How Leadership Culture Shapes Success

Transcript - How Leadership Culture Shapes Success

Rich: On this episode of Team Building Saves the World.

Haley Grayless: Those components of emotional intelligence is self-awareness. Brain scans will show that these leaders actually, it almost looks like they have brain damage. They need to be walking around the cement floors and talking with employees and saying, Hey, what obstacles are in your way?

Do you have any better ideas for this? Yeah, I mean it would be nice just to like feel appreciated once in a while and have you say thank you.

Rich: Hello team. It’s me. Your old friend, Rich Rininsland host of team buildings saves the world and I want you to know how grateful I am to have you on with us today.

There you see how easy that was? In this episode, we’re gonna talk about how to be a better manager with trainer and entrepreneur Haley Grayless. But before we do, I have to share some love with all of my supporters at TeamBonding. If your team is ready to experience teamwork with the Power of Play, then visit TeamBonding.com to learn more.

Now, team, join me in learning how corporate toxicity turned one woman from just a single member of a team to her own boss. Join me as I meet with the curator and CEO of Växa Collective, Haley Grayless. Haley, how are you? Thank you so much for coming on.

Haley Grayless: Oh, thank you. I’m so happy to be here, Rich.

Rich: So my team out there is aware of what’s going on. We’ve been trying to get you on for months, including back toward the end of season five. But, you know, scheduling issues and conflicts and, and can I just say why are you stalking me? You know, why? Why are, can’t you just…? No, I’m, no, I’m very glad that you’re here. I’m so happy that you were able to make it on.

But let’s start off, let’s tell my team out there a little bit about you. Who are you, how did you get into management training, and why is this an important part of your life?

Haley Grayless: Yeah, so I am Haley Grayless. So I started my business in like full-time, left my job before in October of 2018. And so it’s been almost seven years in business, which is amazing.

I’m so happy to say I made it through the pandemic. You know, that was a very challenging time.

Rich: Interesting time to start to change your career. Yeah.

Haley Grayless: Oh yeah, I don’t, and you know, I’m glad I didn’t know what was to come because I probably wouldn’t have started my business because I would’ve been like, oh, you can’t do that during a pandemic.

But yeah, the reason that I’m so passionate about management training and leadership development, culture and team building is because organizations that I’ve worked for in the past have had very like toxic culture. And so I’m so passionate about like, well, getting my hands dirty. Like what can I do to actually make things better and to change, be the change I wish to see in the world, like Gandhi said, you know?

So I, I was pretty unhappy in the organization where I was working. Like, I mean, extreme anxiety I had, I had never really experienced anxiety before. I’m not a person who is naturally that way. I’ve never really been homesick, like I’m pretty chill. But I felt like the organization changed a lot when a couple of like new leaders came on board who were senior vice president level. It was a big nonprofit and they just totally changed the vibe of the whole place. Like it went from more trusting and more like entrepreneurial or entrepreneurial where like, you know, we could be a little more innovative and things like that. And it totally changed where like they were not trusting of us and they would accuse people of things and it was like all the things you’re not supposed to do for a good culture was what they were doing.

So I ended up getting my hand slapped metaphorically a few times for trying to make things better. And I ended up finding someone who was in, was doing kind of similar work to what I do now. Not totally the same, but I ended up asking her, like, I heard her speak somewhere at a networking event and I was, I asked her if I could get breakfast with her.

So we met up. I asked like, so how did you get into this career? How did you qualify yourself for this? And she mentioned that she got her master’s in organizational development focusing on leadership. And so I was like, oh, no. Like I, I loved college, but I do not wanna go back to school. I’m not into that idea of homework again.

And she was like, oh no, it is, it’s a great program. You should absolutely look at, look into it. They make it enjoyable and like easy for working people. And it’s not like there’s a ton of math or something because it’s not it’s not focused on that at all. It’s like projects, papers, proposals, presentations, things like that that you work on.

So. I looked into it and got my master’s started in 2017. Then left my job in 2018, so I wasn’t quite done with my master’s yet.

Rich: Right.

Haley Grayless: But I graduated in May of 2019 with that, and by then I had already been doing it, doing my business a few months and still was figuring out what the heck I was doing.

But I’m really, really glad that I just kept on with it. I kept persisting instead of giving up and acting like this is too hard and I don’t know how to sell it. But once I figured that stuff out and had more of a system, things have been so much better and I, I find so much like fulfillment in what I do now.

Rich: That’s Växa Collective that you founded?

Haley Grayless: Yes. The name of my business, Växa Collective I started it be, and boy, I chose the word Växa because my dad’s side is like Swedish, Norwegian, and it’s the Swedish word for to grow. So think people in companies grow is the focus.

