Are We Part of the Problem at Work?

Most people can spot dysfunction at work.

Bad bosses. Endless emergencies. Burnout masquerading as productivity.

But the harder question is this: what role do we play in it?

In this episode of Relationships at Work, author and executive leader Eric Charran joins Russel Lolacher to unpack how dysfunctional workplaces actually take hold — and why self-assessment is often the missing step in breaking the cycle.

They explore how leaders reward busyness instead of outcomes, why bad behaviors get normalized, and how managing up, setting boundaries, and understanding your own worth can protect your mental health without surrendering your agency.

This conversation isn’t about blame.
 It’s about clarity, self-awareness, and figuring out what’s truly within your control — even when the system isn’t working.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: And on the show today, we have Eric Charran and here is why he is awesome. He's an author, speaker, and executive director and head of product for data at Intuit.

He's also the founder and CEO of Vulcan Collective offering executive level guidance on AI data infrastructure and platform architecture. Before that, he was the chief architect for Microsoft, and he's an author, like I said before. And here's the book we're gonna be talking a little bit about today, which is, have you ever had a boss that.

Dot question mark. I'm very specific in my wording here, Eric, uh, succeeding in a dysfunctional workplace. Welcome to the show, sir.

Eric Charran: Russel, thanks for having me on.

Russel Lolacher: Uh, we're not, it's funny reading your bio and getting a little, digging into your background a bit. I'm like, how techy is this conversation gonna be? But happy to know that we're not, even though that's a bit of my background as well, is just overseeing technical products and so forth, but I'm really curious about self-assessing, especially in an organization that may not be working as well as it should.

But before we get to all of that, I have to ask you the question, sir, that I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your best or worst employee experience? I.

Eric Charran: Yeah, I'd love to answer both of those, but maybe I'll just pick on the more challenging one. Um, and so what I, I, I think, and actually one of the things that inspired, partially inspired me just kind of trying to write down everything I've learned was a recent experience that I had with a, a VP at one of the organizations I worked at.

And this is an individual, like most of the individuals that I, and the behaviors that I write about in the book, it's the, the person's fantastic. It's just that they have the wrong tools in their toolbox. And so, um, instead of, you know, taking the time to try to be self-aware, which is a skill in and of itself, um, this individual kind of doubled down, uh, and said that, Nope, these are the tools that I've been given.

These are the tools that are in my box. I'm not interested in swapping out these tools, and so this is the way it's gonna be. So there are, there are instances, and in fact, they inspired one of the archetypes that I write about in the book, which was, um, the, uh, emergency broadcaster. So in, in this scenario, the emergency broadcaster is somebody that, uh, doesn't necessarily do a great job of preparing and being aware of what's happening from a day-to-day perspective.

And it's largely because they are kind of constantly in defense mode. There are so many demands on their time. The inbox has thousands of unread messages. Slacks are piling up, and the demands on their time is considerable. They just haven't figured out a system on how to work through those things. And as a result, only the emergency brought, you know, piled to the top.

When emergencies happen, they may not be emergencies for everybody else. And it turns out in this instance, they weren't. So, myself and a couple other VPs at the time were, uh, consistently under siege where there were these false proclamations of the sky is falling. And in many instances we were like, Hey, no, no, it's not falling.

It's, it's okay. We, we told you last week and it was in your inbox and we slacked you. Here's the slide deck. So this instance was one of those instances in which, you know, we were all, you know, some of us were working out, some of us were dropping kids off at daycare, some of us were getting on and off the subways, balancing phones and, and coffee cups.

And then this emergency meeting happens 7:30 AM Everybody get on this call because the, the, the managing vice president knew every VP has a packed day. When's the one time that you're likely not busy, it's when you're commuting. So 7:30 AM I know everybody can be on, and we began to go through and people, you're screaming, kids in the background, people dropping phones, shaky, zooms, uh, and we're all just, you know, commiserating in the background.

About how this is such a work-life balance, intrusion for no good reason. It's, you know, emergencies happen, but when they are not emergencies for everybody else except your leader, and even though they've been briefed, that's the real challenge. And so that. In and of itself, you're like, well hey, you know Russel, you might say, well that's not TER too terrible, right?

Uh, well, it kept happening. It was chronic and it wasn't until I kind of dug into and figured out what the motivation was, what was the reasons why they were indexing on this tool of the 7:30 AM surprise meeting, why were they doing that? That was what really kinda led me to think about, well. Not only do I have the opportunity to deal with this differently, but I can manage upward, I can talk to this person about what this tool in their toolbox does to the rest of the team and how we can avoid it in the future.

Russel Lolacher: Fair comment. Uh, I appreciate that you in your book, call them Bosses and Not Leaders. Uh, I appreciate that because we call, we label a lot of people in their roles as leaders because of where they sit in the company. But that's management, that's not leadership. So I really appreciate that your, you made that clarification in your book.

What impact does that have on mental health for you? Because I mean, ha having him have that meeting at seven 30 once, twice, this is red flags, this is not, you know, regular operating. But then it became that way. So suddenly a very full day for you becomes far more full. It's bleeding into your, into your private, you know, time with family and so forth.

So what was the impact to you from a mental standpoint?

Eric Charran: Yeah, great question. Uh, it creates this sense of foreboding and dread. It's almost like at the end of the day, and many executives probably do the same thing at the end of your day at 6:00 PM or so, whenever you wind up, uh, you tend to take a break. You know, go get dinner, spend time with the family. And then maybe around I, for me it's like 10 or 11 o'clock at night.

I look at, I kind of just stack up what I'm gonna be doing the next day, just so I can prepare. And then all of a sudden, you see, sometimes while you're looking at your calendar, it pops up 7:30 AM meeting and you're just like, Ugh. And so, um, it creates this sense of dread, this sensor, foreboding, this sense of.

Gosh, if I, I'm not gonna attend this. So it's, it's like a cycle. It's like, I'm not gonna attend that. That just showed up. And if I give in to attending these last minute meetings, uh, I'm teaching my manager that these are okay, that I'm gonna show up, so I'm not gonna show up. Then maybe around 6:00 AM the next morning you take a look, second to look at your calendar as you're getting up to go work out and you're like, well, it looks like everybody else accepted.

