You've heard it. You believe it. You've even tried it.
Judge the work. Protect the person.
And then someone turns in a project three days late, leaves the back door unlocked, or drops the ball on something that mattered. And even though you walk in saying the right things they still get defensive. Nothing changes.
Here's what's actually happening.
Shane Jacob has been running his own companies for over 30 years. He's made every mistake there is to make with people. And the one he kept making even after he knew better was this:
He'd go in with the right words and the wrong thoughts.
He'd say, "This isn't about you personally."
And in the back of his mind he was thinking, "How could you do this? What is the matter with you? You don't care. You're never going to get this."
He didn't say any of that out loud.
He didn't have to.
They already knew.
Shane says it plainly: people know what you think about them. It shows up in your tone. Your patience. Your face. The questions you ask. The ones you don't.
You can preface the conversation all you want. If you believe even quietly, even unconsciously that what they did makes them lazy or careless or a lost cause, they feel it.
And the moment they feel it, the trust is gone.
Most leaders know the concept. They understand the separation worth from work, person from behavior.
The problem is the belief underneath hasn't changed.
We've been conditioned our whole lives to believe that what you do determines what you're worth. Better grade, better person. Promotion, you matter more. Fired, you matter less. That belief runs deep. It doesn't go away because you learned a new framework.
So when something goes wrong at work, most leaders move through two steps without even noticing:
Step one: See the problem.
Step two: Attach meaning to the person.
They don't care. They're lazy. I can't count on anybody.
That second step is where it all falls apart. And most leaders skip right past it.
Shane walks through exactly where the system breaks down and gives you a three-step process to catch yourself before the damage is done.
Recognize what you're actually thinking about the person not the behavior.
Replace the thought before you open your mouth.
Then go have the conversation.
He also asks a question worth sitting with:
What evidence do you have that one human being is worth more than another?
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the How to Get Your Team to Take a Bullet For You podcast. Just kidding. Experimenting with new names. I don't know about that one.
But that's kind of what we're about anyway. How to get people to line up for you, how to get better results, how to get more cooperation, how to get more accountability, how to get how to make more progress with what you have to work with, or get something different to work with. Really, it just comes down to people, you know.
And as a quick recap, oh by the way, hey, don't want to forget this. This episode is sponsored in part by Cowboy Cuffs. Elevate your style, elevate your life, and elevate each other. I think we called this one Saddle or something like that. Saddle Rawhide. Rawhide and Leather, or I don't know, something, but I got the cool Cowboy, there you go. Couldn't see that right there. Cowboy Cuffs Gold and Silver Cuff Link.
And, yeah, pretty good match to my hat. I mean, elevating my style. Come on, you're gonna want to get you some Cowboy Cuffs. Soon to be released later this year.
So, the judge the work, protect the person is kind of the foundation, the principle inside the principle of the Worth Work system. Worth Work meaning the idea behind the Worth Work, it's like a total tongue twister, is that you separate worth, personal worth, from work.
And that's also another way of saying that we only judge the work, but we don't judge the person. We always protect the person. Judge the work, protect the person.
And because when people feel safe from value judgment, when they think that you're not thinking that they're an idiot, not thinking that they suck because of what they're doing, then it changes the dynamic of how the team, the group, the company operates because they feel psychologically safe.
Trust goes up is what happens. Trust shoots up. Okay. The trust between the employee who has a lot at risk, okay, because this is his living we're talking about, and the leader who has a lot at risk because he's responsible for the results. And it's also his living. So the stakes are high.
And so a lot of mistakes are high at work, you know. It's your work. I mean, it's so important, your career.
And so what we attempt to do with the Worth Work system is separate value from behavior, or excuse me, yes, separate value from behavior, where we judge the work, we only judge the work, and we always protect the person.
Which sounds really good. I mean, and it sounds good because it works good. It works well.
And so that's why.
And really magical things happen. And what happens is people get less defensive because they're not worried about, they're not thinking about what their leaders are thinking about them. They think about that less.
