Episode 24: Fostering an Outward Mindset feat. Mitch Warner

Emre [00:00:07] You're listening to the Team Check-In, powered by Teamflect. All right — hi, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Team Check-In. And with me today, I have a managing partner at the Arbinger Institute, Mitch Warner. But more importantly, he is a standing advocate — Mitch is the first guest to join the show not sitting down. So, Mitch, what's going

Mitch [00:00:30] on? I love it. Thanks for having me on the show. I love to stand when I'm in a conversation, because I have more energy — even when I'm talking on the phone, I stand, and I often pace, because my energy just sinks when I'm sitting in a chair. So thanks for letting me join this way.

Emre [00:00:48] Yeah, I get it. So it's not one of those, "Oh, sitting is the biggest killer in America, you should all get standing desks" kind of things?

Mitch [00:00:56] No, but I would advocate for a standing desk — I love mine, it's fantastic, just awesome. More often than not, especially since I'm working remote, I find myself pacing around the house, especially during meetings like this. So totally there with you on that.

Emre [00:01:18] For our listeners who don't know you, can you tell us a bit about yourself and the Arbinger Institute as a whole?

Mitch [00:01:27] You bet. As a managing partner at the Arbinger Institute, I get to work with an amazing group of people who are all committed to helping organizations transform their culture, specifically at the level of mindset. So many organizations try to improve behaviors, because they know better behaviors lead to better results. But our work has shown us that mindset drives every behavior — both the behaviors we engage in, and the influence of those behaviors. Specifically, a fundamental shift from what we call an inward mindset to an outward mindset is what unlocks organizational results and drives excellent cultures. So that's our work, that's what we do.

Emre [00:02:13] That's awesome. And you guys are just about to come out with a brand new edition — or has it already come out — of Leadership and Self-Deception?

Mitch [00:02:24] Yeah, the fourth edition was just released in August of 2024, but the book was first published in 2000, and it's now been through four editions. It's in over 30 languages and has sold over 3 million copies. It's one of those interesting books that sells more copies every year than it did the year before — it's just kind of taken on a life of its own.

Emre [00:02:49] Yeah, that reminds me of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens — the longer a book stays in the market, the more people just keep discovering it and picking it up. That's awesome. So can you briefly walk us through the connection between leadership and self-deception?

Mitch [00:03:08] You bet. Look — self-deception is simply the issue of lying to ourselves and believing the lie, and on its face, that seems impossible. How could I be the same person telling myself the lie and believing it at the same time, if I know it's a lie? But we see this show up everywhere. It's what undermines our relationships, and particularly our leadership effectiveness. If I'm not really tied to the truth — particularly about myself, about how I'm showing up and how others are experiencing me — there's no way I can lead. So this book is really about uncovering both how self-deception happens, how to identify it, and what to do about it — how to live more truthfully in our role as leaders, whether that's at work or at home.

Emre [00:03:59] So what are these lies that leaders are telling themselves? What are some examples?

Mitch [00:04:06] It's the same lies anyone tells themselves, and they're usually lies that get in the way of our relationships with others — either that I'm better than you, or that I'm worse than you. How does that come about? Through a phenomenon we call "self-betrayal," which is simply going against my own sense of what other people — as people who matter the way I matter — deserve from me. Let's say you and I work together, and I come across a piece of information one day, something simple. If I'm seeing you as a person who matters the way I matter, living in that reality, I just have a sense: oh, go share the information. And if I do that, great. But let's say I don't — let's say I betray my own sense of what you deserve from me as a person who matters just as much as I do. How might I then begin to see you in a way that's not truthful? What lies might I tell myself about you? "Well, you're a threat, because there's that promotion coming and only one of us can get it. And you're clearly not that hard-working, because I wasn't doing anything special to find this information, I was just doing my job — so if I found it and you didn't, clearly you're not doing yours, and you're probably incompetent. Maybe you even think people should just feed you information." None of that is true about you, but I believe it. And, of course, I tell the opposite lies about myself: "I'm really smart, I'm hard-working, clearly, because I found this information." It might even become, "In deciding not to share this information, I'm actually being kind, because I want you to develop as a person — I'm not going to just spoon-feed you." Look how wise and noble and incredible —

