CEO Solves the Toxic Talent Conundrum

[00:00:00] I'm Felicia Shakiba and this is CPO PLAYBOOK, where we solve a business challenge in every episode. We've all encountered toxic individuals in one way or another. According to the 2023 Toxic Workplace Report by Oak and Gage, 56% of respondents admitted

[00:00:24] to being subjected to the demoralizing experience of being belittled in front of their colleagues, while 42% reported incidents of bullying. Additionally, 32% of employees have been coerced into working long hours. Yet sometimes toxic individuals can produce outstanding business results and leaders might be swayed to keep them.

[00:00:49] So what do we do? Today, I'll interview Robert Gardner, co-founder and CEO at Rebalance Earth to find out. Rob, before we get into learning more about how to deal with toxic individuals, could you start by sharing some background on the various leadership roles you've held throughout your career?

[00:01:13] Well, firstly, Felicia, thanks for having me on your podcast. The thing about my leadership roles, it probably started when I co-founded Reddington, which was the first company I started 18 years ago. Obviously you start out as co-founders, but that business today, I don't work there,

[00:01:30] but that business today has got over 200 employees and so I was co-CEO of that business. And then in 2009 we co-founded another business called Mallet Street and I remain a non-executive director on that board. I also founded a charity, Red Start for Financial Education,

[00:01:49] which is now one of the largest providers of financial education to primary schools in the UK. And I'm a trustee and we have a full-time CEO in place. And we should come back to that because it's fascinating how you build and grow something where you don't pay people,

[00:02:02] you don't have bonuses and how do you motivate people to do stuff outside of traditional incentives? And then I was on the executive board of St. James's Place, which is the largest wealth manager in the UK.

[00:02:14] And I was basically in charge of investing all of the money on behalf of our clients. So we had almost a million clients, about £150 billion. And I had a team of people reporting in to me of about 450 people. And I'm now back in startup life.

[00:02:29] I left that job and I've just started a new business and I'm now back to me, my co-founder. I've got my personal assistant and we've got one other colleague. So we're now back to four people.

[00:02:39] So leadership is more about convincing the outside world that we've got a good idea. Leadership goes in phases depending on where the company is at. Got you. In seasons. Right, seasons.

[00:02:52] I love that you mentioned that because I feel like a lot of people talk about leadership as a general term, but there's leadership for different parts and different pieces. So many variations you've shared already. Well, I'm going to say it's cheesy, but I'm also a dad.

[00:03:06] I'm also a dad and I think parenting, me and my wife are ultimately leaders to our children. I think any parent is really providing a leadership role for their kids. So I think it's important to call that out as well. I would never disagree with you on that.

[00:03:19] Never. I think that there's a lot of similarities when people become parents and then they look at the way they talk to their colleagues and so forth. But another episode, right? There are lots of parenting and leadership. Absolutely. That's a great one.

[00:03:36] I have to follow up with that one. Today is about toxic talent, identifying, learning more about them, what do they look like and so forth. So given your extensive experience in leadership, which we've already clearly outlined, what are some signs that someone has become a toxic talent?

[00:03:56] What does that term toxic talent mean to you? I think I first came across the term probably about 10 years ago. And I think the way you experienced it is when you have an individual normally who is extremely competent in their role.

[00:04:13] Let's say they're a sales role and they're very good at winning new clients, bringing in new business, telling you product or service. And the risk is, A, you live in fear of them leaving because of the impact that they might have.

[00:04:28] But at the same time, these people are normally extremely good at managing up. But you start to get a sense that the people around them don't like that person. It's more than just jealousy about their capability. And we talked about seasons of a business.

[00:04:42] And I think you become of a size and scale where the performance of the team is more important than the individual. And once you recognize that, it doesn't matter how good someone is, whether they're an exceptional coder, whether they're an exceptional COO or lawyer or an outstanding salesperson.

[00:04:59] If ultimately the behaviors of that person are undermining the performance of that team, then that's toxic talent. That's how I would define it. What are those behaviors? What's maybe one or two examples that you could share of someone behaving in a way that identifies them as toxic?

