how do you regain respect from your employees after you have come across as
too nice my husband and I are business owners with 45 employees in a small
software firm since adding more employees in the last 18 months the
culture is changing I blame our easygoing attitude increasingly there is
an attitude problem where negative pushback has become almost a daily
occurrence how do we lead our way out of this okay well this is a rough one not
by no means I shouldn't have even said it's a rough one it's a challenge right
you have to hit the reset button for sure and you got to let people know that
things are changing now I would straight up have a meeting that you you sit
everyone down and say hey here's what's happening we are growing and as we grow
we are going to have to evolve just like a person as you get older you have to
evolve you have to become more mature and here's some of the things that we're
gonna have to tighten up right is instead of you know everyone's just hey
if you come in and you want to go you got a you know it's your kid's birthday
oh yeah no problem day off you say look that's not happening anymore we will do
our best to let you out for your daughter's birthday we will do our best
to let you go take care of family members when they're sick we will do our
best to give you bonuses that you've become accustomed to we will do our best
to give you raises annually we will do our best to continue to take care of you
but none of those things are guaranteed at all we are trying to be profitable in
fact we have to be profitable in order to continue as a business on top of
being profitable in order to grow we have to reinvest in the company we have
to take the money that we make and we have to put it back into this company in
order to grow and we are going to grow that is our goal
and in order to grow we are going to have to put procedures and standards in
place now that will allow us to maintain some control and efficiency as we grow
if we don't do that we're gonna fall apart so that is what we need to do now
why do we want to grow the reason we want to grow is because we want to be
bigger we want to create more opportunity for everyone sitting in this
room we're not trying to grow for us we're trying to grow for everyone the
more opportunity everyone has to advance and leadership to make more money that
is what we are trying to do but we can only do that if we as we grow we evolve
and become better and become more efficient and become more standardized
in the next 18 to 24 months that is what we have to do as a company so I would
have a meeting and say something like that something along those lines
lay down the law a little bit now also then you have to change your attitude
you have to somewhat change your attitude because you are mr. nice guy
that's how you ended up in this position you know the husband-and-wife team mr.
mr. and mrs. nice guy mm-hmm and you can and should be nice as a leader I
understand that but at this point the team needs to get tightened up and so
you're gonna have to impose some discipline on them in order for there to
be freedom in the future surprisingly right but we know that now I had a
friend who was a platoon commander and he was he worked with me and I knew him
and when he was a platoon commander he was a real nice guy super nice guy when
he was a platoon commander he was a nice guy super nice guy things didn't work
out good for him because I don't know that I don't I don't specifically know
what happened but I know that things didn't go great and when he talked to me
about it because the thing is when I worked with him we were all Bros and I
was young enlisted guy but we know we were all Bros but we all had that level
of respect hey you know what we can go out and have a beer tonight but tomorrow
morn get to work I'm in the game and I'm you
know I'm I'm telling the line and that's pretty much what we were all like all of
us unless the guys working with this guy and when he got to this new place new
command all of a sudden it wasn't like that anymore
and he was growing out with people and when he get back into work they wanted
to blow out at work and was like well we don't need to listen to you we were
having beers with you last night and that's what he told me he said you know
I was too nice of a guy and I didn't get the respect that I needed to be able to
effectively run the platoon mm-hmm and it was not good and he said something to
me too which I I guess I instinctively knew or maybe I didn't but it stuck with
me you know it's real easy to give more slack to someone when you have them on a
tight leash right it's real easy yeah yeah it's hard to do the other thing
it's hard to well listen to this when I have you on a tight leash and I give you
a little slack you're happy you like oh look at chocolate rust me he's letting
me go a little bit yeah when I give you all kinds of got all kinds of slack and
all of a sudden I have to tighten up I start pulling on the leash well guess
what it chokes your neck it chokes you and I start bring in them and the
further I got to pull you back on in the longer you're choking for yeah and so by
the time you get back to me you're ready to bite yeah and so that's what you have
to do you don't walk in and put the dogs out and let them run wild on to the end
