Make Your Team Love You | Mike Robbins

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It took 50 K and that was our, we get sued for firing someone account.

Take a long time to hire.

Take a short time to fire.

I've been thrown against fences.

It was like the biggest, loudest, smelliest fart you've ever heard in church in your entire life.

You're a loser.

You're a loser.

You're a loser.

Feelings were not talked about.

GNF, right?

Give no fucks.

You're the boss.

You're the founder.

You have to be really mindful of all the players.

Guys, go back and rewind of what Mike just said. That is really, really powerful stuff.
And this is something that is not talked about enough. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show.
It is tremendous to have you here. And we have a great conversation with Mike Robbins, an author, speaker, and highly sought after leadership coach in the Silicon Valley region and tech industry.
Specifically, Mike works with leaders to build authenticity and transparency into the product they deliver to their teams to ultimately get everyone pointed in the same direction. We specifically focus on his most recent book, We're All in This Together, because it answers a question that I know all of us have.
Why is it that we can have a talented team, talented individuals, but underperform as a company? And if that's the case, how do we solve that problem? How do we get our team pointed in the same direction to grow our business? Highly tactical episode. You're going to want to take notes.
Guys, love your thoughts on this too. If you're watching on YouTube, leave it in the comments.
If you're listening on audio, just jump in the reviews. Let me know what you think about this episode.
In particular, which of these areas are you struggling with? Let's have a conversation about that. Let's start to dive into why we struggle to be transparent, to be authentic with our team, why we feel the need to position ourselves as we assume a leader should be instead of what our team actually needs.
You're gonna love this episode. Highly recommend you connect and follow with Mike.
And as always, if you're first time here, please subscribe to the show. More goodness every week.
All right, guys, love you for being here. Let's get on to Mike Robbins.
Mike, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show, man. When your team reached out to me and I started looking through your stuff and, you know, just seeing what you were all about, immediately, immediately grabbed me.
I have a saying on the show I talk about all the time. No one's lost because of tactics, right? The stuff that you're an expert in is where when people come to me and I do a lot of executive coaching now, it's, they may, they may lead.
It's kind of like price shoppers, people, you know, when people shop for price, right? They might lead with some sort of tactical issue, but it always comes back to the topics that your work addresses. And the one that the first question that hit me and where

I want to start was this idea of vulnerability and leadership and that I've seen, and maybe this has always been a problem, but lately it feels like because of an uptick and I need to get shorts out on YouTube and, you know, show, you know, show myself as a thought leader on Instagram or whatever there's we've we've lost if we ever had it and maybe myself as a thought leader on Instagram or whatever, we've lost if we ever had it. And maybe that's a good question to answer as well.
Being vulnerable, being open with who we are as a leader, we try to put this front on that we think we're supposed to be. One, do you think that's true? And two, how do we start to address that? Because I believe you cannot make a real connection with your team and get them on the same page if they don't know who you actually are.
Yeah. Well, thanks for having me on the show.
It's good to connect with you and everybody. Look, I mean, there's two things I would say about the question that you're asking.
On the one hand, I do feel like we have a deeper awareness and appreciation for the importance of vulnerability and authenticity in our world today. And I think it's also more challenging than ever because there's so much of it that can be performative.
To your point, it's like, I'm going to post something on social media about it. I'm going to perform being authentic or being vulnerable, which isn't, that's the antithesis of what it is.
And we're moving so fast in life and business these days. We have all this great technology, like you and I being able to connect this way across the country and people all over the world being able to listen to us or watch us, which is fantastic.
What sometimes gets lost in that process in life, in business and leadership is like, oh yeah, there's human connections we still have to make. In your new book, you, you ask, you answer the question, have you ever been on a team with immense talent that isn't performing? Yeah.
What's the answer to that? Because I think we all have. Well, and Ryan, you know this from knowing a little bit about my work, but like my background.
So I played baseball all growing up out here in California, where I still live, and then got a chance to play in college at Stanford, got a chance to play professionally in the Kansas City Royals organization. Before I got injured, I was a pitcher, tore ligaments in my elbow in the minor leagues.
But I basically played baseball from the age of seven until I got hurt at 23 and then retired at 25 after a series of surgeries on my arm. And I was super bummed when baseball ended, as you could imagine, right? It was half a lifetime ago now for me.
But one of the things that I had become most fascinated by when I was playing baseball that I thought was a sports phenomenon, but then I got my first job working for a tech company in the late 90s and realized it was a human phenomenon was there was this thing in sports we call chemistry. And it was all that intangible stuff.
Because like I was on some teams sometimes, really good players, really good talent, but the team would underperform. You know, the coach was weird or guys were jerks or there was a lot of egos or whatever it was, we wouldn't perform well together.
We had bad chemistry, right? Then I was on other teams where it's like, you know, decent talent, amazing chemistry, and we would play incredibly well. Like we would beat other teams that had better players than we did.
I always played better on teams with good chemistry. Again, I thought that was a sports phenomenon.
I get my first job back in the nineties working for an internet company during the dot-com boom. And I realized, oh, wait a minute, that's not a sports thing.
That's a human thing. My manager was just calling it culture.
And I was like, what is that? No one could define it. It was intangible.
It was kind of hard to quantify, but it's really, really powerful, right? And there's all the cliches and sayings in the world, you know, culture eats strategy for breakfast. So most of what I've studied for the last almost 25 years doing this work is what are those intangible things that make teams great? And on an individual level, what do we need to do from that mindset sort of intangible side so that we can be as effective as possible? So that's a long preamble back to your question of like, it's important to really invest in those intangible things because just getting the right talent on the team, while that is incredibly important, that's not enough because we've all been part of teams.
And whether you run a small business, whether you work for a bigger company, whether you're just starting your own side hustle, whatever it is, it's like not just about the talent and the skills, it's about something else. And that's something else.
And everybody watching and listening obviously knows that to some degree else they wouldn't be watching and listening to us right now. But it's really investing in that, our own personal growth, as well as investing in the health of the team in an ongoing way.
I love using the word chemistry over culture. Yes.
To me, culture, it just doesn't mean anything. I mean, I know it has a meaning, but I feel like it, it's like sand sifting through your hands as an idea, right? You, you, you, we use the word, we put it on vision boards during executive retreats, but like no one can touch it, feel it, grab it, build anything with it.
But chemistry feels more like something we can actually have an impact on. Yeah.
Chemistry is more of, I like the distinction. I'm glad you're making it.
Because again, the word culture is used much more often, but it turns into, again, these are our culture principles, which are great. And they're on the flyer, they're on the wall, they're on all the collateral for the, that's wonderful.
But chemistry is really that sense, that feeling, that energy amongst us, between us, that who are we? What do we believe in? How do we operate? Do we have each other's backs? Do we care about each other? Do we actually care about what we're doing? And that's something that needs to be nurtured all the time. I just yesterday was with a leadership team for one of our clients and spent the whole day with them.
We did a day-long workshop. And one of the things we were talking about, and this is true often, whether, again, it doesn't matter the size of the company

