The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Lisa Edmondson, Founder & Owner of Leadership Reno

Episode Date: December 3, 2022

Lisa Edmondson, Founder & Owner of Leadership Reno Leadershipreno.com

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. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. 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 rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, welcome to the big show. The big giant show in the sky.

Runs on those inner tubes, the inner waves, the microwaves, or the major waves, micromajor, of the inner waves. We come to you. It's just already gone wrong. We do a ramble every time. You never know when it's going to come. I never know where it's going to come from. It just flows right out.

But I feel like after I said that, if we come from the interwaves, I should mention that we come in peace. Oh, right. Some kind of alien thing. I feel like I was doing like some Twilight Zone. They come from the interwaves of space. Your intro is pretty much Twilight Zone-ish. Pretty much. Every time. You should see what's going through my brain whenish. Pretty much. Every time.

You should see what's going through my brain when we do the ramble every time. People actually think we pre-write this crap. So anyway, welcome to the show, my friends, neighbors, and relatives. As you can hear, we have an amazing, very funny, interesting, exciting person on the show. You're definitely going to want to check her out and her knowledge. We're going to break open her brain. We're actually going to take her brain. We're going to actually take her brain. We're going to cut it open and slice it and expand it.

We're just going to pull it apart. We're going to look here deeply inside and find out the amazing business knowledge that she has inside. That's a little scary. Yeah, that's a little scary. But we're not going to physically do it. We're just going to let her impart that to us from the will of her mind through her mouth or whatever. I don't know.

Her communication. Whatever, guys. You get the deal. You're a pro at this. You've done this before, right? This show is infotainment, man. It's infotainment. That's why people tune in.

Anyway, guys, refer to the show to your family, friends, and relatives. If you're sitting around those holiday dinners, sit around. And, you know, if people want to argue about stuff, you know, the holidays, everyone wants to argue. You know, you go to a grandma's house and, you know, everyone's arguing about whatever the news is or politics or, you know, who has the best mobile phone that they make. We all know it's Android, of course. But when that happens, say, you know what? Hey, I found a way we can all get along. We should all subscribe to Chris Foss show podcast.

And there is the love, my friends. There's the love. LinkedIn, uh, check the LinkedIn newsletter, the big LinkedIn group, 130,000 people over there. Everything we're doing on LinkedIn, TikTok, uh, youtube.com, 4chesschrisfossandgoodreese.com, uh, dot Chris Foss. And now for the main order of the holiday feast, now that we've brought up the feasting, everyone's hungry now. Lisa

Edmondson is on the show with us today. You can hear her giggling. I'm so confused too. I don't know. Where am I? Where am I? She is the founder and owner of her consulting site Leadership Reno, where she renovates people and helps them get to know

things better. We'll find out more what that's about. I don't want to put words in her mouth, but I'm pretty sure that's something of what she does. She successfully led a high-performing team for almost 11 years. She suddenly found herself in a scenario where she experienced intimidation, harassment, and sabotage that ultimately cost her a job where she was revered by her employees. It was this experience that motivated her to start her own company and collaborate with other industry experts to join the battle against workplace bullying, while also sharing her passion and expertise as a people leader. Lisa believes that great people leaders are the solution to companies

struggling with bullying and disengaging workforce, and that focusing on these characteristics when hiring, selecting, and evaluating people leaders is the answer. You can find her original content as other helpful resources on her website. She spent her entire career in the corporate learning and development space, for which she's recognized by Marquise, who's who in America in its 2023 edition. Welcome to the show, Lisa. How are you? I'm okay now, I think.

You're okay. Welcome to the roller coaster. Right? There you go. We've been through surgery and brain, and I'm just, yeah. Yeah, we're just and and now now it's time to heal uh so uh i'm in the not who's who of america 2023 edition

gibboushire.com lisa so people can find you on the interwebs sure it's it's we interwebs leadership reno.com yeah there's interwebs in the sky. You know, the inner tubes, the pneumatic tubes that the internet runs on. That's how we get to the show. Like at the bank. Yeah, pretty much. Or Home Depot or wherever. Yeah, okay. I mean, it works at the bank. You trust your money at the bank. You put it through the

inner tube and it's gone. It's magically... Yeah, that's pretty much how the bank works. It takes your money and then says, Thanks. See you, bye. I think crypto works that way lately. It's vaporware, isn't it?

Those of you watching this years from now, we're in the midst of the FTX debacle. So, we need to use some more because that's what we're here for is to get to know you better and your knowledge and insight that you have from your experience. Tell us a little bit about your upbringing, what got you into going into business and running high performance teams.

Wow. So I'll start at my career portion of the upbringing. So how about that? We'll start there. I won't go all the way back. But yeah, so basically after I graduated college, I kind of fell into the learning and development arena and have been there my entire career. And so the last several years, the last decade or so, leading a team of employees. And so that's kind of where I found my passion. And then just, you know, like I said, being in the learning and development industry, everything's about learning. So, you know, bringing that forward with me in my career.

So you go through this experience where you end up getting bullied at your office, is my understanding. Tell us about what this, you know, this experience that makes the difference that you're just like, hey, man, something's not right here. Yeah. So it's ironic because I hadn't been bullied at work before. So it was new to me.

