The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Don’t Be a Dick Manager: The Down & Dirty Guide to Management by James Monroe

Episode Date: February 15, 2021

Don't Be a Dick Manager: The Down & Dirty Guide to Management by James Monroe Take a successful employee, promote them into management but give them no management training and there’s a very good chance you’ll create a defensive, insecure, unsuccessful, dick manager.Here is the management training you never got! This honest, straightforward guide reveals the things nobody talks about–knowledge that only comes from real-world experience in the management trenches. It will change the way you look at yourself, your job and your career and it will enable you to be a successful leader and mentor.Most importantly, it will help you avoid becoming a dick manager (or, if it’s too late, to reform) so you can enjoy the personal and financial rewards of being a great manager.Discover the power of the Laws of Management and understand the personal characteristics you must have to excel as a manager.Learn how to deal with non-communicative, mean, micromanaging, bully bosses, and how to figure out when it’s time for you to leave an impossible situation.Find out how to deal with ambitious employees and how to turn around hostile, jaded ones. And be warned about the one type of employee who must go, no matter what.Filled with anecdotes from more than 20 years of management experience, this book takes a frank look at the author’s mistakes and triumphs, his great bosses and his dick managers and the lessons learned from all of them.About James Monroe I became a manager at the age of 29. It was a big job. I had a lot of autonomy, a good-sized team and no management training whatsoever. And the moment I walked into my fancy new office, my education began. I'd been working since the age of 11 and I'd had eight bosses by then. All I knew about management was that I wanted to copy the good things I'd seen and avoid the bad. Fortunately, I had a supportive boss and a forgiving team. I made some mistakes, but I learned from them, as I have in every job since. I went on to manage teams in large media companies like CBS and NBC (while it was owned by both GE and Comcast) and in tiny Silicon Valley tech startups. I've worked in government as well as the service, consumer product, media and technology industries. Though every company was different, the great managers I knew-and there were very few of them-all had something in common: they had very specific personal characteristics that enabled them to be great. Few people are born with these characteristics, but many more can acquire them if they work at it. These are things nobody talks about, which is a shame because I wish I'd known about them much sooner. This is my attempt to help other mangers, particularly those who are early in their careers, make fewer mistakes and enjoy long, rewarding, successful management careers. This book isn't based on academic studies or on one person's unusual, one-of-a-kind experience. It's based on working in the trenches year after year, learning as I went and eventually understanding what it takes to be a great manager.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

Hey, we're coming here with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you tuning in. Not you. That one in the back there. Yeah, yeah. You. You. We appreciate you tuning in and that other lady in the chair over there.

And I don't know about some of you in the front row, but we appreciate all of you when it comes down to it. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Be sure to refer the show to your friends, neighbors, relatives, dogs, cats, mistresses, pool boys. Get everyone listening to the cool Chris Voss Show, et cetera, et cetera. Go to thecvpn.com to subscribe or thechrisvossshow.com to subscribe. Today we have a most excellent guest. We have this weirdest thing. Every time we do an episode, we have the most amazing, brilliant, intelligent guests.

They have spent tens of millions of hours, maybe it's thousands or hundreds, but tens of millions of hours writing these books, studying them, researching. And they come to you and deliver studying them, researching, and they come to you and deliver this amazing, small, beautiful package. It's like a puppy. It's like beautiful and you want to pet it and you want to touch it. You want to love it and hug it. And you're like, wow, I'm so much smarter. My life is so much better because this person, this book, this author is in my life. And that's what we brought you again here today. I've made a big, I've really built you up, James. You're going to have to call this. I'm sorry. So the author we have today, he has written the book that was out in 2020, Don't Be a Dick Manager, The Down and Dirty

Guide to Management. His name is James Monroe. James Monroe comes to us with a ton of experience, and let's give you the lowdown on that. He became a manager at the age of 29. He also had a lot of autonomy being that manager of a good-sized team and no management training whatsoever. And soon he learned he was not alone. He went on to manage teams in media and technology companies. He had great managers and terrible ones. Boy, we've all seen that movie. And eventually developed management skills. But he also wondered why he had to learn on the job. Why was there no training, no mentoring, no guide to help managers understand their jobs?

The reason was shocking but simple. American businesses don't understand how to identify management potential, what it takes to be a good manager, and what to do with the bad ones. And that's why he wrote, Don't Be a Dick Manager, The Down and Dirty Guide to Management. The book helps managers understand their roles and develop skills necessary for success. It reveals management truths people don't like to talk about and helps managers either succeed or change careers. The book distills two decades of on-the-job training in management trenches into 25 chapters of things Monroe wishes someone had told him when he was starting out. This will be in movie theaters

coming near you. I started to feel like that guy who does the movies. James, welcome to the Chris Foss Show podcast. How are you, my friend? I'm well. Thank you, Chris. Nice to be here. There you go. I kind of built you up with a whole puppy in the box thing. And so I'm sorry if I put you on a really high pedestal, but I've checked out your book,

so I'm sure we're going to be fine. I hope so. The pressure. Yeah, no kidding. How much pressure can you put on the guest, Chris? Come on, man. Stop it. So give us your plugs, James.

