Grateful for Dynamic Leadership!

Your hosts are grateful to bring Greg Taylor, author of Find Your Winning Edge, renowned leadership coach and motivational speaker, to the podcast!
What better way to manage a busy Thanksgiving week than with the positivity and real-world guidance from Greg Taylor? Well, we can't think of any!

Greg Taylor has over 35 years of experience in corporate and personal leadership.  Greg has honed a process of insight discovery that has led to numerous successes, failures, triumphs and bruises.  Through his work, Greg aims to help people learn from their experiences, inspire themselves, and create profound, lasting change that positively impacts everyone around them. 

Greg is the host of The Leadership Factory podcast and is a professional speaker.  He and his lovely wife of 35 years, Mickey, have two sons and 3 grandchildren.  Greg has a genuine love for people and has the unique ability to relate topics of discussion to the hearts and spirits of the audience.

Oh- and he's Trent Taylor's (Chicago Bears) dad. :)

Spotify Playlist- A special soundtrack you will be thankful to play as you prepare Thanksgiving dinner!
Find Your Winning Edge
The Leadership Factory Podcast (Apple Music)
Greg Taylor's personal cell phone number: (318) 230-6481 (tell him you heard him on The Toxic Tearoom!)
HireMyMom: Get 15% off job listings with code ToxicTearoom at checkout!
Escatena- Unleash Uncommon Results! Get Scope 3 sustainability with us!

Transcript

0:01

The Toxic Tea Room podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Neither the Toxic tea Room nor its parent, that one booth Productions, LLC, Ah, is responsible for the statements or opinions of its guests, submissions, or content derived from publicly available sources. Content should not be interpreted as targeting specific companies, organizations, or individuals. The Toxic Tea Room podcast and that one Booth Productions, LLC, are not responsible for any actions taken by individuals as a result of any content produced on this podcast. Listeners are encouraged to vet any recommendations with certified professional personnel. For more info on our disclaimer and to read our blog with fun Easter eggs throughout, visit our website at www.toxictroom.com. I'm Stella. And I'm Roberta. Welcome to the Toxic Tea Room. How you doing? Yes, I'm great. How are you? A little tired, but I have a feeling that after this episode I'm going to be rejuvenated, reinvigorated, going to get a heavy dose intravenously of positivity from our guests today. Are you excited, Stell? Shake and bake. That's all I got to say. Shaken bake. Do you remember Shaken Bake? Like from the 70s? Like that nasty coating on chicken? You put it on the chicken and throw it in the oven. Do you remember that? Is that still a thing? Like, can someone still buy it? Are you asking me? Well, I don't know anybody. Do we have anybody shaken Bake? Because I thought it was good. Did you? My mom made it a couple of times and I think even as a kid I asked her, could you not? That's not good for me. I don't know. I just didn't care for it. But for those of you wondering, who is that gentleman in the background? Because that doesn't sound like T Bone. So allow me to introduce the man who thought Shaken Bake was good. Everybody, Greg Taylor has joined us today. Greg Taylor is a transformative leader dedicated to empowering individuals to reach their full potential. With over 35 years of experience in corporate and personal leadership, Greg has honed a process of insight discovery that has led to numerous successes, failures, triumphs, and bruises. Through his work, Greg aims to help people learn from their experiences, inspire themselves, and create profound, lasting change that positively impacts everyone around them. The ultimate goal is to create more inspirational leaders who can inspire others to take a journey that they will not take by themselves. And by the way, everybody, Greg is the author of Find your Winning Edge, which I have read and highly recommend. The host of the Leadership Factory podcast and a professional speaker, he has been married to Mickey for 35 years. Bless her heart. She is a saint and has two sons and three grandchildren. His youngest son, Trent, is in his 7th year of the National Football League and is currently on the roster with the Chicago Bears. Thank you for your service, Trent. Greg's true passion is being a professional speaker. He's a genius. I'm sorry? A genuine love, though. He is a genius. It's a genius. Genuine love. I just coined something for you, Greg, for people. And he has the unique ability to relate topics of discussion into the hearts and spirits of the audience. As one client said, I thought you and I were having a one on one conversation. Greg's ability to have a personal connection from the podium is what will inspire, motivate, and leave a lasting impact on every person that he meets. Welcome to the toxic tea room, Greg Taylor. well, wow. That's good. Well, thank you very much. I'm happy to be here today. Well, and thank you for being proud of Trent, even though he's on the Bears, which, by the way, as you know, I'm a Chicago Bears fan. I'm originally from Chicago. That is my team. And as long as we can just beat Green Bay once this year, I'm happy. So if you could let Trent know, catch those footballs