Vaughn Sigmon - People Leave Bad Bosses Not Bad Jobs

If you enjoy this episode please leave me a voicemail and possibly get featured on the show: https://www.speakpipe.com/rebeldiariesvoicemail

Vaughn is the co-founder of Results-Driven Leadership. He is not your average leadership development expert. As a co-founder of Results-Driven Leadership and former Carmax executive, he knows what it takes to be a high-impact leader and manager. Rather than offering theory, his coaching and training programs provide common-sense advice and direction based on real-world experience.

What Scott discusses with Vaughn

• How one boss influenced him for the rest of his life
• How people are promoted with little to no experience or training to be leaders 
• Why he'd had enough of having a boss
• Why he asks people to tell them about the best and worst bosses they have had
• 80% of all new managers fail in the first 18 months
• Management afraid of confrontation and the impact it has
• Managers who become friends with their staff
• And much more...

Links in this episode

• Vaughn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vaughnsigmon/
• Results Driven Leadership: https://rdltraining.com/
• The Business Mechanic Podcast: https://rdltraining.com/podcast/
• Start With Why - https://www.goodreads.com/uk/book/show/7108725-start-with-why

Transcript

[00:00:00] Scott: Hi, I'm Scott Fulton, the host of the Rebel Diaries podcast. This show will help you learn how to make work better for you, your colleagues and the organization you work for. I believe the modern workplace is broken for too many people with leaders and their teams, drowning in corporate complexity, information overload, and unnecessary levels of stress. 

[00:00:18] Scott: Having spent over 20 years leading disruptive high-performing teams who have won international awards for their impact. I've now dedicated my career to helping coach and train leaders and teams to deliver more value and impact at work whilst reducing the risk of burnout, overload, and wasted effort. 

[00:00:34] Scott: This podcast is dedicated to you and thousands like you who know work can and should be better.

[00:00:39] Scott: You'll get tips and insights from me as well as the amazing guests I invite to be the show, many of them have disrupted their industries and are thought leaders, speakers, and authors who have fascinating stories and advice to share. 

[00:00:50] Scott: Thank you for listening. I'm Scott Fulton and welcome to the Rebel Diaries show. 

[00:00:54] Vaughn: I believe most of that comes from the phenomenon I spoke of earlier, which is there's so many people managing people that have no idea how to do that, how they just don't have the skill sets and it made themselves bad bosses. 

[00:01:10] Vaughn: And over 50% report that they left their job, their previous job because of a bad boss, a bad leadership. 

[00:01:18] Vaughn: These people get away with murder. The inmates are running the asylum around here and you're letting that happen and they get it, but they just don't have the DNA to go do anything about it. 

[00:01:30] Scott: Vaughn knows what it takes to be a high-impact leader and manager his coaching and training programs provide common sense, advice and direction based on real world experience. I had a great time chatting to Vaughn i hope you enjoy this week's episode.

[00:01:44] Scott: Hi Vaughn. Welcome to the Revel Diaries podcast.

[00:01:48] Vaughn: So good to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:50] Scott: Thanks for being here. Where are you calling from at the moment?

[00:01:54] Vaughn: I am in beautiful Huntington Beach, California, just south of Los Angeles.

[00:01:59] Scott: Nice. And what's the weather like there at the moment?

[00:02:01] Vaughn: It today is one of the first nice days we've had in months. It's been one of the worst winters in the 16 years I've been here. Just rain and cold. It's finally light California I joke all the time. We need to get in touch with the governor because we don't pay all these taxes to have wind, rain, and cold weather.

[00:02:21] Scott: Can you tell us a bit of your background, what got you into what you do now? 

[00:02:26] Vaughn: I'm a bit of a storyteller, so I'm gonna start with a story because it's very recent. I just spent last. Week, four days last week with my oldest and best friend, who was actually one of my very first bosses. His name's Ted Basel. Shout out Ted, but Ted got me and groomed me when I was in my early twenties.

[00:02:46] Vaughn: I think I, I met Ted when I was about 21, 22 years old. I was in retail. He was my regional vice president. I was a wet buy, the years manager and way too young, but I thought I knew everything. But thank God Ted came into my life and he influenced the next 40 years for me. Because he taught me one thing and drilled it into my head, and I've played that card over and over again to a high level of success.

