Hello, everyone. Welcome to Real Talk with Tia and Jill. Welcome to a new week. A new week. Happy Monday. Happy Monday. Happy Monday. Right. There are times, I don't know about you all, but like today, I was just telling Tia, I got a cold over the weekend. So my Monday... It's off to a slow start, but we're doing it. That's right. Like, that's just how it is sometimes. So here we are. This is what I told Tiana this morning. So Tiana's my three-year-old. And she did not want to wake up this morning. She's like, I don't want to get up. And so, you know, I comfort her and stuff. I was like, well, we have to start getting ready. She's like, no. I'm like, time waits for no one. I'm a three-year-old. We got to keep moving. We got to keep moving. I don't know what that all means, but whatever. I know. She's like, time waits for me. Well, time doesn't necessarily wait for anyone. But of course, we love knowing everyone who's here with us. So we encourage you or invite you to drop in the chat. Where are you from? Put a comment in. Where are you listed from? What's your week like? We'd love to know. And share your perspectives because today's topic is about ownership, right? And the real reason why your team just won't take ownership. Yeah. And so it's a big topic. And I know there's plenty of perspectives out there. So put it in the chat. We'd love to hear from you. Yeah, like how often do we hear people who are like, gosh, I feel like I can't make a decision about this. We're like, if you don't own it, who does? And what we find no one does. Right, but yet people don't feel they have the authority. I think so often we hear people who are like, I think it's the cliche, like people these days just don't want to work. Right. I think that plays into this ownership thing, doesn't it? I think so. I think so, too. We excuse it instead of looking internally and saying, no. I as a leader, where do I need to shift how I'm leading? We really just blame other people and say, well, it's them. They're lazy. They don't want to work. They don't have the same work ethic that I had when I was that young or when I started my career. They don't want to do this. They don't want to do that versus looking inward. For people who've been with us for a while, you all know we look inward. We look at what are we doing as leaders to create this environment? yeah because i think that's probably one of the uh the big myths that when people don't want to take ownership that it's because they aren't motivated or that it's an engagement problem but really you know that's what we're talking about today it's not usually it's a clarity problem because most people we've talked about this too people protect what they own that's right but if we don't know what that is we're like i'm not going to touch that i don't know What I'm saying I'm accountable for if I don't know that I'm responsible for it. Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, when we started talking about like, Ooh, you know, people protect the things that they, that they feel like they own or, you know, like that is theirs. It really just, it makes you think about, huh, is that true? And in what areas of my life, like even think about in your personal life, the things that, you know, belongs to you, right. You're not having someone come in, mess it up, draw all over it, change the color, whatever it is that you're thinking about in your head. You don't let anyone touch it or change it in a way that you don't understand or that you don't support. And a part of that is that ownership of it. you feel that this is yours and you should be the decision maker around it. If we had that same mindset at work or capitalize on that human, it's really a human behavior on how we look at things that we feel belong to us. Maybe it's, I don't know, maybe it could be more of a social thing that we've learned over the years, but it really is a part of how humans behave today. And if we can tap into that, then this ownership, you won't be one of the ones that say, why is my team not taking ownership? Well, if it is your first time being with us, I'm Jill, this is Tia. And today's episode is the real reason your team won't take ownership. And so if you are leading smart, capable people, and you still feel like you are deciding everything, or you are cleaning up everything, then this show is for you. I want to share this too. If your team is like, what do you want me to do? How do you want me to do it? Is that really mine? Because role confusion, in particular at work, is showing up everywhere. It does. In the conversations that we're having, in the clients that we're helping. Rural confusion is real. Yeah. We were just talking about like when you look around the table at a meeting or on Zoom or whatever you're on and you're like, why are three or four of my other team counterparts in the same meeting? Right. That's a clue. That's a clue, right? Yes. But there's some confusion over like what are what what roles are we all playing in? Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I think about it too. If something comes up and it is clearly, you know, food safety and quality, or it's clearly operations like in my head and no one is like stepping up for it or saying, yes, I'll take it on. All right. Let me, let me look into it. Then I'm like, there's a clarity issue. There's a clarity issue happening here. You know, and I know this doesn't necessarily apply to everyone, but I know in other events that we've had, Tia, and I don't have this pulled up, but I believe it was probably the same Gallup poll that said more than fifty percent of people don't know what they're expect what's expected of them at work, which is kind of mind blowing, whether it's a couple things or whether it's a lot of stuff. And I'm sure that it encompasses that entire range of of that, but more than half And just from what I see or what we see in the industry, I would say there's probably more moments of that as well than just kind of this like normalized state of I don't know what's happening. but you still see pockets. So even for those people who are like, yep, I know what I'm doing. There's still plenty of pockets. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And many times if someone's like, well, I know what I'm supposed to be doing, right? Like that's why this stat is so important because it talks about like half of the team members. I could feel like, ooh, I know the things that I'm doing. But I feel when others don't know, when things are maybe, maybe I'm doing too much of the work, right? If you have someone that's doing all the work on the team because they're the ones that's taking the ownership of all the things and no one else is, or that one person doesn't have anything to do, that's when you start seeing that unbalance across your team. Because half feel great about it, the other half, don't really know, right? We go back to the confusion phase. The other half is like, I don't even know. And it doesn't have to be from a malicious point of like, I don't want it. It could even be from, I don't even know if I should take this. Is this mine? Is it not mine? I'm just going to wait until someone says, yes, it is mine. Otherwise, Like, I don't know. Right. I feel like that's common. Well, you bring up a good point. Even people who are like, yep, I know. Would others agree with them? That is very true. Or the whole other side, because especially if you have half the team who's like, I don't know that this group being like, I do know. Like, is there some perhaps interaction going on here with like they feel so strongly about what they know? This person's like, I thought that was mine. Right. Right. Who knows? We don't have all of those details, but I imagine some of that happens as well. And that really ties back to the real reason that this exists is because there's a lack of clarity, right? Even the person that feels like they know, they don't even have clarity on what their other team members are doing, right? And how that relates to the work that they do. Otherwise, they'll be like, oh, Jill, that's yours, right? Like that's yours and this is why. When that clarity is clear. Yeah. when the expectations are clear and that clarity exists, then even that's there. But you're right, if a person is taking on everything or they feel good about what they're doing, but others do not, is that really true? Does that clarity really exist for that team? Yeah. And I think these are the areas, too, that organizations often don't highlight when they think about profitability and operational inefficiency. Yes. Right. Typically, we're looking at what's happening mechanically that I need to improve. But this right here is probably the bane of our of like our existence and others, because this is what creates so much inefficiency. So it's when, gosh, we're not getting new products out the door. Gosh, we're not getting around to getting all our work completed. We're not getting our internal audits done. There's a whole list of things that we feel like we fall behind on and they show up because we're not sure who owns the decisions on things. Right. Right. And you're right. It slows us down. It's the meeting after the meeting, after a meeting, because we can't align, the expectations are not clear. And honestly, the rest of the people are hoping that leadership steps in and help provides this clarity. But, you know, a lot of times that doesn't happen because the leaders are not clear. Right. And the thing is, in this day and age, when we talk about Uh, team member wellbeing and having them engaged is kind of a, you know, the, the metric most companies use when it comes to like kind of the wellbeing and like how, how, how, how engaged are people? Like we know that employees, sorry, I could just spit it out, but maybe it's brain fog for my employees that know what's expected of them at work are two point seven times more likely to be engaged almost three times more. more likely to be engaged, according to Gallup. That is incredible when we think about the day and age where like seventy to eighty percent of people are not engaged at work. Right. Yes. Yes. And imagine how much more efficient you can be. How and even when you think about like the well-being of people, when you have highly engaged teams, they know what they're doing. Right. They're performing at this higher level. They tend to see higher levels of positive well-being. They have higher, their lives they feel are more balanced, whatever that means for them. They have these positive feelings around wellbeing, around engagement, around workload, when expectations are clear, when ownership is clear. And it doesn't, like you said, it's this thing that we don't really measure in a way that we should in the industry, but it's there. I feel like it's probably the majority of the reasons on why, well, I'd say that I feel that way, but like places like Gallup, you know, Culture Amp, like there's many, many groups out there that do study, Mercer, right? They all do these studies that show that a large part of inefficiency stems from leadership lack of clarity right lack of expectations um accountability the things that really fall into the space of leadership yeah i mean and i know this is you know i maybe an extreme example but we all know pick a sports team you like what would it be like if they all were like running around let's pick football if they're all running around the field and like You know, the running back is a lineman and the quarterback's like, oh, I want to go catch the, you know, catch a pass. Or they're maybe having a little conference on the side. Like, hey, well, maybe today you do this and you do that. Like it's, I know it sounds absolutely ridiculous. And so it's interesting that we can look at, you know, a team, a well-defined role team like that. Gosh, undefined role seems ridiculous. Right. But yet, how do we apply that to what we do? Mm-hmm. Like for whatever reason, we think that's okay within our, you know, within our own teams. And I get like, we may not always have clarity and we've seen plenty of plays that get ran and a player goes in the wrong direction. Like everybody's always on board with the play at hand. But, you know, if we can even get it to a Pareto concept of, you know, eighty percent of the time, we all know where we're going. Would that be amazing? Right. Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine a sports team where half of the people have no clarity. Right. Those are the ones that didn't make it to that team. Right. Exactly. For real. Right. Like that's that's true. And we have just accepted we just have accepted that versus investing in our people to get the clarity that they need. Yeah. So it's not always that obvious when we're working on teams at work. So today we wanted to talk about some of the things that you might see, some of the ways to get out of this. Yes. When we think about, gosh, my team won't take ownership. Like there are certain patterns that people can look for. Is it there? There is. And we talked about a few on, on like this uncertainty, this overlap of work, multiple people in a meeting. Right. And then even if there's two or three people from your team in this meeting, there's still hesitation on accepting, you know, all areas of responsibility, right. Ownership. That's still a hesitation. Yeah, I think about city and meetings in the past and having, you know, let's say like our boss be like, OK, who's going to take this on? Like to me, that's a clear signal. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Ask like who's who's going to lead that? That should already be known. Yes. It's so funny, Jill. This is on topic, but just thinking about the things that we run into and how we assess culture when we go into different organizations. It's things like that that we pick up on where Like we don't need to see engagement scores, right? Like we and again, that that data is great. It helps support. It helps add some clarity. But even something as simple as the boss and who's going to take on this. Yeah. Tells you something about your culture. Yeah. It doesn't even have to be the boss. It could be anybody who's like, who is responsible for that? Yeah. We haven't. Well, maybe well established or well communicated. who owns what. Right, exactly. That clarity is not there because everyone in the room should know, you know, hey, Tia, this is yours, right? Jill, I think this is what, I think this one belongs to you. And you're able to say yes or no, but it is someone on my team. I'm gonna, I'll take this out, right? Like the clarity is there around who owns versus that hesitation of, well, who owns this? Who should? Or even that uncertainty of who owns this piece? You know, and I think this matters because research shows that this ambiguity in roles is really a stronger driver of stress and burnout than workload itself. And that, you know, people that are often exhausted, it's often can be this uncertainty and not the volume of work. We see this when we do workload capacity. We've had people who they go through the workload capacity exercise and they're like, wow, It's not one, which in our calculation, it's like the amount of work I do versus the amount of hours I'm available to work. Right. So they're equal. The ratio equals one. Right. But people be like, huh, it doesn't look like I have that much to do, but I'm always doing stuff. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. When we use that tool for our clients, I can tell that clarity exists. This is another sign. I can tell that there's a lack of clarity when they drag their feet on completing it because the number doesn't seem to represent the way that they feel. So they drag their feet on completing it because they feel like it's not a representation. Which in reality, right, like we're using it for a purpose, right? Yeah, like I don't want a record that shows I don't have enough work. Right. But I feel so burnt out. What's wrong? What's wrong, right? But that lack of clarity, there's actually mental work that's happening that wears you out, right? Like it's this invisible workload that exists because people have to figure, it takes mental work to be like, is this mine? Is this not mine? Should I do it? I don't know what to do with it. I mean, how many times have we, Have we like sat on a personal project and we don't know what direction we're going to go in and we just like waste a half the day just thinking about it versus actually doing it because there's a lack of clarity. That's still mental work. It is. And that's real. And that's what we remind people. Like what you're feeling is still real. All because the numbers maybe don't add up doesn't mean what you're experiencing is not real. Right. But it gives us some clues as to like, well, where do we go next? Right. Exactly. Exactly. It's more, I like to say, tools in your toolbox. Just like engagement surveys does not tell you everything, does not actually tell you what to do next. It's just information that you have in order to make a better decision in the future. And all of these pieces sort of add up, combine, to give us more clarity on what we're seeing so we can make better decisions. Yeah. So I think that's really important as we think about what are things to look for. So if I think People aren't, if I'm in a spot where I'm like, gosh, my people aren't owning their roles or people around me, like these are the things to look for because they are exhausting. And I think it's a reminder that like ownership, it's not that people don't want to own things, but they need clarity first. Right. clarity clarity first and that kind of moves us to our second point of the the myth behind job descriptions and if that equals clarity and the reason why we wanted to bring this up is because many people if they're like we need more clarity let's go to the job descriptions right and then typically right when you bring out these job descriptions they're old they don't actually have You know, they don't actually have details in it. And maybe there's, you know, like some things live in job descriptions, some things don't. But many, many people first go to job descriptions and they think, oh, this is where the clarity lives. But they haven't actually done work on their job descriptions to make them. I know it's always a bummer because you're like, gosh, this tool that I've been told is supposed to help give me clarity. Like, I don't feel like it does. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And. I always use the example of training, like you're responsible for training. Okay. What part do I create the training? Do I sign up, decide on the training topics? Do I decide on how it's executed, how it's implemented? Do I just show up and go, Hey, we need training. Like what does responsible for training actually mean? And it sounds so simple, but a lot of people in the food industry get, get this responsibility. Like health and safety, you're responsible for training on health and safety. Like operations, you're in charge of making sure you have a trained workforce. Food safety quality, you're in charge of making sure people are trained on HACCP and food safety plans and all the things. Mm-hmm. What does that mean? Exactly. In many of these spaces, we can't just say, hey, training, by the way, training's going to be on Thursday. Everyone must be there. And everyone's going to be like, oh, yeah, Tia's over training. So she says, this is when training's happening. We know it does not work that way. And many times, you don't own all parts of a program like training. So if that is the case, there's a lack of clarity if it is not clear on who owns what part of the training program in this example. Right. And I think that's where even the workload capacity tool that we have is a perfect conversion to expectations because it's really supposed to be like, what do I actually do? Like, what actions does this role actually take? What do I decide? What do I influence? It can even be as clear as like under pressure. This is what shifts. Yes. So that I understand like my top three priorities all the time are one, two, three. These other things are a pool of. They compete for four prices. Right, exactly. Yeah, I think it's a tool that helps you understand exactly what you're talking about. What needs to come off the list? What do I need to create more space for? But we also talk about it with even, you know, sometimes we brought it up in our firefighting one where it's like, you are in this role that helps extinguish fires. Many times people don't put that on their workload capacity. When we're like, you need to put that on your workload capacity. That's part of what you do. That's a part of what you do. And I think that goes deeper into this clarity piece. And when you think about job descriptions where it's really describing the scope of the role, not really how decisions are being made. And that's really important because people try to use it as in, well, you have training, so you should be able to make the decisions around training. But there's so many parts of it when really that's a scope. That's not how decisions are being made. Yeah. And just this gap between what a job description says and then what's really supposed to happen can be stressful, even if you are technically qualified. I've even come into roles where they're like, yep, you as being the PCQI, being HACCP trained, you're responsible for stuff. And then I'm like, well, then what's this person supposed to be doing? Is that my responsibility? Is that their responsibility? Right. Exactly. Exactly. And many times when you go into a role, whether you've been promoted into the role internally or you're joining externally, someone has probably done the role before differently than you because you are different people or you did. Or maybe that role has been empty for so long, so other people have kind of picked up the task. There's almost like a regrounding that needs to happen within roles. And obviously, we're talking about it from someone has stepped into it, but you can do that right now. With the team that you have now, you're like, wow, I hear some of the signs or I see some of the signs that we're talking about today. Maybe I need to reset with my team and say, OK, how do we really look at each of the expectations of the roles that we have? Yeah, that that is that's just so important. Even it's a great exercise to be able to do individually to have people look at theirs, but then also collectively as a group. to say, because that's the best time for people to be like, you have that on your list? That's supposed to be on my list. Right. Yes. So it's not, once again, leadership isn't like a one person show. Right. It takes everybody together to be able to move through these things and understand what parts we play. But that's a great reason why people don't take ownership, because it's very unclear on the expectations, even if I think my job description provides some clarity. Absolutely, absolutely. And one of the things, I know you brought it up in this conversation, but it's one of the reasons why we focus on these foundational pieces in bootcamp because without this clarity, it's really hard to lead if you don't have clarity in these areas of your job. So you need to spend that time. Even people, I mean, we know we have people come into bootcamp. They're like, oh, I know, right? I know we talked about this earlier. Like I'm clear, I'm clear. But once they actually start working through the different parts of our leadership bootcamp, they're like, ooh, I did need to revisit this. yeah right people around me have changed i didn't oh i do need to have a conversation with this team member to see what's on their list because i feel like we've been doing similar tasks if you don't stop and think about that and do that work right you'll find yourself in a spot where this clarity does not exist and therefore ownership is starting to take right a dive right but once again from a business standpoint this is where things fall apart yeah We create these fantastic strategies of how we're going to be more profitable, how we're going to have more product, how we're going to drive more revenue. And then we're like, good, team, go do. And they're all like, what part am I supposed to be doing? And so you either get people who all jump in to try to do the same thing or people who don't do one part of it because it's not clear. So whether it's a business strategy, whether it's, I mean, we see this with even rolling out programs. Yeah. gosh, we're going to roll out a corrective action program. Who does what? What are the expectations? It is just as critical at that step as it is as a company up here at the highest strategic level. And I want to call out, too, that especially as we talk about job descriptions, with it really being a scope, is that you can't do everything on your job description every day. If you did everything on your job description today, you're just not going to have enough. time in the day especially when there's other external factors that's happening but when that clarity exists right you know what your priorities are including what's on the list but what needs to drop off the list over these next four weeks or this quarter like what are we prioritizing what am i not doing that's equally important Right. That clarity is equally important that, you know, other people around, you know, your manager know, the organization knows that we're not focused on X right now because that's not