for us, we'd appreciate it. Trent. I'm, hoping to be there on January the 7th or 9th at the Frozen tundra to watch the Bears beat the pack. I appreciate the last game of the year. I appreciate that. And that's what we wAnt. So you and I are both going to be watching that game, though I will be warm in the comfort of my home, but I will be cheering for you, sir. And I did cheer for them. They won on Sunday, or, I'm sorry, on Thursday, they won. And I was cheering loudly. I was. And Trent got some time. He did. I was proud. I mean, I was doing all right. All right, so, by the way, for those of you in the listening audience that are not in the United States, and there's a significant amount of you, Google NFL. I don't have time to explain, but the Chicago Bears are the team to. Right. That's right. Super bowl bound. That's right. I said it. I'm going to manifest it. Even though mathematically it's not likely. You got to speak it into life. That's right, man. Speak it into. Right. All right. So, Greg, um, you and I have known each other for a while, and I've actually had you at a previous life working with a few members of my organization. I can absolutely say you did incredible things for them both boosted their confidence, helped them see some alternative paths to resolving problems and interpersonal things. You did amazing work. They were both so thrilled to have you as part of their lives. And you and I have amazing conversations. Whenever I have the chance to spend even just a little few seconds of your time, I'm always happy. I'll take those little scraps, I don't care. I love it. But I know because you're on the toxic tea room where we talk about workplace issues and toxic work environments. And I know even Greg Taylor, with all of his positivity, probably had one experience that might lend itself to our audience. So, Greg, could you share a story about one of the worst workplace situations you've either witnessed or been part of? And how did that lead you to your current profession? Wow, that's a great question. Yeah, we've all been through toxic workplaces. and one that probably comes to mind the most is where I came in as a COO and things were needing to get fixed quickly. So being an all in guy, Mr. Internal opTimism, I jumped into the middle of so. And I ruffled some people because I didn't stop spend time on people to build a relationship with them. Only thing I had in my mind is I'm getting the result done. Because I was working for the man. He told me what he needed to get done. It's my job to go get it. And he kept putting pressure on me to get it done. So I did that, and I ruffled some feathers. Then they had a roundtable meeting with me in there. So there were ten people that revoted against me. And guess who the owner chose to go with? The ten people. Yeah, he went with, which is smart. I can replace one. I can't replace ten. Right. sorry, it was a trick question. I honestly thought this was a trick question. I'm like, if I say he went with the ten people, like most CEOs would do, and it ended up he went with Greg against ten people. I am not doing this man a service. Stella's like the ten people because that's what most people would do. Sorry, Greg. It was a great opportunity, in my personal opinion, for him to bring us all together. But he split it again. That was very tough for me. So in that process, I said, this is not for me. then at that point, I don't need to be mad at anybody. I don't need to get upset with anybody. I just need to say, this environment is not for me, this is not conducive for me, being the very best version of myself, because I've got to find an environment where I'm encouraged, I'm challenged, I'm allowed to learn. I'm allowed to fail as long as I'm learning through those failures, because I have a WTA win through adversity instead of saying, WTF. And, the first company I worked for, they were amazing. If you failed, what did you learn? What happened? Why'd you make that decision? They're trying to figure out why you did that. So let's learn from this. Because if you go to university and you pay $150,000 for an education and you know nothing, that was a waste of money. Same thing in an environment, a work environment. If you make a mistake, what did you learn from thAt? So let's take that lesson. Let's win through adversity, and let's make ourselves better as we go through that. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, that's really interesting. so it sounds like maybe you were the cause of toxicity in that situation for coming in and not establishing a relationship. That's right. Wow. Way to be so candid and honest. I love that because no one's above going in with the best intentions but not slowing down to understand everything that's going on. So what are some of the psychological factors that leaders and employers need to recognize? Because I'm sure you did. Right. Right. That's right. So I'm going to go into a good story where I was the COO and I walked in. It needed to be fixed immediately. Okay. Yeah. But the owner, the investor, he said, greg, I don't want you to fix anything for six months. Oh, nice. He told me, I know your personality. Okay? You're going to run and take over the world today. You're not going to do that here. You're going to stop and spend time on people. You're going to stop. You're going to