- 4 hours ago
What if your company's biggest leadership problems are hiding in plain sight, disguised as loyalty, productivity, or employee engagement?
A longtime employee isn't pulling their weight, but nobody addresses it. A department appears productive, but employees are working around an ineffective manager. Executives believe expectations are clear, while employees quietly pretend to understand.
How much are these leadership blind spots costing your business?
In this episode of The Workforce Alchemy Show, host Mason Duchatschek welcomes back Marlene Chism, leadership and conflict management expert and author of From Conflict to Courage, to discuss her new book, Spilling the Beans.
Using 52 humorous cartoons and short workplace stories, Marlene exposes everyday leadership behaviors that undermine employee engagement, trust, accountability, communication, and organizational performance.
With 21 years of experience as a frontline factory worker and a subsequent career advising executives and organizations, Marlene offers a unique perspective on the disconnect between management decisions and employee experiences.
In this episode, you'll discover:
Tenure vs. loyalty: Why years of service shouldn't excuse poor performance or undermine accountability.
The cost of conflict avoidance: How conversations leaders refuse to have create bigger, more expensive problems.
Hidden management failures: Why productive departments may actually be succeeding despite ineffective managers.
Fake clarity: How employees pretend to understand instructions rather than risk appearing uninformed.
Employee disengagement: How dismissive managers discourage employees from speaking up, sharing ideas, and solving problems.
Turning complaints into solutions: Questions leaders can ask to uncover employee frustrations and encourage constructive feedback.
Performance management mistakes: Why documentation should support coaching, accountability, and improvement rather than simply justify termination.
Leadership training through humor: How simple cartoons can spark meaningful workplace conversations without creating defensiveness.
Communication during uncertainty: How CEOs can build trust through consistent updates, clear priorities, and honest communication.
Marlene also shares revealing stories from her factory career, including how she used humor to challenge frustrating management practices long before becoming a leadership consultant.
One powerful takeaway: Problems don't disappear simply because employees have learned to work around them.
For business owners, CEOs, HR professionals, executives, and managers facing employee disengagement, workplace conflict, communication breakdowns, or inconsistent performance, this episode delivers practical leadership insights you can put to work.
Connect With Marlene Chism
Leadership consultant, speaker, and author of Spilling the Beans and From Conflict to Courage.
https://marlenechism.com/
A longtime employee isn't pulling their weight, but nobody addresses it. A department appears productive, but employees are working around an ineffective manager. Executives believe expectations are clear, while employees quietly pretend to understand.
How much are these leadership blind spots costing your business?
In this episode of The Workforce Alchemy Show, host Mason Duchatschek welcomes back Marlene Chism, leadership and conflict management expert and author of From Conflict to Courage, to discuss her new book, Spilling the Beans.
Using 52 humorous cartoons and short workplace stories, Marlene exposes everyday leadership behaviors that undermine employee engagement, trust, accountability, communication, and organizational performance.
With 21 years of experience as a frontline factory worker and a subsequent career advising executives and organizations, Marlene offers a unique perspective on the disconnect between management decisions and employee experiences.
In this episode, you'll discover:
Tenure vs. loyalty: Why years of service shouldn't excuse poor performance or undermine accountability.
The cost of conflict avoidance: How conversations leaders refuse to have create bigger, more expensive problems.
Hidden management failures: Why productive departments may actually be succeeding despite ineffective managers.
Fake clarity: How employees pretend to understand instructions rather than risk appearing uninformed.
Employee disengagement: How dismissive managers discourage employees from speaking up, sharing ideas, and solving problems.
Turning complaints into solutions: Questions leaders can ask to uncover employee frustrations and encourage constructive feedback.
Performance management mistakes: Why documentation should support coaching, accountability, and improvement rather than simply justify termination.
Leadership training through humor: How simple cartoons can spark meaningful workplace conversations without creating defensiveness.
Communication during uncertainty: How CEOs can build trust through consistent updates, clear priorities, and honest communication.
Marlene also shares revealing stories from her factory career, including how she used humor to challenge frustrating management practices long before becoming a leadership consultant.
One powerful takeaway: Problems don't disappear simply because employees have learned to work around them.
For business owners, CEOs, HR professionals, executives, and managers facing employee disengagement, workplace conflict, communication breakdowns, or inconsistent performance, this episode delivers practical leadership insights you can put to work.
Connect With Marlene Chism
Leadership consultant, speaker, and author of Spilling the Beans and From Conflict to Courage.
https://marlenechism.com/
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LifestyleTranscript
00:02Welcome to the Workforce Alchemy Show. I'm today's host, Mason Dukacek, and this episode
00:08is brought to you by WorkforceAlchemy.com, where business leaders discover practical
00:13ways to select, engage, and retain their best employees. My guest today has found a fresh
00:19and surprisingly fun way to talk about some of the most familiar frustrations in business
00:24and leadership. Marlene Chisholm is a leadership and conflict management expert and author.
00:30In our new book, Spilling the Beans, uses 52 cartoons and short workplace stories to reveal
00:37the little problems that can eventually become big problems with trust, morale, accountability,
00:43communication, and performance. Marlene, welcome back. Thanks so much, Mason. I'm excited to be here.