And I didn't even know I was being bullied, quite frankly. I didn't understand that that was what was happening. Because it's so covert nowadays. I mean, they're really good at it. And so it was just kind of a, you know, sabotaging type things where I was being set up to fail. And so, you know, it really came when I got a new boss. And so that's when it started. And so, yeah, so that, um, kind of triggered the whole, um, path that I'm on right now, as far as trying to help others avoid going through that. So, yeah. And that's a real poor leadership style to bully. Probably not the, yeah, not ideal. Um, I wouldn't recommend it, but, uh, yeah, definitely. And it's so rampant. I mean, that was what's so shocking to me is when I, you know, got out on my own and started researching it. It's everywhere. It's,

it's, it's like a pandemic, you know? And so I think with the whole COVID great resignation type thing, people are kind of using that as an excuse to, to not have to deal with that anymore. Cause like everything's virtual now, so they can just, they don't have to stick with their toxic boss anymore. They can just leave and, you know, be working in California from Atlanta. You really nailed it on the head there. People aren't taking it and putting up with it anymore. They're, they're kind of taking their, uh, they're kind of taking their values back and their freedom back. And they're, they're saying, hey, I'm a valued asset, and I don't want to put up with your crap anymore. Do you feel it?

Because you've since built a company around this and everything else. Do you feel like people are doing that because they're uneducated on how to really be good leaders or healthy leaders? Is it companies is it, is a company's putting poor people into management that shouldn't be managers? Yeah, it's all of that. And that's, that's one of the pillars of my, my company is, you know, besides the anti-bullying, you know, platform, it's, it's proper leadership. And I think part of what I realized through all of this is that, you know, we kind of got it wrong in the corporate world. We're kind of promoting the wrong people. We're putting, you know, just whoever has like the best game face on,

we're putting them in as people leaders, and they're just not qualified to be doing that job. It really takes a different type of personality besides the loudest person in the room or the person with the highest sales. It's a whole different personality type. And that's kind of, you know, one of my other platforms is trying to help educate people on what they should be looking for with leaders in the workplace. So let's talk about this some more. Let's expand on it some more. Intimidation, harassment, sabotage, bullying. What does this look like?

What are some examples of what this looks like in the workplace? Yeah. Well, nowadays, like I said, it's covert. So they try not to put anything in writing. So they're clever that way. But for me personally, it was basically nothing I did was right. You know, for example, I had built this department basically from the ground up. I was employee number one and, you know, very profitable

department. And then, you know, suddenly I get this new leader in and and suddenly I'm an idiot so um apparently I didn't know what I was doing for the past uh 11 years yeah so it was all wrong everything was wrong you know and I every week was different direction you know I I mean it was impossible keeping up with the latest instructions you know it was literally just trying to set me up to fail. And I've learned since then that that's called constructive dismissal. So that's a real thing. Yeah, they're clever. Constructive dismissal. I gotta Google this. So do you feel like that was partially, like, was it sociopathic or a narcissistic or just. Yeah. No, I think there's some narcissism involved in this because that seems to be the kind of predominant personality type that takes on this type of bullying.

So not that I can diagnose someone with that, but in my head that I felt like this person was a narcissist for sure. If it wasn't all about, you know, them, then, you know, I became a threat. So, um, you know, I've seen some of that in the, in the corporate world where, uh, people, um, you know, it turns from a performance-based organization or performance-based team to serve the leader, worship the leader. It's almost kind of a authoritarian sort of thing. And nothing gets done. It becomes like a high school popularity game of who can kiss the leader's butt. And nothing's getting done because the only thing the leader recognizes is themselves and people kissing their butt and coming you know, coming up and worshiping them.

Oh, great leader, you know. It's yours. I mean, you hit the nail on the head, and it's ironic because you see people getting promoted because they are the better butt kissers. So, yeah, so people like me that had their own brain, you know, their own thoughts, I mean, yeah, I'm just not cut out for that apparently. So when this happened to you at your office, were there people above this person who took you over, uh, as a manager that, that, that maybe you tried to go to or reach out to, or they just figure,

well, they're there, that's, you know, they're the manager we installed. So deal with it. Yeah. Deal with it. Well, and it's ironic because, um, there was someone above my leader. Um, and, um, unfortunately my leader got to that person first. Um, so that became the truth. So my story was, you know, a little too late. Um, so yeah, apparently, you know, I was, the story was that I was the problem, you know, I'm, I'm the disruptive person. Um, so yeah, apparently, you know, I was, the story was that I was the problem, you know, I'm, I'm the disruptive person. Um, so yeah, yeah, they got there first. And it's interesting to me cause you, you brought up a good point earlier. You've been there for 10 or 11 years and suddenly you're the bad employee.