a priority. So as things come up, people ask questions like, oh, yeah, yes, let me put this on a parking lot list. Let me document it here because that is not what we're working on right now. Like that, even that clarity is really important. to focus on as you think about how do I how do I increase ownership on my team? Yeah. And I think that leads into, you know, we we've talked a little bit about like what we tolerate becomes our culture. Oh, yes. So when we think about that, we tolerate these this vague, these vague job descriptions or expectations. that's the culture we sit in every day then. So when we're like, gosh, why can't someone just make a decision? Gosh, why can't we just move forward? But we've trained everybody around us to sit in this space of uncertainty. Yeah. I mean, if you're new to the organization and everyone around you is sitting and waiting, like you're trying to figure out at what point should I, you know, should I, Should I jump in? Maybe we do wait. Maybe there's a reason why we play it safe here. All of those things are contributing to the culture and how people show up in your spaces. Yeah, and it's really hard to step in and make decisions when you don't have a structure and a process that help flow things through because then it feels personal. Like, I personally have to make this decision. I personally have to own this. Yes. That feels heavy because there's a lot of personal risk then. Right. Exactly. take to that. And you're really teaching your team members that you don't decide, don't make a decision unless you are one hundred percent sure. And we know like we can't be we can't be one hundred percent sure. There's times that we're like, we're leaning into risk here. We don't know what's going to happen. If this happens, we're going to pivot. If this happens, we're going to keep going. Many, many times we're making those decisions. But if you have a culture of sitting back and waiting, let's see who's going to pick it up. Let's see who's going to be dictated to do. If you're just sitting back and waiting, you're telling your organization, Don't decide, be sure, right? Like before you move down that path. Well, gosh, and just, you know, when you think about it, when I'm asked to step into this spot where I feel personally accountable for something, like, I don't know if I necessarily feel safe then. Right. Because if I have that much on the line, I'm like, okay, do I really want to step in and take that risk up? That's a lot to think about. Right? That's a lot to think about. And I feel like that's a real thing that each of us think about all the time within our roles. Yeah. If I'm going to get fired because I made a decision, like, wow, what happens to my family? Where do I live? Where can I find another job? Like that's a lot to put on someone. So why would they step in and be like, let me just own what I don't think I own. I don't know I own. Right. Yeah. And this is why leadership skills are so important. Right. Because great leaders recognize that that's a real thing. Right. That people that people have. And then they help create those safe spaces to show that, no, when you make decisions, you're not. I mean, it needs to be an educated decision, right? It needs to be a decision that we're all a part of, right? But it doesn't necessarily mean you have to be right all the time or that it's going to work out all the time. And like this role clarity really, it really directly links to trust, collaboration and safety, right? Psychological safety and ambiguity really undermines these things. Yeah. And I, you know, even in cultures where on the wall or somewhere it has a nice slogan of like we embrace failure yeah you know that's a really hard concept for any human to embrace because we have all been wired that failure isn't good right whether it's hard wire in our you know in our like just survival mechanisms in our brain but it's also what comes through in a lot of systems you know at school who wanted to raise their hand and have the wrong answer no one exactly so when we think about where this is you may think gosh that's not that big of a deal people should just step on and own this you know we're adults here just own it but guess what that's not just gonna happen it's not having the slogan up that says we embrace failure yay if your people don't truly feel safe That's just wasted ink. Yeah. I like to ask the question, well, if that's the case, in what ways have you shown that? In what ways have your team failed and you celebrated? You show that that was OK, OK to do. That nothing happened when a failure happened. Nothing that felt personal. I think that goes back to the personal piece that this doesn't feel like I'm in personal jeopardy of my job, of my livelihood, of my position even. Am I going to be demoted because I made a mistake? Yeah. I think that even goes into this part around, this is why process and systems are so important. And we get it. We've lived the real life working in companies where it's like, we don't have a process maybe for everything. And so maybe there are definitely gaps, but can we put processes in place to cover most of the things? Yes. The things that are most challenging. Like I'll go back to, I've talked many times on this show about foreign material in the meat industry and how I grew up there. When you start having so much foreign material, a lot of people are like, well, I'm not going to decide. I'm not going to decide what happens with that because there's a lot of the lines. But we couldn't operate efficiently with the amount of incidents we had if people were not willing to step in because it was all bottleneck. So we had to create a better process, a better system for these things to be handled. And that's part of our responsibility as leaders to do. It is. And it helps provide that clarity, right, on who's handling this part of it and what are our goals, right? That's the whole thing with processes is that processes have a goal, right? They have an end state. They let you know this is what good is and this is when the process is not working. And that's why it's important to have these processes and these systems because they do create this clarity. Yeah. You know, and I think about like, okay, if you want me to own something, like i need to have clear understanding of like what actually here do i own right i just own the pens here on my desk