So let us know where we can find you on those intertube webs that flow through the sky and bring us the internet. You can find me at don't be a dick manager.com on LinkedIn at James E Monroe and on Twitter at that James Monroe. James Monroe. The book has a Facebook page. I don't called don't be a dick manager. And there you go. There you go. There you go. So you've got the book here. What I kind of just went

through your bio and actually read what motivated you, but maybe give us a little bit of words of yourself as to why you really wrote the book. You know, first of all, managers have a tremendous influence on the success or failure of a company, in addition to having obviously a tremendous influence on the lives of the people who report to them. And I started poking around at some statistics about management. I'd had so many really terrible managers and so few really good ones. I really wanted to figure out what was going on, why this was the case. So I looked at some statistics. Gallup, which does a ton of research on management, has determined that only about 10% of people have natural management ability.

And that's an interesting thought, both the number, the small number, and the fact that what is natural management ability? It was kind of interesting. They think another 20% might be trainable. They maybe have the building blocks and could be trained to be a better manager. But 70% of people have absolutely no business being managers. There's another statistic that I thought was unbelievable. And that is, according to Gallup, 82% of managers are not qualified to manage. They just don't have the capacity. So we have 10% who are really good. That doesn't mean they're in a management position. It just means they're capable of it. And 70% who don't stand a chance. And therefore, we have a bunch of really crappy managers. And the result is turnover, recruiting costs, disengaged employees who aren't necessarily looking out for the best interest of the company. They're just kind of

punching a clock. And it's costing, again, Gallup and others have estimated somewhere between $500 billion and a trillion dollars a year in lost productivity and recruiting costs and training costs and all of that stuff. It's a huge problem. Those who've worked at corporations have probably experienced this in some form or fashion. And sometimes, you know, there's different management styles of whoever's leading at the top, you know, the worst are like the high school management people who manage by popularity and butt kissing, sometimes sometimes their presidents. And yeah, it's, it's interesting to me, the figures that you mentioned are so real and in, you know, 10%, 70%. Yeah. So how do we, well, let's, let's get into the book. So give us a whole arc of

kind of an arc of the book, if you will. And then we'll get into some of the details. And the book starts out with the whole, the whole point of the book is when I was 29, when I had that first management job and you know, the fate of a bunch of people were put in my completely unqualified hands, what would I have liked to have known back then that I learned only later in my career? And that's really what I wrote the book for. It's not necessarily just for new managers, but it's, it's to fill in the gaps for any manager really, who, who would like to know what it's like at the end of a management career to look back and wish what, and have what I wish I'd had when I was, when I was just starting the, the, I distilled it down to five. I call them the laws of management, but five basic principles. Number one, respect is

earned, not granted. You go into a management position, you have a fancy title. Maybe you have a cool office and you think you're going to get respected and you're not until you've earned it. You want nothing. Nothing gets you that respect, like, like performing consistently, being honest, being straightforward, being a good communicator and being those things over a long period of time, do that. And you'll earn the respect of your people. You have to have respect to lead because people won't, won't be led by somebody who doesn't, who they don't respect. So you have to do it. You have to earn it. It's not given to you. You can't demand it. How many times you've heard people say, you need to respect me. How come you don't treat me with respect? Well, because you haven't earned it. My first six wives. Yeah. Oh no. Yeah. There's

a book in there. It's different in a business. Yeah, there probably is. I don't know. There's, there's, there's lots of papers, but they're mostly divorce papers. No, I'm just kidding. Number two, the second law of management, people are generally good. And if you think about in daily life, this is a hundred percent true, right? People will hold the door for one another. If you drop something on the sidewalk, somebody is going to say, excuse me, sir, you dropped this. People will make faces at babies just to see them smile. And yet in the workplace, management will come in and start making a bunch of rules for problems that don't even exist yet. And they'll be punitive and they'll be suspicious. And if people are at work doing a good job,

which most people are, they want to do a good job. They want to work on a team that's fun to work on. They want to have a nice workplace environment. They want to feel good about what they do. Don't start treating them like a bunch of losers. Don't start treating them like they're going to steal from the company or they're going to somehow try to cheat the companies. Too many companies treat employees that way. They go in thinking that. On the other hand, if you go in thinking, you guys are great, you're going to go in and give them the credit that they already believe they deserve, and you'll find that not everybody deserves it. So deal with those bad apples when you come across them. Don't assume everybody's a bad apple. That's a huge mistake

that so many companies make. Also, if you don't assume they're generally good, they're not going to assume you are either. And that's just a tough, that's a tough way to get in a relationship. No, I'm just kidding. The third law in this, I learned the hard way more than once. Unfortunately, everybody knows everything. You think you have a secret as a manager.