Rich: Can I ask, because I don’t want, I don’t wanna, you know, reignite any trauma or anything for you, but what was it, what are some of the changes?

Just gimme an example of some of the changes you tried to implement that you got smacked down for before you decided to go off on your own.

Haley Grayless: Oh yeah. So one of the things that we would use is this just like basic generated report from our like software system, our database and so when you would take it to a company, like it was an organization where we raised money within corporations, like within companies for the community.

And so I’d take this really boring black and white sheet with like five years of giving history to the organization and talk with my like campaign manager at that company. And it was sometimes the data was wrong and had no spot on it for like. What are the changes like variables or anything like that, like, you know, is your workforce smaller?

Do you have a new CEO who’s not supportive of this organization? What kind of incentives can we work in? Well, like any spot for strategy. So what I did was created what I called the company campaign plan, the CCP. And what we did was like more manually entering that information from just like the past maybe two years of history.

And then there was a page in it where it was like, okay, what has changed? So maybe it’s like, oh, our health insurance premiums went up a lot and we did layoff, so we have 20% less employees and dah, dah, dah. So it was, it was important for us to be able to have that, to make a more accurate goal, right?

Haley Grayless: With strategies for how much they would raise that year versus just saying, okay, you should do a 10% increase. Well, there’s a lot of variables that can not only prevent a 10% increase in their giving, but also like it might be good for us just to stay. 10% under what they did last year. And I’d rather be realistic and know what’s to come with, you know, still optimism and working hard and everything. Anyway, so I created this and I did it with my friend who was like in marketing, who was the graphic designer. And we kind of just did it under the radar to test it at first, the people out externally loved it. And then I kind of got caught. Well, I was like, you know, it’s one of those things like ask for forgiveness instead of permission ’cause I knew it wouldn’t go well.

Rich: Sure, sure.

Haley Grayless: Some people loved it, but the top person who I referred to a couple times for some reason just hated it. And I don’t think it’s that she actually hated it. I think that she saw it as a threat. You know, she was maybe intimidated —

Rich: overreaching, coming for my job, that kind of…?

Haley Grayless: Yeah, but that’s…

Rich: paranoid?

Haley Grayless: Yeah, so that’s one example. Like it was such a downer. Also it was fundraising, so you should really be networking in the community and be seen out there if you’re in net in in fundraising. Yeah. And so I’d be at like, at an event through the Chamber of Commerce and she’d either see me there, some would I get, someone would say they saw me there or something, and she would not talk to me directly, but talk to my boss to talk to me.

So like indirect feedback is something I preach against. But, so I would get in trouble for going to an event that my supervisor approved. Because, she couldn’t stand up to the big, bad wolf, you know?

Rich: Gotcha.

Haley Grayless: So like that kind of thing, like, instead of just asking me, Hey, like, what, you know, what value do you see in you being there?

You know? Mm-hmm. Like, let’s see if this is really a good fit for your time.

Rich: Right.

Haley Grayless: Would just be like, you shouldn’t be there. And she wanted me more like chained to, you know, a lot of us chain to our desks. You shouldn’t do that in fundraising. Like the money doesn’t come from the computer, it comes from relationships.

Yeah. So. So yeah, it was just stuff like that on and on and on. And then I got accused of saying something that I had not done or doing something I hadn’t said. And so no one would, they wouldn’t believe me. It was so strange. And so I ended up going through probably seven months, like the end of 2015 of such extreme anxiety that like, I’m not kidding, my hair was falling out.

Rich: Mm-hmm.

Haley Grayless: I could barely eat. That’s probably why my hair was falling out ’cause like, I mean, I was not taking enough calories in. Sure. I think I had like one individual sized Chobani yogurt in the morning. If I could like choke it down, maybe some cream in my coffee and I could barely eat the rest of the day.

I just, and I, I never had a problem with appetite ever. So that was crazy to me. I would feel this impending doom. All the time I would wake up in a sweat. Yeah. Like it was horrible, horrible anxiety. And I never would wanna cause that kind of like pain in another person. So I don’t understand why some leaders out there are like that.

You know, who they just probably don’t care. I think they just think about themselves and maybe about the bottom line. And so what I ended up doing was. Just kind of, I mean, it almost made me like, feel like my spirit was crushed. Yeah. And people would literally comment and say, you know, you’re not acting like yourself these days.

Your sunshine is gone. And I would, yeah, I’m absolutely miserable. So it was, oh, it was just a terrible time.

Rich: So now eight years later, you get these management teams calling out to you, looking for help. Is this the primary thing that you seem to be noticing across the board for most organizations that, that lack of trust or that lack of psychological safety for their employees and each other?