or the team or what's going on.

I was like, at the end of the day, I said,

listen, everybody's feeling good right now, right?

We got that buzz.

We got that sort of high of being together all day

and some of the exercises.

And the question is, what happens next Tuesday

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or four months down the road

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We think we're going to close or someone's sick or we're behind on a deadline. That's where it really matters.
So ultimately, it is about creating experiences and opportunities for people to really bond and connect in a human way. But it really is about baking into how you operate.
How do we nurture that chemistry all the time? Because again, I mean, in a different way, think of it like a marriage. My wife and I have been together for almost 25 years.
And we have to continually invest in each other in our relationship if our marriage is going to be healthy. It's not just healthy because we fell in love more than 25 years ago and committed to each other in front of all of our family and friends.
It's an ongoing living thing. And it's different today than it was when we got married.
Just like a company as it grows and evolves, it becomes different, especially a small business, right? And you know, this, you bring one new person into a small team and all of a sudden the whole dynamic changes, hopefully for the better, but sometimes not so much. And as we start to grow, if we're not really mindful of how we're building and sort of enhancing that chemistry, it can go away.
The other thing I like about the term chemistry is that it feels, it gives you a visual, right? We can imagine different mixtures. You know, you pour the green in and the red in and the blue in, and then you stir it, and then you put a few flakes of this gold stuff in and each little piece is interacting with each other and forming a constantly changing new entity.
And a concept that hit me and you briefly touched on it and I'd love for you to expand a little bit is this idea of seasons, seasons of our life, seasons of our marriage, seasons of our business.

