How to Deal with Mean People at Work
Listen to Michael Brenner’s segment on how to deal with mean people at work on The Small Business Radio Show here
00:00 Speaker 1: Get ready for all the craziness of small business. It’s exactly that craziness that makes it exciting and totally unbelievable. Small Business Radio is now on the air with your host, Barry Moltz.
00:11 Barry Moltz: Well, thanks for joining this week’s radio show. Remember, this is the final word in small business. For those keeping track, this is now incredibly show number 569. This episode is provided by Nextiva, the all-in-one communications platform for your small business. It’s also sponsored by LinkedIn, the place to generate leads, traffic and build your brand awareness. For a free $100 credit to launch your campaign, go to www.linkedin.com/spr. It’s also sponsored by efile4Biz, the easiest way to electronically process, print and mail your 1099s and W-2s for your business, go to www.efile4biz.com. We’re also sponsored by vCita, all you need to run your business in one software application. Try it for free at www.vcita.com. That’s V-C-I-T-A dot com and use BARRY10 for an exclusive discount. We’re also sponsored by Blue Summit Supplies. Get your W-2s and 1099 tax forms that your business is required to file by January 31st at bluesummitsupplies.com/sbr and use code SBR10 at check out to save 10% on your entire order.
01:23 BM: Well, in the world of small business, you’re gonna meet a lot of great people out there that are really gonna help you out, but you’re also gonna meet a lot of people that are really going to suck. Here to help us with how to deal with those people that suck is Michael Brenner who has been recognized as Forbes top CMO influencer, a Top Business Keynote Speaker by the Huffington Post and a Top Motivational Speaker by Entrepreneur Magazine. He’s got a new book out it’s that’s called, Mean People Suck: How Empathy Leads to Bigger Profits and Better Life lives. Michael, welcome to the show.
01:53 Michael Brenner: Hi, Barry. Thanks for having me.
01:55 BM: Well, I’m so glad that someone wrote a book about this because I think that mean people do suck and I keep thinking that, “Do folks who are really great innovators, leading great companies like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, do they have to be mean people?”
02:08 MB: No, they don’t, and that’s really the… One of the things that led me to write this book is there’s some surprising counter-intuitive research out there. Actually, almost the weight of all the research I found shows that organizations and leaders, and cultures that are focused more on empathy, more on caring and less about creating an environment of fear are actually more successful. And we think and I think sometimes that… When you look at Steve Jobs or you look at other influential inspiring leaders and we think, “Oh, they ruled with a heavy hand.” And actually, if you dive into it, what we find is a lot of those leaders, there’s a myth of culture and of personality about those folks.
02:43 MB: They actually created cultures where they showed some concerns and care whether it’s for their customers or for their employees, or whatever. But they actually weren’t the mean people we thought they were. And so, sometimes, I think we have to dig a little bit deeper into some of those myths but the fact is that cultures, organizations that are built around empathy and concern for other people are more effective and successful over time.
03:05 BM: And I always say just because… I Mean, I do believe ’cause I know enough people that have worked for Steve Jobs. As one of my friends says, “I left Apple for the second time when he threw a coffee pot at my head.” I think Steve Jobs was mean but, as you said, just because Steve Jobs was able to create a successful organization by being mean or Elon Musk by being all… Oh, We don’t know. He’s just very compulsive. It doesn’t mean that you can do it in your organization but the old-time thing is that in order to get people to do stuff, you gotta be mean, you gotta scream, you gotta yell. But what you’re saying in your book is that is just not true.
03:38 MB: Yeah, it’s a myth and that’s why I said, it’s, we hear these stories. And I’ll give you Steve Jobs as an example. Steve actually owned two companies, built two companies in this his life. We all know Apple but we forget about Pixar, and Pixar, their, founder, co-founder wrote an a amazing, one of my favorites, called “Creativity, Inc” where they talked about the secret of their success was a culture of openness and where they had these meetings where they would talk about the movies that they were trying to produce and anybody from the CEO down to the janitor could provide an opinion. So, even in those myths of personality around Steve Jobs, yeah sure, maybe he threw coffee pots at people but the fact is that he built a company that had an entire culture of empathy built right into it and it was the reason for their success. So, that’s one simple thing.
