Why Team Members Leave Managers

Curious as to why your team members are quitting? Florida State University’s research shows that team members don’t leave organizations; they leave managers. Join Rocky as he gives us some tangible ways to promote positivity in the workplace with something as simple as carrying dimes your pocket. 

Transcript

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Speaker 2: 0:02

Welcome to this edition of the service journey with Rocky Desta. Phonto has been a server since his early days of working behind the counter of a chick filet to having a very successful restaurant of his own rocky fields called upon to help in the development of staff training around the country being a server himself. He loves to talk about leading yourself. A few, many leading an organization. Welcome guys. I just want to thank everybody here for tuning in to lesson today and I am so excited about our chance to be here together and to learn to be better leaders.

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Well, that's what we're here for. I absolutely. And I'll tell you what, it is quite the journey. Okay, now I'm going to just tell them what the title of this is. Okay. It's team members. Leave managers, not organizations. You know, I, I think that it's so easy for us to blame as leaders. It's easy to blame every other reason, uh, you know, it's a war for talent. They can go somewhere else to make more. They just don't like this industry, but what I've seen in my own life and, and what I really truly believe is that people leave managers, they don't really leave organizations. That is an amazing statement. Yeah. Well, you know, today Larry, I'm hoping that we can talk through some common reasons why employees ditch their bosses and then as a leader, what can you do to turn that around? So where did it start with you? Well, so I'm gonna draw a kind of a comparison. Um, as I mentioned before, when I was 16, I got a job at chick filet and as I mentioned I quickly, I just fell in love with the company, but you know, when I really think about it, what I really fell in love with was my boss. He was honest and he was hardworking. He was a great example to a young guy that was honestly searching to find his place. But when I was 17 I had this car boy, you know, every 17 year old boy has this car they want. So you started chick-filet at 16. 16? Yes. And what happened at 17? I fell in love with the Monte Carlo ss, you know, the slick black with the orange stripes. It was a beauty. You've got to have it. It's right. I had to have it. I thought I was owed it. So I was uh, uh, you know, above the curve as a millennial. I felt very entitled to it. Uh Huh. Um, but as an attempt to save some money up for that car, I picked up a second job at your school at a clothing store, which, which will remain nameless. No. How did you work in a chick filet and a clothing store at the same time? Or what did you. So I guess I would say the product of immigrant parents, we were taught to work. So, uh, you know, at that point it was only legal to work so many hours at Joyful A. Oh, I see. I kind of tried to job that system a little bit in a second. So you went to a clothing store where you on the floor selling clothes and, and here was a difference and it was a huge difference. You know, my boss, the manager of that store, man, he was a short man with a quick temper and if, if I'm being honest, he spent most of the work day barking orders at me while he spent a lot of time in the back flirting with one of my female coworkers. He never made me feel part of anything. I never felt part of that team. And if I'm honest, he treated me more as a machine, almost like an apparatus that a person. And this went on the entire time I worked there. I worked there almost a year. Wow. So were you good at sales? Yeah. Well, you know, I had to be good at sales because I was the only one on the floor. The other ones were in back flirting. But yeah, uh, you know, I think you can, if you can sell chicken sandwiches, you can sell anything and you'll look good in that suit. That suit fits. Exactly. It's true. It's you. Yeah. But needless to say, the moment that I had saved up enough cash to purchase a halfway decent car, which by the way was not a Monte Carlo. I, I quickly realized economics and how that was not going to be a dream I could get right then. Well, I was driving Volkswagen's a demo. It's not a bad car either. No, but you know, the moment that I got enough cash to purchase a halfway decent car, I jumped ship and I never looked back. You know, in short, one boss made my time at work. Amazing and the other made it unbearable and that's obviously why I left and it was not about pay. It wasn't about the hours or even the work. I actually enjoyed the work. The reason I left the job was him and it turns out I'm not alone. You know, Florida State University conducted a comprehensive study and they analyze the reasons why dissatisfied employees leave their jobs. And what it revealed is that most of the time people leave managers and not companies. Wow. So, so keep going. Well, if you're a manager, you certainly can't please everyone. And in fact that isn't even your number one goal. And we'll kind of talk about that later because your number one goal is caring and developing them. And sometimes that isn't easy and it is does have discipline, but you're not going to please everybody, but you can make sure that your behavior is an actively encouraging your workers to leave. What about communication? Doesn't that help in there yet? So this is one of the first things that I always think about bad leaders. They don't communicate expectations or goals. You know, last week we talked about the why of what we do. And we also talked about how important that is. But a close second for your team is a clear understanding of the expectations and goals. If as an employee, if I don't understand exactly what's expected of