And that early on, maybe chemistry, when it's three people, is super important. And then maybe when you get to 10, it's a little less important because you just need high performers doing shit.
And then you get to 30 and you have to refocus on chemistry again. And it's like this constant evolution, how do we as leaders, how do we, how are we aware of that? How can we be perceptive of changes in our chemistry and the need to reevaluate where it might currently be and or need to go? Well, look, I think the question you're asking is good.
And there's two parts to it, right? The season part of it, I think is a really important one. And that's true for us in life.
I mean, think of just the seasons of the year and depending on, you know, I live in a place where the seasons don't change as much as some other parts of the country and the world, but in general, right, it's different in the spring when we're planting sort of metaphorically versus the summer as it starts to get hot and we get into the dog days of summer and then we move into the fall, right? And it's like harvest time. And then we move into the winter where we sort of have to hunker down.
I mean, that's the sort of season of the year. But a lot of times in our lives over the course of a year in a business, it does go through different seasons.
And to be mindful of that, especially as a leader, as an owner, as a founder of a business, where are we right now? So there's that piece. In terms of the chemistry and paying attention to it, I feel like it's something that we always need to nurture.
Now, there are going to be certain times in the business, again, seasonally or otherwise, where it's kind of an all hands on deck. We just have to get stuff done.
We just have to keep up with, I mean, hopefully the business is going well. We're just keeping up with what's going on, right? But I do think what can happen, and I've seen this happen with a lot of businesses that I've worked with where they're growing, is if we're not constantly nurturing the chemistry, eventually what will happen is we're not mindful as we're hiring people, things are starting to move really fast, and we're so focused on getting things done.
It's not until something blows up that everybody goes, oops, we took our eye off the ball. So it's difficult, right? Because you kind of got to be able to, again, another cliche, you got to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, right? You got to be able to both nurture that chemistry and the people all the time while constantly focusing on making sure we're actually growing the business.
Because if there's no business and the bottom line is not where it needs to be, then it doesn't matter how much we nurture everybody, the business goes away. But if all we do is focus on the business and the bottom line, eventually we burn people out, people leave.
And now we're looking and going, wait, why are we having so many issues with, you know, engagement and morale and retention? It's because, oh, we forgot to nurture that. In my own business that I started, I went after, and I mean that in a positive way, moms with young kids as a lot of my early employees, particularly in the insurance industry, the industry that I came out of, oftentimes moms with young kids are thrown aside because they can't work a standard nine to five.
And we were a fully remote business and I was very malleable and, um, and open to the fact that they may have different hours and all this kind of stuff. And I, we built this wonderful culture and we were doing great, but we hit a moment where I needed a sales leader and none of the current team members were, were, were sales, were a sales leader.
We had sales people, but none of them were sales leaders. Okay.
Right. So I went out and I said, I'm going to go out and get the best sales leader with tons of experience and bring them in.
And this would be great for us. And this guy comes in and he didn't, and this was a mistake that I made.
He didn't buy in to the kind of we'll call it fluid schedule of the women that were on the team. And it was like dropping a nuclear bomb into our company.
It was like it was like the biggest, loudest, smelliest fart you've ever heard in church in your entire life. Like it was just awful.
It was immediately awful. So my question for you is how, how do we know what the chemistry is and how do we convey that to new people we want to bring in so that they match or compliment the culture and hopefully amplify it.
Right. Um, instead of the experience that I had now, thankfully that I went I went out and fixed that fairly rapidly, but it was a bad experience for about three months.
You know, it was very, very bad. Well, look, and the truth of the matter is sometimes you don't know until something like that happens, right? And again, I'm sure when you hired him, you didn't think, oh, it's not going to be a good culture fit.
And then he showed up and you realized, oops, I made a mistake. And look, I mean, again, another phenomenon or sort of cliched phenomenon is like, you know, take a long time to hire, take a short time to fire.
It really does, you know, and I think when we're looking to hire people, especially in a small business, we have to be really mindful of all the players and what the actual chemistry is and what the actual humans involved in the business are. What are we trying to accomplish? And if things are going well and we're hiring someone because we're growing and we want to keep growing, it's important they have the requisite experience, of course, but it's as important, if not more important, that they're going to fit with the mindset, the culture, the values of how we operate.
And again, you don't always know until you know, but I think finding that out sometimes the hard way is important. And then making sure that we're asking questions that are related to that and possibly even letting other people on the team interview people because they're going to have to work with them even for them.
You know, I mean, that happens in big corporations as well as small businesses. And, you know, look, even the most sophisticated companies that I work with, you know, the Googles of the world who have a very sophisticated way they go about identifying talent and recruiting and hiring people, they make mistakes too.
You know, you don't

know until you know. And once you know, the bigger mistake that was not taking action, once you

realize, oops, I made a mistake, this isn't the right fit. I've seen this happen a lot too,

because again, in a small business, it's like, just invest a lot of time and money and energy

into this person, I give them a chance, which again, on a human level, totally makes sense.

But so often, we end up having to let someone go. in reality it's like i should have done that a lot sooner when i saw the writing on the wall you know so i want to share the conclusion that i came up with with you and then i would love for you to maybe do some off the cuff consulting for me uh well post consulting obviously i i sold sold the business and have exited from it, so I don't have it anymore.
But so what I did was, because I realized part of my issue as the founder was I wasn't even interviewing the guy. I was pitching him on all the reasons why he should come work here, right? So that, and that was my fault, you know? So what I did was I did exactly what you said and I moved the interview process.
I said, these are the people that are going to have to work with this individual. So I want them to interview him.
Okay, great. There is a caveat to that though.
You have to also, there has to be, while that provides a good guardrail, I also found you have to have a guardrail on the other side as well, because then they will over index on people they like versus necessarily people who have the requisite skill set. So there's some stuff there.
But what I ultimately ended up doing to your higher slow fire fast was I called my attorney and my banker and I said, I'm going to give how much do I need to put in an account so that we can fire fast and if we get sued we can just keep going and we just had so so that was like my recommendation so that's what we did we took uh we took 50k and we put in a bank account and just sat there and that was our we get sued for beat for firing someone account and and not and i don't mean that people can take that in a fair way and i've shared that i shared it a long time ago on the show and i got some comments like you know you need to care about people i'm like i'm letting them go because i care about them because if they stay here it's going to be miserable for them and everyone else but things happen so one is that a practice that you would recommend? And two, how do we make sure that when we do have others interviewing that aren't the founder, which is a piece of control I know a lot of people struggle with, that we're getting who we need and not just their friends? well look i think there's a couple things i mean i do think protecting your risk and your downside