00:51So, Marlene, this is a very different kind of leadership book. For someone who has not seen
00:58spilling the beans yet, describe what you created, how the cartoons and lessons work together,
01:03and how you hope people will use the book. I just started seeing all the little things that
01:09we humans do at work, whether on the front lines, whether it's C-suite, vice president level,
01:15director level, or whether you're in sales, factory work, the whole gamut. I've seen the whole thing
01:20from the top to the bottom. And I thought, what if it could be funny? What if it could be
01:25humorous?
01:25What if it could be non-threatening and non-academic? And I've always had a sense of humor,
01:30and I've always liked playing with these little cartoons. In fact, you're the one that said,
01:34my gosh, I love these cartoons. I think you should do a book. So, I just had the idea that
01:39what if it was easy? What if it was fun? And what if it was just 52 or it's once
01:43a week? You could use it
01:44in training. You could use it as a conversation with a peer or an employee. So, it was generated
01:50out of our conversation, the idea that you saw. And once the idea was so clear, it was so fast
01:57to create. So, I really appreciate your vision, and I jumped right on it.
02:02So, for those watching or listening, Marlene's been on the show before, and we talk offline fairly
02:08often. So, I consider a friend and two-degree mentor. We share ideas. And
02:14a lot of business books have all this great content, but it takes hours to get to it.
02:20And some of it is difficult to execute and implement. And for those who don't know her
02:26background, Marlene, why don't you tell our audience a little bit about your background
02:30so that they understand the lenses through which you're looking at work in the past and currently?
02:38Well, currently, I've worked with all kinds of leaders at different levels, associations,
02:44government entities. I've worked with the top-level executive teams. I've worked with
02:48director level. I've worked with the management level. And I've even done some work with the
02:52front-line. However, where I started over 25 years ago was as a front-line factory worker. I was not
03:00in
03:01human resources. I was not a manager. I was not in quality control. I did not have a professional
03:06beginning. And that gave me insights that very few consultants can say that they have. Now,
03:12I've heard people say, well, I worked in the factory while I was going to college. Not the same. I
03:16worked
03:17there for 21 years. That was my living. And so, the work that I did was packing product, working on
03:23the
03:24lines, driving a forklift, tearing down equipment for sanitation. And I jokingly used to say the best
03:30part of your day is when you look up at the clock and you realize it's time to rotate. And
03:34for me,
03:35I used to think once I started wanting something more, and a lot of people start new careers with
03:40that desire of wanting something more and thinking, this provided my safety and security, but what else
03:46is there? Once I had that desire, Mason, as I was telling you earlier, when you have a desire and
03:53you
03:53say, how do I get there? Sometimes that's like being in the middle of the ocean and saying, which way
03:57to
03:57shore. And I used to say, I wonder what other people do all day long. How do they know what
04:02to
04:02do? Even if they got the college degree and they get a job, I knew what I did. I clocked
04:07in. I wore
04:08a uniform and a hairnet. I worked by the same people every single day. You knew where to sit even
04:12at
04:13lunchtime. So, I wanted to understand this other world. So, from that place, I went back to college.
04:19I worked on the bachelor's degree, and I thought that would be the ticket. There was so much I didn't
04:24know, but I actually jumped once I got that degree, and I just set my sights on becoming a
04:30professional speaker. And from there, I evolved, went on and got my master's degree, and then started
04:35doing training, and then finally consulting. And now, I can do all of that if I want to.
04:41See, I think you're a very gifted speaker, and I've read some of your books. I'm a super fan of
04:46From Conflict to Courage. Love that book. I read that on a flight from Tampa to Seattle. So,
04:53it was a long flight. I got through it. Loved it. The thing that prompted me to call you,
05:00invite you to come on the podcast was I love your new Spilling the Beans concept. And for those who
05:06don't know, what sparked this was I saw one of your cartoons that you posted on LinkedIn,
05:12and it was a picture of a bean representing an employee in a boat rowing with two other employees
05:20or beans in front, and they were sitting, laying down, doing nothing while the one person in the
05:25back of the boat is rowing. And the caption, I think it was, there's nothing I can do. They've
05:32been so loyal to the company. There's nothing I can do. They've been so loyal to the organization.
05:36And that was instant connection with me. And I suspect a lot of other people, because anybody
05:44that's been around long enough and in different capacities and different organizations, we all
05:49know and have seen something like that and can relate to it. Yeah, that came from a true story.
05:57I've heard it before, but it never had gotten captured in my thinking. I'd heard it a lot. They're
06:03so loyal or we're a government entity. And the way that we do things is we give people feedback
06:09once a year and they get either a scale of one to five and nobody gets a five because there's
06:15no
06:15money to give them promotion. So that gives them the wrong idea. So even if someone's a top performer
06:19in the government entity, they're going to get a three and the poor performers, because we can't fire
06:25them, there's a lot of rules. It takes a lot. We don't want lawsuits. They're going to get a two
06:29and a
06:29half. And so I learned that from a company I was working with where there was someone they were
06:34wanting to let go because she had been abusing. She knew how to work the system, knew how to take
06:39off that family medical leave time, that personal time off and was never stepping up to the plate.