You don't. You want to spiff an employee, give them a little dinner out with a spouse or something like that and think everybody else is not going to know about it. You're wrong. Everybody will know about it. You want to give somebody a little pay raise. Everybody's going to know about it. So just be prepared for that and do what's fair, do what's right. If that guy deserves a dinner, give him a dinner, but know that everybody else is going to know he got it. And if they believe he deserved it too, that's fine. But if the guy's a butt kisser and they manipulated you into giving him a little spiff, that's not going to be okay. It's not good for you. Yeah. What if there was like, uh, some sort of performative, uh, quid

pro quo that got that race? Is that fine? Like, uh, maybe sexual favors or something of that nature? Yeah. That's bad. Cause everybody's going to know, right. And that's what HR told me too. I got to stop it. I wish I put this book out earlier, man. You should have me do the comedy bits on it.

Yes, I should. There's sadly little comedy in management. I'll tell you how I, how I came to realize this was a law and it's, I'm not proud of it, but it's illustrative. I would have staff meetings. This is in that first management job. And I learned the hard way that

everything I say in a staff meeting is going to get out, right? It's not just going to be the secret. And when I say the hard way, I mean, don't under any circumstances joke about your boss's toupee when you're having a meeting with your. Oh boy, this sounds like a great story. Are you going to flush this out for us? If I do, I'll start crying. You're going to have to read the book, folks. Not my proudest moment. Law of management number four, you are not a genius.

And this is super important. People who are successful begin to think that their success is 100% due to their talent and their awesomeness. And they're a hundred percent wrong. You are successful because you got a lucky break because you were at the right place at the right time, because you were in a business that was growing rapidly. And all you had to do was show up and you had good stats. It's, it has almost nothing to do with you. And so keep, keep yourself humble. Don't let your ego get out of control. Don't get arrogant and give your people the credit that they deserve because the biggest, the biggest success factor for a manager is their team, right? If their team is really competent and cranking it, then the manager is going to look great. If they're happy, if they're not the source of a bunch of HR complaints, then the manager is

going to look great. So stay humble, congratulate the team, recognize the team for the quality that they bring to you. Don't get too big, too full of yourself. The last one, the person is sort of related to number four. Number five is the person with the smallest ego wins. If you think about it, anytime you get insulted or feel like you've been disrespected or feel like you're not getting the credit you deserve, that's your ego talking. And as soon as that starts happening, you, you end up getting small. You end up not focusing on the business, not focusing on the team. You're starting to focus more on your own internal issues and your own insecurities. If you can keep your ego small and keep your ego under control,

you will win. And this is especially true when you're negotiating because skillful negotiators will know how to give your ego something and not your business. And so if you can just keep focused on the business, keep your ego in check, you're going to come out way, way ahead, way ahead of people who don't. And if you think back on managers you've had, you can see these guys would get butthurt for no reason, right? And it's because they couldn't keep their egos in check. Cool. Let's flush these out. And I'm going to do a station call out real quick. Those of you in my clubhouse, we'll do a reset here. we are interviewing james monroe and he goes by jim but you'll find him on amazon under james monroe which is probably important so you can find him with his book don't be a dick manager

the down and dirty baby guide to management the down and dirty guide to management i should do the sound of you let me do your audio book. No, I'm just kidding. Absolutely should. The soundtrack. I think you would get banned off Amazon if I did it. So be sure to check it out on Amazon. We're going to be taking your questions, your questions, if they're good and if they're really concise for me because I have to read them quick.

Send them to me on my Instagram. DM me. We'll try and answer your questions if you have any. We certainly appreciate it. Thanks for all the people in the room. I love seeing all the people here. So let's flush some of these out, James. I know that when I was in respecting the title and thinking that your title is just because someone gave you a title that you're King Dewey of whatever. I used to keep this on my desk. I got this from someone years ago about not letting your title just because you own the title doesn't mean you get the respect doesn't mean you get

that you're not, you know, that you're not a, who's a great leader that we can quote. I don't know, Zig Ziglar or something. I don't know, but, but it's real important to help keep you grounded. And so I really liked that because I used to keep that and I used to give that to my managers too. So they didn't get too big heads because mine was the biggest and I didn't want any competition really that's true isn't it I like there's a you know Simon Sinek has a great quote it's simple he just says the boss has the title the leader has the people right and it's all about who do you respect right if you respect you're going to follow who you respect it might might even be a teammate or somebody who, another manager in the company. But it needs to be your boss.