You built the thing and everything else. You know, one of the things that I used to do with my companies, I used to go around and I knew who my most highly valuable employees were and, and they didn't look pretty. They were the people who worked the long hours. They weren't the people who were standing by the, you know, the time clock at 5 PM in the sprint stance, punch the clock. Um, the, and so I knew who they were. And so when, when people come to me sometimes,

I don't like this person. I like that person. And I'd be like, you know, you know how much I value them, you know, and I would give them time off. I had one,

one of my best employees was a gal who had a son who had a, Oh, what's the thing where people talk to you and stuff. And they're invisible. Basically. Oh, beautiful mind. Sociopathopaths yeah uh it's a beautiful mind uh i forget the name of of the some kind of path yeah but she had a son who had that and i would give her time off to go do stuff but she was like the greatest employee in fact sometimes i wander over my office being honey it's eight please go home to your family come on um But she just was,

she was one of the best employees, but people need to recognize that. Like as a manager, I'd be like, okay, why are we hired this new manager? You know, it's just new. And then why do we have someone who's been here 10, 11 years? And so there's a problem to me, that would be the math. Right. Well, I think it was kind of just like a whole comedy of errors because the person above my boss was also fairly new so you know there you go wow it's it's really interesting so what you did is you turn lemons into lemonade is that correct apparently so yeah um so so i kind of took that lesson. And like I said, spent, you know, really first two months or so after I left there researching this whole bullying thing. Because like I said, it just caught me so off guard. I had no idea what was going on. And the more I learned, the more compelled I felt to try and help others avoid going through what I did. There you go.

And so you started your company, and the name of it is Leadership Reno. Is that correct? It is, yes. There you go. Not Reno. There you go. Not Reno. It's Reno, as in renovations.

Correct. I learned that in the green room. So talk to me about your company, what you've set up, what you do, how you interact with people, and we'll get into some of the details here. So talk to me about your company, what you've set up, what you do, how you interact with people and we'll get to some of the details here. Yeah. So Leadership Reno was quite frankly, very well thought out. It occurred overnight, basically. I just kind of went in like a bull in a china shop and was like, oh, what am I going to do? I need to start a company because I need a website because I need to blog. So, yeah, there was no forethought involved whatsoever.

I kind of just figured it out as I went. But I just knew that I needed a platform to be able to share any type of content that I created or whatever. So, yeah, that's how it came to be. And the reno came from renovation because I realized too, that, you know, um, leaders, the, the really good leaders, like here's the thing. If you ask the employees, if their boss is a good boss, that they'll, you'll get a different story from them than you will probably get from the boss's peers and the boss's boss. So that's how, that's, that's the barometer that I use. And so my employees basically told me you're a great boss and they were, you know, just so, I mean, devastated when I, when I left. And so, um,

just kind of using all that information, I thought, well, you know, this, it seems like it should be obvious, but apparently it's not. So, um, so yeah, so I felt like I needed to kind of take on that as well and try and, you know, create some content to help, um, you know, kind of advise others, uh, as far as what they should be looking for in people leaders, because we're, we're just doing it wrong. Yeah. I mean, I've learned the hard way over many years of business at installing the wrong leader or manager. It costs you a lot of money. It does. Yeah.

And most likely, some of the people that work for you and enjoy your leadership probably left or, you know, quiet quit, which seems to be a popular term nowadays, and just started phoning it in because, you in because they're probably exposed to this toxic leader or whoever this toxic leader is. You pick up other toxic leaders, and they just end up wrecking an organization. You brought up a good point. Leaders and CEOs and people listening to the show from a business aspect on LinkedIn and stuff need to realize that, like you mentioned before, they're really the only people who know how good a leader is for the most part of the people that work under them.

They're employees, yeah. Those are the people you really need to ask. Really? Because, you know, we can all get the pr message from each other in pr peer group leadership peer groups or you know like i mean like like people i've had a lot of friends i'll use this example because twitter is going through a lot of interesting things with elon musk buying it out for those of you who might be watching this years from now that's what's we're in the midst of that right now and uh it's about, I don't know, three weeks

and it's going badly. Just so you probably know how it ends, let me know. Send someone for the future and let me know how it ends. I have people on YouTube that 11 years, 12 years, they'll still comment on videos and I'm like, seriously? That was like 12 years ago.

The price still isn't 100 bucks, Chris. It's now 10.99 on Amazon. You're stupid. And I'm like, dude, that video is like five years old. Come on. So we're in the midst of that right now. And I had a lot of friends that were real Elon Musk worshipers and always the greatest leader of all time.

And sadly, we measure great leaders in this country lately on how much money they can steal i mean make and uh uh so it's it's interesting to me that how much it's really turned like it's it's really kind of exposed him as a leader in fact a lot of his spacex employees have been talking about how he used to be a boss at SpaceX. And given, I'm just quoting them, so I'm not saying this. Don't sue me, Elon. But he seems a little short-tempered. He'll buy you out.

He'll buy out the Chris Voss show and rename it the Twitter show or something. The car crash show. But, you know, they're talking about how when he was at SpaceX, they had to do a lot of what you were talking about with your prior manager, where, you know, the babysitting, the ego, you know, driving, the popularity thing, the trying to, you know, you spend more time trying to manage the manager than you do just trying to do stuff and do your work. And so a lot of that's coming out, and we're seeing the fallout from it.