06:45And by this time, she was in her early 70s, still working, still taking off, still drawing a paycheck
06:50while everyone else that was the good performers were carrying the slack. And they hired me actually to
06:56work with them for difficult conversations. But I have to say this, it's too late if you've been
07:02documenting for 20 years that they're a good worker. And so I can teach the skills and you can
07:07start from now that when they tried to let her go, she won the lawsuit. Why? Because they'd been giving
07:12her two and a halves. The records were there. She had never been in trouble for that behavior.
07:16So a lot of my work has been about having the conversations that undermine execution because every
07:22big problem in an organization can be traced back to a conversation that should have happened,
07:26but did not. So that was my first experience of it, but I didn't have this idea to put it
07:31in a
07:31beans book. What happened was I was having lunch with a consultant, not a consultant, a past client
07:39that was running several offices. And there was a poor performer, same thing, lots of tenure,
07:44had been there forever, was the favorite of the CEO, but she wasn't performing. And in fact,
07:49she was becoming a bottleneck. And this administrator didn't have any power to let this person go or to put
07:55on probation because the CEO said there's nothing we can do. She's been so loyal to the organization.
08:00That's the C-suite talking about that. Right. And what's your distinction between tenure and behavior?
08:07Yeah, it's tenure is not loyalty. You know, tenure is just you've been there. And so real loyalty is
08:14your behavior. It's how you're behaving. It's how you're showing up. It's your alignment to the
08:18organizational goals, to the team, to living the values, to getting the product out. That's real loyalty,
08:24not just I've been there for 25, 30 years. So here's the beauty of this particular cartoon in this case
08:31was I had instant connection with it. When I saw that I had instant connection and understanding. I felt
08:38that pain. I felt that discomfort. And I think everyone else who looked at that same thing
08:45was able to do the same. And then in just a few sentences, you're like, and here's what you can
08:50do
08:50about it. And I that was just so impactful to me. Just one cartoon, instant connection, instant relevance.
08:58And oh, by the way, here's two sentences and what you can do. And here's why I love that, because
09:03I felt
09:04that it was something that. And obviously, you create 51 others just like this for different topics.
09:12And this is why I love the magnitude of what I think you're creating. I think that
09:19what you did gives a voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless. Those employees,
09:26because I think of the factory worker who's on the front lines, who's being misled, mismanaged,
09:34mistreated. And they have no voice. They have no power. They quote, have to take it. And someone
09:41might argue, oh, they don't have to take it. They could just get another job, which is true.
09:45Sounds easy.
09:46It does sound easy. But what if that person's been with the company 15 or 20 years?
09:51They've got a kid who's a senior in high school, another kid that's in middle school. They're in
09:56the band. They're in sports. They're involved in the community, in the church, and they've got their
10:00roots down. But they're getting nervous about going to work on Monday, starting Sunday night.
10:07They're calling in sick when they're not. They're crying in the bathroom, and they don't think
10:11anyone can hear because they are so frustrated, and they don't have the power to do anything about
10:17it. And if they were to say anything to the boss, they could get fired.
10:22Absolutely. In fact, I have a factory example, and there are probably several, but the one that's
10:26coming to mind as you're talking about this was factory 101 for me. Working on a production line,
10:31I'm sure it's different nowadays with AI and factories. They're very modern. I'm sure it's evolved
10:36so much from when I was there. But very often, once a year or so, they would have someone come
10:42in
10:42from out of town that was a time study expert. And while we're doing our thing, putting spaghetti
10:48into these bins by hand and rotating and pulling it out with a hand jack and putting the product
10:54back in and working as fast as we can to rotate and get things going so that the line doesn't
10:58shut
10:58down, we've got a person with a clipboard watching our every move. If you scratch your head,
11:02that took two seconds. Oh, you ran to get a drink while the machine was running and someone
11:07watched and did their job and yours, we can eliminate a job. So while it looks easy, it
11:13looks easy when you're not doing it. You don't know what it takes to do it to even get the
11:17opportunity to go get a drink. Or if they tell you that you need so many skids, so many pallets
11:23done by the end of the day, and you can go home early if you want, or there's other things
11:26you can do if you want to fill in. Once you get that goal, that goal becomes not the goal
11:32anymore. They want more. So you don't really have a say. They may act like you have a say
11:38very often, but it's sort of a wink, wink. Thanks for participating. You were engaged.
11:42So yeah, I've got some factory examples in there for sure.
11:46And I just think that we're a, and I personally think that people will buy your book in those
11:53frontline positions and where they can't go to their boss and say, Hey, it sucks working
11:57here. You're a terrible leader, a terrible manager, and I can't stand coming here. They're not going
12:01to say that even if they feel it, but they can say, Hey boss, I got a gift for you.