me, I'm going to have a hard time completing my task. And when they don't feel like they're being successful at work, most of the time they're going to leave. So when leaders fail or, and this is a big fail for leaders when we failed to properly communicate company or your department or even individual goals to your employees, it makes it impossible for their employees and know what to do. And, and even worse, they don't really know when they win. And winning is important to people. So let me give you an example about this. That's what I'd like to hear. So college and Professional Sports, they generate billions of dollars per year in revenue. I mean, it is unreal. People love sports and I think what they love about it is the competition they provide and this kind of. It's not a man thing, it's an everybody thing. Everybody loves to compete, whether you're competing in a bakeoff or a 40 yard dash. I don't think a lot of people believe that today. Now I, I think that innately, you know, last week we talked a little bit about what separates animals from humans. Uh, and I think another way is if there is a way to win, most of us, not all of us, most of us want to win. But let me ask you a quick question. Would, would they love it if there was no scoreboard? I can't imagine playing a game like that. And you know, we look at like the national championship game this year, in January of 2018, an estimated 31 million people turned in to watch it. And honestly, we were meme mesmerized as Alabama took on the University of Georgia. It was a great contest at went back and forth, a Nick Saban made one of the greatest leadership calls ever by putting in as backup quarterback at halftime and he won the game. But nobody would watch that if there was no winner. And if there was no loser, it just wouldn't happen. And I think the same holds true for every job in every company. Each person has to have their own scoreboard and they need to be concrete. They need to understand what exactly, what exactly am I going to win at? And why is that relevant? This is the one secret to build great cultures. So you need to communicate that. Sure. And again, clear expectations and goals. What it leads to is employee engagement and organizations with engaged employees grow two point six times faster than those with disengaged employees. Wow. And if you can that think about that year over year, over year, and you begin to build and you have the makings of an an outstanding organization and a huge competitive advantage because you can tell Larry one, somebody is bought into their job, doesn't matter what they're selling, and then you're hiring goes down. You don't have to hire as often, right? Yeah. The best employee that is the one you don't have to hire the one that you have inside. So what more can you do? Well, you know, this all sounds easy of course, but, but as a manager, it's important that you clearly communicate your overall mission and the overall goals to your employees. And you can do it in several ways. Number one, you can do it with valuable meetings, which valuable meetings are meetings that don't waste anybody's time and we've all been in meetings that waste our time, but also keeping the lines of communication open and offering regular feedback to your team. Just like in the national championship. It's important for your team to be aware of the progress that they've made and what still needs to be done. And also maybe what their next step is. Everybody wants to compete and I know you, your staff has gone from a. can I use numbers 32, 100 and some. Yeah, we're up to about 120. And how do you handle that? You, the leader leader can handle all that. Can you communicate with everybody? So you know, there's a principle, the 80 slash 20, so if I spend 80 percent of my time with my top 20 percent of leadership and they really understand our vision and our goals, then they're going to live those goals and they're going to explain it to people that they serve and so on and so on. And over time you can kind of build a, you know, an organization where everybody knows the goal. Now I will say that's no excuse for me not to try and everyday I have to sit there and say, can I have this two minute conversation? Can I ask this person how they're doing? It's not an excuse to say, well my leadership will do it because at the end I'm the ultimate, you know, I'm, I'm the buck. So making a personal contact is important. Yeah. You know, once you've mastered the expectations and the goals part, you gotta now you got to engage your employees on a regular basis. Again, I, as I explained, this is hard to do because as leaders we're frequently overwhelmed with our own work and responsibilities. Um, because of that, many managers don't even try to initiate conversations or do much more than saying a quick hello or hey, great job, but it's those meaningful one to one conversations where leaders connect to their employees and not only on a professional level but on a personal level, a level. And that connection is more important than anybody realizes. Employees look to their supervisors to help them feel connected to the entire company and an employee who doesn't feel connected to their leader, they just won't feel like a vital part of the company. And without that bond, there's not much holding them to their job. They're going to look around. So if you look at, and this is a famous study where you've heard of maslow and he has that hierarchy and needs. And again, we're gonna continue to say this, we're going to plug google if you're unsure of this, just Google Maslov and how do you spell maslow? M a s l o w and he has a hierarchy of needs. Needs, needs. Yeah. Thank you for correcting my. Just the. I'm just reinforcing this. Forget what I need. All the reinforcement I can get it. Um, maslow said that people have needs and the very first need, the most important. They're all physiological. They need to breathe and eat and drink and