You know, I mean, they're actually trying to hire people now at Twitter, which is interesting because they just laid off, like, 5,000 people or 4,000 people. Some quit, actually. And a lot of people, especially in the tech business, are like, hey, man, we know our value, man. We're not going to be treated like this. We're going someplace else. And that's what employees will do. And so kind of speaking to that, the perception of what you mentioned earlier,

how people peer review each other as leaders, we're kind of finding out that maybe that's not true. And when you're seeing employees quit you know and going elsewhere and saying no we're out of here i mean i saw videos of whole tech engineers who'd work for 10 years i mean you think of the knowledge base that's in there i just thought oh my god that's a lot of experience and knowledge that you paid for yeah corporation yeah yeah and it's and it's uh i mean it's not just obviously there i mean it's it's a phenomenon uh. And it's, and it's, I mean, it's not just obviously there. I mean, it's, it's a phenomenon globally and it's, you know, like I said, I think I mentioned earlier, it's, it's kind of now because of the COVID thing, since everything's remote work, people have more choices. So they're not dealing with it like we, like we used to have to. But, yeah, and ironically, that boss that, you know, why I left is no longer there either.

So they lost a 10-, 11-year employee. Yeah, yeah. And whoever else was under you. And how long did that boss last? I'm curious. A total of a year. So, yeah, six months after I was gone. Wow, that is destructive.

Yeah, yeah yeah i know and it's sad because i i mean ironically it's like that department was you know we were rocking it i mean we were a very profitable learning and development department and you know a lot of learning and development departments are cost centers but we were a profit center and um yeah it's i can't even imagine what their pnl looks like nowadays but but um yeah i should make pay for you know i remember one of the important lessons i learned years and years ago i can't remember who told the story i think it was in one of tom peter's books but i think it was repeated but uh it was uh ibm it was under ibm and if i recall, it might have been HP. IBM or HP.

Anyway, one of their vice presidents loses like $11 or $20 million on some whatever they decide to do. And they lose like, you know, just this gads of amount of money. And so the vice president comes in the CEO's office and says, I think it was under Watson, comes in the CEO's office and tenders his resignation. He says, you know, I just lost all this money. Clearly, I failed. I suck. I suck. I'm resigning.

And the CEO says to him famously, he says, no, man, we just spent $11 million teaching you something. Right. We're not going to let you go. You're an investment. We just spent $11 million teaching you a. We're not going to let you go. You're an investment. We could spend $11 million teaching you a lesson. Right. Oh, my gosh. And to me, employees that stuck with me the longest

were my best employees and my favorite employees because the knowledge that they had about me, my company, my culture my environment was was almost priceless um yeah yeah it is and i bet i'm bet you know you um were able it not only did they do their job well but it kind of made your job a lot easier i bet so you know why why would you, you know, why would you want to make them unhappy? And I think that's, like I said, part of the problem is we're not listening to the employees. And that's one of the things I tell people is I'm like, you know,

if you, if your employees aren't telling you what a great leader you are, like if they're not the ones providing recommendations for you on LinkedIn, you're probably doing something wrong. You know, like something's not right there. They may be lying to you. They may be saying you're great. But you will really see it come out if they, you know, are providing recommendations for you and,, that, that type of thing. Um, so it's, it's, it's obvious, but for whatever reason, people at the top aren't paying attention to that. And so, and so I tell them, you know, well, how about this? You know, so I, I had 0% turnover while I was there. So I did my employees, they didn't leave. And, um, which was great because we were able to, you know, function and innovate and, you know, continue to evolve.

But they they, you know, they knew what they were supposed to do. And so the when the new boss came in and suddenly, you know, there was this, you know, everything's changing directions and that kind of thing. Um, they were caught kind of almost caught in the middle because they knew that, Oh, um, Lisa has been targeted. Um, you know, we love Lisa, but we need our jobs because we're like, you know, the sole provider or something like that. So, um, so it put them in a weird position too. And it was just a really bad feeling to have to go through that and deal with all of that. So I'm rambling. I had a point there, but it kind of escaped me. It makes sense.

So let's talk about some of the tools that you have on your website. I noticed you have a master class series that you take and market here on the website. Talk to us a little bit about that and how that works. Yeah, so it's, you know, I'm the sole employee, and I suck as a boss apparently because I'm just not meeting my deadlines with my course development. But I've created three e-learning courses so far, working on an instructor-led course, but they're basically about bullying.

And the second course specifically uses a technique that I discovered when doing my research. There's a gentleman out there. His name is John Linhart. He's got a methodology that he uses that literally shuts bullying down. I mean, yeah, it's kind of bizarre. It's almost like it uses, you know, almost reverse psychology on the bully. So they end up, you know, basically beating themselves up so that you don't have to. But that's what the second course is on.

And then, you know, the third part but that was that's what the second course is on and then you know the third part of that series is about leaders you know what we should be looking for the characteristics traits we should be looking for what we should be measuring um we should be looking at turnover um that's where i was going with that original thing turnover zero i had zero percent turnover do you know how much money that saves um it's a third of your payroll is put towards turnover. And so, and even in the most recent studies, Gartner, even, or Gallup rather, quotes that across the globe, we spent like $8.1 trillion in just the cost of turnover last year. And so that's kind of a big deal. So that's kind of how I present it to CEOs is like, do you want to save a third of your payroll? Like I can save you third of your payroll,

but you got to get rid of Skippy over here, who's your key butt kisser and go with a different kind of persona for that role. There you go. So you've got, uh, reducing workplace bullying as a module, how to fight back against workplace bullies, uh, transforming your business by putting more women in charge. Um, good, good, good stuff there. And, uh, and people can order those off your website, get to know them better. You've appeared in a lot of media. How do you work with companies?

