Podcast Episode 109 Transcript: Why Your Employees Won’t Do What You Ask

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Why don’t employees do what you ask? Learn how psychological safety and trust drive performance, accountability, and stronger teams.

Introduction

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the Self-Reliant Team Podcast. My name is Shane Jacob, your host, and I thank you for taking your time to be here with me today. Today's episode is brought to us in part by Cowboy Cuffs.

Wow. I mean, I have said this before, but I love this shirt. I think this might be my favorite one. Sportin' the Cowboy Cuffs logo cuff link there. The official Cowboy Cuffs cuff link. Brown with the dark brown satin cuffs and inside the collar. Anyway, I, I think this shirt is absolutely amazing. I call it name of this shirt, I call this shirt Rattlesnake Stew. I love the name too.

I know it's going to be a good one. The lady that makes these prototypes is a seamstress. She makes them one at a time. This is the first one, this prototype. This is coming soon, but just not yet, when I go to pick them up from her. She has a sewing machine and a little deal she does in her garage. When I pick them up, like she did with this shirt, and she says, “Wow, I could have sold that shirt five times already, and it's only been made for two days.” How many people come to your garage? Quite a bit, I guess. But when she says she had multiple opportunities to sell a shirt that's only been there that she just made, I have a pretty good idea it's going to be a pretty good top seller.

And you know, you really never know with these shirts. Like, you look at the material and try to visualize it and put the combination together. And this one was a stretch. I didn't think it would turn out as good as it did, but I really love this shirt. Cowboy Cuffs coming soon. Check out Rattlesnake Stew. Back on the business at hand.

The Core Problem: Why People Don’t Do What We Ask

Today we're talking about a pretty simple concept here. Why don't people do what we tell them to do, what we want them to do? You know, I've been trying to get horses to do what I want them to do for 30 years, and I'm trying to get people to do what I want them to do for 30 years too. Specifically, today I want to talk about employees.

You know, we set out in business, and we become a leader or manager, and we have a system, and we say, okay, here's the perfect system. I'm going to give you everything you need to be to excel in your job. This is the most efficient system. All you gotta do is operate the system. I've clearly communicated, to the best of my ability, the expectation, and go do it. And I'm gonna just kinda keep my eye on the outside edges and make sure that you're moving forward, team, go. Okay? And then we sit back, and well, everything goes to hell. It just falls apart. They don't do it. You know, it just doesn't work out for so many reasons, but why?

You know, really the big reason is, well, you know, companies and teams and organizations and corporations and all of us, you know what we are. We're human beings. Okay. We're pretty complicated creatures, and that's the deal.

System Vs. Human Nature in Performance

So how, how can we compensate, how it's not compensate for weakness, but how can we compensate for what we know, for how we, how do we make up for, not for what we lack, but how can the manager, not make up for? How can the manager give us what we need to actually to excel? Because a system and a way of doing things is only one little piece of it. And it's not the core. It's not, by the way, not the most important part of being a high performance. It is not the most important part of being productive. It's not even close.

I've been managing people, my own companies, okay, for over 30 years. And a lot of it, I'll tell you, has been a damn struggle. I have struggled with everything. I have struggled with high turnover, poor performance, low motivation, unhappy, unreliable people.

And you know, a lot of times when you step into a, when you finally get a leadership role, when you finally get a management role, or you finally decide to run your own business, you say, “Wow, now I can,” you know, “I'm the manager and I'm the leader, can finally, I got the power to make things get, to drive everything, to make sure everything's gonna go as good as it goes.” And then it doesn't work, okay? It can be kind of frustrating.

The Frustration of Leadership

So, like I said, you build the system. And you kind of build the system based on how you would go about doing things, okay? Like I said, you clearly explain it, and then you set clear expectations, and you think people are just going to be able to do it, and you just look at it, and the frustration is why? Why aren't you doing what I asked you to do, man? I mean, what, why? Okay, because almost immediately everything comes apart.

And this is a frustration I think that we all have. It's like things just aren't getting done. They're not getting done at the rate of speed that we want to, or to the effectiveness. They're just, to the quality. It's like, so then you start thinking, well, what are all the reasons? What the hell's going on? These people are just lazy. Or did I just hire the wrong guys? Is that the problem? Or do I need to pay them more? They just not motivated because of money. Or then I start thinking, “Well, the new generation, they're just, they don't even understand work. They have no work ethic. That's what the deal is. The younger generation is the problem. It has nothing to do with me.” Right?