If you're the boss, you need to be respected. Can you give me that one more time just for the Clubhouse room and just for posterity's sake? I love that line. It's great. Simon Sinek, he said, the boss has the title, the leader has the people. That is awesome, man. Isn't that great? Maybe I'll just have you just keep repeating it through the whole show. We'll just lay it down. I love that. Now,

I tried to take some notes here. Was the second point people are mostly good? Was that it? Yes. Yeah. People are generally good. So let's flesh that out. People are generally good. You know, one of my problems in my corporation, and I'll feed this off you because I'd love some feedback on it and tell me whether I'm wrong or right. But, you know, I mean, it won't matter because I know I'm right all the time. No, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. No, I learned a lot from you guys. So when we had our corporations, we would mostly react to different issues that need

to go into a policy manual. We didn't start out with a big policy manual that was really regulatory. It has a couple of pages and then it turned into a monster book, you know, and, you know, employees steal from you. And so you've got to, you actually have to make a rule that says, uh, you shouldn't steal from us and steal like staplers out of the supply closet. You know, I mean, stuff like that, where we had to like start making rules because people were breaking the rules and they're like, well, no one told us those weren't the rules.

It's kind of like the, how you have to put a sign over bridges to say don't jump off the bridge you might kill yourself so was you know we didn't go in right away with those rules we trusted people and i and i and what's his face almost brain bankrupt to me tom peters in thriving chaos he's like you can if you the more you trust people the better better they'll behave. And he cited some nuclear scientists that don't turn stuff into Chernobyl because they're trusted with so much. Thanks. That's not fucking true. I don't want to punch him in the face next time I see him. No, I like Tom Peters.

I wouldn't actually do that, but I'll probably spill a beer on him. I'm kidding. So, Jim, what do you think about that? Was I appropriate in how I approached that, or could I have done that better? No, I think you have to have basic rules. I think that's true. I'm thinking like today, one of the big debates is with everybody working remotely, do you have monitoring software determined when people are on their computer, how many keystrokes and all that stuff? Do you really need to do that to make sure they're working or do you just look at their output? Because if you say you're going to monitor them and really need to do that to make sure they're working or do you just look at their output?

Because if you say you're going to monitor them and they need to hit a key on a computer every 38 seconds or whatever it is, they're going to get pissed off because you don't trust them. They think they're pretty good and they think they're doing a good job and they have product or they have output to show it. If you, by doing this other thing, by measuring their behavior or their activity instead of their productivity, I think you're making a mistake and you're doing something that an employee shouldn't be doing, a good one.

If you have a bunch of employees who are stealing and doing things they shouldn't do, they're probably not the right employees, right? Yeah. You should have people you can trust and who ultimately will trust you. And getting into that, one of the things I found, and you mentioned mentioned on your intro, you know, being able to interview and pick right managers is important. One thing we learned, of course, the hard way was you've got to invest the time to hire well. If you invest the time, like you said, to hire well, to get good people. And so we found by extending the hiring process to two to three different interviews, we really, sometimes four, we really got good people. Because it was interesting, and I taught all my people, my two executive secretaries, my vice president,

I'm like, when you interview these people, you shut the hell up, and you just listen. And if they're going to hang themselves and tell you, I don't know, they were in jail for the last three years or something, which happened, you just shut up. Because if you talk to them and sell them to come to the company too much, you're not going to hear the stuff you need to do. And what was interesting was the first time, you know, people have the guard up, they're like, you know, doing all the PR and like whatever. And then like the second, the second interview, they're starting to go, ah, I probably have this one in the bag. I'm meeting with this executive secretary.

Yeah, we got this one. And then they kind of start letting the guard down and things start coming out. You know, a little skeleton door kind of cracks there. Maybe a hand, skeleton hand comes out and you're like, I wonder what that was. So then the third interview, you know, they just be totally relaxed. They're like, I got this in the bag. They have their feet up on your desk and they're drinking my ties and shit and you know you know they show up wearing a jock strap and that's about it and you're just like wow you really are comfortable you have this

in the bag and what's interesting is you're telling us some really interesting stories and like yeah this one time i embezzled this company and you know you're getting everything and if they're not then you're usually getting some sort of sainthood still so hiring is really important especially with managers because sometimes you just don't know if they're just going to turn in that megalomaniac like i did when i became ceo but i don't know you know what you're right especially with managers and i think one of the mistakes we we make two big mistakes with managers number one most often managers are promoted from a job where they did something else, right? If you're a really strong individual contributor and you are a really good self

promoter, chances are you're, you're going to get a crack at management as a reward, right? But the things you do as a manager have nothing to do with what you used to do. So, and people don't realize that they think that now, you know, they're very, very good. So here, they're here to teach people how good, how to be as good as they are or something like that. They think that now they're very, very good. So here they're here to teach people how to be as good as they are or something like that. That's not the case at all. You're there to manage them and to nurture them. And if you're a hotshot self-promoter, that's a difficult turn to make. So that's problem number one. We don't hire managers. We hire people and try to make them managers. Problem number two is we don't know what to look for. Managers need certain character traits. It's not about their experience or their knowledge.