So they're less defensive, they're more honest, they're more open, they bring more recommendations, they take more responsibility, they contribute more, they're more, they make more.
More recommendations, they give ideas, innovation, you can call that. They're more innovative, and they just participate more in the goal of the company. They're just more present, more together, more invested, I guess I would say, rather than, you know, just hiding in the outskirts and trying not to be noticed.
Don't say anything. Don't, you know, don't ruffle the feathers. Don't bring any attention to themselves. No news is good news. Just slow and low, everything, just keep on going, which doesn't work very well.
And I know what so many things don't work because, as you know, I've been running my own companies for over 30 years, and I have specialized in doing things wrong. And at this point, I'm specializing in doing things right, which is awful nice. That's a big switch.
But I'm just saying I know from experience what the deal is.
So I want to talk today, the focus for today is why judge the work, protect the person doesn't work, why it fails, what goes wrong, and what are the things that can happen inside of the system.
And I want to show you how to avert that so that you get the result that you're looking for.
And here's what I'll say. If you've ever heard somebody say something to you, but it didn't seem right, you were still nervous, you know, like people say that they care about you, they say that this feedback wasn't personal, they said that they were just trying to be honest, and yet you didn't really feel like they were telling you the truth.
And so the thing of it is, what I'm getting at is we human beings can use the right words, but if there's something playing in the background, like a belief, okay, that is contrary, that's opposite to the words, people know it.
Okay. Just like horses do.
People feel this psychological safety. They feel safe. They feel and they have trust. They have a feeling and a sense of trust when they believe that their leader genuinely cares about them.
Okay, that's what it comes down to. That their leader genuinely cares about their value, their worth, regardless of what they do, and that their value or their worth is not being evaluated based on what they do.
In other words, “you turn this in three days late, you are lazy and you suck.”
Okay. So in that example, you turn this in three days late is the behavior, and what we made it mean was you're lazy and you suck.
Okay. Now, that is saying, that's not what we're talking about. What that is, is that behavior equals value.
Okay, and we're trying to separate that.
And it's a challenge. Okay. It's not just like you can say it, that's real nice. Yeah, sure. Separate it, and then it all works.
It does work, but it's not as easy as just separating it because it's much harder than it sounds because we've been, we believe, and we've been conditioned and socialized for our entire lives.
And some of us are kind of getting older than others, we'll say.
And for our whole lives we've been taught that, it hasn't really been said out loud, but we have been taught that a better grade means you're a better person, or if you win, if you're on the winning team, you're better than the other one that doesn't, and on and on and on and on, right?
The more money you make, the more better of a person you are, and all that.
Okay. The problem is trying to change that belief is really what it comes down to.
And a lot of leadership and a lot of systems and techniques, they focus on communication, like the words, okay, like what to say, how to say it, how to give feedback, how to hold people accountable.
But those things, the words that you're using, are not the real issue.
Okay. What you believe in your heart and soul that is coming out, that is unsaid, is what the real issue is.
And people know what we believe, okay? It shows up in our tone. It shows up in how much patience we show. It shows up in if we are honestly curious about the other person. It shows up in our facial expressions, in the way that we react, if we have questions, or the kind of questions that we're posing.
It shows up in so many ways, and employees know when they're being judged.
Okay. They know when they're being judged.
I can go, here's an example.
By the way, horses do too. Just let me just say that. Horses know what's happening.
Okay. You can smile and tell them everything's fine, but they know.
Okay. And we a lot of times think that people don't, but they do.
Okay. People know. They're not quite, they don't have to, they're not forced to be as intuitive and as connected. They don't have to be as observant as a horse does because a horse is naturally that way because it's their life. You know, they're just like fight or flight, what's going on here. They're a prey animal. And so they're super hyper-tuned into everything that's going on. And that's why they can notice, you know, from what seems like a mile away what you've been thinking about yesterday. Okay.
But people know more than we let on. You know, we don't have to feel like we're wearing all of our emotions on our sleeves. People know.
Okay. Even if you're acting like you don't, you think you handled it pretty well, most of the time people are gonna know. A lot of the time. Nearly all the time. Okay.