get to know all the delivery drivers. You're going to get to know the salespeople. You're going to get to know the leaders. You're going to get to know the CFO. Just stop. You're not going to go fix this in six months. Just go build relationships with people. Well, that's freedom. Where I wasn't responsible for the result, even though in my mind I was. but he let me slow down, and I was talking to, m one of my coaching clients. He's an ex military, and the military is smooth. How does he say that? He says, smooth is fast, but slow is smooth. So that's telling you to slow down to go fast. Yeah. I have another client. He owns a bunch of car dealerships. And he said, greg, sometimes you got to go slow to go fast. And that's what that lesson was, because I was wanting to go fast. To go fast in the first one, the second one. No, we're going to go slow so we can go fast, which is more realistic. And that makes a lot of sense. Right. Because in order to hit the results, you have a heck of a battle on your hand if you're trying to get results from people who don't even know you, let alone like you, let alone willing to go the extra mile for you. relationships are critical in making that work. Critical. So the lesson for me, from a high level, clear and concise, is one did not value relationships and one valued relationships. Right. And what are the psychological factors from the employees? Like, what are those? Well, to get someone to trust me, because my definition of a leader that I use is a leader is a person who can inspire another person to take a journey that they're not going to take by themselves. Yes. So the word inspire is what I focus on, and trust is the electricity to the inspiration. So that word inspire, it needs electricity to transform. So therefore, you have to build trust with people. And trust is when you fully depend upon or fully rely upon someone's character and or abilities to help you achieve what you desire. It's amazing. And, you got to build trust. If you have trust, you have nothing. The number one way. I have ten ways to build trust that a friend of mine wrote. We started with, like, six, and we narrowed it down to ten. And the number one is you got to stop, spend time on people. Yeah. I can't get my wife to trust me if I don't spend time with her. I have two sons. One's 30, one's 29. They both, make a long story short. They wanted me to spend time with them. My oldest son, he would get in trouble, and his behavior would become good because he got to spend time with me because I shut him down on the weekend. Okay, right? So then my other son, which, playing for the bears now, when I'd come home from work, I'd say, we got to go work out. We got to throw ball. We got to shoot baskets. We got to said, dad, why do we have to do stuff all the time? Why can't we just hang out? And I would just go, what the heck is he talking about, hanging? I ain't got time to hang out with you, Greg. They just want your time yeah, they just want your time. They don't want to know what you know, they want your time. They just want to hang out. So, long story short, one of their coaches said, correction, without a relationship, equal rebellion. Correction. With a relationship, equal inspiration. Nice. So to wrap all this up, if I want someone to trust me, I got to stop and spend time on people. I have a whole class on stop, spend time on people. You can't build trust if you're not willing to stop and spend time on people, because when you stop, you're going to give someone those four psychological factors. People have something in aid in all of us that we all. Even me, as my wife would say, even, like, I don't need that. I'm macho, I'm blah blah blah. I need to be understood. I need to be understood. I need to be validated, I need to be affirmed, and I need to be appreciated. And one of those fours is a dominant for you, Roberta, and one for you, Stella. So my dominant one is to be validated because if my wife validates run, I can get it done. If my mom validates me, I'll run. Walk. Now, if they don't validate me, I get very angry M because I need their validation. Go through that one more time. Greg, this is fascinating. What are the four things? The four psychological factors? Yeah. And this is from Stephen Covey's book, Seven Habits of highly effective. So to be understood. To be validated. To be affirmed and to be appreciated. Which one do you think is yours still? I don't know. That validation one. I think I ringing for you and. Being understood, because for some reason, especially when things are going at a fast pace in a work environment, I want to slow down and fully understand it. And so when I'm forced to react very quickly, I want to make sure I'm understood, because that's a faster pace than I'm used to. What about you? I don't know. Maybe affirmed. To be affirmed, maybe. But I say maybe because I'm not sure. Well, we all need all four of them fair. So I'm going to go with all of the above. So that's like the option d m on the bottom of the test. I'm going to take all of the above. I need all of it. And that goes from your playbook. I'm reading out of Roberta's book. That's right. All of the above, guys. All of the above and playbook. Interesting, because we've talked about the bears a lot. So, in my playbook, I need everybody just pay attention. In my playbook, I