It's about their characters. Do they have empathy? Are they able to derive their satisfaction from somebody else's accomplishments? You know, do they always have to be the star of the show? Do they, are they good communicators? Are they good listeners? These are, these are sort of characteristics that have more to do with your, your character than that within with anything that you've learned or could be taught. And so then I think that's where Gallup gets their 10%. I think 10% of the population is naturally empathetic, naturally good communicators, naturally nurturing. And that's why those people tend to be the better managers.

You know, you nailed the word that I wish I would have known when I started my first company at 18. And I wish I would have known years ago, empathy. Yeah at 18, and I wish I would have known years ago. Empathy. Yeah, that's a really important word I've found over the years, in fact, with everything. But, yeah, I can totally affirm what you're saying. I learned the hard way. I had great salesmen sometimes that were rock stars, number one guys. You know, they were great.

If they weren't, you know, doing cocaine and limos somewhere, they were great otherwise most of the time. But they were great if they weren't, you know, doing cocaine and limos somewhere. They were great otherwise most of the time. But they were the rock stars. I mean, they were the cream of your people. And usually, you know, the 80-20 rule applies. So they were, you know, a small percentage of your employee base, but they did 80% of the sales. So, yeah, you bailed them out of jail when you needed to. But, you know, sometimes I made the mistake of trying to turn those

guys into managers and sometimes they thought they wanted to be managers and those guys did not make good managers because they're really kind of unique to themselves and they're used to rocking their own world and they don't make good managers. But like you say, man, I wish I would have looked more for empathy. Yeah. It's, it's probably the key characteristic you have to have to be a good manager. And so few managers have it because that's not their background. That's not where they came from.

Definitely. I'm going to call it again because I'm seeing some people raising their hand in Clubhouse. Please send your questions to me that you want to give to the gym to my Instagram, please, because I'm not going to be able to hear them because of some malfunctioning we're having on the show. Now, as a third tip, I wrote down why you are successful. Was that the third tip or the fourth tip? That was the fourth. The third is everybody knows everything. Everybody knows their secrets. Let's talk about that a little bit, because I do, but I often wonder if I don't. Well, I'll tell you, probably the most clear example of this was early in my career.

I was at a TV station and we were having some employee issues. We had a bunch of people who weren't very happy. The station had just been sold and it's a tumultuous time. And somebody got into the accounting department, got a printout of the payroll and copied it and mailed it to every single employee. Yeah. That was me. I'm sorry. Damn it. Everybody at the company got to find out how much everybody else made from the guy who ran the business all the way down to the, you know, the bottom rungs. And it was incredibly disruptive. People who thought they were peers realized they were being paid

significantly less. It's just, it was really damaging because people weren't being compensated fairly. It really wasn't fair, right? And people saw that inequity suddenly. So no matter how hard you try to keep a secret, it's going to get out. It keeps you honest. It keeps you acting fairly and with integrity to keep that in mind. Nice. That's really important. And then this, I guess the fourth point was, why are you successful is what I typed here. I'm not sure that's an accurate portrayal of your fourth. Yeah, so you are not a genius. I mean, you don't have to tell me I'm not a genius, Jim. I just didn't write it right on the computer because I'm trying to type and do the show. But, oh, you mean like your fourth point. Oh, okay. Sorry. Yeah. And it, cause people get full of themselves, a little bit of success. And even, even that first management job can be enough success to trigger this, you know, this arrogance and this, this sense of, of, you know, infallibility.

And it's just not true. You know, if you, if you think back on your career and the twists and turns that it took, there were opportunities that came along and you took advantage of that. And suddenly you were successful. It was the opportunity more than it was you, but good for you. But those things happen to people, to many people. And when you are successful, realize that you need to keep working at nurturing your team, helping them to be successful, because ultimately that's where your next success comes from. Definitely.

I mean, if you think you have all the answers and you're the smartest people in the room. You're definitely not the smartest person in the room. And one of the things I used to have at my office was there were several different things we had in our environment where we had there are no stupid questions. The only stupid question is the unasked question. Oh, good. And so we wanted to make sure that people knew that they can ask questions because the one thing i learned of 20 30 years in business is that employee who's too afraid to ask that question because they'll feel like they're they'll be treated like they're dumb or they'll be treated dumb it won't ask that question and he'll go burn down a 1 000 1 million dollar freaking machine or plant or whatever