[00:03:12] Vaughn: No matter what business you're in the people business and whatever challenges you're facing, it's generally a people challenge and get really good at hiring, onboarding, training, and developing your employees and your life's gonna be pretty. Th that's easier said than done, but I really applied myself to that, and I spent 40 successful years, worked my way up through the ladder.

[00:03:38] Vaughn: I, I retired at the rip old age of 57, about nine years ago, and was not done, but I was done with bosses. And I was over the corporate life. And, after 40 years, I think that, that wears on you a little bit. But I still had this passion for what Ted had taught me all those years ago is I know I knew my own experience.

[00:04:04] Vaughn: That there are a lot of companies, there's a lot of managers, a lot of leaders out there that were put into place with zero or no training to be a leader or a manager. Most companies spend more to train their forklift driver than they do on a brand new manager. Most managers get. To the position they're in because they were tactically very good at doing a job.

[00:04:28] Vaughn: Everybody liked them. They showed up on work on ti at on time. And the boss liked him so they got promoted, but to a position they had no experience or expertise in. And I saw a a huge opportunity to be able to take everything I'd learned and. Gotten together and built for throughout my career to help develop the careers of people.

[00:04:49] Vaughn: I focused on that and just wanted to transfer that into my own business. I didn't want the employees, I didn't want a boss. I didn't want to have to worry about anything other than what my passion is, which is develop. Managers. And so I was fortunate enough to be able to start this business based on all the experience I had and the gathering of materials and built it into courses in a coaching business.

[00:05:14] Vaughn: And here I am today, having a blast, working hard and I've ever worked in my life, but it's a very, we were talking before the podcast started. That's the best thing possible. You don't really feel like you're working when you're working for yourself. 

[00:05:26] Scott: Yeah. Yeah. If you're doing something you enjoy, it's not really a chore is it? So I'm interested in you saying you've had. Was it enough bosses or enough of bosses?

[00:05:35] Vaughn: Some were better than others and, I started with a best boss. It's it's one of the, one of the questions I always a always ask when interviewing somebody is, tell me about the best boss you ever had. There's a reason for that. I need to understand how they like to be led, but they.

[00:05:52] Vaughn: Generally there's a theme to every response that's universal, which is somebody that caught them fairly early in their career, took 'em under their wing gave them trust, gave them direction, allowed them to make some mistakes, supported them, encouraged them, and they learn from this person. I also ask, The opposite of that question, who was the worst boss you ever had? And there's a universal theme to that too. And it's somebody that micromanaged that was rude, did not have many good things to say, only called you when things were wrong tho, that sort of theme. And I had probably 50 50 of both.

[00:06:32] Vaughn: But my last boss, who was a very nice guy, was just the opposite of my leadership style, and I think I'd just run out of accepting that kind of leadership approach and decided to take the package that was offered. To everybody in my organization after, at a certain age, you could take your retirement, take your stocks and go live the good life.

[00:06:54] Vaughn: And I don't know how good the life is. I'm having a blast, but I'm still working a lot. But that's what I did. And it's, good boss is bad bosses, here in the States, and I think it's pretty true in the UK as well, there's a huge level of disengagement. People just don't. Their jobs, they're, quiet, quitting, and minimum Mondays and, which is just, that's just bizarre to me.

[00:07:18] Vaughn: But. I believe most of that comes from the phenomenon I spoke of earlier, which is there's so many people managing people that have no idea how to do that, how they just don't have the skill sets and it made themselves bad bosses. In fact, there's another statistics, Scott. 80% of all new managers fail in the first 18 months. Problem is they don't know it. They don't know they failed, and they just get recycled from company to company and 70%, 73% of the workforce here in the States as at some level of dis engagement, they would leave tomorrow of a better offer came along, which is not good. And over 50% report that they.

[00:08:05] Vaughn: left Their job, their previous job because of a bad boss, a bad leadership. And so I experienced the same thing in different doses and, but I had finally had somebody that just was not a good leader for me. He was a fine gentleman, but just not a good leader for

[00:08:21] Vaughn: And I took the exit and never looked back.

[00:08:26] Scott: Yeah, you hear the phrase, you don't leave a bad job, you leave a bad boss, don't you? And I, yeah I know a lot of people do get, as you said, they, it's because you're skilled at that particular role, and it might be a technical thing. So I've come from the digital space, so somebody's like super technical and then they get promoted or you can lead that.

