want to do is strategize around containing the interpersonal damage that is almost certainly occurring and will continue to occur until we can find a path towards separation from the organization.
SPEAKER_00So, what is it really, but what does containment look like on the court? Like what are talent leaders, CHROs, like what do they have to do to do to manage the containment? What does that look like?
SPEAKER_01It involves reducing the amount of power that this person has over other human beings. That's what we need to get at. Is what power do they have over others? How do we remove that from this equation? If they have functional knowledge, industry knowledge, expertise, okay, fine. But can we take the people that report to them and move them to a different leader? That's what I would explore is how do we make sure we are safeguarding the human beings underneath this leader so that they are not having this power and control exerted over them, which is so damaging. And you protect that pocket of individuals while you are maintaining the access to this leader that you need for whatever reason the organization is you necessary while you are doing succession planning in the back.
SPEAKER_00So I want to make our listeners explicit, very clear in an explicit way. What you are saying is containment actually means changing something. It does not mean like, oh, we're gonna see how things go and like leave them in decision. It actually means a structural change and removing some of the ability they have to mistreat or abuse the power. So why then let's just talk about why is developing the leader sometimes in general just not the best strategy?
SPEAKER_01Yes. The reason why this is sometimes not the best strategy, specifically for the power protective leadership style, is that the motivator of this leader is their standing, their reputation, their status among those that are of higher status than them. And so often when we are looking at leadership effectiveness, we are pulling from the experiences of those underneath them in the organizational structure, the experiences of those individuals. The leader is simply not necessarily going to be motivated by the experiences of those underneath them. They probably will not be swayed hearing that they are having a negative impact on those within their org branch. It's about how is this affecting their standing within the organization as perceived by their leaders? That's why it's so important for that upper echelon of the org chart to understand that this is a problem and to be bought in to addressing it, holding the guardrails for acceptable behavior in that organization because it's that leadership layer that is the only layer that can actually influence that leader to change their behavior.
SPEAKER_00So you mentioned guardrails. I want to ask you, what are the most effective guardrails you've seen? And we've talked about when we were preparing for this, we talked about them being specific and explicit. But what are the most effective guardrails in these situations where you're either trying to contain or develop the leader? What are the most effective guardrails you've seen and what makes them enforceable?
SPEAKER_01Yes. So when we look at containment, we would want the CEO to identify the guardrails that they expect to see within this leader and to insist that they meet those expectations within a very immediate amount of time and that those behaviors continue to be observed consistently over time. So to find an example of a leader that perhaps has kind of cut off access of their people having access to their time. That's an example I've seen before. We would want to see that this leader is holding one-on-one meetings with their direct reports and keeping those. Depending on the level of toxicity, perhaps it would be beneficial for people in culture to be in those meetings. So we would want to see that promise kept. We would want to see that this person is explaining to their people what do they expect to see, what does good look like in their role. They're giving healthy, positive, constructive feedback to their direct reports. They're creating space for others to be heard in meetings. It all depends on what are the specific challenges that we're seeing this leader exhibit. But what I would say is that those are some very common challenges, but ultimately we need the CEO, most likely, depending on the level of this leader. We need the CEO to identify what they expect to see this leader do and not do. And we need to see those guardrails be 100% in a short amount of time and for that to be sustained over time. Right.
SPEAKER_00And so look, and they may be, you know, partnering with HR. They may not, they might not outsource the ownership completely to HR. We know that the there needs to be leadership presence. Like it can't just look like, oh, this is an HR issue. There needs to be leadership. The CEO's mindset really does make a difference. So why do leaders hesitate to make this a thing, even when everybody knows? Like some leaders, like everybody knows this this is an issue, right? But some leaders are hesitating. I don't want to make this a big thing. Why do they do that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It's so persistent. I think what you shared, Stephanie, about the conflict origin story. I definitely think that comes into play here at times. I think there's also a bit of a misbelief, if you will, an inaccurate belief that to name this and address this means it is more real than it was before we didn't talk about it at all. It shines a light on perhaps that the leader knew about this behavior and did not intervene. And that does not look so great for the other leaders that have known. And that's very common. I think as well, it raises the question of what are the other leadership styles that, you know, are being exhibited in the organization. I think leaders kind of can be a bit of a self-protected group, if you will. And I understand that. But I think it's very challenging for leaders to really take the interpersonal risk that's required to insist that a problematic leader change their behavior. I can I can give any explanation, but if I'm being completely honest, the core of this, I simply think everybody often is afraid of these leaders, even those they're leading them.