whatever he doesn't ask that thing's going down and it's going to be expensive and you're going to be like why didn't you ask if you should not put i don't know radioactive uranium into a sheet metal machine and like i thought people think i was stupid and you're just like well you've confirmed it according to the shakespearean thing it's better you know i i don't don't follow the shakespearean thing you know anyway we'll skip by that but yeah i mean i mean time and time again i would find that and then the people who knew the right answers like i remember one time i had a partner who thought he knew the right answers he's like we can't do every two week billing in a company. You can't do

that because this other company and most of the companies don't do that. And I go, but there's one competitor we have who actually is our biggest competitor that does every two weeks. And I'm going to copy that because you don't understand how cashflow works in a business. You've never run a business. We're going to bill every two weeks. And within months, he saw how important it was to get that money full, that cashflow every two weeks, as opposed to every month. Because if you bill monthly, people sometimes go out 90 days. But if you bill out every two weeks, by the time you hit that third stage of the six-week mark, or yeah, six-week mark, you're hustling clients going, hey man, you're three pay periods behind

and you find out who your people aren't going to pay you. And plus, cash is king, especially when you're starting a business back in Wheaton with like $2,000 and a lot of sweat equity. The last one was smallest ego wins. That's really important. That was one of the problems I had being a boss is having a small ego. I had a big ego. I don't know. I tried to make a good environment. I read a lot of good books like The Learning Corporation, The Learning Environment. I don't remember. The Fifth Discipline, I think the book was called. How to Create a Learning Corporation. And I tried to foment a lot of that stuff. But there were things I was, of course, dealing with. Once you go from zero to 100 employees almost within a few years, your head really does whip around. I probably should have spent more time in psychotherapy, really,

when it comes down to it. But then you can still say that now. Anyway, they're going to be putting me in a straitjacket when I get out of here. They let me out for an hour. So what more do we need to cover in your book? And those of you who are on Clubhouse and seeing some hands raised, please send those questions through to Instagram DM. I guess if you look at the problems and maybe some possible solutions. First problem, we kind of touched on this earlier. Management is

seen as a reward for doing something else, not as an independent sort of practice. We need to get over that. We need to look at hiring managers for the character traits that they need to be successful. We have a ton of management training. Once you're a manager, you're going to go through a seminar or online training on how to prevent a hostile work environment, how to avoid insider trading, how to evacuate the building safely in case of a fire, how to detect early detection of workplace violence. But at no point will they say, look, these are the kinds of employees you might have. These are the kinds of things that they might need in order to be successful. You need to go

in and figure them out and figure out how you're going to nurture them to be successful. And if they can't be, you need to figure out how to move them out and bring somebody else in. Yeah. And none of, or how do you manage a boss? Right. That's critically important, but nobody ever talks about that. Whose job is this to do that? I mean, for most places high up, it would be a board. And, but maybe there needs to be a board for just mid-level managers in a company. Maybe there should be. I think, you know, part of the problem is so many people who run companies came up through

this really flawed system and either they don't get it or they think that, you know, you don't want to coddle people too much. I was tough enough to make it. So we want, we want people to go through the gauntlet here in order to, to be successful. That's a terrible way to think. It's very sort of industrial revolution, right? But that's sort of where a lot of companies still are, where a lot of leadership is. I think HR, there are a lot of HR people who understand this stuff. I don't necessarily think they're empowered the way they should be. I don't think people listen to them like they ought to in a lot of cases, but

I think there are people inside the company who get it. It's just not the people in charge. Yeah. And they should read your book, but yeah, you bring up a good point. HR kind of should be the, the, maybe the arbitrator or the overseer that they don't, you know, like you say, they're separate department, but more managers need to be aware of that, need to be aware of their style. Because if you, if you get a bad, I've worked with companies where there's the high school management thing is the worst. I hate those people. They work from popularity.

They make everyone popular, so they want everybody to be sycophants and lick their toes. And it just creates a horrible environment. People that are real performers get discouraged and they leave. And this costs companies money and value and, and value and everything else. And if you're, if you're a performer, you usually leave a management environment like that because usually you're so busy performing and kicking ass, taking names that you're not busy licking someone's boots.

It's usually the guys who are licking the boots that are goofing off in the back. Cause they're like, they just don't want to get fired and found out. And they just like, if I do this, they won't notice that. Right. Exactly. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And the people who go first are the ones who are the top performers, right? Because they can, they can get jobs anywhere. Yeah. I remember when I was a kid, I was getting my, I was, I was getting my, I was working to get my securities license and I was working until a marketing unit. And this gal ran the management style that way. One day she and her lemmings decided to be funny, and they called in a fire. They called in a bomb threat to their own office.

Oh, that's funny. Just because she thought it was cool. It was a high school thing to do. Like, this will be funny. They fired her. Of course, the sheriff's game picked her up when they found out who it was. And she was so dumb. She'd actually called the security department or she called HR to tell them that she'd done it or something.

