I’m an Employer

In any business certain employees mentally decide that they no longer want to be where they are. Whether it be because of a personal crisis that is happening in their life or because they were not chosen for promotion, once an employee decides that they do not want to work with your organization, you must replace them as soon as possible before a negative and toxic culture can be created.

A Quick Hard Statistical Look at the Truth of America’s Current Employees (Not Your Employees of Course):

FUN FACT – “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that 75% of employees steal from the workplace and that most do so repeatedly.” –

Employee Theft: Are You Blind to It? By Rich Russakoff and Mary Goodman – https://www.cbsnews.com/news/employee-theft-are-you-blind-to-it/

FUN FACT – “85 Percent of Job Applicants Lie on Resumes.” – https://www.inc.com/jt-odonnell/staggering-85-of-job-applicants-lying-on-resumes-.html

FUN FACT – “78 percent of the men interviewed had cheated on their current partner.” – 5 Myths About Cheating – https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-cheating/2012/02/08/gIQANGdaBR_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.05ab54a87466

FUN FACT – “The unemployment rate has since crept up to 4% even though hiring remains quite strong.” – https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-us-unemployment-rates-long-and-deep-decline-may-have-come-to-an-end-2019-02-07

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “Understand: people will constantly attack you in life. One of their main weapons will be to instill in you doubts about yourself – your worth, your abilities, your potential. They will often disguise this as their objective opinion, but invariably it has a political purpose – they want to keep you down.” – Robert Greene (The best-selling author of The 48 Irrefutable Laws of Power, Mastery, The 50th Law, The 33 Strategies of War, and the Laws of Human Nature, etc.)

As of the time that I am writing this content, 85% of job applicants are lying on their resumes that they are sending you. Why is this important to know? It’s because it’s important for you to know that the vast majority of Tulsa job candidates (at least 85% of people) that are applying for your business are not being honest with and it starts with the words that they have written on their own resumes. My friend, most employees are going to come to work for YOU because they are excited about a new “opportunity” for growth, however after 3 years or more many employees are going to go through the following predictable cycle by default that we call, “their expiration date.”

1. Step 1 – The Dating Phase –  They are going to dress up everyday for their new job like they are going on their first date with you.
2. Step 2 – The Excuse Phase – They are going to start dressing up less and less and they will actually begin to show up to work wearing clothing that is clearly out of dress code and 1 to 2 minutes late.
3. Step 3 – The “Yeah But” Phase – They are going to passively aggressively disagree with you during a meeting. As a hypothetical example during a meeting with your team you may say, “It’s super important that our Thrive15 interface is easy to use for 99% of our subscribers.” And they will say, “Well if our website doesn’t provide intensive questions, badges and certificates of completion then how can we really call ourselves the world’s best business school?”
4. Step 4 – For the Good of the Brand Phase They are going to openly disagree with you during a meeting where a large number of your teammates are present and they are going to try to start asking “Gotcha questions during meetings.” As a hypothetical example, they will say, “I know that you say that social media is a waste of time 95% of the time, yet I saw you post those pictures of your kids performing at their cheerleading on Facebook.”
5. Step 5 – The Openly Challenging Phase – They are going to begin to passionately and openly disagree to follow your company’s dress-code policy and you will find yourself having questions like, “Kermit, you know that I believe that we should always dress to impress and to over-dress to every business occasion, but you are not wearing a tie like everybody else. What’s going on?” “Well I just don’t think that wearing a tie makes any sense.”
6. Step 6 – The Passive Aggressive Phase – They are going to begin to openly defy you by asking passive aggressive questions like, “Do I really need to be at this meeting? I don’t know whether I am really adding value to this meeting or not? I’ll attend, I mean if you think that this meeting actually adds value?”
7. Step 7 – The Checked Out Phase – The art of the no-show. Passive aggressive people have the courage to quit working at their job emotionally, yet they lack the courage needed to quit showing up for their job physically. Soon they will start saying completely insincere statements like, “Can I just call in for today’s meeting?” or “Do I really need to meet this week, we pretty much just go over the same stuff every week?”
8. Step 8 – The Prepare for War Phase – The full-page key-board warrior emails. The people who have decided to quit working for you, but who don’t have the courage needed to actually quit getting paid by you love to communicate with you via email, oh yes they do. In fact they love writing this to you via e-mail and “certified mail” that they would never say to their face because they are too weak and too passive aggressive to say it to your face.
   1. NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “Trolls are cowards and want to attack and pontificate but not constructively discuss. They do not have the courage to say to your face what they say online. They are bullies who are brave in a pack but shrink away from confrontation when they don’t have a computer to hide behind. That said, you might find that trolls are perfectly reasonable people in person which is a difficult concept to grok.” – Guy Kawasaki (Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva, an online graphic design tool. He is a brand ambassador for Mercedes-Benz  and an executive fellow of the Haas School of Business (UC Berkeley). He was the chief evangelist of Apple and a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation. He is also the author of The Art of the Start 2.0, The Art of Social Media, Enchantment, and nine other books. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.)
9. Step 9 – The All out War Phase –  Although you as an employer don’t spend your day thinking about suing your employees, you will discover that chronic under-performers often quit their job mentally while still showing up to work physically. Then these checked out employees often spend their work days thinking about ways to sue you and your business because of the “wrongful termination” that you have yet to do.
10. Step 10 – The Can’t Move on Phase – They have nothing to lose so they are going to spend their time suing, booing and writing bad online reviews about the success that you and your team have built.
    1. NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” – Winston Churchill (The British politician, army officer, and writer. He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, when he led Britain to victory in the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955.)