And you just try to, your mind just goes and tries to figure out all the different reasons why people won't do what you want them to do. And you try to come up with solutions. And I've tried to come up with all, so many solutions that don't work. And we try, and we try, and we try.

And that is the struggle of leadership as managers, is simply just getting people to do what we want them to do effectively and productively, and why don't they?

Lessons From Horses and Human Behavior

So that's what want to talk about. In the course of learning how to train horses, and I've been studying, and I continue to study, I think this is an important part, I continue to study training horses, and I continue to study relationships with people, how to manage and lead people.

What I found with horses is that, you know, horses need to have a consequence, the same as the people who work for you do. But they're having force or being frustrated and exhibiting that frustration towards people can't, in order to have a horse that is willing, that you can trust, okay, that'll consistently be there for you, you have to have high respect, okay, to create a relationship with the horse.

It's got to be the respectful one, one that he understands and one that is respectful.

The Real Driver: Feelings and Trust

And that is the thing with people. And it's not just respect. The real deal is that we human beings are operating on feelings. And I know that's kind of tough for me to say as a tough guy cowboy, but I'm here to tell you that human beings, all of us, do or don't do.

Whatever we do or don't do is based on how we either feel or think it'll make us feel. We're living our lives on feelings, and that can be a beautiful thing, and it can be a hard thing if you don't understand how it relates to yourself and other people. The more and more you do, the better results that you can get. The more that we have awareness and understanding of how we operate internally, mentally is what I'm talking about.

Trust, Communication, and Missed Leadership Factor

You know, as I figured out more and more about the relationship between man, between me and horses, and how much they were keying off me, and how much respect and clear communication, it wasn't just clear communication, that is an important element, let me guarantee you that. But really it's the trust factor, okay? The trust factor is what makes trusting horses.

And here's what I was missing with my own companies and my own relationships with employees. The people, they didn't feel good. They weren't doing the things that I, they weren't doing what I wanted them to do. Not because they were lazy, or not because a lot of times that they weren't very good at it, or they weren't smart enough, or they weren't skilled, or they didn't have a good enough work ethic, or they were trying to take advantage of this and that.

One of the main reasons why I didn't get the results with people in my own companies was I didn't take into consideration how they feel, and if I ever could figure it out, I didn't know what to do about it. Okay, because I can't, what am I, now okay, well that's how you feel, what the hell am I gonna do? I can't control, I can't control any aspect of another human being, let alone guess how you're feeling and try to control that.

So it can feel like you're trapped and hopeless, and it just can be extremely frustrating as a leader. And I hear that from people. I hear that from you, the people that comment and talk to me about on media, and I hear it in the world in all kinds of managers and leaders in everything.

I mean, from agribusiness and agriculture and farms and ranches to construction and sales teams of software that, I mean, it doesn't matter what you're doing. Human beings still interact the same. We all have similar experiences. And I find that to be true with managers and leaders, depending, regardless of what kind of business that they're in.

Understanding What Drives Performance: Google’s Study

So if it all comes back to how people feel, you know, basically that's how it works. Now, I recently found out about a study that Google did. Google did some research, and they studied 180 teams, and they were trying to answer one question. What creates the highest performing teams? What does it take for a group of people to be the best that they can be?

And what they expected that they would find is if they matched up the right people with a group of super high performers already, and they had an experienced, strong manager, and that they provided all the resources and free resources that they needed, that there'd be no reason that they could excel. They thought that's kind of what they were going to expect, that it would be basically who they put with who, what people they put with what people.

Did they have an experienced leader, and did they have access to enough resources, and they thought that was going to be the answer of having the highest performing team, and guess what? They weren't even close. They were surprised to find out in this study of, by the way, did I say 180 teams across different areas, different departments, but that wasn't it. Surprisingly, I believe to them, and certainly it is to me to know it was when I heard this, was really what it was for me was validation because this is what I know.

The most important factor that Google found in what they dubbed, they named Project Aristotle is the name of the study. So you can look that up, Project Aristotle on Google, and you can find out what I'm telling you. They found that the most important factor in order to have a high performing team is psychological safety.

What is Psychological Safety?

Wow, psychological safety. So what does that actually mean? What it means is that people feel safe at the core, at the foundation of it. People feel safe from having their value judged, from having their person, their individuality, how they feel about themselves, what they perceive that you think about them. They feel safe from value judgment.