need all four things. I need all four of those. I don't know that I need all four all the time. I think it's situational, which kind of leads me to the next thing I want to talk about. so you mentioned in your leadership courses, Greg, that leadership is situational, but it also has to be strategic. Tell us how those two concepts relate to each other. How can you be strategic in leadership and have situational leadership coincide? as I like my opinion, because you can't argue my opinion. This is my opinion. This is my story. That's why I love to tell people, hey, the most fair thing you can do for another person is tell them a story, because it's hard to argue someone's story. Okay? So, to me, strategic is a long term view of something. How do I get from A to Z in all of those steps? To me, it starts at the very beginning. What's my mission? What's my vision, and what's my core values? My mission is what's my purpose and why am I doing this? My vision is, where do I see myself in X amount of years? And my core value is, how are we going to do these things? So we start off on that journey. Then we have situations come up. Okay, so leadership is situational. What's the circumstances? Who are the people involved? What's their personality and their experiences so you can understand how they're thinking. Then what's your culture? What do you want your culture to be? And that's where you're tying your mission, vision, core values. Because at the end of the day, if you work through those uncontrollable circumstances and all these different personalities and belief systems, how am I validating that? Back to my strategic view? Dealing with ambiguity is a strength that a Person's got to have to be a leader. And I learned this from a corporate attorney. I was the VP of operations of about 500 truckload company. and me and the corporate attorney sat in office one day talking about leadership, and he said, greg, to be a leader, you got to be able to handle higher levels of ambiguity. So I was probably 42 years old, I'm 60 now. And I looked at him, I said, did you cuss me? Yeah. I don't know what the word ambiguity means. He's like, yeah, the gray area, the unclear things. I was like, oh, yeah, a leader's got to be able to deal with that, because when you're the leader, nobody brings you a black and white situation. Never. They're bringing you something complicated. They're bringing you ambiguity. And if the leader struggles with ambiguity, that's maybe a little bit of the root cause of toxicity, where everybody's trying to be right instead of them trying to be wise. I love my class that I call it being wise versus being right. And if you don't understand there's ambiguity going on, you can't understand the concept of being wise versus being right, because my whole life, I've been like Ricky Bobby, if you're not first, you mean, I've been thrown out of every sporting event known to man as a mean if I got know, I have no value for myself, so I'm going to fight for value is my own self analyzing myself from, zero to, say, 25 years old. So I had to manage my way out of that. And at 42 years old, that word really helped me to understand. Look, there's wisdom in this. I can't be right all the time. I call him my mentor, peer. He said, greg, you can't speak direct to everybody like that. You have to understand where they're coming from, and you got to be very shrewd in your process. So to be wise versus being right, you got to understand ambiguity, temperament, discernment, and how to be shrewd, which is how to influence people, not piss them off. So I understand there's ambiguity. I keep my cool. I can discern the facts underneath the surface. Now, I can walk out. Now, I can be Shrewd in my presentation to influence them to think different than to cram it down their throat. I love all of that. Yeah, me too. you know, we. I have an idea for a Christmas gift for people. Well, we got to make it first, Greg. So if you can find someone in your network, I think we need to make little Greg Taylor like action figures. And they go on your desk. Yeah. And they go on your desk, and you press the button, and it shoots out something like what Greg just said. Like, it just shoots it. Like, it'll just tell you wn space. And you can put in your own initials there, which, by the way, for our, listening audience, is why not? And you put your initials in. So, like, in my case, it'd be, why not RT or why not ss? So it's just a reinforcement. Or you could press another button, and it'll give you that, like, ambiguity, and you'll just remember that that's a word you should know as a leader and understand. There's so much. I think it is a hit. I think it would sell out. Let's make this happen. I want little. I'm not. I don't even want a commission on this. I'm just asking for one for myself. That's all I'm asking for. I just want my own little Greg Taylor on my desk. You might need to know the rest of the story and meet my wife and let her tell you the rest of the story. I'm going to make Mickey my VP of Ops, and we're going to be fine. Now, scratch that. She's going to be the creative director. I'll just be like, we need another word there. Help me out, Mickey. Let's go. Now she has a personality like Stella now. We're going to get along great. Then we're going to be perfect. We're going to be great. We're going