As an employer you must always be hiring high-quality team members. You will find yourself surrounded by a team of chronically late, excuse making absent minded employees who refuse to show up on time and to do their jobs effectively. You must embrace the idea that the quality of your Tulsa staff will determine the speed of your growth.

Step 1 – The Dating Phase – They are going to dress up everyday for their new job like they are going on a first date.

During the interview process and when Kermit showed up to work for his first day of work he dressed to impress. Oh, yes, he did dress to impress and do you want to know why? He dressed to impress because he wanted you to believe that he was a nice-dressing, high-quality and dependable employee you could trust. In fact, subconsciously, I believe that at this point in the hiring process Kermit actually believed that this was finally going to be the job where he would gain traction because he had decided that he was not going to screw things up this time. This time, he could make a career.

And for those first few euphoric weeks of employment, Kermit honors the promises that he made to himself and to you. In fact Kermit not only shows up to work on time, but he actually shows up early to showed you that he was serious about his career. And although Kermit knows that you are busy managing the other 50 + responsibilities and employees that you are responsible for every day, he’s just “slightly frustrated that you didn’t even recognize him for arriving early to work.”

Time Frame – First 90 days On the Job

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” – Colossians 3:23 (The Bible)

Step 2 – The Excuse Phase  Dressing Up Less and Showing Up to Work Late (On Occasion)

Over time you begin to notice Kermit dressing up less and less and actually began to show up to work wearing clothing that is slightly out of dress code while being 1 to 2 minutes late. After working diligently for you THREE INCREDIBLE WEEKS IN A ROW, Kermit is growing frustrated with you, and the job because you have yet to recognize him for his potential to be the best employee you’ve ever had and you haven’t yet promoted him to super levels of management based on his first three weeks with you. So, on a Thursday night, Kermit subconsciously wants to teach you a lesson when he agreed to go out with his friends for “Thirsty Thursdays” at a local club. While dancing, partying and hanging out with his friends, Kermit quickly lost track of time and ended up waking up in his apartment the next night at 9:15, which means that Kermit was a full 1 hour and 15 minutes late to arrive for his shift and he was still wearing the clothes from the night before..but he sprayed some cologne on so at least he smells clean. You talked with Kermit 1 on 1 to make sure that he was okay, and yet he felt “singled out” and “like you are judged him” despite the fact that he had been to work on-time and consistently for the previous 3 weeks. Kermit, made the poor life choices, but Kermit is now mad at you yet again.

QUOTE – “Every time I read a management or self-help book, I find myself saying, “That’s fine, but that wasn’t really the hard thing about the situation.” The hard thing isn’t setting a big, hairy, audacious goal. The hard thing is laying people off when you miss the big goal. The hard thing isn’t hiring great people. The hard thing is when those “great people” develop a sense of entitlement and start demanding unreasonable things. The hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organization that you just designed. The hard thing isn’t dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a nightmare.” – Ben Horowitz (The best-selling author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things who sold his company Opsware to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in cash)

Chapter 3 – The “Yeah But” Phase – Kermit Began to passively aggressively disagree with you during a meeting for the first time. As a hypothetical example during a meeting with your team you may say, “It’s super important that our website interface is easy to use for 99% of our customers.” And he said, “Well if our website doesn’t provide intensive questions, badges and certificates of completion then how can we really call ourselves the world’s best then said, “We are the best business and we have dramatically improved the lives of hundreds of our clients over the years.” In front of your whole team the once coachable Kermit now says, “So do you have a chart somewhere that could statistically prove that you know what you are talking about?” Kermit says this while being out of dress-code wearing skinny jeans and dating an employee team member which are both violations of your employee handbook.