of the leash and let them run whatever they want mm-hmm and then try and pull
them back in because when you let them go by the way you think of yourself well
you know this is a good dog so when I let him run around he's not gonna do
anything wrong he's gonna be a perfect Saint when there's a chance that that's
gonna happen and there's a chance that's a good dog and you let him run around
and when you say come back he comes back to you there's also a chance that he's
not a good dog and when he gets out there he starts running and started
biting people or running in the road or doing whatever bad dogs do and so what
do you have to do that dogs you got to pull them back to you and it's it's
actually worse because we already know this is a bad dog so now when you pull
him back he's pissed and he's gonna bite you whereas a good dog
wasn't doing anything bad the first place and when you pull him back any
looks at you and goes hey I must have
gone two out of control I'm sorry I'm back in
line now mmm you seen her saying there's a the the way the whole thing unfolds is
bad because the bad dog he's a bad dog and he's doing bad stuff when you give
him slack on the leash and when you're pulling back he's gonna snap at you
mmm the good dog you give him all kinds of room on me she's not do anything good
and when you pull him back he goes he goes oh sorry I didn't realize I was
doing something I lined master sure I'll keep it in check now and you can give me
more slack if you want or not doesn't matter I want a bit I want you to trust
me meanwhile the bad dog he's just like
growling he's pissed so that's gonna be a hard one like I said it's not
impossible but the big thing you got to do I think in this situation you got to
be clear here's what's going on you could even potentially I don't know how
well you are of a speaker interacting with people you could even say something
along the lines of you know hey look we've been running this real loose and
I've been real you know we've been doing everything we could to run this as loose
as possible but we gotta tighten it up I think that's I think you could say that
because you don't say look I've been being nice and I can't be nice anymore
that that comes across wrong but I say look we've been running it real loose
here and we've been trying to give you guys as much freedom as we can and we
still want you guys to have freedom but we got to put some parameters in place
that are gonna that are gonna allow us to run this business efficiently as we
grow and as we scale you can quote me on that one yeah make sense when you see
them be clear and consistent you know like how um you know some people they'll
implement rules and I'm speaking from an employee standpoint where I'm looking at
the boss when they're trying to put in new rules to tighten it up so to speak
is in the nightclub industry that tends to happen you know managers browing out
with I like to turn bro out but I don't think so not that I don't remember but
that's interesting I thought that was pretty common vernacular especially
amongst a bro like yourself bro yeah bro we know though um yeah and
the nightclub managers tend to bro out with people or you know bro out with
girls or whatever the waitresses whatever whatever I don't know if you
can bro out with the girls yeah probably a different word for a group of words or
whatever but nonetheless that tends to happen so soon you know some Ness say
this same situation you know you get nightclubs in this disarray as a
business you know then they gotta tighten it up and apply more rules and
now you got a you know whatever with the clock ins it's like just little rules
yeah and yeah I'm a late person the whole clock-in thing anyway long story
but so when the manager would implement the rules but they don't follow the
rules you know it's man it they just won't take and people get more mad but
when you see there is this man and he died too unfortunately Joel he was uh he
was he was our boss for for a while and he he had to kind of do that like
implement new rules but this was that he would bro out with you but like it was
weird he did this weird kind of balance where he would break some rules but then
he'd follow rules but the rules that he broke he wouldn't care if you broke him
kind of thing these are all small teeny tiny rules by the way but he was a real
consistent person you know where he wanted something done we were all doing
it including him you know and I remember thinking man this I really like this guy
in that way as well where he's telling us to do stuff but he won't like because
there was other management all man I could go into it man where there's all
the other managers and they were straight-up like I'm the manager here it
gives everyone worships me and it's a weird dynamic in nightclubs anyway and
they wouldn't follow the rules at all you know but you had to cuz you're the
employee you know kind of thing but yeah when you're a manager and again from
employees standpoint and and I see my boss following the new rules
consistently yeah it's so much easier to sign on it's kind of okay that's what
we're doing I dig it and yeah if you combine it with like what you said being
clear well I'm down I'm for the change I get it man really get
it