Relationships at Work - The Leadership Guide to Building Workplace Connections and Avoiding Blind Spots.
Relationships at Work - your leadership guide to building workplace connections and avoiding blind spots.
A relatable and honest show on leadership, organizational culture and soft skills, focusing on improving employee engagement and company culture to inspire people to apply, stay and thrive.
Because no one wants leadership that fosters toxic environments at work, nor should they.
Host, speaker and communications leader Russel Lolacher shares his experience and insights, discussing the leadership and corporate culture topics that matter with global experts help us with the success of our organizations (regardless of industry). This show will give you the information, education, strategies and tips you need to avoid leadership blind spots, better connect with all levels of our organization, and develop the necessary soft skills that are essential to every organization.
From leadership development and training to employee satisfaction to diversity, inclusivity, equity and belonging to personalization and engagement... there are so many aspects and opportunities to build great relationships at work
This is THE place to start and nurture our leadership journey and create an amazing workplace.
Relationships at Work - The Leadership Guide to Building Workplace Connections and Avoiding Blind Spots.
Taking A.I.M. at Bad Leadership: Admit, Identify, Manage
In this mini-episode of Relationships at Work, host Russel Lolacher dives into a tough but necessary conversation—why organizations need to stop passing the buck on bad leadership. Russel explores the hidden dangers of shifting problematic leaders to new roles without accountability, the ripple effects on workplace culture, and how teams often feel forced to "recommend" toxic leaders just to be rid of them. With a simple A.I.M. framework—Admit, Identify, Manage—Russel highlights how leaders and organizations can take responsibility, confront leadership blind spots, and foster real growth. It’s time to stop hiding leadership issues and start fixing them—because while they’re under your roof, they’re your responsibility.
And connect with me for more great content!
Welcome back to Relationships At Work – Your guide to building workplace connections and avoiding leadership blind spots.. I’m your host Russel Lolacher
I’m a communications and leadership nerd with a couple of decades of experience and a heap of curiosity on how we can make the workplace better. If you’re a leader trying to understand and improve your impact on work culture and the employee experience, you’re in the right place.
This mini-episode is a quick and valuable bit of information to help your mindset for the week ahead.
Inspired by our R@W Note Newsletter, I’m passing on to you…
Embracing Our Organizations Leadership Problems
I recently had a conversation about hiring someone as a leader.
In that discussion, we proposed how much more effective it would be to talk to the team they led rather than colleagues and former bosses. Who better to tell you how good or a bad they are as leaders than those being led by them? Wouldn't they have a much better idea of what their leadership is like?
I love this idea... to a point. Great leaders will be sung about by their teams. They’ll do nothing but illustrate how great they are. And bad leaders are really great at hiding. They can con their bosses and their colleagues, but they can’t hide their inabilities from their team.
But in that conversation I was having, we raised a really interesting wrinkle.
What if we did ask those team members for a reference, for their terrible, horrible leader? Think about the relationship they have. The team and the bad leader. Do you think they would want to continue that relationship? What's the likeliness that that team says the bad leader is amazing just so they can get rid of them? So they can become someone else's problem?
Is it a jaded way of looking at the workplace? Sure. But it's also very human. If someone has the opportunity to stop hurting, why wouldn't they take it? We've talked on the show repeatedly about the trauma that bad (and even OK) leaders can inflict, even unknowingly.
Of course this exacerbates a leadership problem; it just shuffles it around. The possible trauma gets spread. What we have when a bad leader isn't addressed and allowed to move to another leadership role, is...
· An untrained leader is now negatively impacting another team.
· An organization hasn't taken accountability for that bad leader. And this is probably not the first time.
· A team survives that leadership experience, and will now take that trauma into their next leadership relationship.
It's important that organizations take ownership, responsibility, and accountability of those in their organization. Whether they were bad before they got to our organization or not, while they are under our roof, we have a duty to ensure we're not part of the problem of perpetuating bad leadership.
It's time to take A.I.M. at these problems we need to own.
Admit, Identify, Manage = AIM
1. Admit we have bad leadership - The first step in solving a problem is admitting we have one. No excuses. No "that's not my experience with that person." No spin. Recognizing the need to address this issue is so important.
2. Identify those bad leaders and the causes for their bad leadership - So who are they? How are they influencing your culture and your teams negatively? What is allowing them to continue that behaviour? Are they untrained? Is their own boss willfully ignorant to the impacts? What are the factors to allowing their bad leadership?
3. Manage their progress to improve - Help them. Let them know what’s been reported about them. Then alter their course of continuing down the path that hurts organizations to one that helps them grow. Provide checkins, goal setting, expectations, direction and accountabilities.
Who’s job is this? Everybody’s. An executive have to create an environment where this is normalized.
We as organizations have a responsibility to our teams and to those bad leaders to do better while they in our stead. In our environment. They are people that need our time and effort rather than those we just shrug our shoulders at and pretend don't exist. Until they become someone elses problem.
Leaders lead. And when they take aim at their leadership problems, teams won't have to lie about how great their leaders are to get rid of them. They'll be confident in the fact that the organization has their back, has been working to help those troublesome leaders, and will want to see them continue to grow into new opportunities.
As my parents used to say, while you're under our roof, you'll live by our rules.
We leaders can do the same to raise better leaders.