Approximately 4 weeks ago, Kermit was appreciative, coachable and committed to help you to achieve your goals now Kermit has become frustrated and passive-aggressive member of the “I Have the Courage to Bi%$*, but I don’t have the courage to quit” club. Being a member of this exclusive club (known as everybody) allows Kermit to feel as though he has the upper hand and that you as the owner and founder should somehow feel bad for because you don’t agree with the consistently wrong world views, strategies and ideas of Kermit. This is where your employees start to attempt to take you hostage. That they are a part of the “I am too valuable to fire” club so entitlement starts to set in.

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “Only the paranoid survive.” – Andy Grove (The former CEO and one of the founding partners of Intel)

Chapter 4 – The For the Good of the Brand Phase – They are going to openly disagree with you during a meeting where a large number of your teammates are present and they are going to try to start asking “Gotcha questions during meetings.” As a hypothetical example, they will say, “I know that you say that social media is a waste of time 95% of the time, yet I saw you post…”

About 10 weeks ago Kermit “was honored” to earn a job on your team, and has probably written some nice thank you note about how you changed his life and he will never leave you because he is too grateful but now he has begun openly disagreeing with you in front of your team, because Kermit is now “officially” on his way out. Now, he will never announce to you that he has fully committed to quitting because Kermit has now recognized the incredible super-move called, “The Power to Complaining Aggressively.”

Chapter 5 – The Openly Challenging Phase – They are going to passionately disagree to follow your company’s dress-code policy and you have found yourself answering questions like, “Kermit, you know that I believe that we should always dress to impress and to over-dress to every business occasion, but you are not wearing a tie like everybody else. What’s going on?” “Well I just don’t think that anybody is going to be interested in doing business with a company where everybody is wearing suits.” It started with a tie, then escalated to them wearing jeans in the office, and eventually it resulted in them wearing the same clothes from the day before because they started dating somebody at your office.

Chapter 6 – The Passive Aggressive Phase – They openly defy you by asking passive aggressive questions like, “Do I really have to be at this meeting? I don’t know whether I am really adding value to this meeting or not? I’ll attend, I mean if you think that this meeting actually adds value?” They tried to trap you in yet another “gotcha question”. If you said yes, they will sulk in the meeting and add no value, thus bringing the energy down in the meeting. Oftentimes they then openly attacked anyone in the meeting that is tried to come up with a creative solution to a problem. They no longer ever came up with their own solutions, they just attacked others with them. If you told them no, they would get their feelings hurt and they will still sulk. This is a lose-lose question and this is when the not showing up to work phase started.

Chapter 7 – The Checked Out Phase – The art of the no-show. Passive aggressive people have the courage to quit working at their job emotionally, yet they lack the courage and the financial capacity needed to quit showing up for their job physically. These people started saying completely insincere statements like, “Can I just call in for today’s meeting?” or “Do I really need to meet this week, we pretty much just go over the same stuff every week?” And this is IF they actually decided to show up or call you at all. Their appearance became increasingly more and more rare. This indicated that they were actively looking at another job or starting their own business that 9 times out of 10 was designed to actively compete against you. I’ve seen this process of becoming an anti-your business terrorist hundreds of times and what will happen next is never positive.

Chapter 8 – The Prepare for War Phase – They now have become full-page key-board warriors who love to communicate exclusively via email. The people who have decided to quit working for you, but who don’t have the courage needed to actually quit getting paid by you love to communicate with you via email, oh yes they do. In fact they love writing this to you via e-mail and “certified mail” that they would never say to their face because they are too weak and too passive aggressive to say it to your face.

1. NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “Trolls are cowards and want to attack and pontificate but not constructively discuss. They do not have the courage to say to your face what they say online. They are bullies who are brave in a pack but shrink away from confrontation when they don’t have a computer to hide behind. That said, you might find that trolls are perfectly reasonable people in person which is a difficult concept to grok.” – Guy Kawasaki (Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva, an online graphic design tool. He is a brand ambassador for Mercedes-Benz  and an executive fellow of the Haas School of Business (UC Berkeley). He was the chief evangelist of Apple and a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation. He is also the author of The Art of the Start 2.0, The Art of Social Media, Enchantment, and nine other books. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.)