SPEAKER_00And it's fear is definitely, I mean, a lot of the reason why we don't make the moves that we need to make in these organizations. So let's say things are working. Let's say containments working and or developing the leader is working. What are early signals that the strategy is working, even if it feels like messy or not perfect?
SPEAKER_01Yes. Again, hearing more of the negative feedback in the immediate near future, that's what we would expect to see. It's not necessarily a problem if that is happening, as long as the experiences being shared were prior to the initiation of this strategy. I would also expect to see that we begin to see others share their perspectives more. That would be an indicator that the level of psychological safety in that environment is improving with time. We want to see signals that the interpersonal fear is lessening within the team. So people would be sharing their opinion more freely. Maybe there would be more open, healthy disagreement in meetings. We would certainly expect to see more lively meetings. We would expect to see a stronger sense of ethos and shared identity among the team. So those are some signals that I would expect to see. And then more of the lagging signals would be improved improvements to turnover, delivery timelines. Those are probably more lagging signals that we would see. But in the immediate future, I would expect healthy, spirited debate, people sharing more of themselves and connecting with one another because it's no longer necessary for them to keep their heads down just to survive in the system.
SPEAKER_00So if it's working, you're going to see different things in terms of team engagement. You might see people coming forward more. Even more complaints could be a positive sign because they might even be feel like, okay, now it's safe to actually give feedback. But now what's going to tell you that the containment strategy is not working? Whether we're developing people or we're trying to contain someone, what's how much time do we give this, right? How do we know if it's working or not? How do we know what how we know how do what's the sort of the signals that we know, okay, it's not working? Yes. And what's that timeline? Like we can't have it be infinite, but we also don't want to say, oh, it's going to be 90 days. It might not work in 90 days. Like behavior is not going to change rapidly in 90 days. So what's the timeline? And what are those signals? Hey, we have to move on towards replace towards replacing this person.
SPEAKER_01Yes, absolutely. I think if you are seeing signs that this behavior is spreading within an organization, I would be very concerned and I would shorten the timeline that you are insisting the leader change their behavior. That would be very concerning for the longer-term health of the organization, their longer-term performance if this behavior is spreading. So in that situation, I would throw a flag on the field and say, we really need to have a tighter timeline where we are turning this around. Yes, it is true that it would be challenging to see a lot of behavior change in 90 days. That being said, when we are looking at the power protective leadership style, I do think that insisting 30-day timeline to see improvement. I mean, truly, you know, like immediate turnaround.
SPEAKER_00Well, you need to see some movement, right? But we can't expect like a miracle, right, to happen, right? So just unless the person's just so overwhelmingly self-aware.
SPEAKER_01It's it's true. And this brings up a really great point that this is where discernment really comes into play in terms of the problematic leader, their impact that they're having on the performance of others and the organization. What is that trajectory? Is that accelerating? Is that becoming very severe? I think that is the most important signal as you form the timeline that you're willing to explore improvement and coaching and growth over time. Those are two timelines that need to be kind of informed by one another. Because if this problematic behavior is spreading, or if it's really preventing others from being able to do their job well, I would not let this go on very long at all.
SPEAKER_00If it's getting really just unruly. So, what's one question that senior leaders, executives, senior talent leaders, or us as external people might need to ask? Are some of these people? What's a question they should be asking themselves? Or if you're an external provider, you might want to ask one of these questions to avoid sliding into avoidance, right? What do we need to be, what does a senior leader need to be asking themselves so that they sort of a benchmark check-in so that they don't avoid this problem?