[00:05:18] Look, I think the world's changed a lot. I've got almost 25 years now of working career. I started in investment banking.

[00:05:25] I started on the training floors of London, which are probably not a million miles away from the training floors of Wall Street in the late 1990s and early 2000s. There it was common to just scream and shout at people and literally have that hair dryer treatment.

[00:05:38] That just doesn't happen. I think there's stuff now that has become just unacceptable on every level. But I think it's a treatment of colleagues that is belittling, that is not respectful, that is undermining.

[00:05:53] It's maybe political, especially if that individual has maybe more influence than others with their boss or the leadership team. And all of that ultimately creates resentment with that individual's team and colleague.

[00:06:07] And yeah, and the danger is good people leave or good people just pull back and say, I can't be asked for this. And they're not going to give all of their effort because they think that individual is just going to take the credit anyway.

[00:06:18] So it can manifest itself in many different ways. But effectively, they're undermining the help of the team. But the power that they have is if you become overly dependent on that person and also you don't have the mechanisms to call it out in doing so.

[00:06:33] I liked your Wall Street reference. Do you mean that the Wolf of Wall Street movie is not real or it shouldn't be? No, no.

[00:06:41] I mean, if I look back to some of the behaviors and some of the characters that I worked with in the late 90s and early 2000s, there's some really unbelievable behaviors that are thankfully just completely unacceptable today. But acceptable then.

[00:06:57] I mean, I was openly described as lower than whale shit at the bottom of the ocean. So I mean, it's pretty clear where you are. Sea level, you've got the bottom of the ocean and then you've got whale shit. And then that is where I am.

[00:07:10] And I used to have a boss who used to call up at like nine o'clock at night and he'd be like, Bobo, Bobo, where is six month Euro Swissie vol or dollar yen vol? And if I didn't know it like that, he'd scream and shout at me.

[00:07:22] At the same time though, he paid me extremely well. He promoted me when the big global boss would walk over. He'd be like, come on over. You've got to meet Bobo. Bobo, he's the star.

[00:07:32] So it was a bit like a psychotic parent in some kind of Netflix, Amazon Prime movie where they're overly generous and overly punishing. I would say that that was the management style. And then within the trading floor environment were all these different fiefdoms between the different deaths.

[00:07:49] And it was like Game of Thrones. And as a young graduate who was wet behind the ears and a bit naive, now looking back, I'm amazed I survived. I mean, just as another little anecdote, a lot of finance uses Excel and Excel modeling.

[00:08:02] And if you were caught using a mouse, if you didn't know all the shortcuts on Excel again, that was like... You're out of here. Yeah, you're out of here. What are you doing? So that's a different era. Thankfully those behaviors have changed and no longer acceptable.

[00:08:17] You were golden handcuffed, it sounds like. Yeah. At the same time, it was exciting and I learned a hell of a lot. And there were also some amazing people and we did some great work. It wasn't all bad, like everything in life. It's a full palette of experiences.

[00:08:32] Let's say a leader determines that a team member is not toxic per se, but can still have a negative impact on the team. What does a scenario like that look like? Again, lots of people like to use the nine box grid for assigning their team.

[00:08:49] And just to explain what that is, if you imagine on one axis, you've got potential. On the other, you've got performance and you divide that into low, medium and high. So you've got high performance, high potential.

[00:09:02] Those are your vulnerable kids who are coming through and you want to promote them and grow them and invest in them. Clearly the people on the bottom left, you need to move out. But it's the people in the middle.

[00:09:14] And I think what happens is sometimes you over-promote things. I think my lesson is there are people who are OK at one level and then you over-promote them. And by over-promote them, I mean just literally up one level and they're out of their depth.

[00:09:26] And that's a nightmare because often that person might have been there a long time, is likeable, people like them. But all of a sudden you have promoted them. And therefore the performance you demand of that person is greater than before.