i mean look you you're an insurance guy so that makes sense that you would be mindful of that

that can be smart practically. I mean, again, a little bit, a little red flag goes off for me.
It's like, if you were doing that, did you have a concern on the front end that has you think that, you know, and so you sometimes want to listen to that. So, I mean, again, I think that can be having enough, you know, cash reserves to run the business to if there a problem.
If you run into a situation where you have to let someone go, there may be legal action. Of course, it's good to have those things in place if you can.
Now, not everybody's in that position or has that much cash flow or liquidity that they can do that. That said, I do think it's I think you speak to something that's paradoxical and important.
Yes, you want people involved who are going to work for or with this person to have some input on hiring. But ultimately,

at the end of the day, you're the boss, you're the founder, you're the leader,

you got to make the decision. And you've got to be able to decipher knowing your team and

your employees well enough. Are they over indexing on just someone they like and think will be

fun to work with or easy to work with versus what does the business really need? And does this person have the skill set? So it can be a both and, right?

You know what you think is needed. You're also running this person through to make sure if they

all come back and say, I hate this person, that's probably not going to be a good hire, even if you

like them and think they have all the right skills. But if you run it through and it just seems like,

oh, they just like them, like they want to hang out with them. But it's not, you know what I mean?

And that's where sort of leadership and discernment comes in ultimately. Today's business marketplace is, you know, incredibly different from that cliche 50s, 60s, 70s.
You just find a good company, put in your 40 years, everything's going to be okay. Right.
Right.

How it feels to me today that I don't want to say everybody.

I don't mean for this to be a broad sweeping stroke, although it will sound like it, that we're less trusting on both sides, right? The company is less trusting that the individuals are committed. The, the individuals at the same exact time are pointing right back going, I don't trust you that you're committed to me.
Okay. So you wrote the book, We're All In This Together.
What is the number one thing that you're running into that is keeping us from having that trust, from pointing in the same direction, and from operating together? I think, look, I mean, I think the value proposition and the exchange today is different

than it was a decade ago, two decades ago, three decades ago.

You know, the expectation of most people isn't that I'm, to your point, going to come and

work for the same company for most of my career.

And most companies, as they're hiring people, small businesses and large companies, they're

not expecting to hire someone and have them stay for, you know, decades, stay for decades, let alone even four or five years, depending on the industry. So based on that, it is important, I think, that everyone involved be as open, authentic, and transparent as possible.
There is a transactional nature of business today, and things move a lot faster than they did in the past. That doesn't have to be a deal breaker, because this concept of we're all all in this together and the book that I wrote and a lot of the research that I've done, and again, a lot of the clients that I've worked with because of where I live and where I went to school, I work with a lot of companies in Silicon Valley.
So a lot of startup tech companies and a lot of bigger tech companies that are growing. And if you work for a tech company for three years, that's a long time.
And some people will stay much longer than that, but many people will move around year to year. And things have changed over the pandemic and there's more flexibility and the job market's been really good, even through some economic swings and whatnot.
So I think the thing that gets in the way is back to our earlier conversation of really investing or not investing in the people, in the chemistry, in the culture of the team. Because ultimately, this phenomenon or this idea of really being in it together, it doesn't mean we're in it together forever.
But it does mean I'm willing to bring my whole self and fully commit to this. And one of the things, and I'm sure you can relate to this, Ryan, small businesses and small business owners and people who start small businesses, it is hard because no one, not no one, but very few people are going to be in it to the same level you're in it.
Yeah. It's kind of like wanting people to be as committed to your kids as you are.
You know, even grandma and grandpa and aunts and uncles and teachers and all the people, like they're not their kids. Do you know what I mean? So there's a different level for better or worse sometimes with our kids, right? There's a different level of commitment.
And so if you start a business, maybe you have a co-founder or a couple of co-founders, but maybe you hire some people early and they're super committed and they believe in it and they believe in you and they're there and they're not going anywhere. It's still not the same.
It's not their baby the same way it's yours. And I think some level of awareness, sometimes when I work with founders and I coach founders or when companies really grow and gets to that founder syndrome where the has to leave whether he or she wants to, it's because they're so attached to the whole thing, they lose objectivity.
So, I mean, I know I said a few things in response to your question there, but I do think that fundamentally what allows people to really invest and commit is knowing that they can, but also having some realistic expectations. Again, if you hire people and think they need to work here for the rest of their lives, that's not a fair expectation.
I love that you just talked about expectations because to me, and I do a lot of sales coaching and growth coaching. I tend to be more on the revenue side of helping companies move forward.
And one of the things that we talk about often after fixing any things that are on fire is expectation setting. Right.
How we set expectations with our prospects, how we set them with our clients, how we set them internally with our team. And this is something that I feel we don't do enough.
And, you know, I would say to some of my team members when I was running my, my company, I don't care if you're here for a year, three years, I would love it if you were here for 10, we didn't make it that long because I ended up exiting. But, but my point was when you show up, here's what I expect you to do.