If I don't show up, then I'm gonna be the one missing out. Alright, well now I need to ha, now I probably need to hop on this. I wasn't planning on it, but gosh, I now need to range my whole gym schedule in the morning. I gotta figure out how I can get people, you know, the kids to school. Maybe I can get them a little, they're a little earlier so they're not screaming in the background.

So it's a infringement upon kind of like a, there's this, um, uh, saying I love called Protect Your Peace. And it's an infringement on the ability to do that. And, um, you know, again, I'm not a clinician even though I talk a lot about how the power of choosing happiness and a positive mental attitude in the book, I talk about that as ingredients to help you manage upward.

Um, it's, it's something that, um, that does have an impact until you learn how to kind of grapple with it.

Russel Lolacher: It's also sad for me to hear that you're surround, you were surrounded by people that also weren't demonstrating leadership by normalizing dysfunction because they all accepted it. So they're perpetuating a dysfunctional workplace and saying, well, that should be the norm because of somebody's title, because of the.

You know, the, the, the influence they have over them. So that breaks my heart because they're part of the problem and don't see it as such, and then they're dragging you in with them, and it just becomes a bigger problem. Which leads me to my first question as we get into our topic today, which is self-assessment during dysfunction and, and why we would even need to do that.

So first I like to define things. Eric, how would you define a dysfunctional workplace? Because we give examples all the time, but we don't always actually define what we're talking about.

Eric Charran: It's a good question. I think if I look at it through a leadership perspective, if I am at in, in the C level or the VP level, there's a couple lenses that I look at it through. Dysfunction could mean that we're actually delivering results. We're rewarding the wrong thing. We're building the wrong culture.

We're achieving results by leaving bodies in the street behind us. We are, um, not actually creating or fostering a place where people want to work that get energy from work. Um, the other scenario is from a leadership perspective is, hey, we're rewarding the wrong thing. It's amazing to me, Russel, how many organizations that I've been a part of, how many teams I've been a part of, reward busyness instead of actual outcomes.

So the idea is if you're busy, your calendar's booked, you're running from conference to meetings to conference rooms. The leadership oftentimes looks at your bosses, might say, Hey, you know, that person's seems to be in demand. You know, they're, they're probably exceeding their expectations. They're always in demand.

They're always busy. Instead of looking at the actual outcomes, and in my leadership journey, I've realized that I want people less busy. I want people to continually optimize to deliver on their accountabilities, but have a, what I call discretionary professional energy that they can use to innovate in new things, help us move past competitors, do things that bring them energy and that have tangible, deliverable results within the enterprise.

The other element is, is toxicity, which is, it's a common word. It makes maybe old, old timers. Gen Xers like me kind of groan because it might be overused, but it's real. So we didn't have, uh, when I was coming up and we didn't have words like, you know, um, you know, uh, bring your whole self to work or psychological safety, those weren't concepts.

You just took it and you persevered. You became, you built that scar tissue and you pushed on. Uh, we now know how harmful that is. And how that people don't have to take that. So to me, that's what dysfunction is. It's facilitating some of these negative, impactful elements, rewarding the wrong thing, building the wrong culture, uh, achieving things, but potentially doing it not in the best or most healthy way.

Russel Lolacher: I like that you balanced it between the two areas of function and feeling to be to to, to just stick to my. Today, Eric, um, I, I saying the word dysfunction, people immediately go to productivity. It is not producing. I'm like, no, that's not what we're talking about. 'cause there's some, to our point as we've kicked off mental health ramifications, burnout, people leaving, we're talking about retention.

We're talking like, there is so many aspect aspects to a dysfunctional workplace. The problem is, is when the p those with power see this as a. And, and again, to your point, rewarding performative not performance. And it's the checkbox leadership that gets rewarded because you delivered this number. I'm like, but how did they deliver the number?

But how, what's, what's the wreckage that allowed you to get to that number? Is it the same team or did 90% of them quit because they hate you? Like there is so much more to dig into and I think we stick too much on the productivity side of things. I once had a conversation with someone. They, they illustrated somebody who was a great leader and I asked them, 'cause I knew they weren't.

And they're like, 'cause they get me what I want, when I want it. I'm like, oh, okay. Well then you have no idea what a leader is, but that's how you're defining it.

Eric Charran: You're, you're a hundred percent right. And, um, the, the how at element is so important. Um, I, I worked for Microsoft for a number of years and I was there for the cultural transition that happened when we changed leaders in 2014. Um, so it was the end of one era in the beginning of another one. And I think everybody's seeing that gif or that the image online with, you know, Microsoft with a bunch of product teams with guns pointing at each other.

There was a street fight culture. It was, who can actually achieve this goal the best and the fastest? Come to the conference room. You go, you go. And I'll pick the best one. Like that was the street fight culture at the time. Uh, and when, um, you know, our, our new leader came in, Satya Nadella. He actually called all the senior leaders together.

Uh, 'cause his focus was changing that culture. He gave us all a book to read called, um, the Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck. And I said, I'm Eric Sheron. I have a growth mindset. I don't need to read this until I was gonna go spend time with him. And they're like, make sure you read that book. So I read it on the plane out and I'm like, the first 20 pages changed my life.

So it became less, even our performance management, it became less of a what you achieved and the, but it became what did you achieve and how did you achieve it? How did you work with others? How did you bring people along? And I think that was, uh, ultimately an instrumental pivot point for the company.

Russel Lolacher: They're both equally important. We can't weigh one over the other because the other will suffer. Uh, I, but how do you know you're in a dysfunctional workplace versus I just had a bad week. And is it different based on a team versus the whole organization?

Eric Charran: That's a great question. So one of the elements of wisdom that I learned from, um, you know, the, the, the relationship that I managed to have with, um, Satya, uh, uh, given the few times that I had a chance to spend time with 'em, is people don't quit. Uh, organizations, they quit managers. Uh, and having that realization means that it's ultimately your responsibility as a leader to make sure that you don't actually have a, uh, series of team members that are constantly having bad weeks, week after week after week after week.