[00:09:44] And they don't have the growth mindset or the ability to move. They don't have the negative behavioral characteristics that go against your company values or that you accept. So you can't really let them go on that basis.

[00:09:56] But then the real danger is if you have someone whose top right hand corner, high performance, high potential, who's working for that person.

[00:10:04] And the danger with companies, especially if they're not fast growing companies, when the growth rate goes down, is you basically end up with dead man shoes. And so that person underneath is like, I'm working for someone who I don't really respect.

[00:10:16] And then if you're the overall boss of that team, so I'm the team with many layers, what do you do? It happens all the time. That person you promoted has probably been there like 10, 15 years, is loyal.

[00:10:27] So a really interesting thing to double click onto is loyalty and how important is loyalty. What is someone's expectations? I don't like it when people describe their company team as a family. I think that's a really unhelpful way of describing things. But again, it's about context.

[00:10:43] I think unless you set the context that this is going to be a high performance team and you define what a high performance team is in the same way that you need to define what your values are in order to be able to ultimately exit or coach.

[00:10:55] And if you can't coach them, exit toxic talent. If you don't have that, what does it mean to be high performance? How do you exit someone who is not so badly underperforming? So they're not in the bottom left, but they're in the bottom left of that middle grid.

[00:11:10] It's a real nightmare. In the UK, it's a lot harder to get rid of people than in the US. So one of the things that I've really learned is to spend a huge amount of time upfront.

[00:11:21] I mean, I really like the Salesforce V2 Moms, so the vision values, methods, obstacles, measurements, but there are different versions of that.

[00:11:28] But ultimately setting a job description and a V2 Mom for everyone cascading down and then setting very clearly what the purpose and values of your team are. And at least twice a year doing a proper performance review.

[00:11:46] And too often I had a role where I had a boss and their idea of a performance review was a one hour walk with you. And I remember telling them, I said, this isn't good enough. You're giving me feedback based on anecdotal stuff.

[00:11:57] This is working in financial services. You carry under the UK what's called SMCR risk. So I carry material financial risk because I'm managing people's money. I'm managing if things go wrong and extremists, I could go to prison. You have to take care and attention.

[00:12:10] I used to prepare 90 minutes for a one hour performance review with a member of my team. I used to collect 360 feedback against our values and our criteria. Love it.

[00:12:23] And by the way, I'm going to ask Felicio, what do you think of me and what you think of X, Y and Z? So it's a full 360. So you've created that open so you all know you're doing it.

[00:12:33] I get you to self rate where you are on the framework and then I would rate you and play it back.

[00:12:39] But I think that the challenge is you cannot exit someone or you can't performance coach someone unless you have that sort of data and unless you put that framework in place. I think too often performance appraisals are just taken lightly and it's like, oh, oh my goodness.

[00:12:56] We've got to do the performance appraisal. Let's go and grab a coffee. Let's have a chat. It's very based on the last two weeks. There's no real sort of data or 360 basis to it. Recency bias. Yeah, recency bias. Again, I'd have all of my leadership team.

[00:13:14] We'd all have done full Hogan profile so I know who my Hogan opposite is. So who are the people who are almost my kryptonite and who am I kryptonite to? And then again, how do you need to overcome that?

[00:13:25] But I think yet the most valuable lesson I've learned over the last five years is the importance of setting up front the context of how are we going to be as a team?

[00:13:36] What are our norms and behaviors and set a vision for what we do and then hold ourselves accountable and then really invest the time and effort as a team. A, doing those performance reviews, whatever you want to describe them at least twice a year.

[00:13:50] Being really clear and being able to say, look, Felicia, this is what we discussed last six months. This is what you're doing. This is what you said you were going to do six months ago. Where are we? If things have changed, that's OK.

[00:13:58] But give me a good reason or we need to understand why. Understand the feedback from colleagues. And I want to see again, it goes back to what you define. But for me, personal growth is extremely important.

[00:14:10] And having set that context, I want to know what sort of personal growth you've done invested in yourself.