The day you don't want to do this anymore, that's perfectly fine. I understand.
You could get a job that pays you twice as much. Awesome.
Super happy for you. But just give me what you can – give me these expectations for this period of time.
And to your point, there's like this, it's, well, I work 16 hours a day and you're checking out at 5 a.m. And it's like, no, duh.
You have 100% of the equity and they're making 50 grand a year with no upside. Like they should check out at 5 a.m.
And frankly, they'd be kind of an idiot not to check out at five. They need to go home to their family or whatever, you know? Totally.
How do we, what is the proper way, speaking more to the chemistry inside of the business, how do we set expectations around the chemistry that we want and expect from our team? Well, I think there's a couple things. One of the things that I've learned in studying performance for teams over the years, I'll answer your question in a couple of different ways.
One is that we wanna have, there's two things that drive performance, expectations and nurturance. So we wanna have healthy high expectations.
They can't be perfection demands or they can't be work 18 hours a day demands because that's unrealistic. Even if we're someone who challenges ourselves and pushes ourselves hard and other people.
So we want to have high healthy expectations and a high level of caring and nurturing. If you expect a lot and care a lot, people will thrive.
People will perform. If you expect a lot, but don't care a lot, people will burn out and feel like they're being, you know, it's like you're pushing, you're driving, you're just, it's never enough.
If you care a lot, but don't expect a lot, everyone feels warm and fuzzy, but nobody's going to perform at the highest level. So it's finding that right balance of expectations and caring and doing both of those at a high level in a healthy way.
As it relates to what you were talking about, I think is really important. What sometimes gets in the way of expectations, they're either not clear, they're unspoken, or they're unrealistic.
But if we can start to speak them out loud, then that keeps us a bit accountable. Oh, what are my expectations? Both performance expectations, but to your point, culture expectations, chemistry expectations, what do I expect for how people show up? So the clearer we can be about that, the better.
And then nurturance is both about caring about people, valuing people, but it's also about acknowledging when those things are happening. One of the distinctions that I make in my work, Ryan, is between recognition, which is about performance and outcome, and appreciation, which is about care and value of people.
They're both important. But think in a sales context, right? If someone hits their number or exceeds their number, there should be some kind of recognition, at least just, hey, good job or way to go or some kind of bonus or reward or something that some incentive, you did it, right? So you get it.
And if you hit yours and I don't hit mine, we should be compensated differently, right? There should be baked into it incentives, right? I always say it's like if everybody gets a trophy, the trophy doesn't mean anything. So we got to give it out when it's deserved.
But appreciation, on the other hand, valuing people, caring about people, that's something we can do and need to do all the time. Because the truth of the matter is, while someone might perform better than someone else and someone might work harder than someone else, if we start delineating how much we're going to care about and value certain people based on their performance, that becomes problematic.
Now, we can pay people differently and recognize people differently based on their performance, based on their role. That's the world.
That's life, right? You know what I mean? Not everybody on the team in sports makes the same amount of money. You know, if you're Steph Curry, you're making more money than the kid that just got drafted and he's the last guy on the bench.
And everyone understands that. But at the same time, on a human level, great teams know, and I use Steph Curry as a specific example because I'm a big Warriors fan and I just love him both as an athlete, but also as a teammate.
Because if you watch how he operates, whether you're a basketball fan or not, right, he's one of the greatest players in the NBA right now, one of the greatest of all time. And he's such a great teammate.
He seems to, I don't know him personally, but he seems to actually care about his teammates, cares about that guy at the end of the bench as much as he cares about everybody else. And what that does then is everybody realizes, oh, we're all valuable as humans, as members of this team.
And yeah, some people actually

perform at a higher level. Not everybody's the CEO.
I think most people understand that. And so when we separate out recognition and appreciation, we can value and care about everybody all the time and we recognize people when they deserve it.
And that actually ends up being a really healthy way to motivate people because we don't want, again, participation trophies. We really don't.

We want to get rewarded when we deserve it, but we want to be valued and cared about all the time. Guys, hit pause, go back and rewind like the last three minutes at what Mike just said, because this is something that is not talked about enough.
And frankly, I don't even know that I've ever had this, I've ever separated this thought in my mind.