Emre [00:05:57] and modest. I'm incredible. So, look —

Mitch [00:06:00] at this — I've created this lie. I'm incredible, you're not. None of it is true. And it happened right there, in the moment of self-betrayal. Why? Because I now had this new need arise in my life: to be justified. How do I get justification? I believe a lie, and now everything in my life at that point — all of these emotions, I'm feeling bugged and frustrated, "I have to work with people like you" — all of that tells me this is true. They're not true emotions in the sense that they point me toward the truth, even though I authentically feel them. And I'll start looking for all the evidence that this false view of myself and others is true. Just think about that in terms of leadership — if I'm going around in my life believing those lies, how can I possibly lead others? I just can't.

Emre [00:06:47] And if you go looking for evidence for those lies, you'll probably find it — easily. You might misinterpret everything you see: "Yep, okay, there's the evidence he's lazy. There's the evidence I'm amazing at this." And I think one thing a lot of us do — and I'm understanding that what you're describing isn't coming from a place of bad faith or bad intentions — is that this is something we can all do completely unintentionally, right?

Mitch [00:07:22] Absolutely. Look, the last thing I will ever admit to myself is that I'm creating this narrative, because that would dispel the lie. The lie has to be believable — so, no, "this is just reality, you're just this way, I'm just this way, I didn't construct this narrative." And it's even worse than just looking for evidence: I'll actually provoke you into becoming the problem I've claimed you are. I'll go about my work in a way that doesn't just look for ways you might be lazy or incompetent — I'll actively try to create the conditions that make you that way. So it's not just confirmation bias. I'll actively undermine my own success and yours, because if I can do that, I have even more justification for seeing you that way in the first place.

Emre [00:08:19] I have to say, the more you talk, the more I'm having black-and-white Vietnam-war flashbacks — I swear, I'm hearing "Fortunate Son" playing in the background, choppers going overhead. All of this is so very true.

Mitch [00:08:44] Absolutely.

Emre [00:08:46] Another aspect of what you're describing — I see this a lot at work, where when we look at our own responsibilities, we think, "Look at everything I'm getting done, look at all my accomplishments, good for me." But when we look at other people's work, it's, "This probably took him fifteen minutes. She did that in thirty minutes, an hour tops — so where did the rest of the workday go? Unbelievable."

Mitch [00:09:24] Absolutely, of course. I give myself all sorts of grace and credit, because I know my own life — I'm intimately acquainted with my own reality. But I just make assumptions about others. And once I've made that assumption, I have to feel justified, because at my core — and this is important — I'm not okay with seeing other people as anything less than people. Everyone is a person, right? I know that fundamentally, that's the core truth: we're all people, you're as real as I am. But if I've chosen not to see you that way, for any reason, particularly a self-serving one, then I'm not okay with that either. So of course I have to build a world where that's not just okay — it's the only reasonable way to act in the situation. What I did wasn't just excusable, it was the only rational approach.

Emre [00:10:28] So you're describing these narratives we build, these realities we construct around ourselves — but where does it end? How does someone, quote-unquote, snap out of it?

Mitch [00:10:42] It's interesting — our experience is that diagnosing the lie is the way out. Once I see a lie as a lie, I can no longer believe it. So how do I begin to see that the things I've told myself, the things I'm invested in, the things I'm actually provoking, aren't true? I have to become alive again to the people I'm telling myself lies about. There's a sense I get when I'm betraying myself — I'll speak from my own experience, because I've told myself these lies, and I know it at a deep level once it's a lie. I actually don't want to spend much time learning about the reality of another person. You gave that hypothetical — "well, that couldn't have taken more than an hour, so what was that person doing for the rest of their eight-hour day?" I don't want to find out, right, because then the assumptions go away. So what's the antidote to self-deception? Becoming really, really curious. It starts with, "You know what, maybe this isn't true, maybe this is motivated." For me, I have to find the red flags that alert me to the fact that it might not be true — blame, resistance, sometimes avoidance, sometimes I'll exaggerate a value: "What's important around here is fairness" — even though I wasn't thinking about fairness when I showed up today, I was thinking about getting the work done, and now fairness becomes all-important. I'll caricature the other person in my head. And another red flag, for me, is just the feeling of being justified — if I feel justified, I know there's something I'm trying to justify, which tells me I already suspected it wasn't straightforward. All of those are red flags that say, wait a minute, this might not be the whole truth — and if it's not, what am I unwilling to see that, if I did see it, might adjust my perception? And then I go, okay, I've got to go get curious. So first it's uncovering that this might not be true, being willing to confront that, and then asking, what don't I know that I need to know?