[00:14:16] Most companies have quite big learning and development budgets and people never really make use of those things like gym where people just maybe go once or twice at the beginning and never really do anything with it. And that's the meat and potatoes.

[00:14:31] I always think that performance management is just the assessment. It's where someone's performance is. It's the knowledge of where you're at. Succession planning is where you're going. But the Alan D part, literally the meat and potatoes that's in between, that's where change happens.

[00:14:50] And without those three compartments working together, I really don't know what companies are doing. But just to stay on track, you spoke a lot about feedback and how important this is, especially in a review.

[00:15:04] When you're giving feedback to someone who might be toxic, what does that look like to you?

[00:15:09] Well, I think the first thing is you need to again, I remember, I think it was probably 2016 when I first came across the radical candor and this idea of radical candor, which again is this two by two matrix around really giving constructive feedback.

[00:15:26] And how do you do it? So on one axis is, do you care or not care? And then the other axis is how you do it. I think another lesson that I've learned is not everyone's like me.

[00:15:40] It's obvious to say that, but I think too often it's easy to just see the world through your own eyes and your own ears. And I'm naturally very tough skinned. I grew up, my parents sent me to boarding school. I was highly independent.

[00:15:51] And then I started my career in the city in London at a time where it was pretty much sink or swim. I was fine. I swam and I was fine, but that's not everyone. And so you assume people take it with that.

[00:16:02] I never got upset about the stuff that was said about me, but you could see that in a different person that might receive it very differently.

[00:16:10] If on top of that, you layer it into you, you work for a very hierarchical organization, all of a sudden any feedback that you give. I think I'm giving you some feedback, Felicia. I think I'm saying it with let's say a five out of 10 level of impact.

[00:16:25] But because I'm the big M.D., the big boss, you feel like it's like a sledgehammer, like nine out of ten. I couldn't agree more with you. I can feel the sledgehammer. So I'm just telling you some stuff.

[00:16:37] Yeah, it took me a long time to figure this out. The person on the receiving end is like, you just don't get it. It's just like you've just suddenly like bam.

[00:16:44] I'm like, well, I was just telling them, look, Felicia, when you did that Excel model, it just wasn't good enough. And here's this, this and this. And I just, no, I've not been rude, but I've just dismantled that person.

[00:16:53] I know you have it in the U.K., in the U.S., but in the U.K. we have these shows like Strictly Come Dancing and we have Kukriwands where you have the judges.

[00:17:01] People go on and dance and people give an eight and nine out of ten and give feedback. Or like Simon Cowell in Britain's Got Talent. And I know you've got U.S. Got Talent. Two or three judges who are a bit generous and all the rest.

[00:17:12] And then you've got one judge who's like quite tough. You're talking about Simon. But ultimately, everyone wants their feedback. So it's how to calibrate. Clearly this is not a TV show or anything else. And so I think I've had to learn how to understand different personality profiles.

[00:17:29] Some people who I can be really direct with and know that they'll receive it on the same. If I'm giving them a six out of ten feedback, they're receiving it as six out of ten.

[00:17:40] Or I need to be more self-aware and go, if I'm giving a six out of ten, that person's probably going to feel it like a nine out of ten. And I need to dial that down.

[00:17:48] I think the second thing is not doing it when you're rushed or stressed. Again, it's back to your personality type because my personality is fiery red on an insights profile.

[00:18:01] So to someone who's a yellow or a blue type personality, so not blue, but a yellow or green, again, that's going to be forceful. I know there are lots of different models, Hogan insights, but being mindful of that.

[00:18:15] But I do think the job of leadership is to hold people to account because ultimately a leader's job is to set the vision and direction of where we're going, is to set the milestones, the KPIs, the objectives to achieve, build the best team and then get that team to deliver.

[00:18:30] And ultimately, by the way, if the team doesn't deliver, it's the leader's fault. And if the leader doesn't upgrade and replace the team either through training or coaching or it's the leader's fault.

[00:18:42] So you can't sit there 12 months later and go, well, we didn't achieve that because that person's rubbish and go, well, at what point did he think that person was rubbish? And why didn't you do anything?

