396: Great Leaders Turn the Temperature Down

Yes, this is something I kind of saw being a very junior person in the Army.

And the Army has this model where typically leaders rotate not at the same time as everyone else.

And so you'll have the same group of soldiers who one day is commanded by Tim, just as an example, and the next day Tom comes in or whatever.

And I saw examples where senior leaders switched out.

And for example, maybe one was really kind of for lack of a better term, a Boy Scout, like really followed the rules and sort of lived that.

And then the other was a little bit more of like flaunted the rules and kind of lived in the gray area.

And it was amazing to see that the same soldiers who the day before, you know, were themselves enforcing the standards, kind of like many of them suddenly when given the latitude to live a little bit more in the gray area, like absolutely took it.

And it was just sort of one of those visceral kind of like you could just see how different a unit was under a leader who understood that their actions were being emulated in a bunch of different ways.

Yeah, that's such a good example because, well, in the workplace, there are turnovers with different leaders as well.

Have you seen a similar thing happen with changes in leadership in the corporate world?

I think so.

I mean, we all see the front page of The New York Times when occasionally a senior leader's bad behavior kind of gets to the level of usually being removed.

And I think in those instances, you...

Yeah, you hear like the story is almost always the same.

It feels like it's like many people knew for a long time there.

I think there's a misconception that that you're able to like segment out the bad.

And I think usually you hear like I was just looking at the news last week and there was a CEO who was removed for an inappropriate relationship.

Not too many details, but, you know, that kind of phrase was used in all of the articles that I read.

But in all the articles that I read, there were also a lot of quotes from employees who had worked with this particular CEO.

They're saying a version of like, oh, this has been going on for a very long time.

And I think it's interesting because it indicates that the behavior is very visible.

Like I think that leaders just maybe sometimes don't fully clock how even small things like a tiny word or phrase just used in an offhand way is picked up as a signal of either like what they tolerate, what they stand for.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And thinking about that, the other thing you had mentioned was managers make or break an employee's entire experience.