12:06I came across
12:07this book. I just thought it was very interesting and I thought it might be helpful. Help you enjoy
12:12it. Now you're giving the boss a gift. And here's the thing. I'm not just trying to rip on
12:19bad bosses because there's no shortage of them. True. But some of these bosses have been
12:25thrown into positions without any training. They've been thrown to the wolves to figure it out
12:30without any leadership training, without any management training, without any supervisory
12:33training. And guess what? They're learning by trial and error. And it isn't pretty for the people
12:38that are suffering because of that. Down the chain.
12:42The boss is probably going to see their colleague. Like I've got one in there that's about being the
12:46bottleneck or being the workaround. And I've known very many people at director level where
12:51there's another director that's the bottleneck and everybody's working around someone that should be
12:56leading. And the human resources doesn't have the wherewithal to have a talk with that director.
13:02Instead, they're moving other people around and reorganizing so that their life is easier versus
13:07having a conversation with the leader that should be leading. I've seen that so many times.
13:12So I love the way your book is, again, a voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless if
13:18they choose to give that as a gift to their managers and supervisors. Likewise, people in
13:25executive or management or leadership roles, it's very helpful to them because some of these people
13:30haven't been trained. And we're not talking about a six-month college course on leadership or
13:36management. You're talking about being able to look at a cartoon, understand what the situation is,
13:40in about a half a second. And then you're reading a sentence or two to say, well, here's how you
13:45fix
13:45that. And all of the things in your book are so relevant to so many challenges that these managers
13:55have that they haven't been trained for, or maybe that they were trained for, but they've forgotten
13:59and need to be reminded about. I just think that everyone can benefit from it. The executives,
14:05the managers should be buying this for themselves, for their peers, the employees, for their managers
14:11who need the help that aren't getting it. I just love it. So let's dive into why I love it
14:17a little
14:17bit. Can you maybe pick one of the cartoons? We talked about the bean row in the boat. Can you
14:23maybe pick one of the cartoons that makes you laugh because you've seen that exact situation play out
14:28in real life? Maybe describe it for us and tell us what the leadership lesson is.
14:31Yeah. There's one that's actually more of a personal one that really relates to me. And it
14:36was funny because someone that I talked to the other day that has a job is wanting out of that
14:41job. And they're feeling this because the feeling of reinvention is so difficult. And there's a little
14:46bean standing on tectonic plates that are shifting like an earthquake. And so reinventing, whether that's
14:52a new level in your leadership role or whether that's you're wanting to leave your company,
14:56the feeling that you have is the tectonic plates are shifting. And many of us are feeling that right
15:01now with the advancement of AI and technology and the half-life of technology tools that are only
15:06lasting about two years. And we're not realizing that the durable skills, you've still got to develop
15:11the individual with critical skills. It's a both-and world. It's not an either-or. And so that feeling
15:17of the tectonic plates shifting is true for all of us right now, except for those that absolutely love
15:22the change and they're excited by it because of their understanding of technology. But for the rest of us,
15:27we're kind of feeling like we're standing on tectonic plates, especially if we're not liking
15:31where we're working.
15:32So can you maybe give us another example of one that maybe looks funny on the page,
15:37but points to a problem that can become very expensive if leaders ignore it?
15:41I just pulled one open. I thought, let me just open the book because there's 52.
15:47One I'm thinking about is the cost of avoidance. That's being number 10. And it shows a boss sitting
15:53in the top chair with their blindfolded. And it shows little beings arguing below them. And the
15:59manager, the top leader is totally oblivious to it. What I've discovered after years and years of
16:05working with different levels, there's an unspoken belief at the very top. And I'll say very top,
16:12meaning CEO, president, perhaps vice presidents. The idea is that if conflict, if the awareness of
16:19conflict gets to us, someone's not doing their job. We should never be even faced with any of this
16:26little bickering, these conflicts, these turf wars. If we know about that, the directors and the
16:31managers and the supervisors are not doing their job. Well, that may be true, but the reason that
16:37you're knowing about it is because they don't have the skills or the support to deal with it.
16:41So you're expecting them to do something they do not know how to do. They've not been trained for
16:46it. And they've not been supported when they have made decisions. So while this idea is I'm at the
16:51top, I've got bigger and better things to do, you should handle the conflict. What happens is
16:56they handle it by moving people around, by doing things they need to do so that they don't look
17:02incompetent. So it's totally a blind spot at the top to believe that you should not be aware of
17:08conflict that's going on. So which cartoon do you think employees will recognize immediately,
17:14even if their boss doesn't? Wow. Which one? I think they'll understand fake clarity. That one's
17:20number nine. And that is where the boss is standing at the little flip chart or the PowerPoint and
17:26pointing to things and blah, blah, blah. And the three employee beings are sitting there like,
17:30I'm not quite sure what this is about, but we're going to pretend like we know because we're going to
17:35look stupid if we don't. I can relate this back even to my factory days too, where they decided
17:40that we people on the front line wanted to understand the state of the business. Well,
17:47you don't start there because we've never thought about that. So you're shutting down lines and you're
17:52saying we care so much that we're going to shut down lines that cost us a fortune to do that,
17:57but we're going to give you a bunch of spreadsheets and talk about the different
18:00businesses within this organization and the person in Chicago that runs the whole thing and how we
18:05might lose a line if we don't. It's not interesting to most people at the front lines. They don't
18:10understand that at all. It's not the place to start, but you know what? No one's going to act
18:14like they don't understand. We're all going to be like, yeah, there's coffee and donuts. Let's go to
18:18the meeting. So make clarity. We're not clear at all. We don't know what you want. What do you want
18:23from us at this level? What are you really saying? Are you saying work harder? Are you saying
18:28appreciate your job? What are you really saying? What's the purpose of this meeting?