do i owe like everything right right and then i need authority to actually decide oh yeah that's a big one right i can't own something if every time a question comes up or something comes through the process and you're like oh not you this time right what part do i have And then the last part is I need the skills. You cannot ask people to own things if they do not have the correct skills and they are not supported. Or they don't have the capacity. I love when they're like, hey, they're already busy. Just throw that on top. I can't own that if I actually do not have the capacity to be able to take it on. Yes, yes. You know, absolutely. You know, when you think about that, really ownership requires these things where you have the authority, that there's this clear responsibility and that you have the ability, the skills to do it. If any of those three conditions are not met, then that's what causes us to backslide. Right? That's what causes the leader to say, well, I tried. I tried to give them ownership, but it just didn't work out. Well, if you dive a little bit deeper, they really didn't have the authority to make it. You wanted to be the final authority. You wanted to be involved. Or someone else wanted to. Whatever happens to be right. they really didn't have the authority to move forward with their decision once they made it for their area. And that just, like you said, it teaches people how to show up, right? It teaches people that you're saying you want us to take on ownership, but you really don't because you're not giving us the authority. So I'm going to sit back. And I'll just wait till you make the decision because I'm busy. Right. Like if you are the authority, then maybe you should own it. Right. And that just causes that it causes you to backslide where it feels like, well, I'm doing all the things that you're telling me to do to build this ownership, but I'm missing it. And it's because of those conditions are not met. Right. Yeah. Well, and we just think because if you have to make it up as you go along, every time something comes up, Like that's wickedly inefficient. Or we've all seen people who are like, I don't know what that is. So I'm just going to like sit over here and say nothing and pretend I don't know. Right. Because I don't know. Right. I don't know if you, I don't know if I answered this question, if you're going to be like, oh yeah, that is yours. You go forward. Or if I'm going to be undermined, or if you're like, well, I love your thoughts, but you're not the person. And then it's like, okay, but then I shouldn't be the person, right? Like, so I'm going to really quietly opt out of this conversation. Yes. You know, and kind of going back to some of our first stats that we showed, right, employees with high role clarity are shown to be up to fifty three percent more efficient and twenty seven percent more effective. Yes. Like, well, we know what we want. We're like, I want to be able to get things done. Easily. And I want to have impact. Yes. There's nothing people like more than to be like, I have purpose and I matter. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So this is where this fits in when we think about engagement, because it's not just ownership. It's do I make a difference and do I matter? that helps through part of clarifying our roles. Yeah. This is why organizations care about this stuff, right? Like this is why organizations invest and should invest in leadership development and helping their teams become more efficient when it comes from an ownership standpoint and a human behavior standpoint. These are the reasons to invest because we see that, you know, they're, up to fifty three percent more efficient, right? Twenty seven percent more effective. That's I mean, just those type of results. Like, just imagine what you can get from your team if you even get a little bit of that, right? Like, let's just say seventy twenty seven percent more effective is the average. Even if you get ten percent more effective, what type of impact could you really make on your team? And that translates to, again, the well-being of your team. the well-being of your own self, right? Because you, the type of stress is different, right? Like you're not carrying this stress without seeing the impact of the work that you're doing. Yeah. And you know, these things aren't always just, I mean, we've given some clues and signals on things to look like, you know, to look for. But there's also, you know, we just talked about when we want people to take things on, there are skills that they need to be able to do that. yes and there are a few common things that leaders tend to miss when we think about having people have ownership right they do you know they miss the well the one i feel like that this is like the core of my catalyst was created right but they focus so much on technical expertise but not really around collaboration skill not really around leadership skills what people call soft skills, which are really leadership skills, human behavior skills. We miss that because we feel like if we can get stronger in our technical side, then those things will come. But we know that is not true, right? No. I mean, even our foundational piece, when we think of, let's say in food safety, like a food safety plan, I'm going to go back just to a HACCP plan, right? Like how many times does it feel like it's like a cursory HACCP plan? because one person's done it or two. And I know everybody's like, oh, we have a HACCP team, but does everybody really understand it and get involved? Or are we checking the box of I have a HACCP team, so it looks like I have collaboration. Right. When in reality, there's no collaboration happening. If you go to the meeting, it's really just the food safety person or persons having conversation and there's no contribution. from other functions in the room, even though they have the expertise around their line. They have the expertise on how they're running every day. They're down there on the floor every single day looking at their systems. There's a reason why HACCP teams are cross-functional. But we don't invest in people to be able to have these collaboration skills in order to work together and to bring that out of people that HACCP is not first on their mind, other than their HACCP checks. HACCP might not be front of mind for them. So how do you have the skills to be able