Emre [00:13:54] Exactly. Curiosity is one of the most important values, and it's such an unsung hero of workplace concepts — we always talk about being lifelong learners, this, that — but curiosity doesn't come up nearly as often, even though it's more often than not the solution to most of the conflicts people have in the workplace, all these interpersonal relationships. It's like that scene from Ted Lasso, quoting Walt Whitman — "be curious, not judgmental." That's

Mitch [00:14:02] essentially what it all boils down to.

Emre [00:14:02] Now, all of these concepts you've talked about — these awakening moments, the end of these misconceptions — they usually come up around performance reviews, which are often treated as these checkpoints where —

Mitch [00:14:20] we can undo these mistakes and see everything for what it is. We say, okay, let's look at the past review period in retrospect and see — sometimes these can be opportunities where we discover the lies we've been telling ourselves.

Emre [00:14:39] But I've heard you have some strong opinions on performance reviews, and how we conduct them traditionally.

Mitch [00:14:49] Yeah, I do. There's no question that performance reviews, as you said, are this remarkable opportunity to adjust our perception of reality — and so often they're not, because we're not measuring the right things. If we take a step back, before even thinking about a performance review — there are two ways to go about your job: with an inward mindset, or with an outward mindset. With an inward mindset, as you've already suggested, it's not that I'm malicious, it's not that I wake up thinking about how to make everyone's job harder. It's that I don't see that everything I do — every task on the job description, every objective tied to those tasks — is in service of helping another human being, whether that's my external or internal customers, the people who report to me, my coworkers, or my manager. If you think about it, there isn't a single objective on anyone's job description that isn't, at bottom, designed to help another human being succeed. So if I'm inward, I'm just thinking, "I've got to get my tasks and objectives done" — I'm not malicious, but I'm not recognizing that everything I'm doing impacts other people. When I'm outward, it's exactly the opposite: I recognize that everything I'm doing on the job impacts human beings, and they matter the way I matter. That's where it all comes back to — they count the way I count, their objectives matter as much as mine do. So if I'm going to do my job effectively inside an organization, I can't start with my tasks and objectives — I have to start with, well, who am I doing any of this for? What are they trying to achieve, why are they depending on me? As I get curious about their needs, hopes, challenges, and objectives, I start to see there are things I could do — no one has to prescribe them for me — that would help them accomplish their objectives, inside of my own tasks. And, by the way — that's not how most people show up at work. The inward way is the default.

Emre [00:17:26] And, playing devil's advocate here — the outlook you're describing is the ideal way to go about things, and not just at work, it's the ideal way to approach friendships, family, everything. But there's a reason the inward way is more common, more predominant — it's the default, because more often than not, when you look at the state of work right now and everything people are going through, people are in survival mode,

Mitch [00:18:03] and

Emre [00:18:04] everyone's just trying to keep their heads above water. The outward

Mitch [00:18:11] look —

Emre [00:18:11] is perfect, but if you're drowning in tasks, if you're unsure about tomorrow, if you're thinking, "Okay, now AI is coming for my job, what do I even decide now?" — when you're in that much confusion, neck-deep in tasks, I think it's only natural to take the inward approach, to say, "These are the things I need to worry about to move my career forward. Sorry, I'm going to shoot you in the leg so the zombies eat you and I get to move on." There's no question it feels like survival mode. But let's — I promise we'll get to the performance management piece, because it's critically important — but go back with me to that hypothetical of not sharing the information.