04:25 MB: Another stat that I love to use is, a good friend of mine, Jim Stengel, who was the former CMO at Procter & Gamble wrote a book called “Grow” where he looked at companies that were built on some sort of a purpose or values where they weren’t just putting profits over people, they were putting people over profits. Those companies were 400% more successful based on their stock price. And so, yeah, we hear these anecdotal stories about mean leaders, but the simple fact is that companies that are built on cultures of acceptance and diversity and inclusion and concern for other people or the environment, or whatever it is, concern for others and not just leadership worship, they’re more successful. So, if you wanna build a successful company, have a little bit of concern for the people around you.
05:05 BM: What’s, It’s interesting because now that I think back on it, and of course, we’ll never know is maybe Steve Jobs was like that because he didn’t want there to be leadership worship because, certainly, Apple is a company built on concern for other people, and diversity, and inclusion, those kinds of things.
05:17 MB: Well, that’s exactly right. I mean, you look at their head of design, he’s a famous person in his own right and their whole company was built on obsession over customer utilization and amazing customer experiences. So, yeah, Steve maybe was obsessed with and sort of forceful in making that an important point but that’s what Apple was. It was a company built around providing an amazing technical customer experience.
05:43 BM: So, you have talk talked about on your bio that you’ve had 53 jobs in your life. So, you must have seen your fair share of mean people.
05:49 MB: Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, I mean, the story is I was at… And somebody sat down with me and it is was for an interview and they were like, “Hey, you’ve been a successful executive,” and for the first time, I had actually never had considered myself as successful. I still feel like I have a lot to accomplish. And she asked me why and I gave her an answer but afterwards just thinking about it. And then I started thinking, “Well, how many jobs have I actually had?” And I counted them up and I thought a lot of the reasons I’ve had so many, and a lot of them were within one company. I would spend nine years at one company, seven years at another. I mean, I’ve had some long stints, but many jobs within. And what I found was that, in those cases, I liked the company or I liked the work but I just hated my boss. [chuckle] And I think a lot of the reasons for the 53 jobs is I left my boss and, in some cases, gave up too soon I think and I think, slowly over the course of my career, learned how to deal with what I looked back and considered some mean people. One great example, I had a boss who I really didn’t like and…
06:46 MB: And we’re now friends. And what happened was, I learned how to deal with him. I learned that we were both fathers, we were both parents of a couple of kids. And once I got to know him as a person, once I got to understand what he really wanted to accomplish, and once I took the, I think, the courage to stick up for myself and let him know like, “Hey, if you want something accomplished, you’ve hired me to do that job, and I’m good at doing that job, so let me do it.” We became… We had a great working environment, and we’re friends to this day.
07:15 BM: It’s so interesting, you said that you left your boss. I remember when I left IBM in 1990, I actually did leave my boss, and I always tell a joke when I’m speaking that, this guy used to have a sales contest where first prize was lunch with him, and I always said, “Oh, what’s the second prize? Two lunches with you.” And I realized that I didn’t just leave IBM, I really left him. So based on your experience, Michael, how do you deal with mean people that suck at work instead of just getting out of the situation? ‘Cause that’s not always the solution, and that’s not always the right thing to do.
07:44 MB: That’s right, and it’s true. And in fact, the data shows that most people do leave, I think, it’s something like 60 plus percent of people that leave a job are leaving their boss, it’s not the company or the work. Which is sad, it means that we have a crisis of leadership in our culture. Simple ways, and that I have kinda touched upon this, but the first thing is, find out what your boss really wants. If you find out in that conversation that your boss just wants to feed his ego, he or she is a narcissist, then you need to leave, that’s step number five. But the first thing is, find out what they really want. Make sure that’s clear between the two of you. The second thing, and this is something I did at almost every job I had, is I would interview and meet with the people that were peers of my boss. I would meet with the stakeholders that my boss was supposed to be serving, and sometimes that was customers, which was a lot of fun.