So here's an example. I can go up and I can preface my comment. Let's just say that whoever works for me is just like, “I can't believe you did that, right? It is so wrong. And these are my thoughts.”
And so I go to them and I say, first of all, I recognize that something needs a change. Okay. I need them to change what they're doing. So I go to them and I say to them, “Hey, I just want you to know, remember this judge the work, protect the person thing? I take it seriously. We're only gonna look at the work, always gonna protect the person.” So I'm prefacing it with a reminder of, “Hey, I just want you to know this isn't about you personally. It's just about the work.” And maybe I say it just like that.
Okay. But then I go, “I can't believe you did this.” Or I start into it. And in the back of my mind, these thoughts are saying, “How could you do this? What is the matter with you? You know, you just don't give a, you don't care. You're just lazy. I mean, I don't understand what is wrong with you.” Or I'm just thinking, “you're never gonna get this,” or, “I would never do that. I don't even know how you could think to do such a thing.” And these are examples of thoughts that I've had, if you can't tell, about people when I'm talking to them.
And so even if I don't say those thoughts, if I go up and I preface it and I say, “Hey, just want you to know this isn't about you personally,” and then I go talk about the work, but I have those thoughts that I've been thinking or I'm thinking now as I start to discuss what needs to change, they know it. Okay. It's coming out. I mean, I just might as well have taken up a red flag and said, “Hey, just kidding about what I said about this. Don't take this personally. This is totally personal. You're a total idiot. I think you suck as a human being because of what you've been doing.”
That's kind of what they hear. Okay. Even though that's not what we said, that's what we hear because our thoughts are coming out.
Okay, that's the difficulty of this. But it doesn't, it's not really that. It doesn't have to be complex. It's not something that you can't overcome. Beliefs are changeable. We can believe whatever we want in this lifetime. You get to believe as an adult or as a human being whatever you choose to do so, if you know the process to change your belief.
Okay. So we spend our entire lives believing that what we do determines value, you know. If we perform well, we're valuable. If we don't, we're less valuable. If you get promoted, yeah, you're a total, that means something about who you are. Okay. Your identity. You get fired? Oh man. You are a lesser human being.
Okay. Most of us have been fired, including me. Let go, laid off early, I guess. Whatever. I'm gonna call it. I was fired then one day. By the way, like I said, I've been doing my own thing for thirty years, but I was given an early layoff when I was beginning.
So now we've been conditioned to believe that what we do equals who we are. Okay. It's our value. What we do determines our value as a human being. We don't say it out loud, but we say because you do this, then you are this. Okay. That's your identity, that's your value or your worth. Then the Worth Work principle comes along.
Where we judge the work and protect the person, you're like, “Dang, yeah, I see that. That makes total sense. That's why I'm not getting good results. And I'm just gonna separate it. Now it's gonna be a totally different deal.” But it's not always that easy because we've had the same thoughts for years and years and years. And so it's not that easy. So we have to practice it.
Okay. So the leader, a lot of times what happens is with leaders, we begin the thought process with the behavior. We start saying, okay, well, we're gonna focus on this behavior, we're gonna think about this behavior. And then all of a sudden we have these back thoughts, like something gets added to the mix, like, man, this person doesn't care. Okay. Or you're not really committed to being good here, or this person is lazy, or this person is hopeless, or you are an idiot. Okay.
And so now, as I'm thinking this, as I'm trying to talk about the work and not make it personal for the person, because of the thoughts that I'm having inside of my mind that I'm not even saying, the discussion is no longer about the behavior. It's become about the person. And then the trust just goes. Whatever trust we had just erodes. Boom, it's gone. Okay. It goes back down to nothing.
So when, you know, like I said, the whole system sounds easy until you as a leader come up with a missed deadline that you're responsible for. Somebody out there that's just a troublemaker, they're creating problems, important tasks are going down, you know, they didn't meet the expectations, and then you're just like, you're angry. I mean, it can be pretty frustrating if you don't manage your mind with what people do and don't do that you're paying to do a certain job. Okay. Because people don't do what we want them to do for a whole slew of reasons.
