Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Moral Dilemmas, Problem Employees, Big Career Changes

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

Normally scheduled Q and A for this Friday: 1. A veteran from Tennessee wrestles with the state of American democracy, morality in politics, and societal divisions, drawing unsettling parallels to history while seeking clarity on the future.  2. A newly promoted supervisor in a state natural resources agency faces the classic dilemma of motivating an entrenched, underperforming employee — or finding a way to move forward for the sake of the team. 3. A young police officer grapples with the decision to leave law enforcement for a less stressful life, questioning his identity, interests, and courage as he considers entrepreneurial ambitions. Enjoy

What's going on, everybody? Q&A Friday for today. Man, got a cough drop in, feeling like shit, was trying not to cough, didn't even get 15 seconds into it, coughed. So I have another cough drop here on the table. I'm going to do the best I can. A little bit under the weather. I have my yearly cold.

It's almost like my wife teaches disease vectors at the gym. And it somehow makes its way to me. But I digress. Let's talk about the sponsor for. today's episode. That's right, Spartan Forge. I've been talking about this for the last few weeks. Go to their website, Spartanforge.a.I. And check this thing out for yourself. If you're a hunter, you're familiar with these type of applications. And I'm just going to say this exceeds what I have seen in other applications. If you're looking at the video I'm looking at right now,

you're looking at terrain data, you're looking at LIDAR, you're looking at UAV footage, you're looking at the ability to share your location, to boundary and area and track movements, to look at sunrise, sunset, you could get studies done on game movement, deer movement prediction. The LIDAR thing, again, this was something that kind of blew my mind about the app, and I've said this a couple times. I'll probably keep saying it. I've been using that feature more for helicopter stuff than I have for hunting because it gives you an idea of what the terrain looks like underneath the foliage. And when it comes to flying a helicopter, you can get them into some pretty tight spots,

but you want it to be pretty level as well. So I've been using the shit out of that. And there is a free downloadable version. It's using AI. There's not much I can say about this that I haven't said already. Other than it is absolutely best in class for what I have seen for this type of software. And it's not just for hunters. There have been applications that people have reached out to me about where they're using this well outside of the hunting space.

And again, go to Spartanforge. and check it out for yourself. You'd be shocked what you can use this tool for. Now let's get into our Q&A for the week. I'm looking at danger close now. All right, here we go. Fresh cough drops in. I'm trying not to rattle it around in my teeth,

but hopefully it stops me from coughing incessantly into the microphone. Three emails, three different questions. We'll start with the one tied to the recent election. Andy, I'm having difficulty in wrapping my brain around the election results. And I'm hoping maybe you will address some of these in a future podcast.

You and your father spoke a little bit about people saying it isn't a difference of opinion, it is a difference of morality. While I may not go that far, I understand the sentiment. I'm a veteran, so I don't understand how someone brushes aside inciting an insurgents slash attacking the Capitol.

I'm a woman, so I don't understand how someone excuses the vulgar treatment of women by this man. I don't understand how Christians embrace the epitome of the opposite of Jesus's teachings. I live in Tennessee and I'm regularly shunned or prayed for because I won't attend church and I have been told I should have died in Saudi Arabia. And this part where the email is at right here, it says in parentheses, clearly not a veteran in the rear with the gear baby and the next positive or the next post inviting people to a revival.

So I think what you're saying is somebody saying that you should have. died in Saudi Arabia because you were in the front lines and they're not a veteran and they don't know what they're talking about? I don't know. You lost me a little bit on that sentence, but let's continue on. Also, now seems a little reticent of Germany in 1938. How concerned should people be? I've spoken to various people whose opinions have run the gambit of. I don't think democracy will survive until the midterms, two, it will be business as usual. Prior to Trump's first term, I generally thought the two parties wanted the same thing, but had different opinions on how to get there. Now it seems like the two parties are destroying the U.S. better than any terrorist could.