to be great. So when I found out her personality, because I use path elements assessment when I do individual coaching and group coaching with people so I can understand their personality. So I asked her to take this for, like, six months because I think I know your personality, but I want to be sure. So she took the test. So we had two and a half hour discussion about it. So the biggest thing that I learned through that process of having that conversation, because conversations solve problems, but it takes time. Yes, because you got to stop. Spend time on Mickey Stone. I call that stone. So we were in a car going on a trip. We had a two and a half hour discussion about it. So the thing I learned is I got to pace myself with her. See, I'm an explosive volcano, type a fire. I want to take off. I don't need to know how we're getting there. We're just going to get there. She needs to know where we're going before we leave. So when I get too quick for her, she's got to say, pace yourself, Greg. And that tells me I need to slow down. It's really helped our relationship because we're starting to buy real estate and rental units, and I go too fast for I just let her go at her pace because I want to stay married, because she's an amazing young lady. My goal is to remain married. Greg, you got a bhag for this real estate project? Yes, remain married. That is my big, hairy, audacious goal. I want to remain married at the end of this real estate project of mine. It's a wonderful goal to have. Knowing you, Greg, you'll accomplish that. I'm not worried about that at, Got it. You just got to. Once again, you set back frustrating is overtaking. Time's running out, and you just got to sit back and go, do I want to be wise or do I want to be right? That's right. Because if you want to salvage relationship, wisdom's got to prevail. If you just want to be right and don't care about the relationship, you just go be right. Well, that's great stuff. I don't know about saving marriages, but if you need better leadership for that seemingly insurmountable project, could be done. you could keep procrastinating, but why not reach out to the supply chain experts who can help? That sounds like a better idea. Slice your time in half with actionable and efficient steps. Sounds wise. Not right. Right, Roberta? That's right. Anyway, sounds wise. Escategenna has a proven record of fast tracking to uncommon results. Visit Escategor Escategatena net and unleash uncommon results. Boom, boom. Mic drop. Mic drop. Mic drop. So, Greg, with regards to human behavior, I believe you mentioned that there are two things that motivate behavior. Inspiration and consequence. Tell us about how an improper use of these motivators can cause toxicity in the workplace. That's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a deep question. Can you have too much inspiration? I'm going to go back to building that foundation floor for you. Yeah, there you go. that's a little bit up here in the upper right room. So the basic fundamentals of human behavior. Now, I have a friend, he used to work for m me, he owns his own autism clinic, so he calls it ABA applied behavior analytics. So at my first job, I went through performance management, which they called it the ABCs of human behavior. So, ABC applied behavior analytics, they're similar, different letters, but they're very similar in their approach because my friend and I, who owns his own autism clinic, we talk about the parallels of them because it's just human behavior. At the end of the. I like, I do ABCs of human behavior. So the first thing you need to understand about a behavior is what's the antecedent? What did you tell them to do? What did you ask them to do? What did you teach them to do? And the B is the behavior, the known behavior, not what someone tells me they did. The known behavior. That's a whole book. And C is the consequence. So I tell them what to do. I coach them what to do. I'll make sure they can do it first before I'll run off and leave them. I've got to see, they know how to do that. Okay. I control that. The leader controls the A behavior is controlled by whom? You? I don't control the behavior. The leader doesn't like you as an individual, the person being person. The person you're teaching. Not literally. You see, I found some liberation in my mid 40s that I don't control people. That's right. Yeah. See, I did this performance management in my 20s, but this is what in my 40s, until I understand, I don't control people because I'm an obsessive person that likes to control things. So I don't control the behavior, but I do control the antecedent and I do control the consequence. And to optimize behavior, I got to tell them what to do. I got to get them to do it. Then I got to pick them. Pic positive, immediate, certain consequence. That optimizes behavior. It's got to be positive, immediate, certain consequence. Yeah. It can't be uncertain. Means sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. Right. It's got to be. It can't be delayed. Right. If you come and tell someone, well, you did a good job on that presentation two months ago, they'll go, which one? Yeah. What are you talking about? It's got to be a meeting that optimizes people's behavior. So when you tell them, they see that you've seen them do it, you know the behavior, they didn't