18:32You know what? And even not even at the bottom level, but even mid-level, if you've got senior
18:35executives talking to mid-level managers and those guys don't get it. I had a conversation just the
18:39other day with a business owner and the conversation went along the lines of tell your people what to do,
18:45tell them how to do it. You got to provide them the training, but you tell them the why so
18:48they
18:48understand what the objectives are and what the destination is. And I said, if you don't give them that,
18:57it's like asking them to put together a puzzle without, with half the pieces missing, not knowing
19:01what the original picture is supposed to look like. Well, there's two or three things that come to mind
19:07with that because leaders are taught, you know, managers that are managing and leading other people,
19:12they're taught to document, but they don't understand why they think they're documenting to either fire
19:19someone. Okay. Now it's time to document because we need to let them go. And as long as we show
19:22that we
19:23documented for a year, we've tried, you know what I'm saying? So they document for the wrong
19:27reason. They're documenting to fire someone or they're documenting to say, I documented,
19:32it's a checklist. And while they really need a performance improvement, I've heard when I've
19:37worked with the directors and their managers under the director, their people are documenting and
19:42giving great scores and giving great feedback. And then when they were questioned, well, they're not
19:46doing a good job. Why did you give them a good review? Well, they're really trying and they mean well.
19:51The documentation is to be factual so that you show that you're coaching work. It's to be
19:57accountability. It's to be measurement, not punishment, measurement, coaching, improvement.
20:02There's a purpose. And if we don't understand the purpose, we're in a checklist mentality.
20:07And I see that so often. So which one do you think is most likely to make a leader stop
20:13and say,
20:14oh no, I do that. It just is going to depend on their level of awareness. I think it's the
20:19human
20:19tendency to look at what other people are doing than to look at ourselves. So it's going to just
20:24depend on your own desire to improve. I don't think someone that is not conscious at all might
20:30go, hey, this is a cute little book. Oh, I love this. Oh, this is talking about people comparing
20:36each other. I get that. Yeah, I see Betty over there comparing herself all the time. They're never
20:41going to go, you know, maybe I compare myself and I don't give other people chances. That takes a
20:46certain level of awareness. So I don't know if that's going to happen or not. It wasn't really
20:51the intention of the book. It was more of a humorous look of what do you see? The real deeper
20:56question is, what do you see yourself doing? Of course you see these things. Do you see yourself
21:01in any of it? If you don't, that means there's a lack of awareness there.
21:06So the highway makes the point that people hide reality from leaders who punish truth.
21:13Yes. What are some of the subtle ways leaders teach employees that bad news, disagreement,
21:17or honesty is not well? Yeah, I've got it. Are you talking about the little
21:20bean that says my way or the highway? You know I am.
21:25Well, there's a lot of bosses that believe that leadership is about top-down control instead
21:31of collaboration, understanding, curiosity. Again, that's a lack of awareness. It's cultural.
21:37It has to do with their training, what they view leadership to be. And I did have a boss.
21:42I had great bosses. Let me straighten the record. I had some really great male bosses that let me do
21:48things that generally only men can do. So I had some really forward-thinking male bosses and female
21:54bosses. And I had some on both genders and ages that were terrible from the perspective that I think
22:00now good leadership is. But I had one boss that was actually the catalyst of me being able to do
22:07the
22:07work I do because he was, in my mind, so top-down, so driven by fear is what I want
22:14to say now.
22:14He had three sayings for everything. Now, with that said, when I would have a complaint, I as an
22:21employee didn't know how to register a complaint in a proper way to say, here's the problem.
22:27Here's how it's affecting productivity. Here's a solution I see. Am I trained on that? No. So I'm going
22:32to complain about the line isn't working. The dater's getting jammed up or having a lot of downtime.
22:37It's going to be a safety hazard. And he would say, look, there's nothing I can do. I didn't ask
22:42you to work here. He said, I didn't ask you to work here. There's nothing I can do. If you
22:46don't
22:46like it, find yourself another place to work. So in other words, I'm sorry that you're unhappy,
22:51but it's not my monkey, not my circus. And so it was so frustrating.
22:56Listen to this clip I'm talking about. I guarantee you there are people that are listening and
22:59watching right now that can relate to that 100%.
23:02Yeah. And so I would take it as just the way I would see it. Now that I'm a communication
23:09specialist, I see where I was flawed, but I don't have the responsibility of knowing that. I haven't
23:14had the training. I haven't had the college education, right? I haven't studied this stuff.