Haley Grayless: I think that is one of the biggest things, Yes, that they’re missing. Yeah. So it’s in my framework that I take clients through. So I have a five pillar system, the five pillars of successful leadership. Pillar number three is cultivate a culture of psychological safety. Mm-hmm. So for people who are listening who might not know what that is, psychological safety is, term coined by Dr. Amy Edmondson, where a team can feel like they can appear vulnerable, bring their full selves to work, take risks, be innovative, ask questions, be themselves, all of that without fear of retaliation, humiliation, and opportunities being taken from them. So that’s one thing I really work on with leaders and with their teams to make sure that, because it has to go both sides too. The leader have to show psychological safety and encourage people to take risks and all of that. And then you have to have people on the team doing it. And they, I mean, I’m a big believer in like feedback and conflict resolution going both ways. So I don’t care if somebody is an entry-level employee, if they wanna talk with like the CEO, you know, within reason about certain things.

You know things they observe and they do it with like a curiosity and humility. I think that’s a really important thing, like we should be talking with everybody in our organizations. Nobody’s too good for another person.

Rich: The unfortunate thing that I’ve seen and heard over the last six years of this podcast is that a lot of these upper C-suites, what have you, they don’t know that this is what they’re doing.

Yeah, they just see it as this company has a problem. And then, you know, like the employees don’t reach for things. They don’t, they don’t wanna grow with us, they just wanna stay planted where they are. What kind of methods or what kind of systemic problems have you seen translate into that? Mm-hmm. Basically like when the client reaches out to you, what do they say?

That immediately makes me go, I know what your problem is and here’s how we’re gonna fix it.

Haley Grayless: I think a lot of it is the conflict thing. So I’ve been recently talking about conflict being dealt with so poorly. I’m wanting to write a book on this whole idea too, of like curious confrontation.

So instead of this pendulum that we see with like the style of conflict from leaders or anyone, right? People will either be aggressive where they assume the worst about people. They won’t listen. They label employees like, well, that’s just a problem employee. That’s an entitled millennial, or Gen Z, or they’re lazy.

That’s the kind of like aggressive side and like then it’s their way or the highway. There’s not like. Curiosity coming from them. There’s not humility. Right? And so then the other side that we’ll see from leaders or anyone again, is being too avoidant. And the avoidant people either ignore things and just like keep moving on, like nothing’s happening.

So they kind of sweep it under the rug or they’ll ghost someone. So people kind of think like ignore and ghost, is that the same thing? Yeah. You know, ghost is like, now you’re not even talking to that person. You’re almost like disappearing from their life.

Rich: Right.

Haley Grayless: Ignoring is like letting that person get away with it more. Ghosting is like you didn’t even give them a chance to explain. You’re not actually addressing it. And neither of those are good. So what we wanna do is be like more in the middle of this scale or pendulum, which is more assertiveness. That’s one thing I’m like working with leaders on is how do you be an assertive communicator when that looks like clear and kind, gentle and direct? Like they can all coexist.

Rich: Okay.

Haley Grayless: Directness is not always mean. Like you can say it in a way that’s very kind to other people.

Rich: Sure.

Haley Grayless: Mm-hmm.

Rich: And this is always a problematic question ’cause I know how it’s going to sound in my head. But I always wonder how it sounds for the team out there, but how do you get management to realize that management training is what is needed?

That this isn’t the poor young, you know, millennials and Gen Zs who are coming into the marketplace and, you know, have a and a brimming with ideas and energy. But you just keep putting them down and telling ’em to sit quietly in the corner. How do you, how do you get them to realize that maybe the problem is not the teams of people under them, but is you?

Haley Grayless: Yeah. Oh, that’s one of the hardest parts because you know if, especially if they are not like on, like they’re not a client yet and I’m working through like a sales process, it can be tough. But like the only clients that I really wanna work with, who I will actually see impact happen with are the people who will hear me out when I say, this is not just the problems of your middle managers or, you know, needing to train new leaders.

It’s even you guys at the top, like maybe you, I don’t care if you’ve been a CEO for 30 or 40 or 50 years. You might not have been doing it right. You know, like when I first started my business, there were a few all men, I’ll be honest, who asked me, what makes you think you can do this? And I thought it was such a weird way to phrase it, like really hurtful.

But I, you know, I try to take it and just like let it fire me up in a good way to give me more like energy and pizazz. It was men. I really respected, like either people have like mentor type things, like even like an uncle who I love, but they phrased it like that. It was a consistent thing.

What makes you think you can do this? You know, like going to a CEO in his fifties… First of all, assuming the CEO is older and a man…

Rich: Yeah.

Haley Grayless: And tell him how to run his company? That’s like what I heard probably three or four times, like as I was starting. And I thought, what makes you think I can’t?