do it. Now you got to give them a nick. I'm not talking about termination yet. There's a process that I have, ten step process. Because leadership is more than asking for a certain result, it's more leading them through the process to obtain the result. I'll start at one. One is can they do the job? And number ten is discipline termination. And that's a long journey between there. And that's what I teach in my leadership training course. But to fix a problem, you give them a negative, immediate, certain consequence. That fixes a problem. That doesn't optimize behavior, it fixes the problem. Sort of like when I touch a stove and it's on, so I get a negative pain immediately. It's immediate. Hm. And it's certain because every time I touch a hot stove, it burns me and it gives me immediate response. So you think I'm going to touch that again? No, not unless you're. Now, I didn't optimize my behavior. I just won't touch that stove again. That's correct. So I get that. I mean, that's nice and easy to remember. for leaders, if you want to optimize positive behavior, give your person a pick. If you want to stop the problem, give them a Nick. Always do so with love, though, right, Greg? That's right. Well, you got to give positive and negative with love, because that's where the relationship comes in. Because I always said when we had to discipline someone who has the best relationship with this person, because I'm about to tell this person something bad they're not going to like. So I need to find who in this process do they trust the most? And two, I got to work on my relationship, which my relationship started with them in the interview process. Why would anybody come into a business where I don't have a relationship with someone? Because you're going to figure out in the interview process, is this a good environment or toxic environment? And it's all going to depend how much time do they spend with you getting to know who you are? And were you able to have a conversation with them in just a very casual environment? Because if they don't ask you about who you are, they're never going to ask you about who you are once you get the job. Truth, absolute truth there. Yeah. Ah. So you just get hired at a company that has a less than stellar culture. I don't know anything about that. By the way. I'm speaking purely in. I'm sorry. It's all right. What are the top principles of a leader that make a good culture, or at least contribute to a good culture? Well, I have ten traits of a leader, so I'm going to go right back to number one. Is character important? Do you do the right thing when nobody's watching? Amen. Do you see value in people? Yes. Are you calm with people? Do you have emotional intelligence where you can see into people, where you can stop and spend time with people? That's your character. Are you going to do what's right when nobody else is watching? Then to me, the next two things is that temperament and discernment. Because if I can stay under control and be a thermostat in my leadership training, I have a leadership is being a thermostat. And I got to be cool hand Luke or I got to be cool hand Lisa. They can't see me sweat. Okay. Then I got to be able to discern what's really going on in this situation, because if I can't discern what's going on, I can't determine reality. So therefore I can never fix the root problem. So a lot of companies just run around, just keep cutting the tree, and the tree keeps growing. They keep getting frustrated, they keep cut. But I got to find into the root of the problem. What is the root of the problem? There's a technique in total quality management is you got to ask why five times so you can find the root of the problem. Because if you don't tear the root out, it's just going to grow back. I've used that five, wise. I don't know, Stella, if I ever used it with us. I think I did once. Not with you, though. With one of our other teammates. I never saw someone get more pissed more fast because, hey, we have this problem. Why? Well, Because so and so did this. Okay. Why? Well, I don't know why they do things. Well, find out and let me know. What kind of answer is that, Roberta? Find out and let me know. Well, if I don't understand that why, then that doesn't help me understand why he would have done the things he did, which is clearly, by your own admission, the root cause of this problem. So come back and let me know. Comes back half hour later. Okay, I found out why. Okay, great. Tell me. Tells me the why, and I go, okay, so why? Honest to God, I need help from you. Are you able to give me counsel? Why do you need counsel? But the truth was, I understood he was getting frustrated. And later I said, listen, I understand the frustration, but what I'm trying to do is help you distill the issue. And too often, particularly in that environment, that was not a positive work environment under anybody's definition. I don't care. Unless you're a sadist, then maybe it was a very positive environment if you're a sadist and a masochist. But, what I was trying to help him with is getting away from a soundbite and saying, that's my issue, and let's put all of our attention on that Issue from a sound bite and rather talk through yourself asking those five whys and can we get down to what the root cause at least might be? And then let's go from there. Then