What that what that looks like is that with, with a group where there's psychological safety, people feel safe to speak up. They'll make recommendations. They'll give ideas and act on ideas. They'll, they won't hide things. They won't, they'll be more honest and more open. They'll be more willing to give ideas because they were afraid, they won't be afraid that they'll, they'll feel like they suck if they give you an idea that you don't like. They're more open to, they acknowledge their mistakes easier. They can look at their work more objectively.

We've talked a lot about this on this podcast before, they're more open to objectively looking at what needs to change to improve their own work and the work of the teams. They give more ideas. They're not afraid to be seen.

How Safety Changes Team Behavior

Really that the bottom line is like I said, don't, they show up at work with a higher trust level because they feel like they're safe from judgment. Okay? And we don't like to feel like other people think that we're certain ways. Did you hear what I said? We don't like to feel like that other people that we think that they think we're a certain way. Okay? A certain way being how they judge our value. Okay?

Do they think I'm important? Do they think I'm valuable to the team? Do they think I'm capable? Do they think I'm deficient somehow? Do they think, you know, all the things that we think about when we think about value judgments. Now I'm not talking about behavior or work judgments. Those are totally separate, okay?

But the way to create the trust and create the psychological safety is the an environment where people don't feel judged.

The Performance Impact of Psychological Safety

What Google found out was not only that that was the key to the productive team, but those people in those groups that felt psychologically safe were 19% had 19% higher productivity. 19% higher productivity. 31% more motivate, excuse me, 31% more innovation, 20%, 27% lower turnover and 3.6 times higher engagement.

People perform better when they feel safe, not when they feel pressure, not when they're worried about how they're being perceived and what kind of an effect that that's gonna have on them.

Connecting to “Judge the Work, Protect the Person”

The key in this, the key where this relates to me, Project Aristotle and Google's research was validating for me because it's exactly, not exactly, but it's almost identical. The ideas are very close in parallel. My system of judge the word, protect the person, because that is the point of it all, right? Is to create the psychological safety where people can come to work and excel, and they don't have all this extra curricular stuff going on in the background, okay?

Where people get to get it wrong, and it gets to be okay. People get to make mistakes, no one's values questioned. We all hold everybody in high regard and with perfect respect the best we can at all times, and we also have a way of doing things here where we have a policy that we repair.

Creating a Culture of Trust and Repair

If we ever are judgmental or we make people feel bad, we fix it, and we fix it fast. We repair fast. We deal with behavior, we judge the behavior. We separate the person from the behavior. We protect the person and we judge the work because the work's important. That's why it's there. And it needs to be judged. We need to look at it open and objectively and improve it because I mean, as long as we're okay with it.

Constantly improving let's just say that we do our best and throw it out there and somebody says that's not good enough we need to do this and that the other instead of me making that mean that I'm not good enough because I did that, okay, I know I'm held in perfect high regard, just what I did we need to do different so that we can have a better result at the company.

I can just look at it and say yeah great, let's, let me do that, and I I'm more willing. See, I don't have the defensiveness, I don't have the shutdown, I don't feel bad, I don't have all this internal negativity going on that prevents me from doing an amazing job at work.

Why Safety Drives High Performance

And that's why they found the results that they did at Google that this psychological safety is the key to high performance of work. Huge big news right here, okay?

We never go after the person. When you don't do that, and when you create that environment, and there's certain things that you can do to create the environment where people feel that safety and that because of the trust, then you're gonna have a team that's gonna, you know, a lot of those problems, they all go down and some of them disappear. It's not a perfect world, but this is how we actually get more cooperation.

You know, you want people to do what you want them to do, give them a place where they can do it. And think about, I mean, if you're the leader, just think of like, where would you like to operate? You know, where somebody was giving you perfect regard and perfect respect and didn't judge you and just looked at your work.

Leadership Starts with Your Mindset

Now this begins with the mindset that the leader, we need to understand and believe that about ourselves. Okay. And that will help speed up the process and people being able to accept and internalize the ideas that we're giving them of, excuse me, judge the work, protect the person.

Because the more that we believe and we live that principle for ourselves, we come out differently. People see that. They see it, they experience how we interact with them in the world, and that makes it easier for them to take it on.

It's not just some words that we're talking about here, it's how we roll, it's how we live our lives.

Leadership Begins with How You Show Up

And remember that it's like Brene Brown said about parenting. You know, the same thing applies here. And what she said was, I'm going to kind of paraphrase and apply this to leadership. Basically, the point is, the way that we interact, the way that we show up and interact in the world has more influence on the people that we lead than all the philosophies and everything that we know about management leadership. Okay?