When companies want to reach out to you, what sort of companies do you work with, big, medium, small? What kind of companies are companies you can help the most? Well, I mean, what I would like to work with and what I'm working with currently are two very different things. You know, like I said, I'm in my first year and still putting my curriculum together. And so up to this point, I've been giving my courses away for free just to kind of, you know, help people currently in the situation that I was in. But ideally, I would love to be able to meet with, you know, CEOs of the big, you know, big companies where it's going to make a difference. Because if you think about it, we're talking about leaders here.

If you have the right people leaders in place, their influence on the rest of the workforce is just unparalleled. And so why wouldn't you want to put the right people leaders in place, their influence on the rest of the workforce is just unparalleled. And so why wouldn't you want to put the right people leaders in place? Because it not only increases employee engagement, but it also increases their productivity, which is money in your pocket. So, you know, I mean, who wouldn't want to do this, but it is, it is a paradigm shift from what we're currently doing in corporate right now. Like I said, which is just basically, you know, picking, picking the guy that can, you know, work a room or, you know, has the biggest sales or that kind of thing.

So, yeah. Or the best looking guy, which I never get picked for. You didn't, you didn't have to agree with that. Oh, oh, sorry. I meant, yeah, that's a shame. I think you're bullying me now. I'm just kidding. These are just jokes.

We do the comedy here. Infotainment. So you bring up a good point where I see leadership almost kind of like becoming a lost art lately. And I think COVID really exposed some of the bad leaders and bad companies out there you know the great resignation really spoke to it in saying hey man we're tired of being treated this way we're tired of being intimidated in the job we're tired of being held hostage by paychecks and and and people started you know i i mean i sat down with that with covid i'm like you know maybe i should do a life perspective and a nice little break here and go what what's important to me in life? And it realigned my values a lot. I realized how important my

family was. You know, I mean, I hated them before, but now I like them. They're okay now. They're okay now. I mean, I hate them sometimes, but no, I'm just kidding. I love my family. You know, it came down with COVID. It came down to this thing where I, and I think a lot of people went through, it came to this thing where I'm like, Hey, all this stuff doesn't matter. My family matters. The people I love that are close to me that matters because they can be taken from me in a second by this, by this crazy thing that's going on. You know, my mother's older. I mean, I was just reading that I think like 90% of the people

who died from COVID were 65 and above. And I'm like, you know, I really like my mom. I like to keep her around. Yeah. This thing where I like her. She doesn't like me, of course. Have you seen me lately? You know where she lives. No, she's wonderful. But

I think that was when I was young. She didn't like me or something. I don't know. We were horrible kids, so there was that. But no, and I think everyone went through that. You know, I've always, I've been running my company since I was 35, but I think most employees went through a soul search, like I talked about there, where they went,

what am I doing with my life? I'm working for a horrible boss, treats me horribly. Maybe there's some bullying and intimidation that goes on. You know, I've experienced that at different places that I worked when I was young, um, where it was, it was, you know, there was bullying and intimidation and sabotage. You know, I've had that manager that doesn't like you. I think I wrote about my book, um, who doesn't like you and, and does everything to, to, to try and, uh, sabotage you. And it's really sad and it's really destructive. And it's really sad that someone isn't overseeing them going, Hey man, what are you doing with our assets? We know what our assets are and why that can make a difference. Um, and so you're, you're going to design more courses. Is that what you're going to

do on your website and and get more of this stuff out there so that people can dive into it yeah so um right now like i said the content that's out there is is e-learning so it you know self-paced they can find it online um but the the goal um actually right now i'm putting together an instructor-led course so that we can go maybe not on site. We might still be virtual, but, you know, go into companies live and kind of bring the program to them. Because and that's ironic, too, that, you know, talking about the great resignation, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but a huge population of people that have suddenly decided they no longer want to stand for the bullying that they've been receiving is is our teachers, our educators. I don't know if you've seen that, but that's like I consult with a lot of educators that are trying to transition into corporate because they're just tired of getting abused.

And they did like what you said, they kind of reevaluated their lives and they're like, I'm not going to stand for this anymore. So yeah. So that's also part of the consulting that I do is, is helping people who are trying to transition into the corporate world. Cause obviously for teachers, learning and development on the corporate side is where they tend to want to go. So, yeah, it's a phenomenon. And I just don't, I don't get that whole mentality, but I think because they've been able to get

away with it. Exactly. They've been able to get away with it. They're kind of was, you know, we went for a good 30, 40 years where unions were in decline. The power of the employee was in decline, and the power of, you know, big corporations were like, we'll do whatever we want. And I think, you know, like you said, a lot of abuse took place and a lot of bad leadership took place. I mean, it really is interesting to me. I don't know if it got lost in the millennials or the,

I don't know, I don't know about the Gen Zers, we're having an argument with somebody today over that. But, you know, somewhere along the lines, I mean, customer service is one of those other things that got lost. I grew up in the age of Tom Peters and in search of excellence, and it's a big deal for me. But it seems like that got lost. And that's probably also bad leadership as well. So people don't realize not only how bad they're losing with employees, how bad they're losing with customers as well.