Everyone has a bad day. Everyone has a bad week where things don't go the way you want them to. The question is whether or not your leadership and your bosses will support you and say, listen. You goofed up, but together we'll get through it. Uh, so if they're a coach versus a somebody that's not, doesn't have the best tools in a toolbox, gosh, this was a big miss.

Really disappointed. Make sure that you do better next time. Um, same, same outcome, different messages, different ways in which you bring the best out in people. And I, I think the way that you, under you, you kind of have that self-awareness and assess. Is, is it happening chronically? Can I count on the number of times that this has happened and is it likely to change?

Uh, and what can I do to help it change? And if the answers are none of nothing, um, and sometimes it is. Sometimes you try your best to change, you manage upwards. You use some of the techniques I have in the book. But knowing your worth is really what's important, uh, for you to say, listen, all right, it's time for me to, time for me to ride off this.

I, I can't continue putting more energy after bad in this chronically terrible situation.

Russel Lolacher: Before we get into the whole self-reflection, self-assessment side of things, I did wanna ask why a lot of leaders never seem to see themselves as part of the problem. They either, because even if it's directly and obviously somebody else's, like somebody else did the thing, the leader, if they are a leader, should understand that they may be influencing environments, they may be influencing a, there's always something, and yet.

Yet there's always this, we go figure it out. I'll, I'll lead over. Here you go, figure it out. Which just perpetuates, perpetuates dysfunction. So I was kind of curious as to why you think that is continues to be a problem.

Eric Charran: That's a great question. The only thing I can think of is if I put myself in a leader's shoes who. Obviously is, it's, it's difficult to say that any one person is the problem, but, and 'cause everybody has responsibility, but ultimately leaders control resources and establish culture and those are the things that the, the cultural establishment is really is many times the challenge.

The, I think maybe a, if I were to step into a leaders, uh, that believed that they're not part of the problem or doesn't even occur to them, is that the organization hired me here, they pay me pretty decently. I've been given this responsibility, meaning that I earned it, and as a result, the organization believes that I'm here doing the right things, and I'm gonna use every tool that I know how in order to get things done.

And as a result, if things aren't getting done. It can't be me. It's gotta be the people that are underneath me. And I need better people. I need better resources. I need more resources. I need more expertise. So that, um, that, uh, haze of, of infallibility, I think is probably rewarded or gifted to them by the fact that they were given the role.

Either they were promoted into it or they were hired or recruited into it and sought after. And as a result, you kind of get that perception of infallibility.

Russel Lolacher: It breaks my heart. Uh, so let's get into the self-assessment side of things. What is the role of self-assessment specifically as it pertains to diagnosing dysfunction? Like basically, why should we.

Eric Charran: I think in order to master a situation you have to first master yourself, uh, and really understand how things are impacting and affecting you. And I think I've kind of had to develop this muscle over time. There are much, much better ways to do it than going through trauma like I did, or maybe like a lot of, a lot of our listeners are doing.

But the more you can really understand where your energy comes from, what motivates you, what you like and don't like, and what your worth is, it gives you kind of like a power. So in, in many of the archetypes and many of these bad behaviors that I talk about in the book. A lot of people feel that, number one, depending on where you are in your career, early in career, people tend to feel that it's directed at them, and I am deficient somehow.

Uh, I'm, I'm new here. I just graduated my undergrad. This is my first professional gig, and I'm being yelled at, screamed at, um, uh, or maybe iced out or neglected and, or I'm on the outside. I can't, I can't get in. Um, it must be me. I must be doing something wrong. Maybe this career isn't for me. Maybe I, you know, maybe I didn't really go choose the right school.

Whatever all this self-doubt kind of creeps in. Um, and then when you're mid career, you're kind of like, well, hey, uh, this is just the way that it is. This is the grind. I just have to put up with this and I have to deal with it until one day I'm in that role. And what you don't realize is that you're learning from your leader.

That's these bad behaviors. That's what the organization values because they keep promoting people that have these bad behaviors. So I must now adopt these bad behaviors. So these things kind of persist generationally almost, and they oftentimes persist in silence. Nobody has the courage to speak up and say, you know what?

Your behaviors in this way are impacting us negatively. And it's not only bringing down the team, but it's bringing down results and productivity. Um, and here's what I think we can do next. So understanding yourself and self-assessing gives you the confidence to say, you know what? This probably isn't me.

Um, and sure ev, nobody's perfect, but maybe it's not just me. Maybe if I look around and take a lens across the entire team. How many other people are actually experiencing some of these issues and some of these behaviors. So if it's not me, then there's only really one thing that it can be, which is the behavior.

Again, it's, I, I try to, in the book, separate the individual from the behavior. Uh, the behavior is really what we wanna change, and it's entirely possible if you're of the mindset that I am not powerless under my manager, I can actually manage upwards and make suggestions and ask questions and lead them down paths and educate them.

I know who I am. I know that I, I've got these behaviors and I can understand their motivations. Uh, and I've assessed myself and I can actually now take control of the, the scenario.

Russel Lolacher: I do know a lot of people that get frustrated about having to manage up because they're like, you make more money than me. Why am I having to manage you? You should just be a better leader. Like, aren't you hired to do the job? To, you know, to lead me? Aren't you supposed to be my mentor and show model the behavior that I want, and yet I have to babysit you or I have to hold your hand through something because you can't handle.

Critical information, you can't handle your calendar. So I, I always find that interesting 'cause I'm like, I get managing up and I get the value of it, but I also see the flip side of it going, we have an ecosystem problem when it comes to leadership that we allow this behavior to happen and then we're asking too much of our middle management to have to manage up, which just hurts and makes a dysfunctional organization.

Eric Charran: Yeah, there's a couple of great points that you brought up there. Middle management is largely underserved, uh, in terms of leadership training. They give a lot of support to people like me and, and, and people and my peers 'cause who are managing, you know, hundreds or maybe even thousands of people within an organization.