08:31 MB: But really try to get a 360-degree view of what your leader really is looking for, what they’re trying to accomplish. Then the third is what I mentioned, you have to have that courageous conversation, I call it the cake baking conversation. You want to sit down and have this conversation with your boss where you say, “Listen, I know you want me to… You want a cake, you want it to be chocolate, you want chocolate chips with chocolate icing, and guess what? I’m a good chef, I know how to make a really great cake, so let me go bake that cake. You can’t ask me for a cake and tell me how to bake it.” And so, that’s the conversation that I think too few of us have. We get into this kind of victim mentality, where we just think our bosses yelling at us and telling us what to do, and we get mad and miserable, and then we leave. So that’s kind of the third step, it is making sure you have that conversation.
09:13 MB: The fourth, I had have mentioned as well, get to know them as a person. Try to just subtly find out, are they mean because they’re going through a divorce, or they’ve got health issues, or they have got problems at home? Sometimes when we learn these things, we find that they’re just people too, and we can understand a little bit more about why they’re acting the way they are. And so, once you go through those four steps, if you still find that your boss is a jerk, then step number five is either commit to delivering what they want, or leave. And I think at least having a formal systematic process to go through those steps can really help a lot of people.
09:47 BM: Is there a difference, Michael, between someone who’s mean and someone who’s abusive?
09:52 MB: Well, yeah, there’s a fine line, I guess, you could say. And I think abusive behavior should never ever be tolerated. One of the people I highlight in the book is Satya Nadella from Microsoft, who is in his own memoir and bio talked about how he grew up very, in a very challenging situation, he had has a child with… Actually, I think it’s two children with some developmental disabilities, and it really helped him to learn. He tells this the story about how one day he was sitting with his wife and saying, “Why did this happen to us?” But what he realized was, it didn’t happen to him, it happened to his son who had a developmental disorder, and it helped him to realize for the first time that it’s not just all about him. Nancy Duarte who is a famous storyteller, her secret to a great stories and great professional presentations is always this tip, this understanding that it’s not about you.
10:45 MB: And so, that is a really important, that’s what Satya learned, the power of empathy and brought that to Microsoft. And one of the things that he tried to do, was is to say, “We won’t tolerate abusive conversations. We won’t tolerate abusive relationships or behavior in any way, whether it’s physical, sexual, verbal, of any kind.” So he started to weed those kinds of leaders out, who in many cases were almost even encouraged and promoted. There’s a number of CEOs that I’ve talked to who have had started this process of trying to actually hire, fire and promote based on the values of the people that they want. You want people that care about their team, leaders that put the customer first, those are the kinds of behaviors you want. We don’t necessarily need smart jerks, as one of the CEOs I talked to refers to them as. Every organization has them, we need to stop hiring them, we need to stop promoting them.
11:39 BM: It’s… I’m so glad you have focus focused on the word empathy, because I believe in any kind of communication, especially between people that work inside a company, if you can just show empathy, if you can just show that, hey, you’re listening to what the other person is saying, that really goes a long way to building relationships.
11:55 MB: Yeah, I mean, empathy really is the key. It’s kind of… If we’re not gonna be mean, then what are we gonna be? [chuckle] Because I think the problem is there’s some folks that just believe that’s what a leader should do. A leader should be the sergeant, the drill sergeant in boot camp that’s at screaming at people. And companies are not the military, and we need our teams to be able to think as thinking organisms or organizations, and really start to come together and that starts with empathy. And so empathy is, it’s kind of a touchy feely word that some people kind of resist sometimes. But it really just means trying to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, trying to understand what they’re going through. If you’re a leader, your job is not to tell people what to do, your job is to help empower and encourage the power and the thinking and the experience of the teams that you’re leading.
12:44 BM: You know, it’s interesting to me because I think that as a manager that has so many experience, it’s easy to be mean, it’s easy to threaten, it’s easy to yell, it’s easy to swear. To do the other thing, that to show empathy to me, that takes more time, and that’s a lot more difficult.