Our examples of how we show up and interact have more to do with the results of our people and our teams than all the ideas and principles that we can come up with. So it must begin here. But this, I'm telling you, is the place to begin.

Where Real Results Come From

And I'm telling you, why? Because after 30 years of basically getting my ass kicked, as a leader and a manager, and really trying, going at it and just trying to, to have high performing good happy cohesive teams that want to work together and that can operate and just be high functioning and not having a lot of good results for the most vast majority of the period of time.

I'm here to tell you this is where the results are. The results are is to first look at yourself and then to live that way and apply it inside of your teams. To apply it meaning create the space. Create the environment where people understand that they can be safe.

People start speaking up instead of shutting down. They take ownership, they're accountable, they bring the ideas, they stop defending themselves, they have more engagement. Turnover goes down, performance goes up, and trust shoots up fast.

Respect Vs. “Being Nice”

This isn't about being nice. When I say being respectful, it's not just about being kind and showing kindness, which I think we should all be kind and show kindness, and it's not just a tone.

Again, respect means that we don't judge each other's value here. I don't think that you're a certain kind of way because of anything you've done. I think you're a human being because of whatever you've done.

And you're an imperfect human being that did either great work or did not very good work or somewhere in the middle, just like I do and just like everyone else does. Okay? And that doesn't mean anything about my worth, what kind of a person I am, my value.

I'm saying all those things so that you... to try to be descriptive enough that when I say value judgments, it means your worth as a human being. How important you are. How much value you have. How much worth you are.

Separating Who You Are From What You Do

Okay, as an individual, and what again the separation means is, is there's things that we do and there's who we are, and the things that we do don't need to impact who we are, even though that is not the way that we've been wired.

I don't, I have never met and I don't expect to meet anybody who has ever taught or wired or learned that it was automatic to not have the things we do mean something about who we are, about our value as a human being.

That's just the way we roll. We're taught that, we're taught to believe that, that the things that we do determine our value in the world, our value in comparison to other people and just how good of a person we are.

The Human Need for Worth and Acceptance

I like to say like a, to measure yourself like The Peanut Butter Falcon. I forgot the kid's name in the movie. I love that show, The Peanut Butter Falcon. Check it out. If you haven't seen it before, it'll make you laugh and cry at the same time.

But anyway, the handicapped man in the show asks the guy who he's kind of running away with, forgot their names, but he asks him, says, “Am I a good guy or a bad guy?”

And to me that moment right there is like what we're all asking ourselves all the time. Like how good am I and how good am I in the world? What am I, a good guy or not a very good guy? That's what we all want to know or go. That's what we all want to know.

We want to believe and know that we're exceptional. We want to be great. We want to be accepted and have it be okay.

Creating Safety Even When People Fail

And when you can believe that you are all the time and you can transfer a little bit of that to the people that you work with and they can accept that you're not gonna judge them, that they're always gonna be a good guy, even if they do bad work.

Now there's gonna be consequences for it. If you do bad enough work or if you're not dependable, you're gonna have to leave the company because we're gonna terminate you.

But here's the thing, we're gonna do, even if that happens, let's say we put you on a, we put you on an improvement plan, right? And it doesn't work out, you're gone. Okay, we're gonna have to discharge you. Okay, we're firing you, you're gone.

But we're gonna do that in a way where we're gonna respect you as a human being, and we're not even gonna judge you all the way through. You just, for whatever reason, we required this, we believed you could do it, you didn't do it, we have to say it part ways, and we're gonna love you all the way through it, even as difficult as it might be for you, and even regardless of how you even act, even if you're upset and you start judging us, whatever.

We're just, not gonna, we're not going to, we're gonna do our best to hold you in perfect high regard and not make judgment on you. We're only gonna focus on judging on what you do or don't do in this company, and that's the way we roll. Period. Even when it's time to say goodbye, because we do need to be, there is consequences and we do need to judge the work. I mean, that's why we're there.

Why Judging the Work Still Matters

We're there to do the work. By there, I mean that's why we show up at work. That's why we start businesses, own companies, want to be leaders, want to be managers, so that we can increase the quality of life that we have for ourselves, one way or another, mostly with money.

And so in order to be profitable and make more money and all the other things that we want from a job, from a career, from our work, from our life's work, whatever. We want to have significance, we want to be important, and we want to have some money in the bank.

And so we have to, in order to be competitive and be profitable and all of that, we have to have, you know, we have to judge the work. Because, well, like I said, that's what we're there for.