But, and, and by the way, that's absolutely necessary because that's a different skill altogether if you wanna do it well. But the people that lead 2, 3, 10, 20, 40 people. Maybe early leaders, early managers, they're oftentimes like, oh, their teams are so small, they're not managing thousands of people. They should, they should, you know, they, they've got the right stuff.

They'll figure it out. And that is absolutely where bad leadership kind of festers. Um, and these unhelpful behaviors kind of fester is in lack of the preparing our new leaders on how to lead. You're kind of creating this, of veneer of, you know. Toxicity, if you will. Um, so I, I think that that's important.

And the other thing is that should word leaders should be awesome. They, because we recruit them and pay them all this money, they should be setting the right culture. And I think it really depends on, and you as an individual and, uh, how would you regard when you hear that word should, it shouldn't be this way, it should be this, and it should be like this.

Certain people are like, yes, that's it. It should, this should be the way that it is. I can't believe it's not. And then you stew in that discomfort and you stew in that. Um, you dwell in that, uh, that, that, that, um, toxicity if you will. There are other people that say things should be this way. They should have better leadership.

Lemme go figure out how I can make it happen, because ultimately what I want is to take my leader's job one day when they move on. Ultimately, what I want is to actually make myself more marketable. So when I make a ladderal a a move outside the organization, I'm gonna get a, a senior role. So the question becomes, it's all about power.

You are not powerless. So when you hear that word should, my recommendation would be to be the type of person that actually says, well, what can I do to take things into my hands and change things?

Russel Lolacher: And I think making assumptions never works. I just wrote in my newsletter about the frustration between performative versus performance and the fact that there was this one. Person I talked to ages ago who was demanding their executive be a leader and for two years thought they might be a leader. I'm like, just 'cause they're an executive doesn't mean they're a leader.

They've been rewarded for years for never having to be a leader. They've been a very successful manager. So stop thinking they are what they aren't. You're not gonna let them, you're not gonna in fluence them to be now because they. Haven't needed to be, leave the job. Like it's, it's almost to a point where you have to self-assess and know what you're willing to put up with, what you're not willing to put up with you, figuring out what your boundaries are and to your point, how actionable is that?

And, and, but you need the self-assessment of yourself, of what you're able to, or want to put yourself through. Because when we talked at the top about mental health. You're bringing that home, you're, there is no escape from this. If you are spending 8, 9, 10 hours a day in this world that is horrible and you are having to manage a boss that is not a leader, then you're taking it out on your partner.

You're taking it out on your kids. You're taking it out on your mental health. So really understanding, I think, is. So important. So I guess I have to, leads me to the next question was how do we self-assess, how do we get to, 'cause I often talk on the show that there's three bedrocks of every great leader.

Great self-awareness, great situational awareness and communication. You have to have those three, or you're not a leader, period. So how do you start down the path of self-assessment? Like what are the, what are the tangible things we need to be doing?

Eric Charran: I think being a good observer is key. So in a situation where you're seeing good leadership and you're seeing what makes you feel a leader, that brings you energy and you know what it's like to actually have a strong leader. Definitely observe and understand and infer, well, how can I actually take what this leader's doing?

And then if I were in charge, what would I do? How could I take these techniques and actually make them, um, interesting? Or how can I take these techniques and do things differently with my own teams? The second thing is when you are, you know, kind of, uh, toiling underneath one of these archetypes, uh, that I write about, the biggest thing is to really try to separate the person from the behavior first.

The second is to really try to understand the motivation. I I, I would imagine if you go to any of these people that are exhibiting these bad tendencies, hey, would you prefer to in impact your teams this way? The answer would be no, but I, but underneath that is, I don't really know what else to do. I don't have any other tools.

See where I need a screwdriver, but all I have is hammers and so I'm gonna use hammers. So the sec, the third thing is once you understand and you could kind of empathize with. The pressures that they're under, and I kind of did it at the top of our conversation. You know, the emergency broadcaster manager is that way because they are just under enormous pressure.

They have probably way too many direct reports, way too many messages, way too many things that they've taken on. Uh, and some of these are self-inflicted wounds and some of these are organizational inflicted wounds. But regardless, that is what's driving this undesirable behavior. Then you have to say, well, now that I empathize with them, maybe I can help them solve the problem, which is go to them and say, listen, this negative, this is impacting us negatively, but I am here.

I have suggestions, but what can I do to make it so that you don't have to schedule a 7:30 AM meeting, that you don't have to disrupt everybody's morning and degrade work life experiences because I know it's happened to me, and if it's happened to me, it's happening to everybody else. How can we work together?

What can I do to make this better? Here are some ideas.

Russel Lolacher: How. Your self-assessment is accurate or valuable,

Eric Charran: Well, that's really where you have to practice self-awareness, uh, and self-awareness. The question is whether you're born with it, whether you develop it, whether it can be taught. It's like leadership. Can leadership be taught? Maybe, maybe not. There are leadership courses. Um, but at the same time, the question is always look at your, try to look at yourself from an outside in perspective.

How am I, and we do this as human beings, right? Like a part of our identity is what you think about yourself. Versus what other people think about you. And eventually there's some kind of balance to the point where somebody comes outta left field and says, you're a horrible person. You might be able to be like, Hey, no I'm not.

Or hey, maybe I am because I've got other people telling me I'm horrible. Right? So if you take that same skill that every most humans have, you try to apply that to your work. Identity, which by the way, your work identity should be separate from your personal identity. You, you know, it's, it's part of who we are.

Uh, but it's a lesson that I learned early on. It was amazing how much my personal identity was wrapped up in my work. So that was some work that I had to do to kind of separate those two things. But assessing your professional identity is a combination of, uh, formalized reviews and, you know, things that you get when you, you do your midyear, your quarterly, or your year end reviews.

But also, uh, what people are saying about you and what the results you're ready, you're capable of delivering. So it's a constant stream of, you know, looking at yourself and looking at others and what they think of you.

Russel Lolacher: I wanna go back to that point you made about basically severance of. Between home and work, because I've heard a lot of conversations where that's not what you should be doing because you're not technically bringing yourself to work. You're bringing a version of you to work. You're keeping a version of you at home.