But you look at it, and it's very easy when things are going bad to get frustrated and to just look at and to judge the people. I mean, I have done it so much, I don't need any practice thinking about it. I am still practicing on the separation and making sure that I look at the people in the right way. Okay.
So here's the question. What evidence? This is a question for you and me. What evidence do I have that one human being is worth more than another human being? What evidence do you have that one human being is worth more than another human being?
Okay. Not that does their job better, not that's more proficient or more skilled or anything, not that performs better, not that contributes more, not that earns more. Is worth more, is what I'm saying. Okay. Because if we believe that some people are worth more than others, we'll eventually treat them that way.
So what this comes down to is an actual belief system shift. The only way to make it work is, first of all, if you desire to change your belief that behavior does not have any bearing or any effect on a human being's value. So then my question comes back: what evidence do you have that any human being is worth more than another human being?
Okay. And the answer is there is none. Okay. Unless you're gonna make behavior or what they do or don't do determine their value. Okay. If you have no evidence that any human being is worth more or less than any other human being, do they have different skills, different abilities, different talents? Is everybody different? Does everybody have the same IQ?
You know, everybody is different. They have different results. They make different choices. But do they have a different value? Are they worth more or less because of that? And the answer is, I have no evidence that because of what you do makes you worth more or less. So that makes it a choice.
And I'm suggesting that you make the choice to make every human being equal and not base their value, their worth, their identity, who they are, based on what we do. By the way, this will transform. I figured this out for my own personal life because I had destroyed my life and everybody around me based on my thinking about myself because of what I had done. Okay. So I know about this a lot. And I know it very well and very clearly.
Here's another way to quickly look at this. The example of a child. Okay. So if you have children, this will work. And if you don't, think of a child.
Okay. So if you imagine your child or a young child lies to you, steals, okay, fails at school, makes bad decisions all day long, and you're constantly trying to fix their behavior. And so you look at it and you're like, well, the behavior needs to be corrected, and there are going to be consequences for this behavior, but most of the time, particularly for our own children, we don't make what they did mean something. We don't devalue them because of what they've done, even if they make tons of bad choices.
So it's easy to look at through the lens of a parent, the way that we look at our kids, or if you don't have kids, somebody that you love the most deeply, to look at it that way. Okay. Or to just look at a young child. The child isn't the problem based on what they do. We focus on what they do and changing what they do, not who they are.
Okay. And if we can extend that same principle to adults, that is what I'm suggesting to help us understand the separation of behavior and value. When we are judging people, it leaves red and blue flashing lights.
Okay, judgment leaves clues for people who are hearing it. Okay. And the way that they see it is through us as leaders. They see our frustration, irritation, anger, contempt, impatience.
Whenever we experience any of these emotions, okay, we should stop and ask ourselves right now. Here's the key. Stop and ask yourself, what am I believing right now about this person's value? Okay. Because usually what's happening, almost all the time, what's happening when we get angry and upset and frustrated and about ready to blow up, excuse me, what we're thinking has something to do, we're making a value judgment about these people.
Okay. I can't believe they did that. What the hell's the matter? I can't count on anybody. You are not dependable. You are this, you are that, you are all these things, okay, is what is rolling through our minds.
Okay. And if you ask yourself the question, “What am I?” And then ask yourself the first question, “What am I believing about their value?” Okay. Don't ask yourself what I'm believing about your behavior. You know what the problem with the behavior is.
Because those emotions of anger, frustration, impatience, and all of that, those are the signals, the red and blue lights for people that you're going to talk to, that their behavior and their value have been fused together again by us, and we're making that mean something about what they've done. And that is really the core problem where the trust disappears and why we can't get the results.
It's like backwards. We have to love and respect people and hold them in perfect high regard and on equal value as ourselves and everyone else. And when you choose to do that, then the trust goes up. Then the results start, you start getting much better results than what you had before. Okay.