12:58 MB: I actually, I find it, I found it to be pretty simple, and one of the things that I… I’ll give you an example. I’ve always hated two things in big companies that I worked for. Annual performance reviews and the, quote unquote, “one-on-one.” My manager would always say, “I want you to set up a 30 minute one-on-one, so you could can tell me all the things that you’re working on.” And I always thought that, “Well, how ridiculous is this, right?” Like, “First of all, I perform all year, not just once. Why are we talking about my performance once? And second secondly, why do I need to spend 30 minutes of my valuable time telling you what I’m doing? I could spend that time maybe getting your advice or learning some of your experiences.” So, as a leader, when I became a leader, because of that anger and frustration with those processes bosses is, I came up with this simple conversation that first of all, it wasn’t formally scheduled, I would just always try to check-in with the teams that I led regularly, but not formally, and I did it doing three things.
13:48 MB: One, how are you doing? Check-in. How are things going? Just personally, how are things going? You know what I mean? Do you like your job? Or Are you getting what you need? So that’s number one, how are you doing? Number two, how am I doing? And so, it reverses the whole concept of, as the a leader, I’m supposed to tell you what to do, and it says, “You know what? As the leader, I’m here to support you, and how am I doing in supporting you?” And that’s… Then it’s question number three is, what can I do to help you? And it’s back to this cake, right? Like, “I need a chocolate cake, but you’re the one who’s gonna bake it, so how can I help you? How am I doing in supporting what you need? Do you need a certain ingredient to make this a great cake?” That’s what a leader’s job is. And so, it’s very simple. Just ask those three questions, just check-in with your team, find out how they’re doing, find out how you’re doing and find out what you need to do to help them.
14:30 BM: One thing that you talk in the book, Mean People Suck, is that you have to put some emotion into it. And sometimes for a lot of folks, this seems to be counter-intuitive because you hear a lot in small business, Michael, that it’s not personal. And I reject that because I really think it is personal, and you’ve gotta put some emotion into it because it’s your life’s work.
14:47 MB: Exactly, the first time somebody said that to me, I was actually really young, and it was my first… And not my first manager, but it was like my third or fourth, and I had a number in my first couple of years, but, but I remember just saying to him, like, “Well, I’m a person, so how can it not be personal?” First of all, personal, if you’re attacking me and in the things that I’m doing? Here’s what it comes down to. I’ve spent two chapters in the book talking about story telling, and the reason I talk about this is it’s a skill that so many leaders lack, so many professionals lack. And the reason stories are effective ways of communicating information is because of the emotion. It’s the emotion that we attach to. We loved Star Wars because we fell in love, maybe, with Luke or Leia, right? Like, we find ourselves attached emotionally to the characters, the heroes of the stories that we love, or we find ourselves hating and feeling negatively towards the villains of those stories but it’s the emotion that causes us to love or hate or to really emotionally connect.
15:43 MB: Organizations need to do the same thing. In Jim’s book, “Grow,” he talks about how companies built on purpose tell the their stories of what they believe in. Companies, and leaders that are more successful are the ones that are able to connect with their teams, and even more so, connect with their customers in an emotional way, and the way that they do that is through the stories that they tell. The stories aren’t, “Hey, I’m awesome.” The stories are, “Hey, I understand what you need, I know somebody like you who had the a this similar problem and let me tell you how they succeeded.” And that’s a great story that many organizations just… Many leaders just simply don’t know how to tell.
16:19 BM: Well, Michael, I appreciate being on the show. The title of the book is, Mean People Suck: How empathy leads to bigger profits and a better life. Where can people get in touch with you?
16:25 MB: Yeah, you can could find me at meanpeoplesuck.com, you could can also connect with me on LinkedIn and Facebook, and look up the book on Amazon, it’s something that, and I have narrated it myself on Audible as well, and would love any of your audience’s feedback on what they think about Mean People Suck.
16:39 BM: Michael, thanks so much. This is AMA 20 WCPT in Chicago. We will be right back.