So there's probably a whole new course series for you there. Right, yeah. Well, a lot of my transitioning teachers are going into customer service for that reason. You know, it's funny. I saw a TikTok person who went viral and it was a teacher quitting to go to work for amazon as a manager and they could make so much more money and they love you know my mom was a teacher for 20 years my sister was a teacher they we really should revere teachers more as the values that they deliver. And even then I watched the transition with her and she's been retired for

maybe 20 years. Yeah, probably 25 years. She's been retired. But she was a teacher for 20 years and she would call me up and, you know, we talk like sons and daughters do. Her sons and moms do. And it's, I'm still getting back from Thanksgiving. It's still in the pie back at the thing.

So we would talk, and she'd tell me about how more and more these helicopter parents were coming in. And she goes, Chris, there used to be years when I was a teacher, and I would, you know, we'd sit down with parents to go, hey, you know, Billy's struggling and Billy isn't paying attention. And here's some stuff that you can do. And they'd be like, okay, sure. And then it became this blame game where it's like suddenly I became the parent of these kids where the teachers would come in and anything that was wrong with the children and we were trying to help the children out by involving the parent was our fault. Well, maybe you're just not teaching them right. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, maybe you're doing this. And she was considering leaving the business. I think she retired early because of it. Yeah. But this was like 25 years ago. Okay. You know, we've seen what a fallout has gone out, especially from COVID, some of the attacks of teachers over mask wearing stuff. Yeah.

But, yeah, I can imagine there's a lot of people transitioning into that. especially from COVID, some of the attacks of teachers over mask wearing and stuff. But yeah, I can imagine there's a lot of people transitioning into that. You know, one of the targets I'm sure you work with or will be working with in the future is entrepreneurs. There's a lot of people that are leaving companies and going to be entrepreneurs. The big joke about Twitter right now and the mass exodus there is that this is where the big boom comes out of. It's during recessions like this and big layoffs like this where these brilliant people that are engineers that have 10 years at Twitter, 10 years at a company like you did, they're leaving, going starting their own companies. They got some pretty darn good ideas because they worked at companies for 10 years and they know what the good ideas are.

So they're the ones hitting out the venture capital funds. So this is really important. You know, you talk about on your website about culture, about creating a culture of employees who are innovative, collaborative, and motivated to do their best work. Let's touch on that because I learned a long time ago, culture is one of the most important things in the environment you set the tone in your company. Yeah. And ironically, it starts at the top.

And so if you've got a culture of toxicity, there's somebody at the top that's kind of allowing that to happen. So that's clue number one. But it does. and it matters so much. And especially, like I said, nowadays where people can just up and leave, you know, at the drop of a hat. Um, it, and that comes that, that is where leaders become even more important because they're the ones who can salvage, um, their employees from leaving. Employees are, quite frankly, they're more leaving leaders than they are leaving jobs. If they like their leader, they'll stay. So yeah, so the company culture is critical here. And ironically, at least in my situation

and what I've heard from other people who were bullied at work, HR isn't really your friend in that scenario. So, you know, it's kind of a mixed message because, of course, you know, HR would be probably good customers of mine, but they probably don't like the message I'm sending. So, yeah, so it's kind of a catch 22. You know, you bring up a, you bring up a good point. I actually see that I'm laughing because I actually see that a lot on Tik TOK. There's a bunch of HR people and some of it flows over into LinkedIn. There's a bunch of HR, uh, like consultants or something. Uh, and they always, they always, they make a lot of these videos. If you go search them, the HR is not your friend. They're really not.

And it's so ironic because it's like I found out personally, they'll choose the person with the bigger title over the person with the tenure. So, yeah, that's what happened to me. It's really crazy. You know, I had one time, I'll tell the story. I don't know if it's interesting or not, but it's an example of where bad leaders can do a thing. I'd originally gotten kicked over or promoted over three to four levels of management to run a facility management company for a facility for Cincinnati Bell. And it pissed off a lot of people who'd worked there for years.

But I come in, they'd had horrible managers. They'd had the popular high school managers. And so they put me up with number three in the facility. And I was working hard doing stuff. And one day, my regular boss who'd promoted me and hired me, he took like two weeks off for vacation. And so this new gal who'd come in, they'd brought her in from the outside. And she one day sits me down and says, hey, man, we're writing you up, giving you three days suspension. I'm like, what for? She goes,

you know, one of the employees said you go into this certain executive bathroom that I never went into and you're doing cocaine in cocaine in there well you stopped doing cocaine at work right I mean well you know I'm like have you seen my salary I can't afford cocaine like I don't I don't make shit here I mean I was like a 20 year old kid I can't even afford cocaine like that would be the last drug i'd be doing like you know like how would you know this was in since the 90s when cocaine was i don't know what cocaine was back then but it was probably a lot and i said i said well who made this accusation well i can't tell you it was clearly one of these people i've been i'd hopped over management with, and they were pissed at me. But, you know, after you see the match.

So I was, I was pissed. So I was like, what do you do now? And they literally, there was no give. It was just like, you get a three day suspension. Yeah. Wow. Whatever, what someone said. Wow.