[00:08:44] Scott: And I know some people. I've been in this position, they get promoted as like the lead developer, but they don't wanna do that. They just wanna develop. But they're given the leadership job and as you said, they're not given the training to do that. And luckily the ones I've experienced have turned out to be good leaders, hopefully, cuz I've coached them and cuz they're good people anyway.

[00:09:06] Scott: But

[00:09:06] Vaughn: Probably the case.

[00:09:07] Scott: thank you. I wasn't just fishing for a compliment but I was, I'm wondering is there, are there people. You think should never be a boss or leader cuz they're just uncoachable or they couldn't, they're just not wired in that way. Have you come across people like that 

[00:09:21] Vaughn: I haven't had many failures, Scott but I've had a few, and when I say failures, people that just could not get it, they could not make the turn, and there's some commonalities around them, but some uniqueness. But the commonality generally is it's on two sides of the spectrum. It's, they're so overbearing or so disagreeable, or so hardheaded about their own opinion. Demanding and they will not take advice from anybody else. They're just, it's almost throwing the gun at after you emptied it at Superman, it's just gonna bounce off any advice. And so there's been a couple of those people who just are uncoachable and that all comes, I believe, from self-esteem.

[00:10:06] Vaughn: I think that's a lack of self-esteem that they're compensating. But I'm not a psychologist. I read a lot about psychology on the on, but really where many of them fall. And I think this is the trap that many employers fall into. I, we use the DISC profile extensively with all of my coaches here, and I'm, unfortunately, I'm up to six coaches now in my practice and we use disk extensively, and I've used disk for over 20 years.

[00:10:35] Vaughn: And there are certain disc profiles, dominant influencer, steady compliant. Are very nice people, but they just don't make very good bosses, and that's generally the high S or the high steadiness because they're conflict avoidant and management requires some level of confrontation and you've got to be able to give difficult feedback to people from time to time, or that behavior that is unacceptable is gonna continue and that. These folks generally are so reticent to be able to confront issues, have hard discussions that people either walk over them or there's just fires burning around them all the time that they just don't, they just cannot have the guts to go. Put 'em out and people taking advantage of 'em. They good people look at this boss and say, oh my God, you don't take care of any of these problems.

[00:11:30] Vaughn: These people get away with murder. The inmates are running the asylum around here and you're letting that happen and they get it, but they just don't have the DNA to go do anything about it. But again, that's fairly rare. I can teach people to have difficult conversations, get very comfortable with enough role playing and practicing with it cause there's a formula to it.

[00:11:51] Vaughn: There's a, just a distinct formula to it. If they will embrace that, be willing to go utilize the formula to have difficult conversations. They will generally make the term but some are unwilling to. 

[00:12:04] Scott: Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder how much of that avoiding those difficult conversations is because those people just. Want to be liked. They always almost want to be friends with their team. There's different extremes, isn't there? It's does the boss go out with the team for drinks at the weekend or is the boss No, they keep that separate.

[00:12:25] Scott: So when I was a boss, I had this policy that I didn't want to be friends with any of my staff on Facebook, for example. I just felt that was just like crossed the line. But as a boss I was happy to share what was going on in my private life if anyone was interested. But it just felt, I just wanted to keep that separate.

[00:12:43] Scott: And then after I left, then connected to new people. I've actually come off Facebook now anyway, but, yeah, there's that line I think, which some people might struggle with, I think. Cuz if you become too friendly, then what happens if you've got. Step into the boss mode and give 'em some difficult feedback.

[00:13:00] Scott: It can get tricky. 

[00:13:01] Vaughn: Scott, I was again, very for. In that I made that mistake very early in my career and paid the price for it, a very difficult price, and I've never forgot it. I was an assistant manager for a chain of clothing stores and it was brand new guy in town. I'd never left my home state. I was four states away.

[00:13:21] Vaughn: I'd moved from North Carolina to. And had moved. Didn't know a soul. And of course I needed friends and I made friends with one of the salespeople there. And bill Stickler, I'll never forget his name. Bill and I became fast buddies running around the bars after work and, just having a good time.

[00:13:41] Vaughn: But Bill started taking advantage of that relationship. His results dwindled. Dwindled. And finally my boss, who was a kind of a no BS kind of guy, said, I know you and Bill are hanging out. Bill's taking advantage of you, and guess what? You're going to deal with that. You're gonna go fire Bill.