let's examine things, then let's see who can come help solve it. But too often we just walk in with this sound bite. It's the issue du jour. And it's like, okay, well, as a leader, it's not my job to fix everything. It is my job to help you see what you can do. That said, though, I also feel that as a leader, you have to take the opportunity. If everything was so easy to read, no one would come to you for counsel. So you do have to listen to your team. You have to understand what the issue is. You have to get into the weeds a little bit, and once you're there, you can say, okay, so we're here. We now know what the root cause is. What do you guys need from me? How can I support you? because I'm not taking this problem away from you. I want to help you get past it so we can move forward. And oftentimes, that's hard. I mean, as human beings, we'd love to. I've got this monkey on my back. I would like Stella, it is now your monkey. Stella's like, I don't have a zoo. I'm not equipped to. What does the monkey eat? Is it really just bananas? Like, am I good with that? I have a couple bananas. Does it wear a diaper? I don't want this thing all over my house. I don't want the monkey. Can you take the monkey back? Well, no. Stella was your monkey. It's no longer my monkey. It's your. Eventually, you know, you just get to a place where, you leave someone ill prepared to take care of that issue by themselves. That's not leadership. You have got to help your people be prepared for what you are asking them to do. And your job is to support them so that they get the achievement, not you. They get to achieve it. And that's not easy for some leaders to do. and candidly, that's one of the things that I think will erode a culture almost as fast as trust. A lack of trust is feeling like you can't win no matter what, because nobody goes to work to be defeated every day. Nobody wants to go into a meeting to say, let's see if it's my turn to get skewered. How are you talking to your customers? How is your front line solving problems for the people who feed you, which is your customers, your clients, if they themselves feel they can't get a problem solved, it's just a trickle down effect that I think is completely underrated for just how much it can hurt a company. But I do know this much. Oh, go ahead, Stell. Well, I wanted to add one thing, and maybe it's a curveball for what if. Because I've been at several of my last employers, I've been told to manage up because my leaders were being not leaders. So that can really complicate the dynamic. If you're already dealing with all these things with your subordinates to try to get to know them, try to sHield, them from office politics, whatever it is. Right. but then when you're told to manage up, that to me, I've been told it for the last three jobs, I think, and it always really bothered me. How do you manage up? And not that you can't shine and say, hey, I'm doing this with my team, but when they're a few levels above you, that adds a complexity, doesn't it? Yeah. Manage up. Can I ask you what that means to you? Well, that's a new term for this country, boy. Oh, is it? Oh, boy. Here we go. He's going to write a new book. Wait. Go ahead, Stella. Go ahead. Give it to him, Stella. I don't want to punch that doll. you got on your dash. Get that little doll. I like the little. He's. He's all right. Tell me what you mean by manage up. Well, so you know how there's this notion, maybe it's dwindling down now, I'm not sure of open door policies. So for whatever reason, in prior places of employment, I had other leaders, or even my direct leader who was not seeing the big picture, not focused on mission, vision, or strategy. And so when you're someone who naturally is inclined to, hey, give me the vision and strategy, and I'm going to execute upon that, but then your leader is focused on this situation, and that's all they spend tons of time on the bottom line, and they're not focused on. They're flying at a lower level than they should fly, I guess. Right. So you're talking about managing your ball. Yes, managing it. Okay, I got you. So, my first balls for the first eight years, he gave me a book, manage your ball. Learn how to manage your balls. Got to read that. Meaning he wasn't a toxic boss. He was a very inspirational person, but he knew that. You, need to understand who I am. Right? Because I've got ten things. How to turn a boss into a mentor. And let's all be real here. There are just some people that's not going to be an inspirational leader. Yeah. Until something's taken from them. That consequence, when they got to manage up, if that guy above them keeps rewarding that toxicity, they're going to keep doing it. Because leadership starts at the very top and it rows down. Because until that leader at the very top takes responsibility for the toxicity, it'll never fix. Preach. Everybody just keeps deflecting. Meaning you can't get it done. Everything rises and falls on leadership. So when I go into companies, I want to know who their president is, who's the owners? How did this company come through? What's your mission, vision, core values? Because if you don't want me to teach inspirational leadership, I can't help you. But if we go to the frontline leader and teach them, but we don't teach the middle and the upper, well, those lower people, I'm