First of all, like, I’ve got a master’s in this and they don’t, I’m naturally gifted in this stuff. Like, I’m not good at math, I’m not good at singing. I’m really slow at running. There’s things I’m bad at. I am really good at seeing what’s missing from a team? I’m really good at being able to see like what tools, models, scripts, like whatever we need to use.

What can we do to make a team work together better? Like I’m really good at team development, I’m good at leadership and that’s why I think I can do it. Like I’m already doing it internally at my organization as a manager and managing up to other people. So that’s. I just try to be really confident and not take it as like, you know, something that offended me, but instead as something that could fuel me and fire me up to prove them wrong and be able to do it in a, in a right way that it creates more impact for people out there.

Rich: Especially if they’re, they’re using the same practices that were in place back in the eighties.

Haley Grayless: Mm-hmm.

Rich: It’s not the same world anymore. And you’ve gotta learn to grow with it, I suppose is the best way to put it. So can you gimme a good example. You don’t have to name names by all means, I don’t want you to spill those kind of beans, but give me a good example of when you actually saw what I love to call those aha moments. Those, oh, I get it! Maybe she was right! Maybe this is actually something I need to think about and try to put into practice.

Haley Grayless: Yeah. Okay. I’ve got a good example from a few months ago, and then I actually been telling this story at other clients.

I was working with one of my favorite clients. It’s a pretty small organization, a small company here in Kansas City, and we were talking about the different types of feedback. So what I call curious or I’ve, I can’t even think of like, negative feedback, criticism…

Rich: Criticism. Yeah.

Haley Grayless: Yeah. And so I, what I talk about with people here is those kinds of things like talking about like supportive feedback, fearless feedback. Being able to say like, this is how some you know, here’s how you could do something better. And then positive reinforcement.

And so what the CEO really realized it, ’cause he was actually sitting in on this session and a lot of times you don’t see a CEO actually sitting in on management training. And so what he realized when we were talking about positive reinforcement was that when I’m saying, you know, you need to be like thanking your team members, even when they are just doing their, the bare minimum, they’re doing their job.

They’re not necessarily doing anything that’s above and beyond. You should still thank them and show appreciation and show that you’re, you know, you’re glad they’re there. And you support them and whatever they need, you know, you wanna remove obstacles for them. He had this like, epiphany, you know, little light bulb go off over his head, metaphorically, where he said, you know what I’m realizing, unless people are going above and beyond, I don’t think I ever thank anybody for doing their job. And I’ve always thought, well, why? You know? Why should I? Because they’re just doing their job. That’s why they’re here. It’s why I’m paying them. But I had given him all this information about why it’s so, so, so important to communicate that even with his team. And so he asked the other leaders in the room who were in this training about it and they literally were like, yeah, I mean, it would be nice just to like feel appreciated once in a while and have you say thank you. And so he decided that he was going to start saying thank you and showing appreciation just for people being there and doing their job.

The reason for that is because I’d much rather thank somebody for doing their job, for doing the bare minimum. Instead of never, ever, ever giving them thankful thankfulness or showing gratitude. And so that wears them out. They’re never getting thanked. Their work is never acknowledged, and then they start to do under their job, under the bare minimum, and they’re not performing very well at all because it’s gonna be easier to say, Hey, thank you for being here today. You did a great job on whatever project or with that customer, whatever. Because people who feel appreciated will do far more than is expected.

You’re gonna get more and more out of them, and they’re going to feel more inspired because they’re, they’re thanked and there’s gratitude in the air and like they feel that like warmth in their heart, like all of that, it really does mean that they’re gonna work harder for you.

So I’d much rather thank them now for doing their job instead of have to like, build them up when they’re not doing enough and like, and I have to like counsel them or coach them through it. You’re saving yourself time in the long run.

Rich: Right. And it really is such a simple little thing, but it can make a world of difference.

I mean, I came up in a market that was basically your thank you is the paycheck I’m giving you every week. Or two weeks or whatever it might happen to be. And, but if I do half the amount of work, I normally put in half the effort that I give you weekly, I still get the same paycheck.

Haley Grayless: Mm-hmm.

Rich: So why would I work as hard? Why would I put my thoughts and, and my goals and, and my thinking into doing more when I can do less and still get the same. Thank you.

Haley Grayless: Yeah. I. Yeah, exactly. That’s why it’s, I mean, having some sort of like in incentive is a really good thing. And not just like a pizza party, but if you can give a bonus, if you can promote that person or give them more leadership opportunities, like figuring out what inspires somebody.

Like I’m the kind of person who my like mentor at work a few years ago used to joke like, because I’d be like, oh, yay, I got this new project. She goes, well, you remember what the reward for good work is… more work a lot of times. But for me, I wanted more leadership opportunities and more like things delegated to me.