The types of emails that they sent were full of half-truths, and are always filled with content that is 99% emotional in nature. “I feel like you don’t appreciate all that I have done for this company and for you” and the “I need to work on my personal brand instead of just building yours like a slave!” and things like that. They don’t ever remember that you are the one that taught them everything they now know and that they now using it to compete with you. When they send those types of emails, you can also guarantee that they will not be in the building later that week for you to discuss it in person. When (if) they finally do show back up, they are all smiles and never, ever mention sending the email at all. This is assuming that they ever send you an email. Many times they will talk about you in a derogatory manner to people you know or other employees creating a weird atmosphere for both you and your current team.

Chapter 9 – The All out War Phase – At this point they have begun passively aggressively using slight legal threats like, “Well Dr. Zoellner will need to speak to my attorney” or “My dad has advised me to speak to my attorney before communicating with you further.” As of the time I am writing this, Once a chronic under-performer discovered that they were going to be fired from the job that they quit mentally showing up to mentally months ago they then go out and hire an attorney to represent them.

After your employee has moved on and started something else most the time directly competing against you they than have by now a business based off of all of the things that you taught them and their entitlement and bitterness of feeling underappreciated or undervalued all team up to have created a new monster called rage. They have now begun using this rage in the form of suing you or invoicing you for work they did in the past that they “forgot to turn in”. There is no win-win here, the damage is done and the relationship is irreparable. They will go around town dragging your name through the mud, so a super move is to call everyone that you both know first and let them know what actually happened. Warren Buffett said “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it” so be sure to protect your reputation from lies and slander.

Chapter 10 – The Can’t Move on Phase – Since this person had no money and they did not have any immediate success, they decided to invest their idle time (which is all of their time) suing you, booing you and writing bad online reviews about the success that you have built.

1. NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” – Winston Churchill (The British politician, army officer, and writer. He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, when he led Britain to victory in the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955.)

Their bitterness is out of control here. They have decided to commit their days to sitting there and sulking about all of the times that you went 24 hours without pointing out they did a good job for showing up on time and doing their job. They only remember the times when you had to pull them aside and tell them to be on time, get their job done, hit deadlines, etc. They now resent you for ever having tried to help them become a better version of themselves. They hate you for your success and they want it for themselves but without making any sacrifices at all. Simply put, they loathe you but lack the courage needed to ever talk to you about it or the brain to resolve it and move on. So what do they do? They spend all of their free time (let’s face it, there is a lot of it since they aren’t employed) bashing you all over social media, suing you, and making up false stories of you. It is best to ignore them and let their burning passion flame out, much like their passion for working with you once did.

Conclusion

The whole point of this web page is to show you what can and will happen to you if you let employees and their problems fester. Having employed thousands of employees, I can honestly say that there are a few GREAT exceptions out there that do not fall into these phases. They are here for a season, grow, and leave thankful for what they have learned. But there are also the terrorists employees that will try to hold you hostage. Do not let this become you. Below are some action steps you can take to make sure you are never being held hostage.

1. Never stop hiring – Even when you are fully staffed, never ever stop looking for great employees to make room for. This allows you to never be put into a bind or an awkward situation if an employee decides to move on.
2. Never stop the group interview – The group interview is where you can interview multiple people at the same time for the same position. This is powerful because it allows you to find/look for good people an hour a week instead of having to allocate hours and hours a week to sit down and interview each person one on one
3. Never stop people shadowing you – After you find a seemingly good person from the group interview, THEN have them shadow you for a day for the following reasons 1. Anyone can pretend to be awesome for an hour, but holding up the facade for 12 hours is a little bit more tough 2. This is their opportunity to see what it is you do and for you to build a foundation of relationship with them 3. This is your opportunity to see how they think and what level of skill they have for the job you are hiring them for.
   1. BONUS TIP – Just because they are shadowing you, does not mean you have to keep them with you all day. If they are not a good fit, send them home early.
4. Never push an employee past their “lid” – John Maxwell talks about how each person has their own “lid” or their limit of competence. Once you try to push someone to be greater then they want to be, they resent you for it.
5. Never teach an employee the ENTIRE business – Each employee can have specific roles within the company but once you teach an employee all of the ins and outs of the business, you have taught your future competitor.
6. Mentally fire uncoachable people – You can watch an employee go from being coachable and eager to learn to not being open to feedback at all. When this happens, run. Mentally fire the person and replace them at the most convenient time for you, the business owner.

• I’m an Employer
• I’m a Job Seeker