And like, so for instance, I remember doing an exercise with a group around, it's one of those regular values exercises we always did. But there was this one woman who did a values exercise and her values at home were different than her values at work, which makes no sense. 'cause suddenly her family doesn't matter when she walks through the door or turns on her computer.

So I'm just kind of curious as to why that was an approach that worked for you, considering I've kind of heard or felt that it might be different.

Eric Charran: Yeah. The way I think about it is like it's layers and this is what I try to tell my, my kids. So family's at the bottom's the most important thing. Then it's, uh, school for, for for

Russel Lolacher: Not at the bottom. It's foundational. There's a difference.

Eric Charran: You see, I'm still on journey, Russel on my own journey. But, but family is foundational.

Uh, then it's for, for kids, it's like school, then it's commitments like sports, then it's their jobs, then it's fun, and then it's, you know, everything else on top of that. Um, the way I think about my own, uh, life is very similar. It's, it's family. It's the most important thing. Uh, and then you have your profession, which sits on top of that.

It's built on top of family. The professional, uh, identity should never kind of just encompass and become like, you know, could subsume your family, uh, where family is secondary, you know, if you, if you have commitments to family. You have to balance that with work. And I, I, people hate this term. I think, and maybe people groan when I say, but work-life balance, it is a real thing and it's something that you have to choose, uh, and you have to keep choosing it almost every day.

Um, sometimes you're going to be outta balance, but the other times you have to get back into balance. But once you are professional, identity becomes your identity, your source of worth in this world. If your source of worth is like, I'm bringing in a paycheck and that paycheck helps me, you know. Provide opportunities to my family and my children.

It's very easy to fall downhill and be like, well, now the whole reason I exist is to work and I better do a good job at work. And now that my, my family life is secondary, I found it to be a very, very, um, rewarding and healthy mental exercise for me to be like my worth. Even though I love what I do, it's a job to help me in my life, ver versus who I am.

And I think that's a healthy, I, I found that to, for me, to be a healthier way to look at the world.

Russel Lolacher: And maybe I misunderstood. 'cause it sounds like you're talking about boundaries to a lot of what not that you become a different person there versus at home. It's that you are separating church and state and going, this is, this is me over here. This is, I'm still the same person. On both sides, but I have to, I have, for my own mental health, for my own mental ability to focus, I need to have a bit of, not separation, but just more of a boundary side of things.

Eric Charran: In fact, one of the coping strategies that I talk about for dealing with the emergency broadcaster in the book is, um, dealing with fomo. Which is the fear of missing out, which is why so many Americans work on their vacations, because, hey, there could be that one thing, that one opportunity, this one thing is blowing up, and I'm sitting here on a cruise studying myself.

But, you know, these things are happening and I don't, I'm not aware of them. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta take my work phone with me. I gotta, I gotta look and see what's happening. The 7:30 AM. I, in my, you know, at the top of our discussion I joined because what if they, what if they assign me something? What if I get called out for not doing something?

What if I just miss an opportunity, uh, and setting those boundaries to say, no, I will catch up. I will listen to the recording. I'll feed it to a generative AI agent that's, that looks for my name, uh, and, and asks whether or not I was exposed or if I have any opportunities. I will connect with my manager one-on-one later in the day, but I'm teaching my manager how to manage me by saying that I'm not going to be on these 7:30 AM calls.

I'm dropping the kids off, or I'm, uh, in transit, and I'd rather sit down and focus on what you're telling me rather than try to give you half my attention while I'm trying to balance my life.

Russel Lolacher: And to be fair, as a Canadian, you Americans don't get a lot of vacation time. So it is, or Europeans get tons more than both of us combined, but it really. Goes back to that boundary is that if you don't have that time to disconnect from work, which again, depending on where you live in the world, is quite different.

So you feel more tied, I can imagine, to the workplace when you're not allowed to give the space to move away from it with time

Eric Charran: It could be quite, it could be quite parasitic. You got...

Russel Lolacher: Oh, absolutely.

Eric Charran: it, it kind of crawls under your skin and it becomes kind of like this drumbeat in your head, like, what's going on there? You, you gotta monitor it just to keep it under control.

Russel Lolacher: Is taking a vacation, a career limiting move? Like, are you like that? That's the world you live in. That's, that shows a lot of, I mean, that is such a. Beautiful example of a dysfunctional workplace. If you think you feel that way, that means you're working in a dysfunctional workplace. So I wanna pull it back a bit from self, because self can also be a team.

You're responsible for a team. You're responsible for a team of 10, 20, 50, but your direct reports are obviously not all that. What, how do you self-assess from a team lens when it comes to a dysfunctional workplace? So we've done the work as leaders, but we have to, it, it's important to probably bring our team with us to self-assess on the team level, how do we go down that path?

Eric Charran: Yeah, it's a good question. I can tell speak from my own experience and, and what I learned from leaders that I had an opportunity to spend time with. It was servant leadership really is, again, people might groan when they hear that term, but what it really means to me is the ability for you to say, listen, my job is to get you promoted.

My job is to help you do great things. My job is to be the shoulders you stand on to be great. And by the way, by being great, the outcome for me is that, um, people recognize that people wanna work for me and new leadership opportunities open up, open up for me. So it it for some folks that might be groaning out there right now, it sounds too good to be true.

It might be sound like some kind of crazy pyramid scheme, but it's not. It actually is. A great way to lead. Um, many organizations now are turning to, uh, what they call pulse surveys, which factor into your compensation and your promotability. As a leader, how does your team feel about you? They basically go through and answer anywhere from 25 to 40 questions on.

The culture, do they feel recognized? Do they feel energized? Do they feel that your team or the organization's on the right track that you provide them with opportunities? By the way, these are real questions 'cause I, I've just went through this. So all of

Russel Lolacher: that's not a pulse survey. That's a survey. A pulse survey is like five questions, two questions, like from what is Pulse is supposed to be quick. That's.

Eric Charran: Yeah, they're often not, they're often not, they call it the Pulse survey Russel, really not.

Russel Lolacher: I'm not saying it's not important information. I'm like, you're labeling it wrong. That's all.