Mitch [00:18:59] When did it feel more like survival — after I betrayed my own sense not to share the information, or before? After. Because now, "I have to work with people like you, who are gunning for my job, who can't pull their own weight" — now it feels like survival. Multiply that by everyone I work with, and it really feels like survival. Before, when I just had the sense to share the information, it was, "That takes two seconds, go share it, we move on, we get better results." And your experience of me, as someone genuinely helpful, actually improves my own ability to progress and grow in this role, in this career, in this company — not living in a self-deceived way improves things. But once I've betrayed myself, once I'm living in self-deception, it feels like survival, like I can barely keep up. And the more it feels like survival, the more justified I am in not sharing information, or not doing what I sense I should do. That's the first piece. The second piece is that, in a workplace setting, we're actually battling a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to have a job in the first place. It feels natural in friendships, or partnerships at home, or with children, to think, "Well, of course my actions affect them." But at work, I hear a version of this statement in every client organization I've ever worked with: "So-and-so is really good at their job, but they make it really hard for other people around here." And you go, wait a minute — we've fundamentally misunderstood what it means to have a job. You could do your work, accomplish your tasks, achieve your objectives, in a way that makes it harder for other people to achieve theirs — and still be considered to be doing a good job. We've boiled the definition of "a job" down to tasks and objectives, and in doing so, we've helped people fundamentally misunderstand that working in an organization means precisely that you're not just getting your stuff done — you're doing it in a way that's helpful to others. When people understand their work that way, which is a fundamental shift that changes your culture, they suddenly go, "Oh, why am I doing that? Maybe that's not so helpful, I should do this instead." I'll make this real — we went through this with a sales team at our own organization, the team that works with clients to architect their solutions. They came to believe their job was to have a green dashboard on all the things we'd told them they should do to help a client succeed. So they built this idea in their heads that either I can be green on my dashboard, or I can help my client succeed — and that became the justification for doing the things on the dashboard, even when they couldn't do that and help the client succeed at the same time. Do you see the issue? I can become maliciously compliant without even feeling that way — I'll just feel like it's incredibly hard to get done what I'm trying to get done. But if I'm fully outward, I go, "Wait, why am I doing that? I could do this differently." If I'm learning about this client and what they actually need, I might realize what's on my task list, my responsibilities, even my objectives, might not be exactly what's needed to help our clients, my customers, or my coworkers. So, coming all the way back to performance management — what does all this mean? It means we're measuring the wrong things. What gets measured gets done. If all we're measuring is tasks and objectives, I can complete all of those in an inward way — in a way that keeps me blind to, and even incentivized against seeing, the people I'm doing any of it for. So when we think about performance management, we have to revolutionize it, if we're going to help people, in the very way we measure how they do their job, stay turned outward. Does that make sense?

Emre [00:23:20] Yes. And I think I was just about to ask — where does management come in? Where does leadership come in? And I think that's exactly where leadership and executives come in, because, like the example you gave with the sales team — it feels so natural, especially in a stressful environment like sales, to think, "Let me just get through the week and have those green checks." And that's the inward way of thinking. So then the question becomes: is it the fault of my sales team, because they're all such selfish people? No — it's my fault. So how did it come to this? When did my people start... why is my workplace fostering this inward thinking instead of facilitating that outward look? I think changing the criteria for performance reviews and performance management is one of the essential pieces of that puzzle.

Mitch [00:24:40] It's absolutely critical. As a leader, you have enormous power to transform an organization's culture, but you have to look at what you're measuring, what you're incentivizing, what you've told people their job is. If their job is just the checklist — getting their tasks done, their objectives achieved — without understanding the impact of that, then I will fail as a leader. So, whose fault was it that my sales team was operating under that assumption? It was mine. I had set up the way we were managing performance, instead of saying, "Here's your primary responsibility: help our clients succeed. And if anything gets in the way of that, let's talk now." They won't come to you with that, as a leader, on their own — because nobody believes that's actually what matters. Nobody thinks, "That's great, that's what Mitch says, or what our leader says, in their big speech." Ultimately, in their mind, their job depends on whether all those checkmarks are green — whether all their task activities are done, not whether the client actually succeeds. So it takes real work, and I failed here as a leader, to get genuinely curious and say, "Tell me about your job." I used to work as a nursing home administrator, and in that role I had people throughout the facility doing all kinds of jobs I wasn't actually qualified or certified to do myself, but I was in charge of the whole thing. My mentor told me once: "Mitch, it doesn't matter how many hours you spend in that facility, in your office — you won't know what it's like to be a patient, or an employee, until you put on a hospital gown like your patients and sleep in one of those beds, literally overnight, and experience what it's like to be a patient in your own facility. You'll get insight there you can't get any other way. There are things you're not certified to do — but I promise you, you can go clean those toilets. And if you do that next to the people you're leading, you'll start to see things." We hadn't done that with our sales team — we hadn't spent a night in the bed, hadn't sat next to people and asked, "What are we asking you to do that's actually getting in your way?" And this reinforces the idea: when you think about performance management, most of it is structured to measure effort and capability relative to whether we're hitting our objectives. What are we doing to measure our impact? To ask, "What's the patient's experience like in this healthcare facility? What's the client's experience like when a sales team architects a solution for them?" That's the missing piece. When you think about going from an inward organization to an outward one, the fundamental difference is: when we're outward, we're focused on our impact. When I'm inward, I'm focused on other people's impact on me. When I'm outward, it's all about my impact on others — and our performance management should be reinforcing that as the fundamental measure of a job. My impact.