to translate some of this technical expertise into work that needs to get done? And that takes leadership skills. Yeah. And I think HACCP is a good example where I think a lot of people would say, well, we have worked with our HACCP team for a long time. We do feel like we have more people involved. But what about all the other programs? Right. Yeah. even if we think, yep, we do have good collaboration there, how well does that extend to the other systems and the other programs that we have? And I don't know about you, but I think in my career, at least, I learned early that just being a nice person, being kind, didn't mean I was a good influencer or necessarily helping move things forward. And we see that a lot in teams, don't we? Where people are like, well, we all get along. Right. Can we have the conversations that matter? Exactly. Yes. Yes. Can we have the conversations that matter? Sometimes we can't because we're trying to be nice. Right. Or we're trying to we're trying to appear friendly. Right. When in reality you can, I mean, you can be friendly and hold people accountable, right? Like you can, it's not mutually exclusive, exclusive. You can be kind and take ownership, you know, like you can be kind and influence, right. And help inspire people to move forward. You can do those things together. That just means you need to, you know, if you find that you are saying like, if this resonates, resonating with you and you're like, yeah, you know, I do kind of lean into being kind or not ruffling feathers. That's what I'm trying to avoid. If you feel yourself feeling that way, having that tightness, you really are avoiding conflict and friction. And that's a part of being a leader. That's a part of working with people is that there's conflict and friction. Otherwise, you'll just be working with yourself. But it takes skill to be able to navigate that and get to the other side of that conflict. Yeah, and I think to be a good example is I've been on plenty of project teams where it's like you meet week after week after week and you go through an action log and they're like, sorry, we didn't get that done yet. Oh, we got this part done. And you're like, okay, you just put a new due date in. Yes. That's the type of stuff when we think about ownership because if you're the project owner, what are the conversations you need to have that go beyond ownership? It's a bummer you weren't able to get that done. What's standing in the way? What would it take for you to commit to this? Right. How do I help remove those barriers? What needs to drop off your plate and how do I advocate for that? um for you you know all of the and really what we're describing is a leader right stepping up and saying hey i need to lead in this in this situation otherwise we're not going to hit the goals that we um that we need right like we're not we're gonna fall behind we're not gonna create the processes that we need we're gonna continue to see these fires if if there are no leaders, right, stepping up in that way. And I really see it as like a skill gap for the industry because we don't have enough leaders that can do this effectively. Right. I mean, right. Managing, leading. Two different skill sets. And then there's technical skills still outside of that. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And I think one of the things that we miss as leaders is that experience does not mean that you're going to have clarity under pressure. True. Sometimes we feel like, oh, well, Jill's been in the industry for a long time. We're just going to throw her. I think you said earlier on like, you'll know what to do, right? Like, oh, you know what to do. You have training. You can figure it out. Yeah. But that doesn't mean that this person is going to be able to figure it out just because they have some experience or have a lot of experience in a certain area. Yeah. And it's really unfair to put people in those situations. It is. when you feel like I'm under pressure, I have a big decision to make and I don't know if I have enough time. And that's why we all have recall plans, right? Because we know we are not good at making decisions under pressure. And so that's why it's so important that we understand ownership and we have processes in place to support our people. Absolutely. Yeah. It goes back to that importance that you brought up on why systems and processes are so important. Because just as humans, we struggle when we're under pressure. We do. We start making wild decisions or decisions that's like, wow, why did Tia make that decision? Oh, well, she was under pressure, right? She was under pressure here. And we just don't do well as human beings in those situations. You're right. That's why we have recall. That's why we have crisis management. That's why we have, you know, double supply chains. That's why we have these redundancies. That's why we have these things is because it doesn't mean that clarity is just going to appear when we're under pressure, that we're going to stick with what we know when we're under pressure. Yeah. I think it's also a sign of operational maturity when we actually have programs and systems in place because it's recognizing that to set people up, that's what we do. And when we do that, decisions move faster. We can't move faster as an organization when we have foundations in place. Yeah, when that clarity is present, you find people, they speak up. They say, hey, there's something going on here. Let's have a conversation about it. Or, hey, what is this? Let's have a conversation about it. You find that people are stepping up versus opting out. Yeah. And even with that, when accountability, like we know like Tia's responsible for this, Jill's responsible for that, like it's not all weighing on one person. It doesn't feel so heavy. Yes. So being an owner is like, sure, I can own this part. And that ultimately leads to trust on your team and psychological safety within your team, because when people have the authority when roles are clear, right? When they can make those decisions, then you start to trust, oh yeah, Jill, she has it. Right. Oh, yeah. This person got it. That's their area of responsibility. They're going to make the decision there. Or they also feel like I can go to this person, ask them questions because I know that they're clear in their roles. Right. I'm clear that they know or they have responsibility