Eric Charran: Yes, you're but, but may, but maybe that's intentional whole survey. Hey, once we get you in, what, what I tell, I'll tell you, I can tell you the most difficult thing is getting people to fill it out.

So whatever techniques that they're trying to use to, to get people to do it. Um, maybe it's working, maybe it's not, because I usually have to tin cup. Please answer the survey. Um.

Russel Lolacher: Don't make people answer it if it's not 40 freaking questions.

Eric Charran: it more frequently. Like a pulse. Exactly. Uh, I think that's a fantastic idea. So, but I, it's, it's a, it's ultimately a good, um, and the goal, the goal is, uh, how, and again, it people are incented by, um, the, the reward system. So having a stellar pulse survey as a leader. Means that you are a empirically a good leader.

Now, you can argue that, but that's the way that the organization will interpret those results. And so I, I think the original question was how do you develop that self-awareness as a leader, how you're doing? To me, I oftentimes think about if, if I'm talking to an a skip level, one of my, one of my managers, managers, you know, uh, you know, team members are chatting with me and I try to spend time with everybody equally on a monthly basis.

Um, how would they answer the pulse survey after I engage with them, how would they rate working on the team? And if I don't know the answer to those questions, I ask, I say, as a servant leader, what can I do to help your visibility? What can I do to provide you with new opportunities that not only are gonna be great from a career perspective, but you actually want to do that?

You want to work on how much of your time here is spent working on things that you hate? Versus things that you love and if that balances off, what can I do to support it? So it's all about like re-recruiting people when every time you talk to them and the way you re-recruit is you try to make them feel that you're there to support them.

And just, and it's not to, to order take, it's not to be subservient. It's not to, that's why they call this work and not fun. We're going to have to do things that take away our energy. But the goal is to do more things that give energy. And I constantly ask for that.

Russel Lolacher: How do you have a meaningful conversation with people that don't see the dysfunction or benefit from it?

Eric Charran: People that don't see the dysfunction are typically people that are, feel, that, feel comfortable in terms of the. Rewards and the incentive systems that, that they're, that they're experiencing. So if your work as part of a dysfunctional team, part of um, what I experienced is, and even in this last role that I had, was looking around and saying, is anybody else experiencing this?

Or do they see it? And that, that they're just swallowing it like I am. And then you begin this process of exploration in what you're gently probing. How honest can I be with you as a peer of mine to tell you to say, Hey, this is not okay. Um, and sometimes you might get this impermeable. Yeah, but that's the way it's always been.

And you know, things are pretty good. Uh, they might not say that, but that's the attitude that you might get, in which case you pull back and then you just go to the other peer and say. Does this really make sense to you? Because I imagine some people might find this frustrating, so you're big gently probing and would if they respond, oh my gosh, this is hugely frustrating.

Can you believe they did this? You develop this. Um, you know, certainly you commiserate it's group empathy, maybe unofficial therapy in some ways. Uh, I know it was for me. But once you develop this kind of shared consciousness, you kind of understand that if, hey, there's a person over there that really is thriving in this dysfunction, they are getting bonuses.

They are the favorite of the, the, of the leader. And so it's outside of their, um, scope to say that, Hey, I wanna change things. Potentially, potentially some instances they might be like, yes, this is dysfunctional, even though I am, you know, kind of, kind of, okay. I don't want the rest of the team to be this way, and so I'm gonna work with you to kind of, uh, change things.

So I, I think that those are kind of the, you know, incentive drives behavior. The other element is looking up, so, or, uh, as a manager who is ex exhibiting in creating this, you know, culture of strife and dysfunction, are you still delivering results? Um, and if you're still delivering results and your pulse, pulse surveys are not in the toilet, then I'm just gonna leave well enough alone because I have other leaders to worry about other, uh, things to do.

And so, um, you know, it, it's, it becomes a, uh, you know, don't ask, don't tell scenario in many instances,

Russel Lolacher: I often talk about the missing middle, which you kind of brought up there, which is leaders generally eater have to work with the 20% that are the rock stars or the 20% that are the problems. So guess who gets ignored? The 60% in the middle. So we can self-assess, uh, a team and go, okay, you're fine. Good.

Moving on. Fine is not enough. You, you've assessed the situation great, but you're not leading, you're managing, you're managing a resource as opposed to helping somebody grow. So I can see self-assessment being an unbelievably powerful tool as a leader when self-assessing a team is what I mean to, so you can support them in the way that you need to as a leader, because I think it's a missed opportunity.

A lot of the times is where they just look at, oh great, you're not adding to my workload. I don't have to worry about you moving on, or you're not the person that I can delegate work to, to help me out. It becomes a narcissism exercise as opposed to a here's a great opportunity to help the team grow.

Eric Charran: Yeah, there's, there's a, um, there's a fallacy, I think a leadership fallacy. It's called the Rockstar Phenomenon, and I'm, I just invented that by the way. It doesn't exist out there anywhere, at least not that I know of. But the rockstar phenomenon is if I have an unbelievable team of standout people that are heroes in their own rights.

They come from heroic backgrounds, they do heroic things, they stay up 24 hours. Produce slide decks at the last minute. Um, they're fantastic in front of speaker. They're fantastic speakers. Orators, they drive incredible results. Well, if I had a team of those people, then wow, what, what could I accomplish?

That fallacy, uh, is one in which you are like, Hey, I don't wanna spend that, you know, 90, 80% of my time with the, the people that are not performing fantastic. I wanna spend, uh, you know, most of my time with the people that are fantastic and maybe wouldn't it be great if there were no middle? Everyone was fantastic.

Um, I did that by the way, at Microsoft and it was one of the most, uh, educational, professional, uh, experiences I've ever had in that I had a team of people that talk like me, thought like me, um, had my same experiences. But, uh, Russel, we all had the same blind spots, so, uh, in essence we were like, Hey, there's a fire over there burning in the corner.

And we were all like, yeah, somebody else will get that. I'm gonna go out here and do some whiteboarding and some brilliant technology stuff and, you know, somebody else will figure out how to report out on our results for the quarter. Um, that didn't turn out so well. But the, the way I think about this to kind of wrap up this, this, um, you know, my observation here is you constantly have to be re-recruiting your team.