Emre [00:28:15] Yeah, and as you were talking, I think if this were a live episode, people would be thinking, "That's cool, I'd love to, but how do I turn that into KPIs?"

Mitch [00:28:28] So —

Emre [00:28:31] and I know that sounds a little silly, but how do we take the existing performance criteria we have — which, like you said, is more about output and getting things done — and turn that into criteria that fits an outward organization?

Mitch [00:28:52] The KPIs are actually really easy — because, yes, I have my objectives, I need to deliver X to you on a particular cadence, or at a particular percentage of completion, whatever the case is. But what about your KPI, as the person receiving my work, the person who depends on that work to succeed? Now, what I can't do is say someone else's performance dictates your performance — that wouldn't be fair. But when the people who report to me come to me — I had one just yesterday morning — that person felt responsible for holding the performance review, not me, because he's the employee, and he knew his responsibility was to do his work, achieve his objectives, in a way that enabled others to achieve theirs. So when we sat down, he simply gave me his performance review. He'd done all the work: "Here are my objectives, here's whether they're on or off target, and if they're off target, here's how much, and here's my plan to fix it." And all of that framed in terms of the people he impacts through his work — yes, I'm his manager, but he's also got customers, coworkers, direct reports, and in advance of meeting with me, he'd already met with those people, and here's what they were saying. He'd done the check-ins himself, with everyone on his "job map" — the people he impacts through the way he does his work — and here's what they told him. And then it's on me to say, "You know, I'm seeing the same thing," or, "Actually, I've had a conversation with so-and-so, and it feels like there might be a disconnect — maybe they're not comfortable telling you directly, but what I've heard is that the way you're doing your job here is making it difficult for them. Would you go have another conversation?" Or sometimes it's, "Could you have a conversation with this person, because it's clear you haven't connected with them, and they've got some feedback for you." Notice what's happening here: first, as the manager, it's not my job to hold people accountable for their impact or performance — it's theirs. Second, when I'm doing this right, they understand their impact is their performance — they're not two separate things. So I can't be performing well in my role, in the way the organization needs, if I don't know what my impact actually is, or if that impact is deficient in some way. It's on me to figure that out. It changes your job as a manager — it puts the responsibility, and the opportunity to grow, into the hands of the people doing the actual work.

Emre [00:31:59] And so much of that depends on having enough of a trust relationship to give feedback openly — not just feedback coming top-down, but also bottom-up. One of the things you mentioned earlier, with the nursing home story, was about helping the customer, being genuinely helpful to them, versus getting all your tasks done — and sometimes those tasks getting in the way of helping the customer. Now, if you look at an employee choosing tasks over being helpful, you can see the logic: "Okay, the boss is saying this, but I have to get these done, because if I don't, I'll get chewed out for it." And that's a real disconnect between those two outlooks — there's a legitimate criticism to be made there. In an ideal world, an employee should be able to say, "Hey Mitch, you're telling me to focus on this, but you're also chewing me out about these tasks — we need to make a decision, because what you're asking is contradictory." But without that positive relationship of trust between manager and employee, the employee is more often than not going to feel intimidated into saying, "No, I'll find a way, I'll get them done, I'll figure something out," instead. So I think so much of what you're describing depends heavily on building that trust between managers and employees, so employees feel comfortable saying no, and giving feedback openly. So how do we actually build that relationship?