[00:18:50] Once we've got through the calibration, and I think this goes back to why you have to write down and define what are objectives, what are goals? What are we trying to achieve and be clear and say, look, Felicia, this is what we agreed.

[00:19:04] Be better at using, I feel in this is what happened. Can you explain to me before just jumping to, I'm going to jump down your throat and be like, you've not done this, you've not done this and you've not done this to be three months ago.

[00:19:15] We said you and your team were going to deliver this. We haven't delivered this. We've slipped. We're over budget. I feel that you've mismanaged me. We have our weekly team meetings. You haven't really told me just I'm feeling disappointed. Can you walk me through how we got it?

[00:19:31] Yeah, absolutely. The context is so important, right? It's just giving people the benefit of the doubt. And I think that once you have all of that context and someone still underperforming, then you have some reason.

[00:19:43] You have even just the ability to say, hey, let's figure out how we can do that differently the next time or better the next time. Right.

[00:19:51] And then I think after that person maybe doesn't improve, I guess the other question too is when do you decide that toxic talent needs to go? Are you giving that radical candor for a year until they finally do something? Do you have a window? Is it situational?

[00:20:08] When do you pull the plug, especially when a business is very highly dependent on someone. For example, I once was working with a company whose top talent, top sellers, right? Who probably held a quarter or half of the company's clients in their hand.

[00:20:25] And they said this seller was literally going around talking to whoever, however she wanted to. And they kept her. And of course everything crumbled after. But when is the right time to let go? And what does that look like?

[00:20:41] I think the reality is in the UK, once someone worked for over two years, the minimum is a 12 month period. So you've got to be on it. And I think this is where people are sloppy and you need to start the performance appraisal.

[00:20:52] You then need to put someone where you have a three month window, but you're managing it the whole way. And I think if you have toxic talent and it's undermining the team, at least the team can see that you're on it.

[00:21:04] People need to know as a boss that you are aware of the situation and that you are managing it and it's fair. It might be different in the US, but just the legal to avoid being sued or unfair dismissal or anything else.

[00:21:18] And I think this is where what's changed in the last 20, 25 years is much more being clear on job descriptions on roles. But job description is not just being about tasks and functionality, but about values and behaviours and making sure actually it's how you pay and promote people.

[00:21:33] So I think where I got called out early in my career when I was co- Like they're saying elements of toxicity and say, you're bonus should have been 75 out of 100, but actually you're not the ball, like you're 90 on performance,

[00:22:14] but on value you're like this is how your colleagues and all the rest score you against our own team values that we've all signed up to. And therefore that's why I'm giving you a bonus of 75. So and you're like, yeah, hit all my targets.

[00:22:27] I'm the best salesperson that person, we go, well that's that. The second thing is being comfortable that no one is indispensable, that if you are dependent on someone then that's a failure of your strategy.

[00:22:38] So I have a very simple heuristic that I do every week where I write down all my problems and I put it into, is it a people problem, a strategy problem, an execution problem or a funding problem?

[00:22:51] Every issue is normally related but I think if you have a people person issue, top to talent can't afford to get rid of them, then you've got a strategy problem. Then you need to work on finding a way to not let that person have so much control or

[00:23:05] influence over either the execution of your software that you're trying to deliver or the revenue that you need to hit to deliver that quarter or that year. So once you have that, that gives you the freedom and it's like a game of chess.

[00:23:18] That's why I think it does take you 12 months because you're like, well if I want to get rid of that person, I need to hire that or I need to move these two people to compensate for the loss of revenue or impact my finances to do this.

[00:23:29] And I do think leadership is like a Rubik's cube. It's this multi-dimensional problem. And again, I think that's quite often why people get, when they get promoted, they're just not very good at that multi-dimensional problem.