So the first step, of course, is, first of all, you have to want to do it. Okay. You have to agree, and you have to sign up for the idea that this makes sense. Okay.
Rather than sitting here and casting stones at this problem, that you've done this thing that you shouldn't have done. I don't need you to, you cannot keep doing your same behavior here in this company. Rather than lining up and picking up stones to cast, you simply, you know, we judge the work. Go your way and do no more.
We must judge the work. The work is not working. Something has to change here, but that doesn't mean it's not for us to judge. Okay. And it's for us to judge behavior, not the value of the soul.
Okay. And the more that we internalize that and believe it and hold everybody at the same level, the faster and the more that the trust goes up.
So step one is first you have to want to be able to do this. I want to have the idea. I believe it would be nice to think. I want to believe that everyone is equal and what people do and don't do doesn't affect their value.
If you can go with that, that's step one. But you must have that. You must want to desire because nothing's going to change unless you genuinely, genuinely inside of yourself, want to stop judging people based on what they do.
I highly recommend this. And you can, I like to start with yourself, you know. Start forgiving yourself for what you do and just say, yeah, sometimes, sometimes I'm a human being. Sometimes I do things I wish I wouldn't have. And then I correct them the best I can. And then I go on and whatever.
Start forgiving yourself. Start judging and hold your own value in perfect regard. Start there. Do the best you can on everything. This is a huge concept and it's a big shift.
And so if you look at yourself that way, then you're going to be able to relate to the rest of the world this way. Okay.
If you work for a company that agrees with the Worth Work system, you know, you don't want to be just doing it because HR, that's the company's new motto or all that. You have to actually desire to do it, not because it's a technique or a trick or something that's going to help you get a better result. You have to actually want to, okay.
Because people get defensive, they hide. People get defensive, they hide problems. They get defensive, they avoid accountability. Lost my train of thought a minute there, shoot me, but there's all these negative results. People stop trusting, they stop making progress, they start being less honest, they start not lining up for the team. You can feel it, okay. And the whole attitude in the group starts to go down.
Okay. As a leader, you have to really want to develop a new way of thinking for yourself that is going to be related to the people that you lead and is gonna fundamentally change. Okay. And it doesn't have to take forever to be able to do this, but it's going to fundamentally change the dynamic, the way that everybody acts and behaves is the end result inside the group. Okay.
So first of all is the desire. You have to genuinely want to be able to accept the ideas of separating and accept the idea that you want to judge the work and protect the person.
Step two is to recognize your own thinking and have the awareness. Okay. You have to recognize your thinking, and then you have to recognize the words that are gonna go behind the thinking. Okay.
So when you're upset, when you're frustrated, when you can see that you're impatient, when you're ready to, now's not the time unless you absolutely have to. And then when you do go, I'm gonna tell you a thought to put first when you do go, even if it's urgent and you can't give yourself time to rethink it.
Okay. If you catch yourself, here's the thoughts. Okay. And I've given you a whole bunch, but to recognize, recognize what you're thinking about the person that needs to change the behavior.
Okay. If you see yourself, if you hear yourself thinking, “This person is this. This person is lazy. This person is hopeless.” Or, “You are an idiot.” Or, “You will never learn. I don't know what's the matter with you. Competent people wouldn't do this. Good employees don't act this way. Responsible people don't, blah, blah, blah. If you were smart enough, smart people would understand this by now. It didn't take me an average of nine times to do these simple…”
Notice the pattern of your thinking, okay, and what you're thinking about what's happening.
Then what happens is that the pattern of the thinking is you see a problem. Okay. So let's just say, what would it be here?
The other day I got back here and our back office was left unlocked. You know, the one where the cash box is. And the light was on. And to top it off, the AC wall unit was left on. And this was like 9:30PM. And we close at six, just so you know.
So the door's unlocked, AC on, light on. So these are three things that whoever closes, you know, there's a checklist, we go through it. There've been people, whoever was closing that day is trained to do this, and those three things didn't happen. They just flat didn't do it. Got in a hurry, forgot, whatever the thing was.