[00:14:00] Scott: Oh wow.

[00:14:01] Vaughn: Oh,

[00:14:02] Scott: Not even a warning.

[00:14:05] Vaughn: I found out what kind of friend Bill was but I had to fire my local best friend within six months of having my first assistant manager job. And that was a horrible experience. So just like you I think I learned to cut that. Just just at the right spot for the rest of my career.

[00:14:26] Vaughn: And I'm okay being friendly with people. I'm just not gonna be friends. I'd love to know about their personal lives and if they're having kids or buying a home or that sort of thing. I wanna be able to support them in their goals. But I'm a locked secret. They don't need to know anything about me especially on Facebook or social media.

[00:14:44] Vaughn: That's a no-no. But I do see back to the original points you made. Many people make very bad decisions for the fear of being disliked, and that's, again, that high ass on the dis scale is they don't say things they need to say for fear of eroding a relationship. And that's very powerful.

[00:15:03] Vaughn: That's a very powerful demotivator for doing the right thing. And it's hard for somebody to get over that if they're willing to get over that.

[00:15:12] Scott: And the irony of that is if the, say there's a bad, some bad behavior going on in the team. Or one individual's quite difficult or disruptive and the boss needs should be speaking to them. The rest of the team know that's going on and see a lack of action by the boss. They're just all gonna dislike the boss.

[00:15:33] Scott: So instead of being worried about making one person dislike them in a one-to-one conversation, they suddenly lose the confidence to the rest of the team.

[00:15:41] Vaughn: You are 100% on the spot right there. It's I described that phenomenon to managers in that every day you let that problem person reside under your management authority, your leadership is being undermined. And believe me, people are talking about it behind your back. You'll never know everything that everybody's saying about it, but they all know that person's a problem and they're expecting you to deal with it.

[00:16:07] Vaughn: And every day you don't. Two things happen. Not only are you being undermined in your authority and respect, but now you're lowering the standard. You're saying this low standard that this person's establishing is. I can get away with that, and I know boss wants that, but they don't always cognitively think about it that way.

[00:16:27] Scott: No. Yeah, and I'm happy to share. Very early on in my management career, again, I was I'd done some leadership in retail and then I got into the job I did and became a manager quite quickly, and then, I took the cowards approach. I had one member of staff that was spending a lot of time not doing work.

[00:16:46] Scott: They were on their mobile phone and this is pre smartphone, so they were just like texting. But Instead of addressing that individually, I just emailed, what a coward. I emailed the whole team and just said, I noticed there's a, so basically I tied everybody with the same brush and that was so wrong.

[00:17:02] Scott: And I cringe now to share that live. It's not live, but to share that on the podcast. But you learn from your mistakes, don't you? And I was like, looking back, I was like, that's just awful. Like they would all think, great. We know who the problem is. Why have we just labeled us all the same thing? Deal with it.

[00:17:18] Scott: So yeah, that's one of my learnings.

[00:17:20] Vaughn: all the people who were good were offended by that. And all the people who were, even, especially the person that was not performing very well, that went right by their head. They made no, they must be everybody else. My I did have advice from one gentleman I worked with for a number of years.

[00:17:37] Vaughn: That taught me the difference in meetings and conversations between being efficient and effective, which they sound similar, but they're very different, and you took a very efficient approach in that. I'm just gonna throw it out there. I'm gonna be done with it. I can move

[00:17:54] Scott: done my bit. Yeah. Coward.

[00:17:57] Vaughn: however, it's not very effective because it probably didn't have the outcome that you desired.

[00:18:03] Vaughn: And being effective sometimes is certainly harder and often it takes longer, but it's the right thing to do if you, you know it. Very often I'll have people look at me as we're ha I'm getting them ready to go, have this kind of conversation. And they got this look of fear on their face. And I said, listen, you're gonna be dealing with this.

[00:18:24] Vaughn: One way or the other for a very extended amount of time. If you don't have the conversation now, and it's either deal with it now or deal with it later and it's not going to fix itself, you've got to go have the conversation. So do you really want to extend this pain? Or do you want to go deal with it?