[00:23:40] They might be very good at their task or function or selling or producing coding or producing legal work, whatever it is. But the moment you've got to go into this sort of 3D chess and I've got a team

[00:23:52] and someone's not performing and I'm going to move them out, but I don't have enough money. I need to hire them when I hire them. What position? That's sort of something you can just figure out on a coffee on the

[00:24:02] tube on the way to work that requires beginning with the end in mind and going, okay, what being really clear about what your problem is. I think radical candor isn't just about giving feedback. It's about like feedback on yourself.

[00:24:14] It's having that mirror and go, how have I got myself in this situation where I'm so dependent on this person? What am I dependent on? And working backwards from there, there are always constraints. As I say, budget constraints, delivery constraints.

[00:24:29] If I lose that person, I'm not going to be able to deliver that on time. How do I unwind and get out of this situation? And I think you need to be practicing that almost every week, every

[00:24:38] weekend use the opportunity when you're not working and you can just let your brain catch up and sleep on things. I always just box everything into those four quadrants, people, strategy, execution, and funding. Sleep on it. And then you can normally get clear what the problem is.

[00:24:55] I'm lucky that I get to mentor or coach a few companies that I invest in. And I can see that they get stopped because they're unable to deal with that and they're like, yeah, but you don't understand. It's so easy to see that they've got a people problem.

[00:25:10] You've just got to get rid of your CTO, but it's like, I can't get rid of my CTO. You don't understand. I can't just fire my tech leader in a tech company in a moment's notice. It doesn't work like that.

[00:25:21] I think the other lesson is that people problems only compound and get worse. So the moment you brought those people issues, I think start working on them. As I say, I just take the view that it takes at least 12 months to sort things out.

[00:25:34] I'm also not a lawyer. So I think you also need to know when to bring in HR or legal support. If you're working the last company, there should be good people in HR that you could work with and understand what you can and can't do.

[00:25:46] It then becomes incredibly complex because you might have older people increasingly now post COVID, many people pull the mental health card that's only in the UK gives them protected status. You might have an employee that I joined a team where no one had,

[00:26:01] there'd never been a redundancy round in 30 years. And I started my career, Deutsche Bank and Marilune, where the bottom 5% cleared out every year. The balance curve. Yeah, if I'm honest, I sit more at that end, not saying that you just have to,

[00:26:15] but I think you do need to be clear on holding people at the bottom to account and moving them on. That doesn't necessarily mean you need to let go of 5%, but I think you need to have that discipline and be like, who is not making the boat go

[00:26:27] faster, who's slowing them down? And are we actively managing them was too many organizations don't want to have these difficult conversations. Don't want to actively manage people. You end up with a whole load of well-paid, overly promoted people.

[00:26:44] And when you ask, Oh, we need people that, Oh, you can't make they've been here for 15, 16 years. You go, yeah, but that was back in the day. I need them to do this job today going forward. And when I look at my people budget, they're like a significant

[00:26:57] part of my people budget. I can hire three people for the price of that one person and they're not performing at the level of those three people. So I understand being loyal, but we're not paying people for past performance.

[00:27:07] So that's not a toxic talent, but you do end up with a lot of what I call coasters. And I think it's interesting when you work in a small firm, there's no place to hide. Even in the Maryland is in the Deutsche Bank.

[00:27:18] You realize that some people are really quite sneaky at being able to get away with quite mediocre for a long period of time and not being called out and paid quite a lot of money to not add a lot of value.

[00:27:29] And to be fair, I think that a lot of company cultures are really looking at the people who make a lot of noise as the ones to exit the business. And so people are culturally inclined to coast because of the culture that the leaders provide for the business.

[00:27:51] It's like, if you speak up or if you cause too much angst or anxiety, it's not good and we're going to just promote the one that's coasting because they don't talk up against you or whatnot.

[00:28:02] But I think that the cultures that I think are actually quite healthy are the ones that allow that like healthy debate, right? And encourage the healthy debate, especially at the top that allows for diversity and innovation.