So I recognize, boom, boom, boom, here's the problem. And then my next thought is, what is my next thought? “How the hell could they do this? Do I have to watch everything that happens here? If I'm not babysitting every single, you know, am I thinking? Is that my thinking?”
Because now I'm starting to attach meaning to the person about why it happened. Okay. That is usually the next step. I recognize the problem is one. Number two, I attach meaning about the person. Number two.
Okay. If you can catch yourself doing that, it makes it clearer to separate. So I see that there's a problem, and I say, rather than attaching meaning to a person about the problem, I say to myself, “I need to first of all, what am I thinking about the person? Make sure I'm clear with that.”
And when I do that, what happens is my frustration starts to go down immediately. When I look at the people that I lead the way that I want to with intention, my frustration starts to ratchet down immediately, even though there's a bunch of problems. Okay.
So I see it. If I see that I'm attaching value, I stop and I say, wait a minute, what am I thinking about this person? And what do I want to think about the person?
And then step three is I replace the thinking. Then I replace the words if I also followed it up with words.
So replace the thinking. And this is the part that people skip because we're asking people to replace decades of conditioning. Okay.
And if you intellectually understand that I want to separate behavior from value, if you understand the concept, it's not enough. You have to practice it and repeat it and repeat it. And that's how you change your belief system around it. You have to have the desire to do it and believe it's possible. That's all part of this.
In my book, The One Horse Race, which is about value creation, intentional value creation, this happens through hundreds of, if not thousands of, little teeny decisions that we're making all day. Corrections inside of our own mind. And it doesn't take very long because there's so many decisions in the course of a day, in the course of a week, that we're making on this subject, okay, about what we're making things that people do mean about people. We have tons of opportunities. It doesn't take very long. We can switch, we can change our belief.
So when you catch yourself thinking, “Man, she's an idiot. Okay, you can replace it with something like, “Okay, this is a perfectly, 100% perfectly equal human being who's currently doing a poor job. Okay. They're producing poor work.”
Every time you think, don't, you'll never learn, you know, you can replace it with something like, this is a person of perfect and equal value that I respect, who has not learned this skill yet. Okay. And then the next step can be your responsibility of what can I do to help them learn this skill.
“What is wrong with you?” Okay, can be replaced with, “Nothing's wrong with their value. Something needs to change with what they're doing, their decisions, their skills, their knowledge, their habits, their effort. Something has to change with what they're doing, not something has to change about their value.”
Okay. Again and again, if you go through the process of recognizing your thinking and replacing your thinking with new thinking, it doesn't take very long until it becomes more and more natural, more and more easier. You pick it up faster. The process is faster.
You're like, you feel yourself getting, here's what happens to me, okay. I feel myself getting frustrated, angry, and I'm like, okay, stop, what's happening here? And I see that I'm attaching meaning to that individual or individuals for what they have done. And I just go, I don't want to do that.
And so I just think, okay, they are just as equally valuable as me or any other person ever. So I'm going to separate that and put it over here, and I'm just going to look at what's happening. What do I need to do to help them solve what's happening? And then I only focus on this.
And if I go in with that attitude and I mean it, and I'm giving myself a minute to breathe and really think it through, which doesn't take all damn day, but it takes effort, takes a little bit of time, then when I go and say, “Hey, this isn't about you, I don't want to make sure you take this personally. But what you're doing needs to change. We need to focus on the behavior.” They can feel it if I believe that or not. Okay. And they know that it's not personal.
I say, “Let's talk about what's happening, let's talk about the work.” Because they hear the words, but they feel the judgment. Okay. People trust, they know what's inside of you. They trust your beliefs before they trust your words. Okay. A lot of times they're like, I don't know, but they can tell.
Okay. Psychological safety, according to me, means that people trust that they are safe from value judgment.
And when people feel safe from, when they believe that in this group, with you as the leader, you are not going to judge them for what they have done, okay, but you are gonna judge the work, okay, we still have a super high standard, but we have more cooperation in getting it done, okay, because before nobody can handle these difficult conversations. Nobody wants to have them. People avoid accountability.