There is a, and clear delineation between caring and compensation. I mean, think about that.
That is a thought that has never run through my head. It makes complete and utter sense.
And I absolutely love it. And it, and to me, it feels like maybe, uh, one of the core systemic problems that we have in our chemistry is that we're trying to show our caring through our compensation, which is then completely misunderstood by the individuals who are receiving it.
And we can care for everybody. You know, I, I, I, I tend to, you know, East coast language, you know, i i'm my i'm more it's like give a shit like yeah give a shit about your people like yeah that that doesn't mean you know and in part of that is maybe you got to sit down and have a tough conversation with someone who's underperforming maybe you need to give a double extra special bonus to the to the to the gal who who put in extra time and made 30 extra phone calls a day and crushed her sales numbers, right? But we have to care about all of them because they're showing up at our business every day.
I absolutely love that. Oh, that's just wonderful.
That is really, really powerful stuff. And it's incredibly important.
Yeah. Well, I appreciate you saying it.
You know, Ryan, another thing to think about in this conversation, and this can get a little tricky, and again, I don't mean to make broad generalizations, but some of this also does vary a bit based on our age, our generation, our background, where we're from, how we grew up, and those kind of personal things. Again, you're a bit younger than I am, I'm assuming, right? And what ends up ends up happening is depending on when and how we were raised.
And for a lot of people in the workforce now, and I use the participation trophy as an example, not in a pejorative way, but I think the idea that that started to become a phenomenon, you know, I'm of the age, I just turned 50 and I was sort of right on the cusp. I'm a Gen Xer.
And a lot of us were raised and especially people older than me, there were no participation trophies. It was like, you're a loser.
You're a loser. You're a loser.
You're good. And it was like, okay, that was problematic because we're shaming everybody.
You're not an artist. You're not an athlete.
You're no good. You sit over there.
You go over to the, and that was a problem. So what happened was we sort of over-indexed the other way.
Everybody's good. Let's not keep score.
Let's not make people feel bad. And that was good intention, But what it did was it screwed us up in a different way.
And now everybody expects, well, hey, I showed up for work. Give me a raise.
Give me a promotion. As opposed to, to your point, really giving a shit and actually earning it.
And that's why this distinction between recognition and appreciation is so important. I'm not saying be like a hardcore, driving so hard pushing everyone never.
No, you can be really kind and generous and caring about everybody. And you can also have a really high standard of expectation.
It's like you got to meet or exceed this expectation to get compensated at this level. I'm going to hold that standard and I'm going to give people really hardcore coaching and feedback about how they can get better.
But I'm going to do it in the context of like, you're valuable and I care about you and you're a part of this team. So back to your question about we're all in this together.
That's one of the things that gets lost. And I think sometimes because people are moving around so much, I find this with leaders and founders and just managers in general.
Sometimes there's a reticence to really care about people because like they're going to leave anyway. I don't want to invest in this person emotionally.
And that's a real thing, right? If people are moving in and out and there's lots of movement and there's just, it's like, oh gosh, I just invested and gave my heart and soul to this person. Especially I'm running a small business.
I hired them. I took care of them.
I trained them. And then they go and leave.
You know, I have a small business and have run it for the last 24, almost 25 years.

I've had a couple of people leave over the years.

It's been super painful when they left,

especially if they didn't leave on good terms.

It's like a member of the family saying,

you know what, I don't want to be in your family anymore.

Yeah.

So I also played baseball in college baseball.

I did not make it into the minors.