23:18I'm just a concerned employee that's going to who I think is an authority, a leader to say,
23:22what can we do? I saw it as me engaging, which actually complaining is a form of engagement.
23:28So if you want engagement, you've got to accept the complaining side of it too.
23:31The reason someone complains is they want something different. They don't know how to ask for it.
23:35That's a skill. And so I would go and say, this is what's happening. We're like losing money.
23:41It's piling up. Look, you know what? I didn't ask you to take this higher level job. You're a D
23:46job.
23:46You were an A worker. Go back to A work. I've worked hard like this too when I was on
23:50the lines. And
23:50that's just, that's the price you pay for getting better money. So frustrating. I felt so misunderstood,
23:57you know, and really I wanted something to change, but didn't know how to ask for it. So one of
24:02the
24:02things I train leaders to do is listen to what's underneath the complaint. And the question you
24:08want to learn to ask is, I hear you. That sounds frustrating. You listen, acknowledge. Then you say,
24:13what is it that you want? Or in a perfect world, what would it look like? I can guarantee that
24:18most
24:18employees don't have that answer just yet. They just know what they don't want. But by posing the
24:23question of what would it look like if it was working, you give them a different track to start
24:27thinking on. And if they don't know, say, well, come back, think about this for a day. I really
24:32want to support you in this. What would it look like? Most of the time, they'll either come back
24:36and say, I just wanted to vent. Thanks for listening. Or they'll say, well, it would look like a different
24:42rotation because if we did the different rotation, we would have a 30 minute break between these
24:46hard pieces. Now we're creating solutions. So when you start digging and learning how to coach
24:54instead of top down, if you don't like it, didn't ask you to work here, I'm not the hiring manager,
24:58you know, take it to HR. That doesn't help you improve, especially in today's time.
25:04And it teaches people to disengage and do just enough not to get fired. And then you got people
25:10at the top saying, why are my labor costs so high? Because people are only given a fraction of
25:14their discretionary effort. Yeah. And I've heard this too. I've got a bully on board,
25:20if you want to call it a bully, but they're a rainmaker. So why would I change everything? I
25:23need them for the sales that we're making. Like, doesn't everybody just need to adapt around them?
25:28I was asked that one time in a workshop full of owners and I thought they were joking. And I
25:33laughed.
25:34I said, oh, you're serious? Like, why does it matter? Like that you've got a rainmaker and I'm
25:38stepping on your toes based on what I'm saying and you don't like it? Because I'm thinking long
25:44term, I'm thinking culture. I'm thinking if there's a leak in the boat and you keep hiring
25:50the rower that's the best rower and there's four leaks in the boat, you need to look at the leak
25:54in the boat. You're actually losing money and you're not even seeing it.
25:58You hinted a little earlier about the workaround example. I'm going to go back into that one because
26:02I think it's impactful. All of them are, but I particularly like that one too. In the workaround,
26:08employees are still getting things done, but only by going around a leader who has become an
26:13obstacle. How can a CEO recognize when apparent productivity is actually people compensating for
26:18poor management? So the question is, how would the CEO notice? How can a CEO recognize when apparent
26:26productivity is actually just people compensating for poor management? They won't notice. They won't
26:31notice is that they have a belief that they shouldn't even understand that kind of stuff.
26:36They don't want to notice. If it's getting done and it does not affect them, they don't want to
26:42notice. The only way they notice is when it hurts them. So in other words, if people would quit
26:47rescuing and the pattern continued, they would have to find the route.
26:51If someone gives their boss this book and says, I thought you might enjoy this,
26:56should the boss wonder whether there's a message behind the gift?
26:59I don't know. Maybe, maybe they'll think that maybe they won't. Maybe employees won't even have
27:03the courage to give that to a boss. I don't know. Like you're the one that thought that that would
27:07happen. I didn't know.
27:08Here's what your take was on it. Yeah.
27:09Yeah.
27:10I don't, those are yet to be seen. Like you and I are very, we study, we want to be
27:16self-aware.
27:17We try to take feedback. I don't know. It's yet to be, I'm a sort of a scientist,
27:22a social scientist. Let's see what happens. Does it, does it really, or is it just a fun?
27:26I'm curious. I'm curious. I just, when you're an employee and you want to be able to have an
27:33impact and you want to say something and there's not a way for you to do that without severe risk,
27:39this is, this might be the ticket for a lot of these folks.
27:42It might, but you know, as I look back on myself being an employee for so long,
27:47there's also an awakening that has to happen for any employee to even think like that.
27:51You know what I mean? Like very often, and I'm speaking only from a limited viewpoint of me as
27:57blue collar employee. Now professional employees might be a bit different, but there's a certain
28:03amount of awareness and self-efficacy or autonomy that has to happen for an employee to even think
28:10like that. I think I had some of that, you know, back in the day, but for many employees that
28:16I knew,
28:16they, they weren't that engaged. They truly, they did their work. They wanted their paycheck.
28:21They wanted the weekend to go to the lake or, or they wanted to work overtime to put back for
28:25retirement. I didn't see a lot of that kind of thinking that we're talking about. With that said,
28:32I don't know if that thinking is going to happen at the more professional levels. Maybe it will.