And so we need to be able to, or otherwise we go out of business because we're bankrupt. So it's pretty important to judge the work.

Detaching Value From Performance

It's important for people that they don't feel judged. And that is what creates the psychological safety. And according to Google, and by the way, they're not the only ones, that's not the only piece of research about psychological safety. But this is the, to me, this is a very recent and very relevant bunch of research.

What you do has nothing to do with your value, my friends, nothing.

You can choose to make it mean something about you. You can choose to do that if you choose to, and most people do, and I did for most of my life, but I'm really working on, on an ongoing basis, having what I do not affect my value.

And guess what I found? A lot of times you could look at that and say, where's the incentive to do well if it doesn't mean anything about you? It means something. It just doesn't mean anything about my value.

Separating Value From Performance Drives Better Results

And what I've found is, is the more that I solidify this belief, the more that I internalize it and live it and project it into the world, the more that I actually want to do better in my work, in my doing, okay, in my actions, I get better at my doing when I separate my value from it.

And I think that you'll be the same with you, and I know you'll find the same to be with the people that you lead. There is nothing that you're going to do, nothing. And there's nothing that you're not going to do. And there's nothing that's going to be done to you or anything that's going to happen to you that can ever change your 100 % priceless inherent worth. Now, most of us spend most of our lives trying to our worth to ourselves to prove that we are that good guy and not a bad guy or gal.

We spend most of our lives trying to our worth to ourselves and to the world. We waste more time and more energy and sometimes hurt a lot of people in the process trying to prove something that wasn't even up for debate to start with.

Choosing Your Value, Starting Today

You can choose today if you, if you do, if you choose to do so, you can choose right now to have everything that you've done and everything that you've not done and everything that's happened to you in any way and everything that you're gonna do and everything that you're not gonna do and everything that's gonna happen to you in the future.

You can choose to have none of that have anything to do with your worth, with your value as a soul.

And you can make that decision today and you can practice thinking it and you can practice living it.

How to Practice This in Real Time

And here's how it works. Okay? Here's how it works. I catch myself being defensive. I catch myself feeling a certain way that doesn't feel good. I look at it and I say, what am I making either what somebody else did or said mean about me? Or what am I making what I have done or said mean about me?

And if I'm making something, here's me and here's what I do. And here's me, and over here with what I do is also what other people say and do. And then when I recognize a feeling in me that doesn't feel good, or I'm having conflict in the relationship, I take a look and I become aware of what either I'm doing or somebody else is doing, and I say, what am I making that mean about me?

Because what I'm making it mean doesn't feel too good.

The Foundational Key to Leadership and Life

And when I'm able inside my own mind to separate who I am and uphold to myself my own value and objectively look at what I do and don't do and what other people do and don't do.

That is the foundational key, my friends. I'm telling you, this is a big deal, okay? There is nothing that you're gonna do or not do that's gonna happen to you, or it's gonna have any impact on your value whatsoever.

And the more that you come to internalize that, the better life you're gonna have, and that's just a damn fact.

How This Unlocks Your Potential and Relationships

Here's the big key, like I've said before a lot of times on this podcast, the more that you're gonna be able to gain the capacity to give and love the people that you care most about and the more ability you're gonna have to reach your potential and make the contribution in this world for the time that you're here to do it.

I believe that with everything in me, okay?

People have free will, and we're all going to do what you're going to do. But when you lead this way from inside yourself and have these fundamental beliefs that you can choose to have and choose to start thinking, you can create a belief by practicing thinking it. Okay? That's the beginning of it.

Final Thoughts and Call to Action

You're going to have more cooperation with your teams, less resistance, better performance, and stronger relationships with the people that you work with every time. Okay?

Hey, if you're tired of dealing with the same people problems that I had, or if you're tired of with people with problems over over again, you can remember that's what I do. I show people in teams how to handle feedback, accountability, and performance without turning it into a personal issue. You can book me for speaking or training. Check us out at shanjacob.com.

Thank you for being with me. Remember my friends, your value is non-negotiable.

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Your team knows what to do. So why aren’t they doing it?

Most team performance problems are not caused by lack of skill or effort. They are caused by how employees interpret feedback and accountability. When people connect their work to their personal value, they react defensively, avoid responsibility, and stop improving. This episode explains how leaders can separate performance from identity using the Worth Work System. By creating psychological safety without lowering standards, organizations can increase productivity, reduce turnover, and build teams that take ownership of their work.