I played in a semi-pro league in Washington, D.C. for about three or four years after.
Gotcha. But I love the game.
What position? What position? I was a catcher. Oh, okay.
Yeah. I moved to the outfield in college for four years and then afterwards went right back to catcher.
Okay. But I – so now I coach, and I have two young at 10 and eight, uh, I'm 43.
I, I, I caught, I caught at 43. I caught the tail end, the very tail end of you could, you know, what you described, but maybe not necessarily as hardcore.
You're like, you're right on the cusp there. You're a sort of older millennial, younger Gen X or yeah.
Yeah. So it's, um, it's, it's very interesting.
You know, I, and, and where I'm from upstate New York, it's a blue collar area, uh, gruff language. You know, I've been thrown against fences.
My high school football coach once shoulder pressed me by the face mask up in the air where my feet are dangling while I was yelling at me, you know, and frankly, the mentality back then was like, I probably deserved it. You know, you know, that was kind of what it was.
I didn't take it personally. I just was like, well, yeah, I did commit that 15 yard personal foul.
So I probably deserve to get yelled at. Right.
That being said, you didn't go home and tell your parents and they marched up to the school and yelled at the coach, right? No. No, my parents would be like, what the hell did you do? Right, right, right.
If he did that to you, then you must have done something stupid. So now today I coach my older son's travel baseball team.
And I struggle with it. So I'll give you an example that happened yesterday just Just just to kind of put it and I'm interested in actually your feedback on this.
So the team, we are the talented team that performs terribly. And a big part of the reason is about half the team, I'd say, are I'll call them regular people.
Right. They take criticism.
They try hard. They have moments.
But for the most part, they, you know, pushing forward, trying to get better. The other half of the team is, hey, I'm here.
If they don't start, they pout. If they don't hit in a batting spot, they pout.
If they don't get not just a hit, but a hard hit that somehow they think is valuable, they pout, they cry. So we had a kid, yes, and this is what it comes back to, and I don't know how to get past.
And though I'm talking about, guys, though I'm talking about 10-year-old baseball, please understand that this transcends to your employees as well. So that's why I'm asking the question.
So I had a kid, hits a ball, kind of a lazy fly, shortstop goes back on it, makes a good catch it's an out, right? We're at the end of the season, this has happened a lot it's not like it's the first time he gets to first base jumps up and down, hands on his helmet puts his head down full pout mode in front of everybody which one is embarrassing to begin with don't understand and i'm the first base coach so i walk up to him i'm like hey dude just missed that one which he did i mean he literally just missed it i said i said you just missed that one you know you'll get him next time but keep going you know and just something like that and i put my hand down to just hand slap his hand keeps his hands on his helmet walks right past me so i don't even think about it i just take my other hand and I kind of slap it, you know, like whatever. I didn't even think twice about it.
The mother comes running down the first baseline from outside the, you know, she's outside the fence, presses herself up against the fence and goes, really? To me, to me, not to the kid throwing a temper tantrum on first base. Yeah.
When for the 40th time this year, he's gotten out like any other baseball player. Right.
And he's a good player for the most part, but yells at me. Right.
For something. Dude, I didn't even think twice about it.
I didn't mean anything by it. It was just like my hand was standing there and I just kind of went like that.
I wasn't trying to like one. I think it's ridiculous what he was doing, but I wasn't trying to like be a jerk.
And I like hit me. I was like, this is why he acts that way for her.
If, if my son had did what he did, what I would have done is run out of the dugout, grab him by his shirt, put him outside the fence and say, thank you. Your day is over.
Yeah. That's not, that's not how we respect.
So now applying that, you can talk about it from a coaching perspective if you want, but I would love for them to apply that kind of scenario mindset to what I feel a lot of people are dealing with, particularly with younger employees in our ecosystem. Not all, by far, not all, but they're struggling with this.
I get this question a lot and I don't know how to answer it. It's look, I do think it's a matter of balance.
And again, I don't, it's like I was saying earlier, it's like, we've swung the pendulum. I mean, look, I'll start with talking a little bit about kids.
So we have an 18 year old and 15 year old, two girls. Um, and I, I've watched, you know, as we've raised our daughters and I watch, you know, friends and whether it's in sports or in school or, you know, our older ones about to go off to college.
And I, for the life of me, I can't figure out. I feel like as a generation, we've done a better job of paying attention to kids' mental health and self-esteem and, you know, protecting, doing a lot of things that maybe our parents and even the generation before that weren't paying attention to.
Like we all try to learn and do better. Right.
And I think one of the unintended consequences of that is we've raised a generation of really fragile kids who can't seem to take criticism or fail or not. You're right.
And it's like, wait a second. Oops.
That's that wasn't the point. Yeah.
I do think in life. Right.
Again, if you go back to like there might have been a case to be made that what your coach did to you on the football field wasn't completely appropriate, right? And maybe someone could have said to him, Hey, listen, this is a high school kid. Yeah.
Hold them accountable, but take your hands off him or chill out, man. You know what I mean? Like some version of that would have been healthy, whether it was your father or another coach or someone going, Oh, let's take it down a notch or two and figure out how do we instill discipline without terrifying kids or putting our hands on them, right? But if we swing the pendulum so far, now parents and kids and people feel completely empowered, which in some cases, when someone's being abused or something terrible is happening, we want there to be intervention.
We want someone to go, hey, the problem is now everything is turned into that. And it's like, now we're outraged by everything and everything's a problem.
And again, instead of, you know, and, and think about this from a, if you think about this in the work context, I mean, you've probably seen this. I talk to leaders all the time and managers and small business owners whose young employees, like their parents are intervening.
And I'm like, what, you know, it's like, I got a call from the parent. I got a call, like I'm trying to get ready for the interview or whatever.
It's like, hold on. This person is a grownup.
Like I know they might only be 23 years old and they just got out of school, but like, this is life. They have to learn how to adult.
Like mom and dad can't intervene. Like that's insane.
Right. But again, the mindset is such, and I've watched myself, even as I'm parenting our 18 year olds about to go off to college.
And it's like, I I have to check myself to remember she's got to figure a lot of this stuff out herself. Of course, she's going to fail.
Of course, there's going to be times I'm going to be frustrated or disappointed or wish she did something differently. But those are all teachable moments.
Whether it's on the baseball field, a kid throwing a tantrum, or whether it's in your business when someone makes a mistake, especially someone who's young, without being condescending, our job is to mentor them. Our job is to coach them respectfully, effectively.