[00:18:41] Vaughn: Which sounds very simple. Again, it's easier said than done. But, and often I will sit with them and have that conversation as a, I'm the muscle, I'm, I'm the backup to all this. And if things go wrong, I can course correct it. But I've had literally thousands of tough discussions.

[00:18:59] Vaughn: But I've got the personality that. That comes to me naturally. I was on the debate team in high school. I loved getting into scuffles verbally with folks. Most of the population north of 80%, that's very distasteful to them. But there is a method that you can get comfortable with if you practice it.

[00:19:17] Vaughn: And, I talk about it like this, Scott. Fear is also an acronym for false expectations appearing real. You probably heard that. And so most people don't have these hard conversations with people. They need to, they're going to, they're really affecting them, but they, and they need to have this conversation, but they have fear about having it.

[00:19:41] Vaughn: And almost to a person, once they have that difficult conversation, they realize that imagine fear, it never comes. It's never there.

[00:19:52] Scott: I was gonna say, yeah. Yeah. These things are never as bad as you think. They're, you go, oh, why didn't I just do that sooner?

[00:19:58] Vaughn: Yeah. Exactly.

[00:19:59] Scott: I spent weeks in bed at night worrying about it and running through how the conversation's gonna go, and it never goes the way that he thought it did.

[00:20:07] Vaughn: It's,

[00:20:07] Scott: action.

[00:20:08] Scott: Just do it.

[00:20:09] Vaughn: It's every time I do a podcast or write a blog I've got a two whole courses on this, but it's my number one most downloaded and red downloaded blog podcasts and red blog. Cuz people are just they're just looking for information and solutions. They're finding, they're trying to find a way to have these hard conversations.

[00:20:29] Vaughn: So it's, I know it's very common and I can relate. I had to fire my best friend

[00:20:35] Scott: Yeah. How did, just interestingly, how did that pan out after that? Did you no longer speak? Were you no longer

[00:20:41] Vaughn: spoke to me again. He actually, he, I think, packed up and left within a week. Left town within a week, and I never heard from him again. And by the way, he owed me $3,000 in the meantime. So he had put $3,000 on a credit card because he's my best friend. I'm helping him out. Never saw that money again.

[00:21:00] Scott: Oh wow.

[00:21:01] Vaughn: Insult injury.

[00:21:02] Scott: If he's listening, he can hopefully transfer that money to you now.

[00:21:06] Vaughn: Yeah. I, and it's funny, you would think in the world of social media today that some of these folks would come back across your life, but thankfully that one never did.

[00:21:18] Scott: So one of the things that I've seen lacking in leadership, and I'm sure you've come across it as well as a lack. Direction or proper goal setting, realistic goal setting. Teams are just floundering, jumping from one fire to put out to the next, not having any structure or, can you give us some of your experiences and thoughts on that, what in that area?

[00:21:40] Vaughn: And Scott, I know you are an expert on this, so I gotta be careful talking to an expert and sharing my advice because, this is something you're very good at. But my experience on this is that they're not specific enough. And they're they specific as to what comes first, what comes second, what comes third, what good looks like, what the best outcome looks like, and most importantly, how much time do they have to get it?

[00:22:04] Vaughn: It's the basic smart goal method, right? Specific, measurable. Achievable, et cetera. But it's that time bound part. I think that's where so many people get tripped up. So many managers and leaders get tripped up and that they say, Hey Lee, listen, will you knock this out? Get this done for me today?

[00:22:21] Vaughn: And the person say, yeah, I'll get this done for you today. And they go out at two o'clock and say, did you get it done? No, I was gonna start it in about an. The leader is frustrated because, ah, I told you to do that. That was the most important thing to do, but you didn't say have it done by two o'clock, and so they're going to translate it into getting it finished.

[00:22:41] Vaughn: By whatever time works for them. It's, it's Parkinson's law. The job will expand to the time allotted. And many leaders need to remember that and add that time bound part to it. And I think you can remove a great deal, your frustration, but just telling 'em how long they have to do it, be specific and how long it's going to take or your expectations or at least have a negotiation or a collaboration on how long it should take.

[00:23:05] Vaughn: I think you'll leave a lot of your frustration. Do you find the same thing, Scott?

[00:23:09] Scott: Yeah I'd see that the other side where sometimes the the deadlines are just unrealistic. The manager's not close enough to actually what work is involved. So they just, I just want it done. Just do it quickly. And the person's gotta do the work is like they have no idea how complex this is, what they've just asked for.