Mitch [00:33:56] This is exactly why we spend so much time on self-deception as a leader. If I'm not seeing the truth, or willing to see it — even if I'm blind to it today — then there's nothing I can actually do; anything I try will just be a behavior, and behaviors don't work if the mindset underneath them is wrong. So first, I have to be open to it. And then I've got to model whatever level of accountability I want to see in my team members around their impact, whatever curiosity I want them to have about how they're impacting others — I have to model that, not just at a behavioral level, but at a mindset level. I have to go to those same employees and say, "I'd like to meet with you, because I don't think I'm having the best impact on you, and I want to take full accountability for that. I think my impact has been X, Y, and Z, because it seems like what you're trying to do is accomplish this — is that true?" And they'll say, "Actually, yeah, that is true," or, "No, it's a little different." "Well, it seems like the ways I've been making things harder for you are this, and this, and this — and I need to own that, I'm sorry, but I'm seeing it now. Is that accurate? Are there more ways I'm making it harder? Tell me more." And then, given all that: "Here's something I feel I could do, changes I could make." As your leader, I'm reporting — if you think of an org chart, if managers aren't reporting down in a genuinely accountable way, curious about their own impact and taking responsibility for it, why would they ever expect an employee to report up in the same way? I have to model that first. We call this "meet to give." When I see my own impact, I have to do the thinking in advance: what are their needs, their challenges, their objectives as a person? What's life like for them, especially having to live and work with me? Then I take ownership of that, and come with ways I could make things better. If I just meet with the people I lead and say, "Tell me, as your leader, what could I do differently, to be more helpful?" — without doing that groundwork first, don't expect anything, it'll be crickets, because no one feels safe to share. But when you've already done the work — "I've been thinking about you, I think this is what you're trying to achieve, tell me more, here's how I've been getting in your way, tell me more, here's what I think I could do better for you, tell me more" — now the floodgates open, because you've demonstrated you've actually been thinking about them, that you care, that you're willing to take responsibility. It's not just about being curious — it's about modeling the accountability that then lets other people share with you what you, as a leader, need to know.

Emre [00:36:33] I love that term, "reporting down" — even though the whole idea of "up" and "down" is a little hierarchical, there's something beautiful about the concept of managers reporting down. And, applied correctly, like you said, it builds that trust — and it benefits everyone involved, one hundred percent. But

Emre [00:37:17] again, it all comes down to — and the more we talk, the more I'm loving this whole self-deception narrative, honestly — but it comes down to what you described before: in order for a leader to initiate that kind of dialogue, to say, "I'm not seeing this, here's the impact I think I'm having," the leader first has to diagnose their own self-deception. And until that happens, that dialogue doesn't happen. And that diagnosis is definitely not going to come from someone reporting to that leader — that's far too intimidating a prospect for most people. So what are some early warning signs leaders can look for, to recognize, "Okay, there's a disconnect between me and my employees," or between certain managers and their teams?

Mitch Great question. Look — the performance of my team is an indicator. Are people actually performing at their best? If not, why not? Because I know people love to perform more than they love not performing. So why aren't they? That's an indicator. Is the work fun? It should be — actually achieving cool results together should be fun, no matter what the work is, doing things together you couldn't do separately. And if people aren't telling you things, if people aren't giving you feedback, I promise you it's not because you're perfect — it's because people don't feel safe. So how do you create that safety? Sometimes it's as simple as, "I need to take accountability, and I really want to know what I'm not seeing." Going back to what you said before — if at the behavioral level I'm chewing people out, of course no one's going to tell me the truth. So, yes, there are behaviors that are more or less helpful. But the truth is, even if I stop doing that — even if someone listening right now says, "That's my problem, I chew people out, I'm going to stop" — it won't make much difference on its own, because what people are actually responding to isn't just a change in behavior, it's how you see them, and you can't hide that. That's the hardest part of leadership — I can't hide how I see people, it comes through in everything I do. If I'm blaming my team, thinking they're the reason we're not succeeding, these idiots I should probably replace — it doesn't matter how I behave or what I say, that blame will come through. So I have to watch for those red flags we've talked about — where am I actually feeling blame, feeling justified, feeling resistant? Are there people on my team I avoid? Are there people I know a lot more about, as a person — their challenges, their home life, their goals and aspirations outside of work — than others? What might that tell me?