Sorry to turn you into a political dear Abby, but you seem to be one of the few sane podcasters who isn't all red or all blue. I appreciate your thoughts. I'm glad that you feel that way because I don't feel like I'm all red or all blue. For me, most of the time, if not always, it is a issue at a time. And sometimes I fall a little bit to the right. Sometimes I fall a little bit to the left. I feel like I have a foot kind of in each bucket much more towards the middle. And I'm glad that it comes off that way because that's at least how I feel about it. I try not to go too far to the extremes. I try not to paint the anomaly with the norm or the norm with the anomaly.

I think both can be very dangerous. The best way to answer your question, I think, and why people are, you know, you're a veteran so you don't understand the or somebody brushing aside inside. and insurgents or attacking the Capitol. I don't think, not everybody agrees that Trump or feels like, that's not even necessarily a matter of agreeing, not everybody believes that Trump incited an insurrection or insurgency on the Capitol building.

And there are a lot of people who view those who were at the Capitol and the actions that they took as kind of idiots. And I'm not saying that that's how I feel about it. But I do question the motivations of some of the people there. Not so sure it was the best expression of what I think they would have verbalized what they were trying to do. And the reality is, half of the country, and this is, I have no data to support this other than the way that the votes turn themselves out. I'd say about half of the country doesn't think it was an insurrection. And some of them would align with, well,

that probably needed to happen because the system is so corrupt. I'm not saying I agree with that either, but it's easy for people to look at those on the other side of the aisle and say, well, you're fucking crazy for believing that. And the reality is the person on the other side of the aisle is saying, well, you're crazy for believing what you believe. And I don't think either side is crazy. They just have a difference in beliefs. So I don't think a lot of people have any feelings of an insurgency or insurrection. And they look at the Capitol, the storming and attack. of the capital is something was an individual decision made versus Trump himself trying to direct those people to do that. I'm not here to make judgment on people how they feel either way,

feel however you want to, but I think that's how people brush that one aside. The next one's a little bit tougher. You're a woman and you don't understand how some excuse the vulgar treatment of women by that man. There's no perfect human being. And I think for a lot of people, they will and would acknowledge the inappropriate nature of the way that he has treated women, but would vote for the policies that that person is espousing over the individual shortcomings in failures of that person. There is no perfect person, and let's be honest, there is no perfect political candidate. Harris was not a perfect political candidate. Trump is not a perfect political candidate.

None of the third party individuals were nobody that the Republicans threw out as a name was. You know, Harris was a little bit of a different story. And I'm just, you know, in a debrief, I hope that the Democratic Party, and what I'm about to say is my personal opinion only, looks at how she became the actual nominee. I know they were short on time. They didn't feel like they had time to do a primary. I think they would have had a closer or the result that they were looking for had they. primaried and found a candidate actually selected by the people as opposed to just choosing the individual person here nor there. But at the end of the day, and at the end of every process,

you are going to be able to tear somebody down because we're all people and we're not perfect. And I really think on that one, people are excused, but they're not excusing that behavior. They would agree with you and they would acknowledge it. But they would point to the policies over the person. And I've seen that happen on both. sides of the aisle. I can 100% understand how as a woman, the vulgar treatment of women by that particular individual would have or strike that cord. And to some people, though, the policy mattered more at a baseline level. I think that's how that happened. I can't speak on the religious nature of, you know, what's happening to you in Tennessee. Religion strikes some people

much more deeply than others. I've said many times for myself. Never been a religious person. It's not that I'm against it in any way, shape, or form. It's just never landed with me, and maybe that just means it's not my time. I don't know. I'm open to it.

So I'm going to leave the religious one alone and jump a little bit ahead here to 1938 Germany. How concerned should people be? I don't think we're in 1938, Germany. I do think democracy will survive, and I do think that there will be an essence of it being business as usual. but I don't know if business as usual has actually great for this country.