sleep. They have to have clothing and shelter, shelter. You really, you don't think about much else if you're living out in the dumpster, it just doesn't. It doesn't happen, you know. But then they need safety and that's personal safety. They have to fail financially. Okay. And they want to know that their health and wellbeing is pretty good. But after that, the next need, the biggest need is to belong. Belonging is a core requirement and it's a huge and very strong one and it drives us. Some of the leaders that I would say weren't great leaders. To me, they had a fear of getting close to me because they thought, I think maybe subconsciously they thought if I never get close to this person and the time arises where I have to let them go, I won't feel so bad, but I can tell you that's not ever going to work. It's unfortunate and it needs and it needs to be fixed and sometimes I think if you're close to someone and you have to let them go, right. That personal connection makes it so much easier and understandable. Right. Well, and I think letting people go sometimes is not only the right thing for the corporation or the business, but sometimes it's the right thing for the team member. Right. And it's really all about you go, you know, it's all about how you go about it. If you have a personal connection, sometimes it goes bad, but most times I think it does help soften the blow. So you must be interested in the team member. Absolutely. As an effective manager, it is. It is my job to be genuinely interested in my people. You know, there's an old saying that applies here. People don't really care what you know until they know that you care. You want to repeat that for the west coast. Yeah. People don't care what you know, until they know what you care. You care it's right what you care. And that was a idiom by my boss at chick filet. He constantly told me that as I struggled in being a young leader, that was not always my concern. My concern was, I'm going to run this. I don't want to get this job does right. And so he constantly, in fact, he gave me many tricks to get better because I was not great naturally at that. So what are some of the things you can do? Oh Gosh. Well, you know, you have to make it a goal, first of all, to connect daily to your employees and you know, if you're not sure where to start, you know, you can lay a foundation for a good connection just by making yourself available. And I mean literally open your door so that your workers don't feel like they're always interrupting you. Um, if, if they need to come to you for advice or input, uh, you know, they have to see that door open and people don't like to bother people that are really busy and seem like they're too busy. Um, and then again, maybe another thing would be making the rounds of your team every so often, you know, just to give them ample opportunities to ask questions. You're going to connect with them and say, hey, hey, hey, did you watch that game Saturday? Or Hey, how's your new daughter Adeline, you know, those are important. And knowing the name of the child, well, you have to take for people like me that are main challenged, sometimes it's okay to know that they have a child and that is a girl and then you can stumble on the name. But, but again, people need to know that. And the great thing is you're giving them the opportunity at that point to ask you questions, which it could be about work or it could just be about you. Who are you as a person? Um, and so this is another thing, pc, you know, we're always told to keep everything professional. I can tell you, if you're going to connect with people, it's going to be with stuff beyond just work related topics. Uh, you connect, you become friends over casual conversations and it's perfectly acceptable. It's a great way to connect to your employees now and understand one of the things that you do at your facility was fantasy football. Oh Gosh, yeah. Yeah. So many of your employees. This is what I observed when I was there. You had them. I just couldn't get into that. But you do that. Yeah. You know, many trades, many epic trades in our fantasy football league have happened around the, you know, the fry machine or the chicken fryer and that's less about fantasy football. To me it's more about, it gives me another opportunity to get to know people and to know who they're passionate about. You know, I can tell somebody likes the guy that's a 11th round draft pick who has to struggle, you know, it tells me how they think or are they like just the first round draft? Pick the guy with all the halo around him. So, so the chicken business is more than just sure. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. You know, we, we've said this before, chicken, it can't be the reason I get up in the morning and it can't be the reason they get up in the morning, but knowing where you're at and what your goals are and knowing that your boss cares about you, that is a lot better. It's a lot more than just chicken. The, the key here is to make sure that you're able to approach him and of course you want to have professionalism, but it's okay to talk about, you know, perfectly, uh, off work topics like fantasy football, fantasy football or music that, that's a big one with a lot of the kids in our store. So now you, uh, you said kids in the store and you probably won't. What is the, the age, the demographics of your, your cost? The spectrum? I would say our greatest part is that 16 to 28 is probably the biggest part of our team, but we do have people that are, you know, 40, 50, 60 even. Um, we had one 83 year old man who outworks everybody involved and so, you know, the Bible says to be all things to all people and so I have to kind of be all things to all people so I have to know a little bit and cared about Broadway for, you know, the little theater girl who just made the president of her thespian society. But I also got to know about, you know, who the