for this. And that just helps build the foundation of really strong teams. It does, because once again, when people do work that matters, they're more likely to be engaged. Yes. When people feel I own a part of this work that I do that matters, like that's part of the clear expectations. And so whether we're looking to chase engagement scores or retention or profits, this is the cornerstone of making all of that happen. Mm-hmm. And this is why just this conversation, just thinking about the conversations we're having today on why, as we look at more like technical cultures, like food safety culture, why it's important to focus on the word culture. Because when we are trying to look at food safety culture, we're saying, well, our organization, we're not where we should be around food safety culture. A piece of it, people will tell us, right? Like, well, people aren't taking ownership of food safety, right? They're not taking ownership of the things. go back to the foundation where is trust eroding where is where are expectations not clear where do people really don't have the authority to make decisions um within your systems right i love even the way that you think about um the way that you talked about collaboration and like hassa might be fine or um you know insert your food safety program but what about the other programs that's that's still eroding trust right still eroding psychological safety within your food safety culture So, you know, we, we talk about this all the time. I know it's my soapbox, but in food safety, we only really focus on food safety. We don't focus on the culture side and the culture side can derail you. Right. It can stop your systems and your processes from working. And many, many times the, at the core, there's a lack of clarity. Yes. Yes. You know, and if you're a leader and you look around and you think, gosh, my team isn't feeling clear right now then it might be the place where you need to ask yourself like where am i assuming they have clarity and they really don't right yeah they even maybe even think about like how am i contributing to the the lack of clarity that they might be feeling i feel like that is the takeaway right for you to really look at and say how am i contributing where might i be contributing yeah and I think that can look like, right? I mean, I've been in cultures and we've seen cultures where we work with clients where it's kind of like firing like the Wild West, like you take that, you take that, you take that. Yes. Like what does it create clarity? No. And it's not intentional. Not at all. It's about oftentimes that's this people trying to be mindful of workload capacity. But it's worth looking at the things that we do that we have good intention on and think, Is that really translating through? Right. Yeah. Or you just assume somebody will pick it up. Sometimes you need to say, Tia, this is yours. Versus even that's a difference than like, who's going to take it? To like, Tia, this is yours. And you're able to explain why that belongs to that. Or have a conversation. Be like, I see this is yours. And if you're like, ah, that's not mine. Good, we have found a spot to have some clarity. That's when you know your culture is moving in the right path. When we start having those, I remember even with a group where we were very clear on our responsibilities. But then we ran into this little section of we need to release holds in the warehouse management system. And quality felt like we can give you direction and then you release it. And our logistics team felt like, well, why don't you just go in and just release it? Because we don't want to release a hold because holds are yours. So there were legit things on both sides. And I remember we had conversations about this so much so that we had to escalate it to our leaders to say this. Everyone has great points. This is what we laid out. Leaders make a decision and we're happy to go down the path. And then they discussed it and they told us this is the path we want to go down and we executed. But I like the way you said, great, let's have a conversation. In strong cultures, it does not mean that there's not going to be times that clarity doesn't exist. But what do you do around it? Are you tackling it? Are people able to say, I'm ready to take on what belongs to me, but I need it to be clear? on each side on what we're doing that's when you know that's when you should be like ah the culture the culture is in the going down the right path when people demand this clarity and then they fall into these areas once clarity once accountability is clear yes yes yeah so you know if you're if you are out there you're like that's us this is exactly the work that we do in bootcamp and strategic leader cohorts and if you've been following us at all you know our spring cohorts are open but it is so important to help leaders have this create you know this clarity and create trust and accountability and results because that's what we are hired to do yeah that's what our company expects from us so our spring cohorts start the week of march sixteenth for both of the programs. So we would love to have you join us and create some clarity and ownership and drive some results and well-being across your team. And we've seen the light bulbs go off. in our cohorts and just the impact that it has had to wellbeing, to the effectiveness of teams, effectiveness of that person, right. Has just been mind blowing, honestly, for me too, to be able to see each cohort of, wow, I was really struggling with this. And now this is moving smoother in my work life and also translate to my home life. Yeah. So if you're listening, there'll be links to our programs in the show notes. But you'll know, we say this every week, leadership isn't a one person show. It's not. And culture certainly will not grow the way you want it to on its own. It all takes intention and it takes a system to make sure that it continues forward. That's right. It takes skill, investment in your skill. It does. So that's today's Real Talk. So remember, culture doesn't change until leaders do. And we hope to see you back next Monday. We have an amazing guest on next Monday, too. So we are excited about that. And we hope that you join us. Same time, we'll be live. Or if you catch us on our podcast, we're happy that you're listening to us as well. Yes. See you next week. Bye, everyone.