Mitch [00:40:49] Just asking myself those questions. But I'd say, if you find yourself in a place where you realize, "I've resisted that person, I'm avoiding them, I'm bugged by them" — spending time preparing to "meet to give," and then having the courage to actually do it, can transform that relationship. At least it can.

Emre [00:41:12] Yeah, Mitch, I'm sorry to tell you, but no one, in the entire history of work, has ever been bothered by or avoided anyone. It's funny, because we talk about performance and market conditions and strategy — "we need a better strategy" — and the reality is, if you get this piece right, the rest —

Mitch [00:41:34] will follow. The rest follows. The rest follows.

Emre [00:41:38] I get it. And it's all about asking the right questions, at the end of the day — it's lovely how everything comes back to curiosity. Because when you talked about warning signs, "performance" was such an easy first answer, right, it just rolls off the tongue — performance is the early warning sign. But when most managers or leaders actually see low performance, they don't immediately think, "Oh, there's a disconnect here, a self-deception issue, a relationship problem in this workplace." It immediately goes to, "It's probably these tasks not getting done," or "it's probably this person's attitude" — instead of looking at the disconnect between managers and employees. So even though performance is technically the clearest warning sign, it's not what most of us actually think of, when we see low performance.

Mitch [00:42:50] No. And the reality is, if I don't understand that performance is performance with impact — not just completing my tasks and responsibilities, but having the right impact on others — then I might say, "Performance is great," and yet something still feels off. One of the people I admire most — I'll tell his story, his name's Warren, he worked at one of our client organizations — was nearing the end of his career, and had been one of the top performers at a multi-billion-dollar organization for years. At the end of his career, he was considered one of the best. The problem was, everyone in the organization knew it was terrible to actually work with Warren. They hadn't yet made this shift in how they defined "a job," and this person had lived his entire career as a high performer, and yet was so difficult in the workplace you'd call him toxic. Finally, the CEO had the courage — and the perspective — to sit down with him and say, "Warren, you're operating at 72%." Warren said, "What are you talking about?" The CEO said, "Because you're achieving your objectives probably better than anyone else in the company — but at a massive cost. So massive, I'm not sure we can keep you." It was such a revelation to Warren, to realize: "Oh, my word — you're saying my job is to accomplish my objectives in a way that makes it easier for others to accomplish theirs. That's what you mean by performance." He'd never been shown that before, and it fundamentally changed him — and when I say "him," I don't just mean him at work, I mean his whole life, because we're one person, we're not a different person at home versus at work. We're either outward or we're inward, either focused on our impact or we're not. So when I say "performance is suffering," what we're really saying is "culture is suffering" — not just that we're achieving results on paper, but achieving those results in a way that's easy for everybody else, that has this tide effect where everyone's improving, where it's fun, where we're finding innovative ways to adjust what we're doing because we're all focused on impact. That's what I mean by performance.

Emre [00:45:25] I love that — this is also known as the Dwight Schrute paradox, you know.

Mitch [00:45:36] I love it. I couldn't have said it better. And I loved how you touched on this not just being about work life — because I genuinely dislike the term "work-life balance." Some people take that idea and run with it in a strange direction — but we don't have a "work life" and a separate "life," we have one life, and we choose to devote some of it to work and some of it to other things. Sure, some people twist that into "work should be your whole life," and that's not what I mean. But how we show up at work reflects, more often than not, how we show up outside of work too — am I just focused on the things I need to do, or on the impact I'm having on other people? And the example you gave with Warren

Emre [00:46:36] just made me think — that must be an incredibly tough conversation for a manager to have with such a high-performing employee,

Mitch [00:46:44] because —

Emre [00:46:45] I'd imagine you still don't want to lose that employee, and you don't want them to

Mitch [00:46:58] — you know,

Emre [00:46:59] feel offended or burnt out, thinking, "I'm working hard, and now my boss is hitting me with this '70%' thing." It can backfire badly. So you want to have that conversation without actually losing the effectiveness of that employee — God, that was the worst segue I've ever done, it took me forever to get there. What you're saying is