presidential candidate was in 1916. Why Lindt cares about them, you know, you, you, you do, you have to take an interest. Um, anyways, you know, I, I told you that I wasn't good at this. Um, one tool that, that my boss gave me was I put 10 dimes in my right pocket and every time I complimented or I spent time in a, in a casual conversation or said, hey, great job or any of those, I got to move one dime over. And my goal was by the end of my day, they all better be over in that left pocket. And that was how I knew that I was doing this. They were making connection. Yeah, and I can tell you the first couple of weeks at the end of the day I was running around thanking people and just to get the dines over because at first it was, you know, I was terrible at it, but over time the more that you practice being gracious and thanking people, it just becomes part of who you are. I think I'm going to have to get quarters because I think diamonds are too small for me. Well, they may not even understand what dimes are, you know, they used to be a pretty good part of the, you know, uh, exchange of money here. But now it's like a penny. A dime is nothing. Wow. So what about negative company cultures? What do you do with that yet? Know this is a, you have to protect that, you know, employees, they really want a boss who fully supports them and then who stands behind their work. So when a manager refuses to take responsibility, you know, when things go wrong, or when they employee in front of their team, when they questioned their productivity or, or, you know, any of those things, job satisfaction is going to plummet. It just says, as a leader, you have to learn. One of the greatest things is accept responsibility when you're the leader, the team's failure is your failure. Um, and some leaders, you know, like my boss at that clothing store, uh, he, he took it even further. You know, he encouraged gossip. He was actively involved in unethical behavior and he was a married man flirting with a 17 year old girl and on the back and, you know, in that kind of work environment, environment, employee and employees just aren't going to stick. You know, they're not going to stick around to see if that will get better. You don't, they're just too, too busy running for the door at that point. So what do you do? What can you do? Well, okay. So as a leader, you've got to set that example for how you want your employees to act. You know, if I gossip, if I complain, if I pass blame, your team is going to do the same thing. They're going to follow in the same footsteps and this is a lot easier said than done. I. Yeah. I can tell you every know the human condition. We like to gossip a little bit. I mean tmz as built up a whole network. So you know, you have to kind of no good gossip because you can gossip. Good. You can talk good about people as well as bad. Encouraging gossip. Yeah. So maybe that's okay, but you do have to set that example. You know, you have to encourage good behavior and discourage that kind of behavior that's bad, that, that you know it. It's going to tear down the team. I'm the behavior you want to encourage is one, you know, one that promotes positivity and you want to be known as somebody who's trustworthy and dependable. You know, you want to be somewhat inspirational. Don't you just do. Everybody has that coach or that Boston. I was thinking of a coach when you said that. Larry, you are a Nebraska Fan. I'm sure there was coaches that moved you when you were young and that was a long time ago. Well, you know, that's okay. We got a new one this year and he's one heck of a coach. The frost is coming back to number. Everybody's excited and he's, you know what, talk about a man who created an incredible work environment. My Gosh, he got a team of pass offs and misfits that nobody else wanted 0:19 or two years ago. They were defeated. They lost every game and, and he won the mythical, you know, of course we're, we're claiming the national championship here at Central Florida. But um, you know, he's inspirational. He built a culture that was, it was huge. People literally they ran through walls for this guy. You know, you have to keep employees informed about things. You have to motivate them, you have to talk to them about organizational issues and you have to motivate them and push them to grow professionally in whatever their profession is. So listen, there's a new milkshake coming out. Yeah. How do you communicate that? I mean, these are the kinds of things that, that make them a part of the team, right? Right. Well, so, uh, to me there's redundancies. Um, you of course share with everybody, hey, here's this milkshake and here's how we make it. And you over communicated over and over. I tell the leaders in my store, there is no such thing as over communicate. In fact, when I'm on my way out, sometimes I'll talk to my leaders and say, Hey, don't forget this and don't forget this and hey, have you thought about this? And you know, it's gotten to be a joke. They'll say, okay Daddy, Okay Daddy. But it's funny because normally I'll get a text in five minutes saying, what did you say about that? You know, even when even the best leaders, and I'm not saying I'm one, but even when you do a good job communicating why it doesn't always get through. There's a lot of clutter. And so, you know, you communicate and communicate and communicate and then just in case you post a menu or a recipe right by the machine. So in case they didn't, weren't listening or they were thinking about that date Friday night or their homework assignment or their kids that are not doing well in school, it's right there. So, you know, part of my job is to make the environment easy for them to. So what happens when a conflict comes up? What happened soon? Yeah, you know, I, I can tell you this, the worst employee to keep the worst team member to keep on your team is an employee that's destructive. And I think too often, um, Pete, you