So the question is, if they were to leave, they're constantly being recruited. We're all constantly being pulled in different directions, whether it's internally or externally. If they were to leave, how big a hole would they leave? How big a hole would you have to kind of just stretch other people to fill in and think about it from that perspective.

If you're talking to each person that's on your team and they're valuable, how can you re-recruit them? How can you continually get them to stay? Uh, that's kind of the way I think about it.

Russel Lolacher: I, I like that a lot. I was a little worried there for a minute. You're like, because you're just re you're re-recruiting new people and you're just replacing them. We're not, but no good swerve. I was, I followed you to the end. I'm like, okay. No, I, I love that because it, it, we always treat onboarding like this amazing, magical thing, but all we do is treat somebody like they're amazing for three days and then ignore them until they leave.

Right. It's this, it's this singular experience of promise that we never follow up with until they leave. And they're like, why did you leave? What could we have done differently? When it should be a journey? And to your point, that's exactly what you're explaining, which is how can we reengage? How can we motivate?

That comes from self-assessment, like with to your, I love the point you had about blind spots because we all had the same, that's where diversity comes in. That's where innovation comes in because you have diversity of thought, which is fueled by diversity of backgrounds, diversity of upbringings, diversity of geography, and we can't know any of that.

Without some sort of self assessment and understanding how the pieces fit together and how the humans work with the other humans. So really, really appreciate that.

Eric Charran: Yeah. Yeah. And thanks for calling that out. Just to be clear, it's re-recruiting the people you

Russel Lolacher: yes, yes. Thank you.

Eric Charran: not, not not farming new people and getting new people in New York.

Russel Lolacher: Super worried there for a minute, Eric. Super worried. Um. What if the culture doesn't get it? Like you're doing the work, you're doing your fake pulse surveys, you're doing your, um, but surveys, we'll just say surveys. 'cause that just drives me. That's, they're calling them pulse surveys. Um, so you're doing surveys to get to know your people.

You're self-assessing, but you're still working in dysfunction. There are so many things outside of your culture, your immediate subculture that can impact you. Toxic bosses, unrealistic expectations. How do you keep safe? While still being connected and collaborative because you can't be an island, you still have to work with all these people that may have different perspectives of what dysfunction and dysfunction, not dysfunction is.

So how does that work?

Eric Charran: Yeah, it's a real interesting word you use. There is how do you, or a phrase, how do you keep safe? I, if I think back, I, I, I may have even, I may have even said this earlier, um, leaders do a couple things. They, uh, allocate resources, but they establish and grow culture. So if you, if you take that to heart and, and you believe that leaders establish culture, every executive, every every leader actually is, has the responsibility to say, this is how we are going to behave when no one's looking, which is my definition of what culture is.

Culture is what do you do when no one's watching you because you have a, a system of shared beliefs. If you, if you buy that and leaders establish culture, then you have to say, well, what kind of culture am I creating in on my team? And is this culture beneficial? Have I delivered great results? Do people love it?

Do what's the churn rate? What's my, what's my survey results? And if I've got something here that's positive, let me go out and talk to the other organizations and other teams about how I achieve this. And here's what I think we can do to change things. You know, safety is important because nobody wants to be out on the street.

But at the same time, you kind of have to have a little bit of courage as a leader to Es to fulfill that element of establishing culture, which means that if you observe a team that is not thriving in the same way that your team is, you can actually go to that leader and say, Hey, I've heard from some folks on your team, and I'm assuming you might wanna know this.

It actually happened to me last week. That. Onboarding was rough or they're, they're, they're wondering if they made the right employment decision or they are constantly thinking about leaving the organization. Here's some ways that I dealt with this, or My team deals with this, or my managers deal with this and it works out really well.

So that's a way that you can kind of intangibly influence culture by looking after staying safe, but it is a leadership responsibility to establish culture, in my opinion.

Russel Lolacher: that you're trying to pick away at scale, like, try, how can we take what we're doing? How can we take the self-assessment and grow it? Because a, a, a lot of leaders won't get it because they're like, I see what they're doing. But it's, and I, I guess it's working for them, whatever they're doing, but I'm gonna do what I do over here because that's, that's my silo, and I like my silo because that's how I'm comfortable working.

I, I think, I think it's important to understand that when we do self-assessments, and I'm kind of curious your thoughts on this. What if we find things we don't like? Like we're doing a lot of self-assessment here of like, well, I'm this and I'm that, and I'm this, I'm that. But I'm also sucky at this. Maybe I'm a horrible leader.

Like there's. And maybe I'm perpetuating these cultures, this function. What do we do with that information?

Eric Charran: Well, I think that, I think that arriving at that realization is an achievement in and of itself. Because we are wired, especially as leaders, it's almost like they strapped us to a rocket ship and there's only one way to go bust or achieve orbit, right? Like so, um, the ability for you to realize that, hey, you know what, even though I'm trying to get escape velocity, I need to make a course correction is super important, right?

To continue the rocket analogy. Uh, so I think that having people that have those thoughts. I, I think that when you do recognize those things, congratulate yourself for the level of self-awareness that you've achieved. The second question is sit with it for a while. Don't try to solve it immediately.

Don't become tactical. Just sit with it and say that, well, if I were working for me, what I would love to do is this. Or maybe even go out and gather feedback from your team and say, Hey, one of the things I was thinking about is my fear is that this is what's happening in the team. What's your perspective?

How, and, and have you seen this behavior? And what would you, what would be a great way for us to work together to change it? There's this, um, you know, I, I think American culture and American corporate culture, we pretend that we don't like hierarchies. Everybody from an EVP to the CEO call me Bob, call me Eric.

This is my boss. We work together, right? So we like to, um, self-deprecate in terms of hierarchy, but we believe it in our hearts, right? I'm in charge. I must know best because I was put here. I can't have somebody else who's three levels beneath me telling me how to lead. Uh, and while, so it's, it's a interesting American dichotomy.