[00:23:25] Scott: So that's where you have to have that safety. I think that's a good leader to actually listen then to the team who are cl, I always say the team, they're the ones closest to customer. They're the ones actually, they're the experts. So it's that balance, isn't it, between good direction leadership and being realistic and trust for the team to be able to say, actually boss.

[00:23:43] Scott: That's just completely unrealistic. Can we have a conversation about that?

[00:23:47] Vaughn: That's a truly authentic leader, one who can listen. You said the word listen. I, I. Great leaders are great listeners and they're great collaborators too. They ask questions and they listen. And the other thing that many unknowing. They don't come to work to do a bad job and not get things done, but many unknowing leaders, and they wouldn't be listening to this podcast if they weren't looking to get better.

[00:24:12] Vaughn: Many of these unknowing leaders they don't approach it. With the big picture in mind in that they give them one little task to get done or what may seem small to them, but they don't take into account all the other things this individual has to get that they must get accomplished and you know who else has given them.

[00:24:34] Vaughn: To-dos task, goals that we don't ever have that conversation, to your point, to find out what else is going on. And it may be much more complex than the timeline allotted, and that's where they need to ask instead of tell.

[00:24:50] Scott: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And one of the things I help teams with is what I call transparency of work. It's actually, it needs to be visible, as visible as possible. So you can then have those negotiations and say, actually, you've asked me to do this thing now boss, but here's the other five things I've got and here's why I think they're higher value than what you just asked me to do.

[00:25:10] Scott: Can we have a conversation about that? Cause if you haven't got that transparency as you said, it's like you just do this. And just eventually the team just. And everything's a priority, but you can't have everything as a priority or you get the classic or can you just squeeze this in?

[00:25:23] Scott: Yes. All right. I'll just squeeze it in and then someone else gives it the other end, so Yeah.

[00:25:28] Vaughn: Time is finite and they can only get so much done in a day and just queing one more thing in that's okay, but something's gonna fall off to your point. And that's maybe the next frustration, right?

[00:25:40] Scott: yeah. And eventually it leads into the staff getting stressed. Hating their boss because the boss is unrealistic.

[00:25:46] Vaughn: You were so right. The beauty of some of these project management software, task management software like Trello and Monday, and it's great that it gives you a little more transparency as to what all's going on.

[00:25:59] Vaughn: If the boss looks at it.

[00:26:01] Scott: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:03] Vaughn: only look at it because somebody's late. They wanna see what was this done on time? And they use it for what it was not intended for.

[00:26:12] Scott: Yeah, exactly. The world is always changing, isn't it? So obviously we've had covid we've had younger generations coming through and you hear about more of a kind of casual approach to work where people don't, they're not, you said you're in your employment for.

[00:26:28] Scott: Quite a long time. Some people like just want a job for a year or two and then move on. Do you think that presents challenges for leaders in terms of how they, how that relationship with their employees 

[00:26:41] Vaughn: Certainly Probably the biggest challenge is between the generations my generation is moving on, that we're less and less of the leadership in companies now, but Gen X is a big part of it, and that was a very hardworking dedicated, just do the job this doesn't get talked about.

[00:26:58] Vaughn: But that's the bulk of executives and managers that are out there today and this new millennial, gen Z group have come along who are all about the journey, not about the destination. And so we have conflicting. Motivations there. And that's, you said it earlier, people work for people, not for companies.

[00:27:19] Vaughn: They leave bosses, not companies. And that's where if you're frustrated as a leader or a manager with the dedication, the motivation, and the the initiative of the folks that you have working with you. We're very good at pointing fingers. How many times do we hear? It's really hard to find good people today, but it's generally the manager's fault.

[00:27:44] Vaughn: Because they're not looking at what should I be doing differently to get the job done, versus what should they be getting, what they should be doing to get the job done? How can I help them be more dedicated and motivated and inspired to work for me? And it's a very different skill set than how they this Gen X.

[00:28:04] Vaughn: Was managed. And so there's, that's one of the big challenges out there, is there's this expectation based on how I approach life, how I do things. And they've gotta wrap their heads around the fact that there's two generations of very hardworking people, very smart, very intelligent, very educated and the big, the biggest generation ever in, in millennials that they'll do a great job for.