No proof. Yeah. So that night I go to a drug clinic. I get a drug test, right? Right. Yeah. Nothing on it. The next day I call up, uh, this guy won't talk to me. So I go to the manager above her and I'm trying to contact him

and I can't get through to him. Um, and so I go to the manager above him cause I'm pissed. This is a three day suspension, no pay. And, um, so I, I end up talking to the, like, what is it? Two levels up and she says, okay, well, we'll look into it. So she, she says, you know, I'm sorry this happened. You know, clearly you're not taking cocaine. It was the most dumbest thing ever. Um, and so, uh, they kicked it down to, uh, they kicked it down to the manager blow me blow her they didn't have time so we're up we're down to next level above the manager your manager and uh he uh doesn't they don't fix it at all they don't do anything at all he actually writes me up for going above him oh wow that wow. That's classic.

Wow. Are you freaking kidding me? It was just, it was just the management of fools. I think I lasted about a year there and then left, but I trained over 800 people. I was there. Um,

this facility had 1600 people in any given time in it. Um, and, uh, it was just crazy, but that's an example of how you lose great employees over just stupid stuff, bullying. And then why would you write someone up for going above your, I mean, it was just, that's how politically stupid this company was.

Well, speaking of write-ups, one of my write-ups, because, you know, you have to, you know, give people the verbal warning and then the written warning before you constructively dismiss them. Cause we're trying to, you know, chase them out, um, before we, we have to fire them. Um, one of the things I was written up for was, um, my emails. Apparently I didn't know how to write emails anymore. Um, and, um, and I was using emojis. I'm not supposed to use emojis in emails. So, yeah, I mean, it was just an alternate reality, but that's part of the bullying, the sabotage.

That's gaslighting. I mean, I didn't know what gaslighting was before that, and I was like, oh, yeah, I've been there. I had to learn what gaslighting was the hard way, too. Right? Like, who wants to learn that lesson? But yeah, so now I know what it is. And that's apparently, you know, there's an alternate reality that they can create.

You know, we had one of the doctors from GMA3 on. I forget her name and she wrote a great book during COVID. But she was communicating. She had like one of those direct lines to Dr. Fauci during the COVID thing. And so we asked for fun during the show. We're like, does he use emojis? Because, you know, he's kind of like 80 years old and like the hip. And, you know, my mom uses emoji.

I can't, I'm just like, I don't know, smiley face. That's all I got. I don't understand. If you write to me emojis, I'm like, I don't know what's going on. I'm old. It's just the way I am. Just put me out of pasture. I'm the guy who sits on the lawn and screams at kids all day.

Get off my lawn. Get off my emoji lawn. The ball is mine now. But even him, at almost 80 years old, uses emojis on his communications. So whoever told you that you can't use emojis on your email, screw those people. Yeah.

What are some ways people can get in touch with you, work with you, get to know you better, find about hiring you for consulting gigs or using your different, your different schooling products that you're putting up there to educate people? What are some ways people can do that? I think probably the easiest way is to find me on LinkedIn. I'm there frequently. And then,

of course, my website, which we already gave the address. But either of those two is the best way to find me because I have gotten a lot of clients through LinkedIn this year. And, you know, I think it's sad that there's people needing this kind of help. But I'm, you know, I'm glad that I can at least offer something to help, you know, help with that battle. But there's a lot of people in this space doing that kind of work as well. And they're even looking at passing legislation. There's legislation being proposed specifically against workplace bullying. And so this isn't the sexual harassment stuff, because we know that's already illegal, but they're trying to tap on this bullying thing

into that as well. So that's how big of a deal it is, sadly. Yeah. Well, LinkedIn is such a great place. We do so well there, and we have for years. I mean, we've got 130,000 group. I built from zero over there. It would probably be much larger if I had it for Microsoft, buying it and ruining it.

They kind of ruin groups for about two or three years. But it's such a great place. If you can, get a newsletter going over there, a LinkedIn newsletter. That thing is like freaking huge. Ours just keeps growing and growing. And there's this social

chat that's over there now. We've been trying to get that going. In fact, I need to make a note to go try and make that work better. You kind of have to schedule things like way far ahead in the time and try and get those people that like it. LinkedIn is just such a great place. And I think, you know, I've been spending more time over there since Twitter kind of looks like it's definitely hitting the wall. We're becoming more toxic than it used to be. Evidently, chinese chinese just flooded

it with a bunch of crap but uh it's such a great place to put stuff yes um you you know there's even we've had people on the show that have done the courses on linkedin you know those those people are making a killing i mean you know especially the people who create LinkedIn courses, you know, it's like they're just suddenly, you know, millionaires, you know, whereas last year they were, you know, jobless. It's very lucrative. And LinkedIn of 2022 is so different from what it used to be that I think that's kind of the common message that I've been hearing across the board this whole year. Because I say I do the same thing. I mean, I joined LinkedIn in 2008. Never really went there other than, you know, when it was, you know, time to, you know, find a job or something. I don't know.

I didn't go there very often. But this year, you know, I kind of had to go there because I was trying to find resources for the bullying thing. And it's and everyone has said the same thing. It's like it's so different. It's so much different now. And there's some really good people on there, too. I mean, some of my closest friends are now, you know, my virtual friends. But but they have you know, it's like there's still some bad people on there, of course. They're everywhere. But there it seems to me of the social media platforms, this is the one that has the most kindest people, the most kind people. Um, they're just, they're congregated there. And there's a lot of people wanting to help other people and, and a lot of entrepreneurs,

you know, doing kind of like what you said, it's like, um, you know, what's important to me now, it's not, it's not working at this, you know, conglomerate. So, so yeah, it's, it's like i'm you know what's important to me now it's not it's not working at this you know conglomerate so so yeah it's it's definitely a lot different so um i've been really enjoying it yeah it's really the place i mean it's it's uh you know the other thing too is like facebook has gotten really out of control of of suspending people and uh it's kind of like what twitter did when it first started it suspended so people, it lost its trust thing. I used to advise, who was it, Wilson, Ted Wilson? Fred Wilson.