I think it's been a lot of talk about there's been this mandate that Trump has been given by the American people. Well, from a voting perspective, more voting or electoral races were won by people who align with his policies than with Harris's policies. And that's just the pure looking at the red blue of the map. I think people want change. people are tired of some ideologies. But I don't think that the structure of our country is at risk, even if to use the Department of Government Efficiency, Doge, which I truly feel is an idiotic name. They did not consult with me on this naming convention. I think I could have helped them to some degree. let's say it does carve out the vast majority of what they are what they claim they're going to do

and they attempt to do so. Even that is not going to crumble our democracy. I believe, and I've said this many times on the podcast, that I think that our government, the size of our government is far too large. I actually think carving away some of the size of the government is going to help it be efficient and it might actually save it in the long run because the bloated political system that we seem to be operating under, which is the business as usual, I don't think it's serving the average American well. And I think that's what the average American has voted to see change in. I don't think anybody voted to destroy the system. I think they voted to change the system. So it's still going to function under the skeleton and framework of a democracy. The question

that I have is, and I agree with a lot of the programs and entities that Doge has taken a look at, to say you're going to make those sweeping changes is one thing. To actually be able to make those sweeping changes is another one. And I'm curious what they're actually going to be able to accomplish and the mechanism that they're going to use to do so. What tool? Is it executive action? Is it something in the legislative? I just, I don't understand how they're going to, well, I do understand.

It's not going to happen like this. It's going to be an extended period of time. I think that there is an opportunity for changes to be made in the next four years. My personal guess is it's going to take the vast majority of those four years to make those changes. My personal timeline, regardless of what people are saying and those people that have been tasked with making these changes and what they are espousing, I take what they say and I'm looking at it. And again, not an expert in the government, either building it or slicing it away. I look at it and I think to myself, I like some of those ideas. Let's see what the reality actually looks like.

Regardless of what the reality looks like, I am not worried that we are going to lose our democracy. Are the next four years going to be unsettling for people, potentially? Yes. But we have midterm election in two years, and another presidential election four years after the one that we just had. I do believe that we will make it through that time. But I do believe that the government is going to end up looking. different. And I think that that's what we need. It needs to continue to evolve. And that might be smaller and more efficient. And we should really take a hard look at what we want from our government

and what we want from our elected officials. And if we feel that we are at a place where we need change, we vote for it. And I think that that's what happened. What remains to be seen is how much change there's actually going to be. But no, I don't feel like we're in 1938, Germany. I don't think we're even remotely approaching that. And I don't know. I will say this about that type of messaging are people that called Trump Hitler or a Nazi or a fascist. If I was ever invited to a debrief or an after-action review of Harris's campaign and not necessarily Harris's campaign, but the platform that and messaging that would align with the party on the left, I would actually recommend stripping that language moving forward because that narrative, that for now, and calling people as those things when they are clearly not is actually one of the reasons why I think a lot of people voted in the way that they did. They are tired of hearing it. They know it's objectively not true. And people are smarter than they are often given credit for.

So when you tell them something that is objectively false and they can verify it with their own eyes, the more you bombard them with it, the less they pay attention. And that would be one of the pieces of advice that I would give. So hopefully that answers your questions. No, I don't feel like. we're in 1938. Sorry about the religious stuff going on. I don't necessarily know what I can say about that. I think I covered the vulgar treatment of women, the insurrection slash attacking the Capitol. That's where I land. Hopefully that helped. Definitely not a political dear Abby, but who knows. Okay. A long time listener, thanks for making the morning commute, entertaining, and enjoyable. Really got a kick out of the post-election talk with Vaughn. What a stud that man is. don't encourage my dad.

All right, I have to live with this shit. The stories that I have that I cannot say on the air because, well, I probably could, but then I'd have to deal with my dad afterwards, which would create more stories. It's a bridge too far. I'm not going to do it. Don't fucking encourage my dad. Stop emailing me and telling me that I need to do merchandise specific to my father and his beard. Do you understand what would happen to the ego of this man if I did that, all right?

it's not fucking happening. However, I do like it. I laugh about it. I like it when it comes in and I laugh about it. All right. Excuse me. In short, I work for a state government national resources agency.