SPEAKER_01And by that do you mean they want to avoid exhibiting that behavior in themselves?
SPEAKER_00No, I mean they're avoiding deal like dealing with it, whether whether to choose like containment or development. So, what's a question that some of these leaders need to ask themselves or people like us might ask them right to avoid sliding into avoiding this issue? I love that question.
SPEAKER_01This might be a bit of a surprising question, but I would ask them what is happening in your body when you are around this leader and when you are seeing them perform and lead. Are you feeling your shoulders rise up? Are you feeling like your body takes on a defensive posture? Are you maintaining openness and you have a degree of physical comfort around this person? If you see a misstep or a problematic moment, are you writing it down because you know that you can share feedback with that leader and have a conversation? Or are you avoiding the eyes of the people that depend on you for leadership because you're so uncomfortable in this moment? It's a little bit of an unconventional answer, but I think our bodies tell us so much in these situations. If you are crunching in, I think you know that we're dealing with a power protective leader that you as a leader are not even safe to give feedback to. But if you are okay, you're able to maintain eye contact through the moment, you know that you can write down a note and share it. That's a different type of leader. So, what is your body telling you about the leader?
SPEAKER_00And for everyone who's listening saying, What is Ellie talking about? What is my body telling me? I want you to all raise your hand right now, because you've all experienced this. And how do we know? Well, a hundred years ago, you used to pick up the phone. I wasn't a hundred years ago. You used to pick up the phone not knowing who was calling you. And it was a surprise, even in a work environment. I worked in a work environment in the 90s where I had to pick up the phone. This is Stephanie, and I didn't know who was there. All of you people listening right now, I'm assuming have a phone. And you know that when certain people call, you get a feeling in your body. Yay, my friend so-and-so. I can't wait to speak to them. You pick it up. You also know you have a feeling in your body when someone who you absolutely do not want to talk to calls and you have a oh, you have a feeling of dread and you go right to voicemail. Okay. So every single person listening to this has experienced a feeling in their body that's a reaction to a certain person just by the using their phone. So they've all experienced it. So you know what that feeling is. It's excitement, it's dread, it's kind of discomfort. Everybody's experienced it. It's not rocket science. If you have a smartphone, you've had this experience before. And you put somebody in your family to voicemail, but you still have the feeling.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's there's very, very simple neuroscience that explains this because of course, when we're talking about these two leadership styles, it's is this underdevelopment that would benefit from coaching, or is this a power-protective leader that is not safe to hold authority over others? Our brain, we have our amygdala, the fight or flight part of our brain, it is responsible for detecting threat in our environment and protecting us and keeping us alive. And that amygdala is firing all the time. And so when you are taking that kind of self-protective posture when you are avoiding and you feel that in your body, that's because your nervous is your nervous system is sending you a signal that it needs to keep you safe. And that's because it detected threat or fear. And so that is what we see in those toxic leaders, threat, intimidation, fear-based leadership style. So that's why let your neuroscience, let your nervous system inform you a little bit here. Your body, your brain, they know when you are dealing with that type of leader versus a well-intended, underdeveloped leader, your body will tell you. And it's it's not woo-woo. I'm not opposed to wooing, but it's not woo-woo, it's simple just. And one thing too, I would actually it in a similar vein of unconventional advice that's actually very effective. If you are a leader wondering if a leader on your team is a power-protective leader, ask them about the lives of the people that they lead. A simple question as, how many children does Stephanie have? Something as simple as that. Yes. Absolutely, like a very, very simple question about the human being that they are leading and their lives. If a leader is not able to answer some of the most basic core questions about the human beings on their team, that's a very concerning signal. Yes, absolutely. You can come find me on LinkedIn. I'm Ellie Fulbert. Um, I know Stephanie will include the link in the show notes. And I would say if you're having a leadership challenge, if there's a leader on your team, something in your gut just feels a little bit off, but you're not quite sure what to do about it, I'm happy to have a private conversation and offer whatever insight I can. Thank you so much, Stephanie. I really appreciate the chance to come on and talk to you. Thank you.