28:37So does that make sense?
28:39It does. It does. It's like, I'm, I'm always fascinated by the thinking of people on the front
28:44lines and I am fascinated by the management. I was having a conversation with Bryant Wright who
28:49helped me write the book built right back in March. We were in Alaska and a speaking engagement
28:54and had a little bit of time off and just in passing, he made a joke and there was some
28:58truth
28:58to that. He said, I hope I quote this right, but he said, if you want to find the most
29:05efficient
29:05way to do something, put a lazy person in charge. Cause they'll, they will not have any extra steps
29:13or any extra effort. There'll be no waste. They will do absolute easiest, fastest way something
29:18can be done. They'll figure that out because they don't want to do extra work. And I couldn't help
29:22but to laugh. So I think that, that a lot of times management underestimates what some of those
29:29folks at the front lines do. If you, if you give them some room to do it, let me,
29:35let me share something that's kind of funny that I really, I don't think I've ever shared it before,
29:39but see, when I worked as a frontline person, we didn't have social media. There was not,
29:46there was no email. So it was back in the days of the chisel and the rock. So when there
29:52were
29:53messages that went out to management, it was in their physical square little mailbox. You know,
29:58there was a mail delivery person, you know, this, right? You'd bring off the memo and it would,
30:03you know, there was, might've been word processors, but I don't know if computers were a thing.
30:07But anyway, when we would have, I was on race. So I probably would be that person that would give
30:13the book if I, cause I look back at myself now, I think I'm underestimating where I was because
30:17I've always been good at, like you said, speaking and writing. Those were skills I brought that I
30:23wasn't getting to use in where I was working, but I've always been able to write a real funny
30:28limerick or a poem and make it just be hilarious and have a boom, a punch at the end of
30:32it. And so
30:33when, when there would be big drama happening, like they were going to have layoffs and furloughs
30:37and whatnot, trying to figure it out. And they kept changing their mind as it, as happens, because
30:41you're getting the information, right? But it was frustrating for us on the lines. I'd write a big
30:46poem about it, you know, and everybody'd be passing those around. Well, I wrote a real ornery poem
30:51one time and someone that had the wherewithal and had the connections internally with the upper
30:56Escalon. They went and had it typed up and put in the mailboxes of every single manager in the plant
31:02and AT double hockey sticks broke out. They're trying to figure out who they're on a witch hunt
31:07to figure out who wrote this. And they knew it was me because they knew my ornery is. And nobody,
31:11even people that did not like me would not tell on me, but I had business unit managers come and
31:15saying, that was pretty funny. Do you know anything about it? I'd be like, what?
31:19And so, like, I did that and, like, wrote poems many times for things that were happening. This
31:25was the one time, though, it got distributed and it felt so good. But, you know, that was the
31:30beginning of even that orneriness. Like, we all have gifts and talents. So, if someone's being ornery
31:36using a skill, they've got a skill that is not being channeled. And one of my favorite authors
31:42from a long time ago, Robert Fritz, said, those who live their lives destructively are not in touch
31:48with their power to create. So, when you think about, that's a sort of a destructive thing I'm
31:53doing. But I'm not in touch with my real power. Like, I'm doing stuff to make a point because I
31:57don't feel empowered and people are loving it and I'm getting to be the villain. My own supervisor,
32:02though, knew it was me and he tacked it up. He said, this is the funniest thing I've ever seen.
32:06So, I had people that liked me that were of that kind of mindset that's like, it's just funny.
32:10We're just at a different place. We see things differently. And there was others that, like,
32:13who's doing this? They're getting fired. We should have never had that happen. So.
32:18That brings me to my next question. Because this book really, and the way you deliver it,
32:25will prompt conversations from all levels. And that's not an accident. That's by design,
32:31which I see as part of the brilliance of what you've created. How can a leadership team use one
32:37of these cartoons to start an honest conversation without turning it into, oh, we all know who this
32:41is about? Yeah. I love that question because that's really, that is my real intention. I'm
32:46a trainer at heart. I love to build, I love to build skills with people. I love to teach people
32:51things that are going to be life-changing. So, I see this being used. In fact, one of my clients,
32:56my past clients from a long ago said, I just bought that. You know what? I'm buying it for my
33:00staff
33:00because I want it as a way to talk about how do you see this from your perspective? It's a
33:05from your
33:05perspective, how do you see this? Or it's even from this perspective. You know, folks,
33:09I realize I'm in the bottleneck here. And it's just, it was an awareness. And so, I'm going to
33:15invite feedback through this, you know, maybe a closed box with a note. You can use it in so many
33:22ways. You can use it for a discussion once a week. You can use it for table groups to get
33:28together if
33:28you're having an internal conference and you don't have the money for funding. It doesn't take much to
33:32say, pick a number out of a hat. You pick three, you pick 10, you pick 12. At your table,
33:37let's talk
33:37about what that means. It's useful as a training tool, even if you don't have, you know, the money
33:43to do training. So, if a leader recognizes themselves in one of these situations, in your
33:49opinion, what should they do next? And how do they move? Oh, I can help. How do they move from
33:55recognition to actually changing the behavior? How do they have the recognition? How do they move from
33:59recognition? Like, I recognize myself in this to actually changing the behavior. Awareness is really
34:05so much of it. And then sometimes it does take a little bit of coaching, you know, or therapy or
34:11whatever to dig deep as to why do you do that? And what would be the shift? What would be
34:17the
34:17pattern interrupt? What would be the prediction error that you have to have in order to change
34:22that? Because everything we do is based on the past. Everything we do is based on the brain's
34:26prediction of what's going to happen. So, there has to be, like, for example, if you're a micromanager
34:32and you've got this idea that you can't rely on people, that's coming from a prediction
34:37of not being able to rely on people. How do you change that? You're probably not going
34:42to change it by just saying, okay, I'm going to let go and rely on people. Because your
34:46brain's going to look for where they didn't do it right. You're going to have to build a
34:49bridge in there to say, maybe I didn't give the next few steps, so there needs to be some
34:54sort of checking in every two weeks to make sure we're on there. Like, I do that with
34:57my assistant. I teach her certain things to do, and I'm thinking, I don't want to take
35:02for granted that my instruction or her brilliance is going to be enough. We're going to have
35:06a check-in, and I'm going to give feedback, and you already know I'm going to give it.