Right. So it was a good fit. I mean, yes, more money and, and a promotion is, is very good too, but, you know, you can’t do that all the time. So that, like somebody knew what inspired me. They gave me more opportunities for leadership. Now some people would not want that. They really are money motivated.

You’re gonna have to figure out what works for you and your company for that kind of situation. Right?

Rich: Sure. Just steady Freddy’s as we call ’em.

Haley Grayless: Yeah, but like dealing with the positive reinforcement and constructive criticism. That’s what I was trying to think of earlier. Constructive criticism.

I like to call it constructive feedback instead. That’s why I couldn’t think of the term. And so that’s one of those ways that I saw somebody actually like, have a light bulb go off and be able to apply something and realize that he wasn’t doing it currently and he could be better.

Rich: I know that management training is, is what it is that you focus on, but, how much does employee feedback play a role in your work? Like, do you actually take time to get to hear what some of those I don’t, and again, I don’t wanna say lesser thans, but the, the lower rung workers are.

Haley Grayless: Yeah, so we’ll use either, like sometimes companies already have like a best places to work survey data that they’ve like paid for.

So I’ll look through that if they’ve already done it ’cause I don’t wanna like survey them to death. You know, there’s some fatigue that can happen or maybe they have a employee engagement survey results that they, that they can share with me or we’ll do that sort of thing if they haven’t done it.

Psychological safety audit is another thing. I just did one a couple weeks ago with a client. We’re talking tomorrow about the next steps, like my recommendations for improving certain areas within it. So using that data or maybe even a 360 survey and review. So if people aren’t familiar with 360 surveys, usually, you know, when we get feedback at work, it’s just from our direct boss.

Rich: Right.

Haley Grayless: But this is where there’s a few people who are above you. Your level like peers and then people who even report to you or who are lower level. So it’s a 360 look at how do other employees experience you which really helps with like my first pillar of successful leadership, which is growing in emotional intelligence.

One of those components of emotional intelligence is self-awareness. Most people think they’re self-aware. Like the studies show from Dr. Tasha Uric, if you’re familiar, that 95% of people when polled say, oh yeah, I’m totally self-aware. But then the data shows that when she actually does the research, 10 to 15% of people are in the aware quadrant of her work.

Rich: Hmm.

Haley Grayless: So I think that the reason for that is that there’s like a comma in the definition. So self-awareness is that you’re aware of your own moods, emotions, and drives. And so people are like, oh, yeah, yeah, I’m, I’m aware of those. Which no, 95% of people are not even aware of their own emotions. They can’t label them.

But then the comma is then and its effect on other people. So my emotional effect on other people, if I’m feeling irritable today because it’s gloomy or I have a headache and I’m snapping at others, I need to be aware of how my irritability is going to affect Rich or Camille or whatever.

Rich: Okay.

Haley Grayless: Because that is true self-awareness. Being able to say like, okay, I need to apologize because I snapped at Rich today, and I, I need to know. I need him to know that wasn’t in my intent, and I hope he forgives me

Rich: well, I do.

Haley Grayless: That’s beautiful, right?

Rich: Yeah.

Haley Grayless: And if a leader does that, I mean anybody at any level, it’s great.

But if a leader does that to somebody lower than them apologizes and admits their own fallibility, it actually behooves them. It like begets more respect if you show transparency and humility like that.

Rich: Nice. You had mentioned that you have an actual, a psychological safety survey. What does that even look like?

Haley Grayless: There’s a few questions on it. It’s actually from the founder of like psychological safety, so dr. Amy Edmondson. And so it’s Likert scale questions where they rate each statement from strongly disagree to strongly agree. We look at it and, and measure the data. What I’ve also been doing with that, if, if the organization wants this, if it’s large enough, is asking like one demographic question.

If it’s a larger organization, we can ask more, but one is, I wanna know like is there level management or is it like individual contributor? Because like you said a moment ago, managers sometimes are not aware of what the reality of the culture is. They think, oh, it’s a great place, you know, maybe we just have some production issues.

People don’t do as much as we want. No, they may not be aware of what the, like real pulse is for the culture. And so I like to know how do we break out that data?

Rich: Okay.

Haley Grayless: A lot of times, almost every time you’ll see that managers rate the culture better than individual contributors.

Rich: Why? Why do you think that is? I mean, is it because of their elevated position, or is it because they want to put a brighter face on things?