[00:28:32] Vaughn: But you've gotta do a good job for them. You've got to show you care. They need to have a mission. They need to be feeling like they, they learn there's gotta be connection and a purpose for what they do. It's not just to get the job done. They have to understand the next level up of what am I actually achieving that is helping.

[00:28:52] Vaughn: And that very often gets left out of the narrative. It's this command and control approach that so many unknowing, again, managers take, just do what I tell you to do. Is it that's just like kryptonite to getting the job done. It's the worst way possible. And so that's the challenge that managers today have to be more collaborative.

[00:29:16] Vaughn: Listen better than any time ever I believe. Cuz you it's just, it's, the world has changed so much and fortunately it keeps me in business. It's keeping you in business. There's a lot of people that wanna learn how to do that. But there's a lot who. Don't even know they need to. I encourage anybody to listen to your podcast, Scott, if you've got somebody in your life that you feel like is frustrated because of their employees, they're working with, not getting the job done.

[00:29:47] Vaughn: Encourage them to go get some training. Listen to your podcast. Listen to my podcast. Find there's better ways that cost almost zero, other than, if you wanna pay for some training and coaching, okay. But you can listen to podcasts and watch YouTube. There's a world of information out there, but all that's.

[00:30:08] Vaughn: You gotta go use it. It's all in the application. It's all in the kinesthetic experience that you get in using it. And if you're dedicated enough to make the change, just like you and just like my me, we both found that, wow, this stuff works.

[00:30:25] Scott: Yeah.

[00:30:26] Vaughn: we keep doing the same thing, expecting a different outcome.

[00:30:30] Vaughn: So it's it's collaborate and listen, collaborate, listen, collaborate, and listen. Your life is gonna be so much better and the results will be astronomical.

[00:30:40] Scott: Yeah. Yeah. Just pick up point there. You said around. It's almost that self-awareness and that self-reflection with the leader to not just blame the team, actually pause and say, wait a minute, what's my part in this? What am I contributing to this situation? And I think I've seen it. There's a, there's almost this arrogance, if I dare call it that, that it's wow, you are lucky to have a job working for me.

[00:31:05] Scott: Or you're lucky to have a job working for the company instead of, actually, I'm really lucky as a leader that you've chosen to work for me. That's a really powerful mind. Left and then get you thinking, how can I help my employees be the best they can be? It's very different from how can I squeeze every last drop out of these people 

[00:31:23] Vaughn: it's a big slap in the head once people finally realize it, but many people do, and they enjoy the rewards for making the change.

[00:31:31] Scott: Yeah. Brilliant. So one of the questions I ask all my guests, if you could take one book with you to a desert island and you're stranded there for the rest of your life, what would it be?

[00:31:42] Vaughn: Boy, that is a tough question. Because I read two kinds of books. Now I'm thinking with my mouth open. Scott I love novels. And read a lot of those. But I also love reading my books on business and especially leadership. For the purposes of this call, I would probably say start with why Simon Sinek.

[00:32:04] Vaughn: I think that is, that's probably altered more mindsets than just. Any other business related leadership related book, seven Habits and Influenced Friends. Those are all great books, but that has I've seen and heard has been a big influencer and it's a great read.

[00:32:25] Scott: Yeah. Brilliant. Thank you. So if anyone wants to work with you, what's the best way for them to get hold of you?

[00:32:31] Vaughn: Please contact me@rdltraining.com. That's romeo delta lima training.com. Follow me on LinkedIn, Vaughn Sigman results Driven Leadership. I'm the only Vaughn Sigman in the world, I think, so I'm easy to find and and I have a podcast too. I'd love for you to listen to the Business Mechanic Show.

[00:32:51] Vaughn: It's available everywhere.

[00:32:54] Scott: Brilliant. Thanks. I'll get those linked up from the show notes. Vaughn, it's been great chatting. Thank you for being on the show.

[00:32:59] Vaughn: Thank you, Scott. It's been a true pleasure this time. It's flown by.

[00:33:03] Scott: A big, thank you for listening to the Rebel Diaries show your time is precious, so it is appreciated. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to hit that subscribe button in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss the next one. There's a new episode every Monday morning, ideal for your commute to work or early morning walk. 

[00:33:20] Scott: Until next time, take care be a rebel and deliver work with impact.