I mean, make sure I got that right. State government natural resources agency. All right. We are small enough to be effective, efficient and tactical in our operations, but large enough to have a comfortably sized bureaucracy with all the associated benefits, checks and balances, job mobility, etc.

I was recently promoted to a supervisor visors position, and am now in charge of six individuals who oversee land management projects on about 150,000 acres. With all the craziness of COVID, most settled and the baby boomers retiring in mass, my team is fairly new to the organization and hungry for work. There is one individual, the oldest and most experience of the bunch who has been here for over 15 years and is truly augured in like a tick. The issue is that he sucks at his job. He has a bad attitude, never takes ownership or accountability for his mistakes or failures, has awful professional relationships with his peers,

never completes projects on time, and in general takes a tremendous amount of mental bandwidth to supervise or even work alongside. Supervisors of the past have all recognized these traits, but in an agency where it's nearly impossible to fire someone, they've just all let it slide. I know there are guys like this augured into most government agencies, but do you have any experience trying to motivate someone like this?

What advice would you give to try and get this guy to either step up his performance and carry his weight or get off the boat? There are dozens of young hungry, educated, and experienced people literally knocking on my door looking for work. And it feels ridiculous to have to turn them away when we have such a coal on the team taking up a valuable slot. Please advise. Thank you for everything that you do. I think that I selected this email because the title of it was, advice for firing someone. And let me tell you right now, if you have never had to fire somebody, it sucks. If you care about people, if you care about your people and you have to let them go.

And maybe it's, maybe it's, they're trying as hard as they can, but they are just, they don't have the aptitude, they're not tooled for the job. Those have been some of the hardest conversations that I have ever had. There are personality issues or performance issues that make it really easy. Like, hey, you keep showing up to work drunk, or you're at work drunk or got a third DUI. Things like that, they make the conversation a little bit easier because you can be very precise. But damn, if letting somebody go isn't difficult from an emotional perspective, at least for me, it's one of the hardest things to do.

My advice to you on this is I'm not going to tell you whether or not you should fire this person, or not, that's up to you. Be direct. And what you described in this email, to go back a little bit to the first question in the Department of Government Efficiency, what you are describing in this email is part of the problem with the federal system. The GS employees, I have worked with spectacular GS. That stands for government service. And their pay grade goes from GS something, I think, all the way up to the GS-15. And there's steps along the way as well. I have worked with spectacular GS employees. And I have worked with the GS employee that you have perfectly described in this email, who doesn't give a fuck about their job, the people that they work for or with, the mission

or the end state of the organization, being on time, doing quality work, communicating with their fellow employees. They just don't care. But they've been in the system so long and they know that it's almost impossible to get rid of them. And it shouldn't be like that. It creates for people who want to game the system, a system that is very easily gainable, or gameable, I should say, not gain, not G-A-I-N-G-A-M-E-able. And that needs to be looked at. And I think that this type of person is what Vivek and Musk are talking about, when they're talking about federal employees in a bloated nature. You're describing somebody who has seniority, but from a performance perspective is the bottom of the heap, and they're holding people back,

the young, hungry people that you could probably train to do this person's job if you could just get them the fuck out of the way. Do some research on what's required to get rid of a GS employee. And this is for the listener, it's not necessarily a person asking this question because you've already encountered how difficult it can be. You get past the 365-day probation. window and it becomes a problem. So what you're going to need to do for this person is the opposite of what the previous supervisors have done because you said right here, supervisors of the passive all recognize these traits, but in an agency where it's nearly impossible to fire someone, they've all just let it slide. If you want to get rid of this person, you are going to have to