Haley Grayless: Hmm. I think both of those and they, so the higher up a manager or leader is in, and this is like within companies, politics, whatever, if they’re not intentionally asking for feedback and applying it and following up… there was this really cool Atlantic article a few years ago that talked about how brain scans will show that these leaders actually, it almost looks like they have brain damage. Because they’re not able to empathize with their employees as much. You know, like we will see that in shows like Undercover Boss, I haven’t watched it in forever. Not even sure if it’s still on, but these, you know, men and women high level within a big company will disguise themselves and then like go front lines and you know, a plant or shipping area or something. And they’ll start to realize, oh my God, for the amount of money I’m getting paid, I have to put up with a ton of crap. Or, you know, there’s so many systems that are not working, but why is was it like this? And then they realize, oh, everybody here has tried to make the best practices or systems better but the managers don’t listen. So I think that what happens is the higher level you are, if you are not managing by walking around, and I’m not just talking about in an office, like if somebody’s a leader within a plant or, you know, an Amazon shipping center or something like that, they need to be walking around the cement floors and talking with employees and saying, Hey, what obstacles are in your way? Do you have any better ideas for this? How does this thing go? Blah, blah? You know, things like that.

And figuring out what, what can change and what can happen. Because they’re just not aware of frontline stuff. And then if it’s in an organization like where I was what I realized all the time was that people who were actually talking with the, the companies that were raising money for our organization.

We would come back and say, okay, they have these like observations, like this is the reputation that our organization has, and my leaders wouldn’t care. They wouldn’t listen and do anything about it. After I left, I think I’d been gone 18 months from my former company. I was getting calls from vice presidents and senior vice presidents asking me about my former accounts, and I was like, well, all the information’s in the database.

I put it in the notes portion, and they’re like, well, they’re not doing a campaign anymore. And so I’d literally say, “it says that that was a risk, that that could be a consequence if you don’t change things”. I even put in quotes, one person told me, and she was like a high level CEO in our community that she felt like working with my organization I used to be at was like banging her head against a wall.

They would try to make things better and change things, but no one would listen. They would just come up with excuses for why they couldn’t be done instead of just being like, okay. Let’s make it happen. Like we’ve got some momentum, let’s do it. Let’s throw money at the problem. Like whatever it takes to just change it, do it.

Do something. So I think that’s why, because a lot of times managers are just, they don’t know what the reality of a situation is because they’re not talking with external people and maybe others are not sharing with them feedback or their like reputation of the organizations.

Rich: But how do you get them there? Because in management, and this has been throughout my entire growth of experience, you are going to have those immovable objects. Whether that’s due to possibly an narcissistic personality disorder or you know, this is the way my dad did it when he ran the company. I’m not going to change that because it made us who we are.

How do you get them to understand that life is very different now? The people you are hiring now have a more thoughtful aspect when they come to a job place, and if you don’t at least listen to them, they’re going to leave you.

Haley Grayless: Mm-hmm.

Rich: How do you get them to see it? I mean, I, I know you have tons of methodologies, but the first thing you have to be able to do is to get them to tear down the facade.

Haley Grayless: Mm-hmm.

Rich: So how do you do that?

Haley Grayless: Yeah, so they need to be in the like leadership trainings that I do and then in addition to that one-on-one coaching. And so I do some one-on-one coaching. There are some leaders that they, honestly, instead of leadership coaching right now they need a therapist or a life coach.

I’m not kidding. They’re even a —

Rich: No, I actually think everybody does. I think everybody in the world would benefit from one, if not both of those things.

Haley Grayless: Absolutely. Like I do leadership coaching, so if it’s the right person who like really wants to talk and like, and they’re willing to change things within their leadership style and they’re willing to have data from like 360 surveys, things like that.

That’s great. I mean, we can make a change, we can make things better. If they’re not willing to do that, or if I realize, I mean this has happened definitely more than once with leaders I’ve been coaching, where I say, you know, I think that there are some, there are, so there’s some certain blocks that like, we can’t really address.

I’m not a therapist, I’m not a counselor, I’m a leadership coach . So there are certain things that are like, honestly unethical for me to address. Like, I’m not gonna do that. So you, I’m gonna advise that you talk with a therapist or I mean a life coach, if that’s what they’re interested in.

A therapist is a good place to start. One time I basically diagnosed somebody with a hormonal disorder because and she ended, I said like, have you had like your blood, I have a blood test recently, or anything like, the way that she, as a manager was responding to emails that were, and I’m a pretty sensitive person, she would react like it was… like they said, I hate you and I’m going to kill your firstborn child. It was like, she was so upset and so I said, I really think you need to talk with your doctor. This might be a hormonal thing. She ended up having blood work done, got back to me the next week and said that she had PMDD, so like extreme PMS like really bad…

Rich: Yep.

Haley Grayless: … dysregulated hormones we’re affecting her emotions, so she got medicated and that really helped. Now there are leaders that, you know, if, if they are ready for leadership coaching. Then we look at those things and I have to, I’m a very like direct, assertive person, so I’m pretty comfortable saying, here’s what the data is showing, like from a 360 survey, maybe I have a quote from someone.