And she just thought they were all on her side. It was like a big sort of, it was like a, anyway, it was like someone we've seen in politics recently. Yeah. So they fired her. Three months later, they brought her back because they couldn't find a good enough replacement because the management was run in this stupid hierarchy, and they just thought that was a good idea. So there you go. I've got some questions for you. Thanks to Immigration Station Canada's, the Instagram.

And my apologies for not knowing her name. She wants to plug that. She's certainly welcome to. She's got a few of your questions. So thank you very much for sharing those. If you do have questions in Clubhouse, please send them to my Instagram for Jim. First question is, and we may have answered this, what advice would you give every first-time manager? You are in a whole new career.

No matter what you think you're in, this has nothing to do with anything you've ever done before. You are now in charge of output of a team, the morale of a team, and you need to focus on that team first and foremost. There you go. And are quality management skills learned or must the individual have some natural ability? I think they have to have natural characteristics like a ego that they can control, the ability to have empathy and to see things through the eyes of other people, the ability to see themselves through the eyes of other people. How are you being perceived? I think those are, those are probably more fundamental people traits than they are things that can be learned. So this is really something you have to develop as a child. I didn't, I don't know how good I was in empathy. Maybe I was, I don't know. I've really,

we've been talking about empathy on the show for social justice issues and things of that nature as well. And I probably should look up and see. I mean, I don't know if you can take a course on empathy. You know what? I actually think it helps just to get older. I think you go a little bit over yourself as you age. No, that's not true for 100% of people, but I think that's true for some people.

They actually start to have a little bit broader view of the world. I know I got a broader view of the world at 9-11. That was a wake-up moment for me where I was like, all right, I'm pretty selfish and I need to figure out why the world wants to kill us all. And what's going on here? I need to get a bigger worldview. And so that did change a lot. And then death in my life, I kind of, it was kind of an interesting life where I didn't go through a lot of death for about almost 30 years. And then suddenly people close to me started passing away. And that definitely amplified my empathy. But it's interesting to me, you know, what you're saying is this is really going to be something you've developed before you get into management. Here's another one. If they aren't natural at all, can you teach them?

Is it worth it? And I think we just asked answer that question a little bit. You know, Gallup says 20% of people are teachable. I don't know how you know if they're in that 20% or the unteachable 70%, but you have to be ready to let managers go. You also have to be ready to reward successful individual contributors some other way than giving them a management job, right? Let them stay doing what they're doing that they're good at. Don't give them, don't promote them into something that they won't be good at. All right. Thank you. Thanks to Annie in the audience at Immigration Station Canada on Instagram there. I guess she's in Canada.

Ooh, we're international. Wow. So thanks to her for sharing those questions. Let me check and see if we have anything else. What haven't we covered about the book that you'd like to plug before we go out? You know, one of the things, I talk a lot about things that nobody will tell you, things that people just don't talk about, either because they don't realize they're true or because, I don't know, they're embarrassing or something. So there's a bunch in the book, just little things about like, what is the real meaning behind perks, right? Especially in the entertainment business, people have, they get limo rides and, you know, car allowances and clothing allowances and all kinds of crazy stuff.

Does that mean they're good at their job? No. No. Crappy directors still get driven to the studio in a limousine. It does not mean that you're good. So you've got to look past perks to performance. How to deal with employees who try to undermine you. This is tough because there's really only one way to deal with an employee who's going to undermine you.

But you need to know that. It's rare, but there are some employees who can not be fixed. And that's one of them. You promote them, right? No, you promote them into a whole different company. Absolutely. There you go. That's what I should have said when I was firing people. I'm like, you know what? We're going to give you an opportunity to move up at a company, another one. I'll tell you one of the things that struck me over the years is insubordination, right? It's like a favorite thing for managers to whip out and punish people with when they feel like they're being talked back to or whatever. Insubordination completely backfires on a manager

because it's judging somebody's behavior, not their performance. And it makes a manager look petty and like they have an out-of-control ego when they try to accuse somebody of insubordination. If you have somebody who's performing badly or disruptive, you can deal with that. It's disruption, right? But insubordination is just a weird – it feels like a tool that only insecure managers would use. Insecurity and ego again, coming back to your rules. Yeah. How to work with other managers. Once're, once you're a manager,

you're also a part of a management team. So that actually, that dynamic is, is pretty interesting. And if you don't have somebody helping you through that, that can be really challenging. Why pinching pennies can backfire. People are like, I'm going to, you know, we're going to cut costs and cut office supplies, or we're not going to, you know, get bagels for the meeting at six o'clock in the morning because you know they can make their own damn bagels or buy their own it's like why right how much goodwill comes from buying sandwiches for a lunch meeting or sending a turkey into a crew that has to work on thanksgiving that's a huge extremely inexpensive

way to build loyalty and goodwill and yes go ahead I want my employees to be healthy. So what I do is instead of bagels, I just give them a whole kale salad there in the morning. In the morning, that sounds delicious. It's just kale, man. I don't even blanch it or whatever, just raw kale. But I want them to be healthy, and I want my employees to know I love them and care about them and their bodies. What a weird meeting that must be.