Mitch [00:47:25] so important. That's exactly why managers avoid this conversation — because they think of it as, "well, this person is, quote-unquote, performing." And honestly, even framing the problem that way is the problem. This person is delivering on objectives, completing all their tasks — but the wake of problems they leave behind, the sheer difficulty of working with this person — I've seen this conversation happen many times in our client organizations, where someone finally realizes, "Wait — as a manager, I've been failing, because I let my Warrens, my quote-unquote high performers, think they were high performers, and I incentivized them to keep performing in a way that ignored their impact. What a disservice to that person." So I sit down and say, "What you're delivering in your role is remarkable — thank you, we couldn't succeed without what you're achieving. But what you're achieving is coming at too high a cost for the organization, because you're not seeing that the people you're doing all of this for are people — and by the way, they don't feel seen." Now, if I go into that conversation with Warren feeling bugged and frustrated, he'll respond to that, not to what I'm actually saying. So I have to see him, and recognize that I created this — I let him perform, quote-unquote, without ever helping him understand that his role is to do that in a way that has the best impact on everyone around him. That's on me. So I go in, and I take ownership: "In the way we've talked about your performance in the past, the way I've incentivized you, the way we've held performance conversations, I haven't helped you see that your impact on others is just as important as your output. It's impact and output. And in order for you to keep working here, we have to change that — I need you to fundamentally shift the way you're thinking." And, look — if I'm not prepared for the possibility of Warren no longer working here, then I probably can't have that conversation, and I have to recognize that. Culture eats strategy for breakfast — if I'm not willing to actually build the right culture, I probably can't have that conversation, and I'll end up indulging the Warrens on my team — the quote-unquote high performers who make it harder for everyone else to work there. But if I actually want to lead people, I have to help them fundamentally reconceive what it means to have a job in this organization. To be outward means you're going to accomplish your objectives in a way that makes it easier for others — and you're going to hold yourself accountable for that, not me holding you accountable. This transformation, this fundamental re-conceiving of what it means to have a job and how we work together — that's what we do, and we see it work all the time. You can radically transform an organization if you help people fundamentally rethink what it means to have a job. And in everything you do — the performance conversations, the sidebar conversations — if you're focused on this, you're leading. You're actually, finally, leading.

Emre [00:51:15] Mitch, I can't think of a stronger or better note to wrap this up on. We're fast approaching an hour, and honestly, it flew by from my end. You're an absolute force of nature. And if there's one thing I've learned from this episode, it's that I'm never sitting again.

Mitch [00:51:40] I love it. Well, it's been fun to talk about, because it has real meaning. As you said — this idea of work-life balance — I think about my own life, the amount of hours I spend at work. This is a critical part of my life, and we should get this part right, from a human perspective.

Emre [00:52:02] Exactly that — exactly. That was the point I was trying to ramp up to before I rambled off into the distance. Work and life aren't separate — work is a key, critical part of our life. And some leaders use that as an excuse to overwork people badly, saying, "Well, it's a huge part of your life, so why not devote yourself fully to it?" No — I think that outlook should be used to enhance the employee experience instead, recognizing that this is a critical part of people's lives, and it should be as positive and impactful as possible. So, Mitch, before we wrap up — how can our listeners reach you, and is there anything new they should know about?

Mitch [00:52:54] We'd love to have you come to the website, explore what we do, and there's an opportunity there to start a conversation — just reach out, and we'll get back to you and find out what's going on, what you want to solve, what you're trying to tackle inside your organization. If you want to explore these ideas more deeply, go to Amazon, or wherever you buy books — Leadership and Self-Deception or The Outward Mindset, both bestsellers we have out in the market, are a great place to start exploring what this could look like for you, what it could transform in your organization, and your ability to get results.

Emre [00:53:30] Perfect. And if you're listening to us on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you find podcasts, leave us a like, subscribe, it really helps the show out. And if you're looking for a performance management or performance review solution that integrates fully into Microsoft Teams and Outlook, you can always check out Teamflect — the link is in the description. This has been the Team Check-In. Mitch, thanks so much for coming on the show, have a good day.

Mitch [00:53:57] Great to be here. Thanks. All right.

‍