Or maybe it’s a pretty consistent score that they’re getting. And I can say like, what do you think the reason for this is? Because I also, everybody wants to defend themselves, so I give them a chance to do that. I think that’s important. Anytime you’re discussing anything in conflict it, so maybe it says that they’re not a good listener to their team or something. And I, I say, okay, the data’s showing this. Tell me what you think about that. And I listen, and I listen, and they’re usually trying to defend things or they’re saying, oh, you know, there’s so much capacity that we have. I don’t have time to listen to them, blah, blah, blah.

And I say, well, how do you think it would actually help you in the long run if you listened to them from the beginning rather than correcting problems after they’ve happened. How? What do you think about mitigating it? So preventing them, and so then people start to see like, this stuff isn’t crappy, just fluff.

They start to realize, oh, if I truly like integrate psychological safety, if I listen to my team, if I explicitly ask for divergent ideas, if I thank them before it’s too late before, you know, like when they’re just doing their job. If I thank them now, yeah, they’re gonna start doing better. All of that is a great investment of your time versus trying to correct it later.

That’s gonna happen anyway. There’s always things you’re going to have to figure out correct. And, and shift and figure out new best practices or whatever. Do all of the, as much as you can early on so that you’re preventing issues and you are building the team dynamic you want.

Rich: It’s just more cost effective if you want to bottom line it like, I mean,

Haley Grayless: Yeah.

Rich: Haley, before we move on, there’s just one more question I want to ask you. If you could reach out to the company that inspired you to make this change, to make this move, what would you say to them in the position you are in now, if they had come to you and said so? What do you think about us and, and what it is that we need to work on?

Haley Grayless: Yeah. Well, that organization has had so much turnover. Literally only five out of 75 people are still there.

Rich: Oh, wow.

Haley Grayless: It’s maybe less, I can think of like three who are still there when I was there. And that was only six and a half years ago.

Rich: Yep.

Haley Grayless: And so what, and I tried to work with them.

Their COO kept stringing me along, ended up never hiring me to help them.

Rich: Well, they didn’t listen to you while you were there. Why would they listen to you now?

Haley Grayless: Yeah. And she, like, I took her out to lunch and I paid for it thinking that they’d become a client. I can’t believe she let me, you know, a young entrepreneur just starting out, pay for her lunch.

Still can’t believe it. But I, yeah, and then didn’t hire me to work with them, but I, so I did reach out to the, like when the new CEO was coming on board, I sent him a LinkedIn message. I said. This is what I do now. I left a couple years ago. I’m so excited for you to take over. If you wanna know any of my perspectives, I’d love to talk.

So I actually kind of did what you, what you’re saying and so we talked, and it was during Covid, so like it was over Zoom and he literally, it was amazing. He was typing out what I was saying, so he wrote down tons of stuff and I know that the culture’s better now, but anyway, if all was still the same and it was still the c old CEO there and everything, right?

I would’ve told them, you have got to do something about your senior leadership and the toxicity that they’re bringing to the rest of the team. What that looks like is going to just, it’s is not going to get any better if you act like nothing happened. It goes to that avoidance side where he was like an ostrich sticking his head in the sand, acting like there was no problem.

You totally ignoring issues or waiting way too long to address it so, I would, I would tell ’em, like, you have to address it now. And I, I literally kind of use this as a, a case study when I do workshops with clients where I talk about like the Chernobyl disaster. So I was like in utero when this happened, but I watched this show on HBO, so I know all about it and I, I always thought like, I don’t if anybody who’s familiar with the Chernobyl implosion in, you know, the Ukraine in 1986, what happened was after it exploded or imploded, all these firefighters went and they were trying to put out fires and all this granite that had exploded from the nuclear reactor, if they were close to it, it wasn’t even still on fire or anything, they were close to it, there was so much nuclear energy that it affected their cells and their bodies. And maybe not for a few days, but days later.

Rich: Yep.

Haley Grayless: They started to have cell breakdown where their bodies started just becoming —

Rich: Literally falling apart. Yeah.

Haley Grayless: But they didn’t know that that was gonna happen. They maybe went home to their wives and slept in, in bed with their wives. Their cells being affected by the nuclear energy was then affecting their wives’ bodies and their children’s. So all of that is to say it’s the same thing, like that toxicity is like nuclear poison where, I mean, my idea was if if you want a great organization, you’re going to have to, what?

I would say, literally just wipe it clean from top to bottom. Like, you know, your COO all the way to the guy who’s in facilities or make them reapply for their jobs. But the reason for that is, is that it was so toxic. I mean, there was like almost 50% turnover each year. It was terrible. If you want things to be better, they need to reapply and prove that they are going to move forward with extreme optimism and hope and a new approach as if it’s almost a new organization.