document everything. And by that I mean everything, whether it is, let's go down the list. Bad attitude. You're going to have to document a bad attitude. You're going to have to have counseling. You're going to have to have remediation. Never takes ownership or accountability for mistakes or failures. Document those things. Each and every one of those things as often as they actually happen. Awful professional relationships with their peers. Document. Never completes projects on time and it generally takes a tremendous amount of mental bandwidth to supervise or even work alongside. Document. I know that I'm a broken record right now. It is possible to get rid of these. people, but you are going to need a dossier of information that is probably literally and physically

a foot and a half tall of paper to justify this. And that sucks. And that's a lot of work. And it sucks that it falls on you. But if you care about your role and you care about the young people who you realize what they're capable of doing if you can get this person out of the way, you are going to shoulder this burden as opposed to passing it on to the person who fills your seat next because let me tell you what they're going to have to deal with this person. If you don't deal with this, it's not going to deal with itself. The cam will be kicked down the road maybe until this person decides to retire. And that is the burden on the federal system that I deeply hope actually becomes addressed.

So how do you motivate this person? This person is going to need to motivate themselves. And in this documentation and counseling, you're going to be able to, you're going to, to have the opportunity to allow this person to modify their behavior or continue down the path that will eventually lead in their termination. You don't need to motivate this person because I'm telling you right now this person is likely not going to be motivatable. They like where they are because of the environment that they're allowed to work in and they probably feel like it's consequence free and there's nothing that can be done. So you can provide a plate of food to this person,

what they do with it is going to be up to them. Do they eat it or do they push it aside? You're not going to be able, in my opinion at least. It is very unlikely you're going to be able to motivate this person. But if you start addressing these shortcomings head on in the counseling sessions, I mean, ask some questions. I would be a little bit more Socratic than I would be directive, at least when I started off with this. You know, he has a bad attitude. ask, you know, okay, are you doing okay?

Is everything going all right in your personal life? Or whatever level you feel comfortable, you know, is everything going okay? Is there anything about your work environment that we could do to make it better? You know, asking some questions to try to elicit where the bad attitude may be coming from. Some of those things you might be able to change, but more than likely, in my assessment of just your email, the snapshot of this individual person, there's nothing that you're going to be able to say to likely be able to motivate them other than fear of them potentially losing their job. That's not great motivation, but it might elicit the change in behavior that you are looking for. And in doing so, changing this person's behavior, they really might not like the situation anymore,

and they may leave on their own. Either way, you're going to be getting that end state that you're looking for, which is an obstacle moved out of the way of the younger people coming up inside of this organization. So my advice to you, you decide what you want to do. But if it's motivation or setting it up for getting rid of this person, I'd take the same path. every single opportunity that you see where this person is falling short across the variety of things that you listed. Address it, bring them into your office. And again, this needs to be objective, though, too.

If your organization has standards, which I'm sure that it does, and a great example would be never completes a project on time, that's pretty objective. This is when it was due. This is when you turned it in. You're going to get counseled for that behavior because you fell short of an objective criteria. It gets very shifty and shady when they're subjective. and I would say avoid that at all costs, which, you know, awful professional relationships with peers, unless your office has objective standards of communication and interpersonal, you know what I mean? Like, that's the one where it could get a little bit more subjective.

So focus on objective feedback, criteria. And again, whether trying to motivate or get rid of this person, you're attacking both at the same time. You can ask questions to try to figure out what's going on with this person. And then at the same time, you're documenting over and over and over again. And it's going to be fucking exhausting. but it is the only mechanism you have to either get this person to change behavior, remove themselves, or have the organization remove them. All of that starts with that addressing the behavior as opposed to kicking the can to the side.

If you do decide that you're going to fire this person or it gets to the point where your organization is ready to do so and you are involved in that, keep it to the facts, keep it as clean and succinct as possible, do not become emotionally involved. the shortest conversation possible, wish them the best, and then dive into bringing this team up from underneath this person, filling those roles, teaching them, motivating them, and getting them pointed in the right direction. It's the best advice I can give you. Firing people sucks. Do not beat around the bush when that situation presents itself. Be direct, be fair, be empathetic, but do your job. Final question for the day. Man, this cough sucks. I'm in the middle of the the field training process as a police officer and decided to quit and leave to find another job.