going to confuse them if they're not all bought in. So I walk through that and I talk to the VP of HR, the owner of what I'm trying to do, because we got to make sure everybody's on board. Because if the owner's not on board with teaching inspirational leadership, it's not going to happen. Right? It's not going to happen. So when you go into job interview or your current job, you got to look at that person. When you manage up, what are they managing up? What are they getting then? What are they getting? However the many levels of that is. Yeah, well, I know this much. I would be very careful about entering into a bad culture. Thankfully, we have hire my mom to help hire my mom works closely with us to get the most highly qualified candidates in record time. If you are frustrated with hundreds of resumes in your inbox and no qualified candidates for your role, you need to do something different. Visit hiremymom.com and get 15% off job listings with code toxict room at checkout. HiremyMom also checks into company cultures, those of you looking to find jobs and wants to make sure you aren't walking into a toxic environment too. So hiremymom.com code toxic tea room at checkout for 15% off job listings and their popular how to hire course. Can I give you one? To me, the most prevalent question to see if it's a toxic environment? Sure, yeah. Please do tell me the average stay of your upper level managers and middle level managers. I love that. How long have they been here? When they tell you that number, it's going to tell you everything you wanted to know. Because my first company, if I ask them that question, they're going to say 38 years. Beautiful. Wow. At our last company, it was like six to nine months. It was five months, so I knew that going into it. But I'm King Kong. I can fix anything. Right? But when you get in there after two or three months, you go, I'm not King Kong. Yeah, I totally understand that in ways. And it's okay. I hope I respected everybody along the path, but at some point, I said, this is not for me. But I gave them 110% every single day until we shook hands and hugged and say, this doesn't work, and I'm going to move on. And you move on. And thank you for the opportunity, because whatever's going on, you got to make it the very best that you can based on what you can control. Don't worry about what you can't control. Let's put all of our time and energy on what I can control. And again, good things will happen to. Yep. Oh, very good stuff. so, Greg, do you have any other closing thoughts for our audience on leadership in general? No. If you're going to be a leader, you got to see value in people. And if you don't see value in people, to me, you can't be an inspirational leader. You can be a leader based on whatever you call that. But you got to see, every person has a gift. There's a gift inside of them, and an inspirational leader says, I can get it out of them. Al Maguire won a 1977 national championship. They interviewed him in the locker room. I saw this on ESPN, 30 for 30. And they asked him, for 40 years, you've been managing 18 to 23 year old people. He said, what does all this mean to you? For 40 years, you've been trying to win a championship. In your 40th year, you win it. And a little tear came to say. He said, I was just trying to get them to take one more step than they thought they could take. That's amazing. I was trying to pull out of them what God had put into them, and if I can't get it out of them, I failed. It's amazing. Wow. It's amazing. This has been such an enlightening and inspirational episode. Honestly, Greg, I'm so incredibly proud to call you a friend to have you on this podcast as a guest. I hope we can have you back. In the meantime, leaders and leaders in the making. We need to wrap this up so Greg can get back to leading by example, but keep sending in those stories to the teabag@toxictroom.com. Yes, and please, if anybody like to. Connect with me, m findyourwinningedge.com is my, web page. The Leadership Factory podcast, which you mentioned. I'll give my phone number out. 318-230-6481 There it is, everybody. I love people. I just want to see people. We'll put it in the show notes, too, if you're serious about that. Guys, if you didn't write that down. We'll put it in the show notes. We can click on it. We'll make it a hyperlink. It'll dial automatically. We'll take care of that. I, get probably ten crazy calls a day like everybody else is getting. So what's another, what's another 200? Everybody do us this. If you're going to reach out to Greg Taylor, tell him you heard him on the toxic tea room. Let's do that. So at least he can keep track. At least he can keep track. Yes. And please subscribe and follow us on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and TikTok. You can also support us by supporting our various affiliates. Look on our blog for additional information. And we've already mentioned we're going to share the episode and resources in the show notes and on our blog@toxictroom.com. Blog and we are so thankful for many things this season, especially our guests and our listeners. We hope you can stop and recognize the things you can be thankful for, including your employees and those who you lead. And eat up that turkey gobble. gobble and stuffing is still the best side dying on this hill. Everybody.