Now, he didn’t do that. I think that they could have and maybe should have, but there was a lot that like could have been done to set it up for more success. They were not like thinking outside the box ever. I mean, with, with like giving these days, like, you know, there’s sometimes like an opportunity on television you’ll see like, you know, text 2 4 2 2 2 or whatever if you wanna give to animals in need in this shelter or whatever. And so like we, we try to do mobile giving. They shut down the idea all the time. I mean all these things. Like, it’s like, get with the program. It’s in the, it’s 20 20 something, 2018 back when I was there. So there they needed to change a lot from like systems and processes to overall culture with like personal behavior.

Rich: You heard it here first. Folks don’t be Chernobyl.

Haley Grayless: That’s right. The toxicity spreads even if you can’t see it.

Rich: Yep, yep, yep. My team out there. Please give a huge round of applause for Haley Grayless Haley. Isn’t that just nice to know? I think that every company should just have that. And every once in a while they just play it over loudspeakers.

Nothing makes you feel better than having an applause track just for you. Haley, let me ask you though, anybody out there who hearing this goes, she’s on the ball. I like what she says. How can they find out more about you and about Växa?

Haley Grayless: Yeah, they can follow on Instagram at @Haleytheleadershipcoach, and Hayley is H-A-L-E-Y. So Haley, the leadership coach. You can go to Växa collective.com and that’s where all the updates will be. So that’s vaxacollective.com. And so I’ll be putting information out there about like the book that I’m writing, my keynote speaking opportunities. I’d love to do at least one keynote per quarter. So if people are interested in that, I’m happy to chat about it. The main one that I’m promoting is Curious Confrontation and really talking about like ways to embrace that assertive style versus avoidant or aggressive.

And then, if they wanna get coached or work through that like process, that framework with their company. That’s my bread and butter of what I love doing. That’s like kinda my main focus day-to-day is working with companies really in depth and taking them through that process with lots of tools and activities.

Rich: Fantastic. Thank you so much Haley, and I hope you had a good time. I had a wonderful time being here with you. I’m so glad we were finally able to connect. After all these many months.

Haley Grayless: Me too. Thank you so much, Rich.

Rich: Oh, I’m glad I, I hope you continue to feel that way, Haley, ’cause unfortunately it’s time for my speed round.

Haley Grayless: Oh boy. Here we go.

Alright, Haley, just so you’re aware of the way this is gonna work I’m gonna play music for 60 seconds. That just keeps me in track of the time. While I’m doing that, I’m gonna ask you a series of completely innocuous questions. This is just a way for us to get to know you a little bit better, but if you are feeling competitive at all the number we’re trying to beat this season is 15 questions asked and answered.

Oh boy. Okay. I’m, I’ll try to be concise then. Okay.

Rich: Okay, great. Alright. I’m going to take notes just so we know how long we are going, and as soon as you hear the music, I will ask the first question. Are you ready?

Haley Grayless: Yep.

Rich: Here we go. Good luck. What’s your name?

Haley Grayless: Haley.

Rich: Do you have any children?

Haley Grayless: No.

Rich: Do you have any pets?

Haley Grayless: Yes. One dog.

Rich: If you could ask your dog a question and get an answer, what would that question be?

Haley Grayless: Do you like ice cream?

Rich: Excellent. What’s your favorite Summer vacation spot.

Haley Grayless: Oh, the beach.

Rich: If you could work remotely from anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Haley Grayless: The beach.

Rich: What is your favorite idea for a last meal?

Haley Grayless: Oh, probably Thai food.

Rich: Most memorable concert experience?

Haley Grayless: Eras tour night six in Los Angeles, Taylor Swift.

Rich: Nice. Pancakes or waffles?

Haley Grayless: Pancakes.

Rich: What job would you be terrible at?

Haley Grayless: Anything with math.

Rich: Who’s your biggest inspiration?

Haley Grayless: Brene Brown.

Rich: Favorite TV series of all time?

Haley Grayless: Oh, parks and Rec.

Rich: Favorite guilty pleasure TV show.

Haley Grayless: Temptation Island.

Rich: Favorite way to stay creative.

Haley Grayless: Window Shopping

Rich: Haley! 17!

Haley Grayless: Oh!

Rich: You did it!

Oh my gosh, that was huge. Oh my goodness.

Haley Grayless: I am competitive. So…

Rich: You are! And if I had got you on last, last season, that would’ve been the new, anyway, that, that, that you have set the bar way high.

That is gonna be the new number to beat. Haley Grayless, thank you so much for coming on.

Haley Grayless: Thank you. It was a blast.