Culturally, we hate, hate hierarchy, but at the same time, it lives deep within us. Uh, and so I think what we have to do is to be servant leaders and say. What do you think help me become a better leader? Help our team become better, and it certainly takes a level of humility and issuing that ingrained corporate hierarchy.

Um, that's, that's what's important.

Russel Lolacher: Do you feel ego is the biggest roadblock for cultures to be able to adopt this?

Eric Charran: I think so. I, I, and maybe, maybe it's it's ego and to say that, Hey, I can't be wrong. I can't, um, I, like you said earlier, like, why do leaders believe that they're not part of the problem? It's because the organization has voted for me. I can't not believe that I'm, I'm part of the problem because it's maybe if I start believing that, then everything else comes undone.

Right? And so I think that there's gotta be an element of ego, but there's also gotta be an element of humility. Um, so just like, you know, most people I would hope are not egomaniacs. There are some out there, um, but folks have to balance like, you know, Hey, I'm pretty good at this, but these are the things I'm probably not great at.

And I will take help from wherever I'm not, I am not, uh, ashamed or embarrassed at take help from somebody who might have just grad, finished their undergrad and started last week.

Russel Lolacher: I did a presentation not so long ago to a group of executives, and I brought some hard truths to the room that some people took. Personally. It had nothing to do with them, but I'm like, maybe it has a lot to do with you based on. You're reacting. But the reason I bring this story up is that there was one executive, she stood up at the end.

You could tell she had a little bit more influence and power than most people in the room, but she stood up and she goes, your presentation made me unbelievably uncomfortable, and I'm curious as to why, and I have to sit with that for a while. I thought that was the most powerful statement that she could have said in that vulnerable moment where she's feeling it.

But she also is sitting in the discomfort as opposed to, it's my safe space and I don't wanna hear anything bad. I don't wanna ever be challenged. I don't want to open myself to self-assessment. And I think that's a step that we have to take is you have to be open to self-assessment before you can even do it.

It's not a checkbox exercise. You have to be willing to be okay with warts and unicorns and all the good, all the bad at once. So that really hit home for me, and I've used that story a few times where I'm just sort of like. Wow. Thank you for being so vulnerable in a group of your peers.

Eric Charran: I think that, um. In that moment, she displayed an unimaginable amount of courage, but also, um. Leadership that needs to be emulated. And I, you know, I know we've been talking a lot about the negatives and the challenges, but I have seen in my travels most recently an ability for the proliferation of this servant leadership to actually take hold in many organizations and to have leaders in E-V-P-M-D-P-S-V-P or C-level, uh, ranks that are doing things exactly like that example you brought up.

So there has been a, uh, a title change or sea change, or whatever you wanna call it in how leaders are adopting that servant leadership. There's also leaders who are not doing that, uh, and organizations where that's not the culture. So I do want to kind of tell folks out there that there is hope. Find the right organization that's worth your talent.

Uh, know your worth in order to do that, and seek the right places that bring you energy in the, in the ways, in the, you know, outlined by the perfect example you brought up. And that to me is aspirational by, for a lot of people in that scenario, people, leaders may be underneath that. That, uh, a person that gave you that feedback are saying, wow, that is what leadership is.

That is a tool I need in my toolbox, and that's, that's happening,

Russel Lolacher: Maybe it sounded negative 'cause we were talking about self-assessment in a dysfunctional workplace. But I, I think to your point, self-assessment is the path to positivity because you are being, you're arming yourself with the information of strengths. Also things you need to work on. And that could be perceiving you as a, as a leader that you don't want to be, so you can correct.

I think it's, I think it's a very positive thing because you could be modeling the behavior to help get out of this leadership ecosystem problem, dysfunctional workplace. So, I wanna echo your positivity. I, Eric, I don't think we've been completely positive. We're trying here.

Eric Charran: Yeah, listen, it all goes back to me. Um, but to the, to the growth mindset book, whether or not you're a fixed mindset and you believe that you're infallible, um, and, or you're a growth mindset in which, um, you embrace failure and you learn and you do it with humility. Uh, it's, it's, it's, uh, I, I love the latter.

Russel Lolacher: So to wrap it up, what is something anybody listening right now can do that takes that first step into self-assessment? Is it taking an online survey? Is it asking around like, what would you recommend just like tomorrow? What could they do to start that path of, I guess, discovery almost?

Eric Charran: Yeah, I, I, I would say that there, there is a host of tools, capabilities, some for free, some you pay for. Um, definitely get engaged with those. Keep, uh, keep an eye on your own mental health, uh, whether it's just, you know, choosing happiness each day, having a positive mental attitude, reframing your reality or engaging in clinical therapy, all things that we need to look after.

So if I set those things aside, I would say the first thing you can do. Is to try to say, Hey, um, what am I worth? Uh, am I, you know, is it me? Do I feel like uh, I am deficient in some way or. What, you know, kind of give yourself a 360 assessment. Sometimes the need for self-assessment and realizing that you should do it is the path to kind of gaining this new level of awareness and then utilizing all the tools and capabilities that you have, clinical, nonclinical free, or that you pay for courses or coursework.

That's super important. Most organizations also have a a 360 assessment that you can, you know, you can do at any point in time. That's super important. Um, and just being. Being prepared to be uncomfortable, I think is the next thing that people really need to kind of embrace. But to me it is, uh, you should kind of take pride in the fact that you've arrived at the point where you realize that I need to self-assess, uh, in order for things to get better.

Russel Lolacher: And I don't care where you are in the organization, you absolutely can still sell. I don't care if you're the CEO or frontline staff. You can always self-assess.

Eric Charran: Absolutely.

Russel Lolacher: That, that is Eric Charran, author, speaker, executive director and head of product for data. Intuit at, yeah, into it. He's also the founder and CEO of Vulcan Collective, and he's got a book.

He's got a book you should definitely check out. There's some archetypes in there that we may wanna be avoiding as a boss. Have You Ever Had a Boss That ...?, uh, Succeeding in a Dysfunctional Workplace. Thank you so much for being here, Eric.

Eric Charran: Thanks for having me. It's been great.