I've come to this decision because of the stress it has put on me and my wife of only a year. My anxiety is always through the roof in the job and on my days off, I can't seem to regulate it. I am super interested in gear and guns and tactics and sort of feel like a coward or like my identity is being stripped for wanting to leave the job so early. I want to start my own plumbing or home building company someday and be an entrepreneur. My question for you is, am I allowed to be interested in the same things like gear, guns, tactics, and hunting, even though I don't have a career in LEO anymore after leaving in its infancy? Am I a coward for not wanting to do this job? I don't feel like I am, but feel like that will be the conclusion others draw when they say the job isn't for everyone. That implies they are godlike beings or something like that.

I have a great respect for the job and have made good grades in FTO. I just don't want it anymore. Any insight would be much appreciated. And as always, thank you for what you do. Okay, you're not a coward. And here is something very powerful you need to wrap your head around that is extremely difficult to actually do. And that is don't give a fuck about the conclusions that other people draw or the things

that other people say. Super easy to say. Very hard to live. Because when people say negative shit, it hurts. negativity is real. When they say mean things, it hurts because mean things are real. But none of these people have to walk a mile in your individual shoes. And this job, the job you're talking about of law enforcement or first responder, it isn't for everybody. I would much rather have somebody make this decision earlier in their career because they realize that for whatever reason,

they are not tooled for the job. And that's not a pejorative. That's not like, oh, you're not as good as me or this, that, or the other. Every human being has strengths and weaknesses. Identifying where your strength and weaknesses are is a very good thing. And if your anxiety is through the roof now and it's creating issues with your wife now, I've never been a cop. People know that. But I don't think it's going to get any better. If you are recognizing the toll that this is taking on you, early and you dive into it for another 20 years. Is it possible that you could develop some coping skills along the way? Sure, with some experience, would things be a little bit easier on you than others?

Maybe. Is it worth that gamble when you're making that recognition as early as you are? I don't think so. And even as it from an organization perspective, trying to think about this on the other side of the coin at the organization that you're working for, I'd rather have somebody hang it up in the first year than the fifth, sixth, seventh, or eighth because of the time and experience that has been put into them and the experience that they have.

And now you have a capabilities gap versus, and I don't say this in a negative way, a newer recruit can come in and fall into the FTO cycle that you're in and be at the level that you are at pretty rapidly in comparison to somebody quitting mid-career. But do your best to not judge yourself because you pursue. sued a job that you thought was going to be one thing, and it ended up having a really negative impact on your life. That is okay. Not everybody is tooled to do this job. We're all different, and some people's strengths and weaknesses align with things like this, and some don't. And if people want to make judgment about that, tell them to fuck off. Because again,

you are the only person that lives inside of your skin, the walks a mile in your shoes, in a relationship with your wife. It gives a fuck what they say. And as far as, you know, can you still like guns and where was it in there? It's like, let me find the same thing. Am I still allowed to be interested in the same things like gear guns and tactics? Dude, you're allowed to be interested in whatever you want to be interested in. There are something, there's a reason why they have a history channel that is full of military

and people testing guns and, you know, military history and operations and all these things. People dig that stuff. and most of them, if not nearly all of them, will never serve. And that's totally cool. I know people who have never served who have the best gun collections I've ever seen. And my only response to that is fucking awesome. If you have the economic ability to do so, pursue whatever you want to. Nobody gets to tell you what you can and can't be interested in.

You can like tactical gear and guns and hunting and not be a cop. You know how many people love gear, guns, tactics, and hunting and have never touched the first responder world, almost everybody, the vast majority of them. And that's totally cool. It is okay to change course in your life when you recognize there is an issue. Value how you feel about yourself, your family, and your wife more than how other people may judge you. Fuck them. Tune that out.

Take care of yourself. And that's all I have for this Friday.