What happens now is people are less defensive. They can look at it and say, “Yes, I can objectively look at the work. I can handle the difficult conversations, and I can even handle the consequences better because I can see that it's not all about me. Okay. It's just being about what I have done, okay, or not done.”
People, and that includes all of us, okay, what we have a hard time with is believing that our value is on the line. It's on trial. So we're nervous about everything that we do and how we're all gonna come out, what everybody's gonna think, and so we're just in this erratic, high-pressure, stress deal going on with not a lot of openness and not a lot of true honesty, you know, like being honest with how you're thinking and how you're feeling.
There's low honesty, low responsibility, high defensiveness. It's kind of pitted back and forth like it's the leaders against the underlings, and, you know, it's not like a cohesive, high-functioning team.
And so that's why Google, in Project Aristotle, proved that the number one factor in high performance is psychological safety. Okay.
So two leaders can stand side by side or go to the same person to talk about the same issue that that employee is having. One will create trust and the other will create fear.
So the difference is not in the words that they use to communicate the issue. The difference is what they believe in their heart and soul. Okay.
So as we move towards believing that we, to begin with ourselves, have perfect value, and all the people that we lead also have equal and perfect value, and that no matter what people do or don't do, no matter what they do, nothing changes their perfect value, then we can all, beginning with us, objectively look at the work and only judge the work and always protect the person.
We must do, hey, the work's gonna be on trial twenty-four seven because it's never gonna be good enough. We can consistently make it better, improve. You know, that's what we're here for. We're here to do the best job that we can in the time that we're here so that we're increasing the quality of our lives.
And the quality of our lives is not just in our paycheck, and that's a lot of it according to me, but it's not for sure all of it. We're spending so much time in our careers and at work that we wanna like being there. We don't want to hate being there.
It needs to be a good experience, a positive experience, a place to grow and progress and move up and participate and cooperate and collaborate with people that we all respect and that we're all moving in the same direction. That's the whole key.
Okay. None of that is gonna happen because leaders use the right words. The right words are helpful, but it's not enough.
Okay. When they sense that leader genuinely believes that their value is high no matter what they do, the trust goes up and the defensiveness goes down. Okay. Trust rises and defensiveness, I forgot what my little saying was about that.
Judge the work, protect the person is not a communication technique. Okay. It is a belief system. It is a belief system that can transform your workplace.
Well, you know what's even more important than that? Before you even get to the workplace, it can transform your life. I can assure you of that. I promise it straight up and down.
You start believing that about yourself, that no matter what you do or don't do, you're still 100% perfectly worthy. Wow. Okay, that's the transformation.
And then that becomes easier because if you believe that about yourself, people are picking up on what you're putting down because how you relate to yourself is how you relate to the world.
So I just want to say, if I didn't make this clear earlier on, this must be something that you take on, a belief that you take on and that you accept for yourself to begin with. Okay. Then recognizing it in other people becomes so much easier. And then changing the belief that you have about behavior and value becomes easier.
And this is something that I work on over time. And I think that it's not a perfect science because it's so ingrained in me and in everybody that I see that works on this, that we just get better and better at it as time goes on. And the people that we lead and our own lives, our own lives and the people that we lead, get better and better over time as we adopt this belief system and this way of seeing and thinking.
My friends, I appreciate you taking your time to be with me today.
Remember this. No matter what you do or don't do or what's been done to you, nothing can change your perfect worth. Your value is non-negotiable.
Stay with me
This episode of the How to Get Your Team to Take a Bullet for You podcast addresses one of the most common breakdowns in workplace leadership: knowing the right approach but not getting the right results. Shane Jacob explains why psychological safety fails even when leaders use the right language, and how deeply held beliefs about human worth silently undermine trust, accountability, and team performance. Built around the Worth Work System which separates personal worth from job performance this episode gives business owners, executives, and managers a practical three-step process for changing the thinking that drives the conversation. Topics include psychological safety, employee trust, leadership belief systems, accountability, and the connection between self-worth and how we lead others.
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