Yeah, I have no employees. They all quit. I'm not sure what's going on there. I think it's all them. So these are some great topics to talk about. One thing I was going to ask you is do, so if you hire good empathetic managers do, well I'm just going to ask the question that I know I might know the answer to, but do good empathetic managers beget and hire and promote other good empathetic managers for your company? And conversely, do bad managers usually promote other bad managers? Yeah, a hundred percent true on both counts. Bad managers will avoid hiring somebody who's going to challenge them, who's going to make them nervous. They

don't want them to be, they want them to be good, but not too good. Good empathetic managers are going to seek out people who have similar qualities, who will be able to nurture the team that they're put in charge of. And if that's challenging, that isn't challenging to somebody who's secure, whose ego is in check. And you know, that's really important. That's one of the things I learned as a manager. I mean, as a CEO running your company or whatever it is, you've got to learn that there's going to come a day where you're going to turn things over.

We just even saw Jeff Bezos is now turning things over. And I'm not talking about those secret pictures that got put through his voice, his messaging. I don't know. Everybody knows everything, right? Everybody knows everything. I believe the Patriots owner also has some turnover in a Florida shop. I don't know what that means. So anyway, great things.

But yeah, it is interesting to me that good managers will breed other good managers and bad managers will make other bad managers. If you really are the head of an organization or an HR and you want to have a good, healthy corporation, you need to make sure and weed out those bad apples and stuff. In the book, do you cover any good evaluations for when you need to kick a manager to the curb at all? It's really basically determining whether or not they have those character traits and then working with them to see if they're in the Gallup trainable 20%. And if not, then you got to kick them to the curb and you can document it, you know, quickly and get them out.

But the trouble is understanding where your bad managers are. Because if you have a bad manager and the company decides to try it out in an employee survey, do you think that's going to be anonymous? HR says it is, but don't you think your manager is going to have a way of figuring out who dumped on them in the survey? Of course you do. And sometimes you're right, by the way. So, so an employee survey isn't necessarily going to root out the bad managers. The askers will continue to say they're great and give them

five stars or whatever. So you got to do more than that. You got to talk to people. You got to really get into your organization. I'll tell you all of the working people know who the bad managers are. So figuring out how to get that truth from them is the hard part. You know, where you go, You go to Glassdoor.com. Oh, 100%. Absolutely. That's an amazing read. I even have some friends that own businesses that, you know, they're good.

They're friends of mine, but I know they have a little bit of a toxic streak on the ego. And yeah, sometimes we'll just have some fun and go read their Glassdoor reviews. And that's probably a good way if you're a manager and you want to check your ilk is to see what's going on there. And you see there's consistency on Glassdoor where this guy is a jerk or in your thing, a dick. And yeah, that's a big deal. You can write a book called Don't Be a Dick Manager and see all the people who come back to you on LinkedIn saying, where the hell were you when you were managing me? Like, come on. When did you learn this exactly?

So would you say that this would be a smart gift to give a bad manager for Christmas? Yes, yes. And I have some anecdotal evidence that that's what happens. You know, you can get the e-book, the audio book, or the physical book on Amazon. Physical book outsells probably 20 to 1. Just outsell them on that annual white elephant gift thing. You want to have something in your hand, yeah, that you can put on your desk and then run. Just anonymously mail it to them. Here you go. Here's your sign.

As we go out, anything more you want to touch on in the book? I think we've covered it all. I really appreciate it. There you go. Thank you for being on the show, Jim. We certainly appreciate you spending some time with us. Thanks for being here. Yeah, thank you.

Thanks for having me. It was a good time. There you go. And thanks, my audience, for tuning in, especially those on Clubhouse, the app on the iPhone. You've got to check it out. The thing is all the rage. We've had a whole group of people sitting in here. Thank you for your questions, and thanks for being in the room. It's been quite a little room going on. You can check out Jim's

book. It's on Amazon under James Monroe. It's called Don't Be a Dick Manager, The Down and Dirty Guide to Management. It's out on paperback. You can get that right now, audiobook or Kindle, and you can pick that up at a local bookseller near you or the Amazon thing. Thanks to my guys for tuning in. Go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification button. See the video version of our interview with Jim. You can go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss. You can also go to facebook.com, The Chris Voss Show. The same thing with LinkedIn. There's a bunch of groups on both those channels and Instagram, both Chris Voss and The Chris Voss Show.

Thanks to everyone for being here. Wear your mask, stay safe, and we'll see you next time. I almost said wear your sask and wear your...