Fred Wilson on it in the early days. I actually caused some fights between the three of them. What's his, Biz Stone, what a name. And Mr. Zucchini Sucker. What was his name? Zucchini drink. What was it? Cucumber thing.

Mr. Jack. I caused a couple of fights, evidently, in the boardroom with some of the things I was feeding to. Oh, wow. But I was telling him, you're going to lose the trust of people and Facebook's going to win.

Guess what? I was right. Right, yeah. And Facebook's going to do that same thing. I mean, I got suspended for a joke I did where I said in October I was going to dress up as Jeffrey Dahmer. And everyone's doing Jeffrey Dahmer jokes because of that Netflix show. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I said I was going to hand out little gingerbread human men or beings or something. You know, it's a joke. Yeah. I know, probably. Yeah. I mean, but not like, not like I was going to really do it.

I got suspended for that because you can't tell jokes about serial killers. Meanwhile, I see all over Facebook, you know, people doing memes about the Jeffrey Dahmer show and stuff. And, and, and I'm like, really?

And you go on any of the platform, but their, their thing, a friend of mine got suspended the other day for saying happy birthday to somebody. For some reason, their algorithm tripped that up. So that's a heinous crime. Oh, that's crazy. So yeah, LinkedIn is so professional. It's such a great place to be. And I think that's why. People have to be professional over there. They can't be like, oh, you can't show up in your underwear and socks and robe and coffee.

You got to be professional. Because employees look on that. But a lot of people don't realize a lot of employees look on other stuff. So let's stomp out bullying, intimidation. And, you know, it's one of those things where if you lead people, if you take them on a journey, if you inspire them, you motivate them, you get to their hearts and minds. And that's what a lot of our great leaders do and did. Yes. You know, they got into our hearts and minds and they, you know, people, people, you can try and whip people and drive them and go, go there or else.

And then, you know, some people go there, you know, and go, well, okay, I'll put up with this because I need a paycheck. But a lot of the great people, especially ones that know their value or have value, be like, yeah, go someplace else. And they're looking, you know, people are looking for great leaders. This is what I learned in building communities and doing stuff all my life. People are looking for great leadership. They really are. And my banner on LinkedIn, I even have a little quote on my banner that says, you know, something about inspiring the best in others. You know, I mean, great leaders inspire the best in others. And that's really what it's all about. It kind of is what it boils down to.

So, yeah, it's definitely, we definitely need to improve in that area for sure. Most definitely. I mean the, the inspiring others, getting others, you know, to me there's a, you can, you know, what's an old saying that people use? I see this in your website, inspire greatness in others. You'll never be disappointed. The, you know, you, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. You know, you can try, you know, you're going to drink water or else. But when you inspire the hearts and minds of people, you get the best out of them.

It's kind of really the difference between even like when you see political genres of capitalism and freedom versus communism or, and freedom, uh, versus, uh, communism or socialism. Yes. Inspiring the best minds to be free to, to do. And that's where you bring out the best human achievement and experience. So anyway, this has been fun and wonderful. Lisa,

I'll be on the show. Brilliant discussion. Thank you. I've enjoyed it myself as well. So I appreciate, um, you taking the time to time to hear me out. There's still hope for us, but we'll get there.

Well, with your help, we'll definitely make it. And maybe we should create a campaign. No more bad leaders. That's a hashtag or something. I don't know. Leadership reform. That's what I've been calling it. Leadership reform.

We need reform. There you go. Leadership reform. Yeah. That's what I've been calling it. Leadership reform. We need reform. There you go. Leadership reform. Yeah. That's a good phrase. And I think a lot more people and CEOs need to listen to this and corporations and boards need to listen to this because there's a lot of them running around going, oh, why is there a great resignation? I thought they liked this. We're paying them good.

No, that's not as important anymore. Yeah. It really isn't. It's more than that. It's quality of life. And's got to lead by heart. It's quality of life. And you bring up a good point. People follow leaders.

Anyway, give us your.com one more time so people can find you on the interwebs. Sure. LeadershipReno.com. There you go. Thanks for coming on the show, Lisa. We really appreciate it. My pleasure. I appreciate it.

And thanks to our amazing audience. Have I told you guys you're amazing lately? That's every show. I tell you guys you're amazing lately? That's every show. I tell you guys are amazing. We definitely value you every day and all the stuff you do. Thanks for all the calls and different messages you send in the show.

Somebody did that over the weekend and just touched my heart. They actually called the show. It was really funny. I'm thinking about putting a 1-800 number up. Let me message and let me know if I should put up a 1-800 number where you can call and leave a message on the show.

Mainly because I'm a narcissist and I need people to feed my ego and tell me how great I am. So there's always that. Thanks for tuning in, folks. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.