[00:28:18] But I think some leaders for sure, and I've seen it and I've witnessed it as you speak up too much, it's a problem. And so I think that a lot of what we've been talking about today around

[00:28:29] toxic talent, what people can get away with the coasters, how you set up your performance appraisal and so forth. That is really driven by the culture that leaders present in the first place. Right? So I think having that at the top is really important and that trickles down

[00:28:47] to all of the things that we've been talking about. But again, it's a preventative, right? Preventative measure too. No, I think for me, the key to business full stop is trust. I think as a leader, you have to build trust with your leadership team and

[00:29:01] trust is it's okay to disagree. And that you have to invest time in that. It's not just the meetings. I used to, with my leadership team go away once a month, we go away for one

[00:29:12] day, but it would be an evening and we do all of our work there. But I deliberately didn't want it to be in the office. We try and go somewhere different. We'd all go out for dinner and drinks or not everyone drunk, but we'd spend social time together.

[00:29:25] And then once a quarter, we normally do a two day one. And I think really investing in that because that's what fills up the trust battery, the trust to have the conversation to disagree and go, yeah, I just don't see that.

[00:29:38] I just don't think we can deliver that in that time. Let's talk about people on your team. Let's talk about when we're going to do promotions. Okay, Felicia, you've got your team to promote. I've got my team.

[00:29:48] Let's have an honest conversation and go, well, I know you think so and so is great, but actually I think you've got a bit of a blind spot for that person. I think actually when we think about our values, it's only when as a

[00:29:58] leadership team, we start to discuss each other's promotion and bonuses in a very open way rather than a hub and spoke where you might be the leader and I say, okay, you've got your part and your team that walk me through it and run it on spokes.

[00:30:13] Rather than let's all get in together. Let's take a day and we're going to go through all of our promotions from the most junior people all the way through. And we're going to really do it properly.

[00:30:22] And you might go, well, that's a waste of time to do that. But actually as much of it is about building that ability to challenge each other and then also be challenged by your colleagues and expect

[00:30:33] to have to justify things is actually all of us will have soft spots for individual members of our team, which others will go, it will either be really obvious or maybe it's just a little bit, but that's healthy to call out.

[00:30:46] But I think that the performance of teams falls over when the trust goes. So I think the number one job of leadership is trust. I think the other thing is you're not there to be friends and being comfortable when you're the boss.

[00:31:01] And I think this is why people struggle when they're promoted, because they're so used to being friends with their colleagues, going for drinks, maybe playing sport, maybe being in a band, whatever people do to suddenly when you're in a leadership position

[00:31:14] that changes, you do have to make the tough calls. And if you're not performing, I need to switch you out. And that's very hard if you're good friends outside of work, if you and your families hang out, if you do stuff with the kids.

[00:31:27] And I was in finding your own company at the beginning. I think that is the danger you form friendships. I was very deliberate when I took my last big executive job of like, I'm not here to build friendships.

[00:31:38] Now, actually it turns out that having left there, I built some good friendships, but I deliberately sort of wanted to keep that line. Again, it doesn't mean you can't have fun, but you need to be

[00:31:47] really clear on that line because at the end of the day, as the leader, I'm accountable to deliver a whole lot of stuff. In order to do that, my most important asset is my human capital.

[00:31:55] And in order to do that, I need to get that team to perform as well as it can. And it's hard to do that objectively if you're overly friends with people, because I think it clouds your judgment. I agree.

[00:32:05] Rob, I loved the perspective you have on how to not only identify toxic talent, but how to address the challenge. I think you are an incredibly authentic leader. So Rob, thank you so much for joining me on the show.

[00:32:22] This has been a wonderful conversation and I'm excited for the next episode. Yeah. Life lessons in parenting and leading. So we'll put that in for next year. Absolutely. That's Rob Gardner, co-founder and CEO at Rebalance Earth, based in London.

[00:32:41] If today's episode captured your interest, please consider sharing it with a friend or visit CPOplaybook.com to read the episode or learn more about leadership and talent management. We greatly appreciate your rating, review and support as a subscriber. I'm Felicia Shakiba.

[00:33:00] See you next Wednesday and thanks for listening.