35:10And my intention with that feedback is to get you up to speed, not to make you feel wrong
35:14or like, oh, I knew she couldn't do it like me. So, I do that so that we already know
35:19in
35:19advance there's going to be feedback, which is accountability, it's coaching, it's improvement.
35:24In my earlier years, when I had different assistants, I was afraid to hurt their feelings.
35:28I'd be like, why didn't they read my mind? Like, I never use this color in my branding.
35:33You know, it's the next time you do it, you say, these are the colors I use in my branding.
35:38It's just teaching you what you're not being clear about.
35:40If you could get every CEO listening to notice one small workplace pattern earlier than they
35:46currently do, which one would you choose, and what should they do the moment they see it?
35:51I think it would either be the fake clarity or the workaround. CEOs often think everyone's
35:57clear, and they're often not. I think there's a lot of research on this out by Gallup that
36:01the lack of clarity is astounding these days, and people pretend that they understand. So,
36:08we have to make it okay not to know. It's got to be okay not to be clear. And if
36:12we continue to
36:13see lack of clarity, that's self-awareness. Are you changing your mind all the time? Are you pivoting
36:18so often? There's one thing that they can do to change some of that, and that is constantly
36:24updating and checking in, whether that's a quick video from the CEO of, here's what's
36:28happening. Here's where we've changed. The expectation that we're going to change needs
36:32to be baked in, because people think, once you say, we're going to this island, that that's
36:37where we're going from now for the next five years. Probably not going to happen these days,
36:41right? New information comes in. The wind blows in. You're not going to go there anymore,
36:45but you had to have that direction to get to where you really need to go. So, you've got to
36:49kind of bake in the expectation. I was reading something, and I can't remember where it was.
36:54It was talking about COVID, where there were different companies, and there were certain
36:58CEOs that were just so nervous, so nervous about the state of their business and what was going to
37:03happen, that they just sort of hid out and waited until they felt certain about what to say.
37:07And there were others that they were nervous as well, but they said, okay, I'm nervous too.
37:12We're all worried. Are we going to be working? Is the business going to fold? But I'm going to,
37:16this is my commitment to you. Every week, I'll have a short video, or we might even have a real
37:21meeting, but I will tell you what I know, even if it's that I don't know anything yet, but my
37:25mind
37:26is still on it. That creates so much solidity. That creates so much, it's not certainty, it creates
37:32clarity. It creates where I go for one week, I'm going to get an update. And very often at the
37:38top,
37:39they forget to communicate, and so it's not in their system to communicate. So I would say get it
37:44in your system to give regular updates and don't make it five pages of something to read. Make it
37:50about the priority, what's changed, what's, make it a templated agenda where you can do it in three
37:55minutes.
37:56Marlene, you're not going to find a bigger fan of your new book than me. I love that it is
38:01so
38:03full of opportunities for people to gain situational awareness, self-awareness, and not just point out
38:12the problems, but easy to implement and quick to execute solutions that everyone can do. And I think
38:19it serves senior executives. I think it serves middle managers, frontline supervisors, and the employees
38:24who take direction from them. And I love the design. I love the impact. I just, I think it's
38:32fantastic. So I appreciate you taking the time to come on and talk about your new book. If people want
38:38to know more about you, the work you do, what are the best ways for them to connect?
38:42They can go to my website at marlenechisholm.com. My email is easy too. It's marlene at marlenechisholm.com.
38:50I'd love for you to connect with me on LinkedIn and say, you saw me on this, on this podcast.
38:54And so LinkedIn or my website or my email is probably the best way.
38:59Great. And Marlene, thanks so much for joining us. And I hope everyone else learned
39:03as much and enjoyed it as much as I did. Thanks for joining us.