know, leaders want to keep, they want to see if they can work with somebody. So at chick fil a, and I'm going to deviate a little bit from this, you know, we really look, we go through a four step process. So for the first three are all about us, like when we talk about an employee that is dangerous for our environment, you know, the first name we're going to do is we're going to say, did we give them, did we explain the expectations to them? Okay? And if. And if we did and we sit down and we explained, Hey, let me be really clear, here's what the expectations are. And then if they're still not performing or they're still causing trouble, the next conversation is going to be around skills. And again, we're looking at ourselves, okay, we explained it, but then we teach it to them how to do it. Maybe they don't know how to do it. So we teach it, we explained, we give them the skills, the next one is going to be, did we give them the tools? We know, we explained it, we know that we gave them the skills we taught them. Maybe they're missing a valuable tool, resource they need. If they are, we give that to them. But in the end, the last step is all about character. I can't that it's more innate. And if I know that I've done the first things well, and they're still not being a part of the team, then you got to get rid of them. You have to, you know, uh, when ignored a small issue can be, can become destructive. And honestly, it threatens to team culture that you've worked hard to create, so you've got to be quick, you've got to be quick about those things. Um, invest in a bridge and not a dead end. And what I mean by that is I'm going to try and train and work with and talk to and give them the explanation and the skills and the tools and I'm going to keep doing that for somebody who I believed wants to change. That's a bridge, but some people are just dead ends and unfortunately you better get rid of them quick. Being a great manager, you need your employees that are happy, be happy. Yeah. And I tell you what, when they're happy and make your job easier, you know, at the end of the day, I want my employees to trust me. I want him to look up to me and respect me. And for that to happen, to have to stick around. Otherwise you're just a fleeting memory. Um, be a great boss and you'll attract and keep great employees. Wow. You. If you've ever had this kind of a manager, you know, you're probably not looking for a job now, not often. You know, the, the other guy, you're probably the one that's going from job to job because you haven't found the right manager. Yeah, it's funny. I've actually thought about that. I love to reconnect with the bad manager and see what his career looked like. Wow. So rocky, you know, you've set a good example. Thank you. I definitely am trying and, and knowing that team members leave managers, they don't leave companies. Absolutely. So a what's ahead here on our servers journey. Yeah, this is exciting. So I'm gonna you know, we actually get a chance to officially give some names to you. So a very soon we're going to be interviewing Dan Turner. She is the HR, the head of hr for chick filet ink and she's the author of a great book called. It's my pleasure, which really talks about chick filets hiring thoughts and what they look for in a team member. And uh, you know, chick fil a has received a lot of accolades as being a tremendous service company. So she's first, we're super excited about having her. Um, we're also going to be interviewing Patrick Lencioni, who, I don't know if it's allowed, but I'm going to go in and say I have a bit of a man crush on. He is a, you know, I don't know if they call that a bromance, but, uh, uh, Patrick, uh, if you're listening, be, be concerned, uh, don't put me on the stocking list, but no, he has written 11 bestselling books. I think he has over$5 million in sales and speaks and writes all over the world. Um, I have read many of his books and the two that had been the most impactful for me are five dysfunctions of a team. And then the ideal team player and five dysfunctions of a team that really talks Kinda like maslow did. He really talks you through five areas that you have to have to have a great team. And he proposes you can't get to the next step until you really kill and do a great job with the first step. So that was impactful for me and my team and we're going to look forward to talking to him and hearing what, what he's got on the horizon. Yeah, he's got, he's always, always writing. And then finally we're going to be bringing in Mark Miller, who has written seven books including chess, not checkers, which that talks about changing the paradigm and making sure that your team is playing the same game as you. If you're playing chess and they're playing checkers, you can't win. Um, he has a book called the heart of leadership and then his most recent book is called the talent magnet and it is phenomenal. In fact, uh, we are honored to be part of that book. He studied our team a little bit to um, help write that book. So very honored. So we'll look forward to talking to him also. Fantastic. Great. People are going to be here on servers journey. Yes. This isn't just your journey, but you want to include other people that have gone on a journey as well. Clearly we're, you and I aren't going to cut it at some point. We're going to be out of ideas, so we're going to have to bring it up,

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some real high caliber talent. There's always ideas so it remembered subscribed to the podcast. If you're missing it. We're here on a Wednesday. It's a good shot in the arm to get you through the week and just remember will be pure each Wednesday. So put us on your subscribe, please, please, and you know, until next time I'm rocky, desk to final and more than anything, I hope that together we can make some of your stories better. Thanks for coming along with me on a server's journey.