And on the flip side, what I will say too, if we can look at it from another perspective, sometimes young employees really understand certain things about social media, about marketing, about what's going on in the world, about like, wait a second, right? When you're all of a sudden now, it's like, you know, again, me, like the 50 year old, like I'm starting my TikTok channel. It's like, Hey, it's helpful to talk to someone who's 24 about this thing, or even 16.
Cause I'm like, what the hell is this? Help me. And they're like, Oh, no problem.
And then you're right. And then it becomes this way where you can leverage some of the energy and talent and enthusiasm of someone who's young at the same time, coach them and mentor them and realize there are teaching moments all the time.
And they're not going to show up to work and say, could you teach me? Could you mentor me? I really want to know. You're going to have to go in and do it.
And sometimes just like parenting, it's going to be uncomfortable, right? My wife and I look at each other sometimes and go, why don't our girls just understand how awesome we are as parents and say, thank you for being such awesome parents. It's like, well, we didn't really do that, but that's part of the stage of life, depending on how old your kids are.
And that same is true. Again, 25 year olds today are different than 25 year olds 50 years ago, but there are some similarities.
There's difference in the generation, but there's also a stage of life thing that I think sometimes we forget that's universal. And again, if you're 43 or 50 or older than you and I both are, there's also a stage of life thing.
Oh, I'm entering this stage. We talked about seasons earlier.
Oh, I'm entering this season of my life. I get to be even more mature.
I get to be even more disciplined about things maybe than I used to be. I completely agree.
And I'll tell you one thing about that, say, 28-year-old and under generation is, yeah, maybe sometimes their over-indexing on emotions frustrates us. But they're also a lot more empathetic and in tuned to where someone is emotionally than we are.
Totally. You know, my mother called me.
My mother is an interesting cat. I love her to death and uh she just has a way she just doesn't she doesn't give a shit she'll just say what's up around her mind and she called me and she goes you know why do you think it is that empathy skipped a generation with you and i was like what are you trying to say man but yeah that's a side point but i do think we can look into okay there are things that may annoy us or we don't understand or whatever right but there's also a lot of things about them that we can harness right for sure that we can tap into that that we don't have because we weren't over indexed on feeling feelings were not talked about and we didn't talk about feelings you know they're very into those things and so there's a lot of good that can come out of that i completely agree um i you know mike i think that i think you we've used this term quite a bit and i think it's incredibly important for the audience to grab onto this that this idea of it, think about it from a chemistry perspective of not just the season of your business, that's important, but the season that each individual employee is in throughout, right? Like you and I have hit the stage of our lives where, you know, I have a, uh, one of my audience members made this, uh, like piece of wood thing for me, which is really cool.
It's the letters G and F, right? Give no fucks. And we've hit that point in our lives.
I mean, I've hit that point in my life where, hey, this is, you know, I'm always trying to improve. But I also, like, if for some reason you just didn't like me, I'm going to go on with my day, right? A 25-year-old, unless they are very unique, they care what other people think.
They're dialeded into culture they're trying to find their place in the world and we have to maybe segment where people are in the season of their life as well as it applies to our chemistry totally i mean you said something earlier that i thought was really interesting and that you were very specific and strategic in growing your business and you hired you know moms with young kids knowing kids knowing that, hey, they're probably just based on life circumstances. It's going to be tricky.
They're going to be busy. They're going to be, you know, flexible, different hours.
I'm okay with that. I mean, that's an example, right? And it's like understanding people in different seasons of their life and where are they at? And again, we don't want to generalize and sort of put people into boxes, but I do think having some awareness of that is important.
And the older we get, hopefully we continue to gain wisdom and we gain perspective. And we can have some understanding, you know, not in that condescending, well, when I was your age, but in the understanding and awareness of like, I do remember being 25 or 28 or whatever.
And that doesn't mean that every other 25 or 28 year old is exactly like me, but I've been through that stage of life and that phase. And I understand it.
Another phenomenon related to my work and my book, when my book, We're All in This Together came out, it actually came out right as we were going into COVID. And it was interesting because a lot of people were asking me, are we really all in this together? It doesn't seem like it.
And what became abundantly clear to me at that time, but I think it's true all the time, is that we're actually all in the same storm and we're in different boats, right? And that's a thing that leaders can really do. Again, small business, big company, three people, 3,000 people, 30,000.
It's like understanding that there's a storm or a series of storms, things that are impacting people positively and negatively. And they impact all of us, especially if you're in a business or a company.
But everyone in their own individual boat is dealing with that storm a little differently based on their stage of life, based on their personality, their role, their skills, all the things. And leaders that can have the empathy and the understanding or leverage that amongst the team can try to get all the boats kind of rowing in the same direction, if you will, and helping the people whose boats are taking on water.
That's really what the chemistry is, is yeah, we're focused on the goal and where we're headed, of course. But if people are literally getting washed away in the storm, then we're not going to get there.
Even if we have a ton of talent, right? Your 10-year-old baseball team, it's like you're going to have a bunch of really talented kids, but kids are pouting and throwing their helmets and getting upset. And it's like, we're not going to win a lot of games operating that way.
That's true with a business too. Like I'd rather have a less talented team who really cares about each other and is super all in and committed to what we're doing than a bunch of rock stars who are all trying to be the star and think they're better than everybody.
Cause that's, I saw that a lot in sports. I see it in business.
And of course we want to hire talented people, but we really want to make sure the chemistry of that people is, you know, there's a synergy there that works. Amen.
Mike, I love your work. This has been a phenomenal conversation.
You've created a huge fan out of me. And where can people who've listened to this and either are become fans as well? Where do they find you? Where do they get their books? How do they dig deeper into your world? The best place to do that is on our website, which is mike-robbins.com.
Awesome. Guys, if you're listening, just go to the show notes.
If for some reason you can't remember what he just said, which was very straightforward. Or if you're watching on YouTube, you can go down in the description, and I'll have it in the show notes page as well.

Mike, it has been such a pleasure.

Hopefully, I have a chance to chat again in the future, and I wish you nothing but the best, my friend.

Thanks, man.

Appreciate you having me.

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