Stress Is Leader Poison - The Not So Hidden Secret Behind The Great Resignation

What you're about to listen to is a little bit of a special episode. We have been working on the information we have presented over the past year about stress and business and how we like to give CEOs and bosses a pass whenever they use stressful tactics to motivate workers. This is something that is industry-wide and very pernicious. And so, we have a little bit of a special presentation for you.

The great resignation is here, and it's reminded us that we don't have to identify ourselves by our jobs. Flipping burgers doesn't make you a burger flipper, working in sales doesn't brand you as a salesman, and being a CEO doesn't make you a festering tax-dodging ghoul - although Americans seem ready to treat you like one. 

….Why is that? Why, just a few years ago, were we all about entrepreneur worship, treating high-power managers like geniuses who had mastered the game. Why were we just a few years ago reading their books, drinking whatever juicy drink they drank, and following their meditation routines? What changed? What did CEOs hold over us that suddenly stopped working aside from money? And why are there so many Americans leaving top-paying positions? Take, for instance, the first-year Analysts at Goldman Sachs quitting their six-figure jobs. If you are doubled the expected salary as a first-year college grad, wouldn’t you be willing to endure anything short of torture?

I want to share a story that might illustrate the why of the great resignation, and it begins in France. A decade ago, the CEO of France Telecom, Didier Lombard, was given the task of downsizing his company. This wasn't his decision; He didn't raise his hand and say, I want to be a villain. He was just at the captain's wheel with France Telecom, a brand that suddenly became a state resource to a publicly traded company. We will skip explaining what happens to a company when it goes public. I'll just summarize by saying that if you were an employer of France Telecom, your job went from being a safe, cushy office role with perks and guarantees that would last in retirement to being in a lean, mean, globally competitive company. Specifically, a company that needed to offer more products and do it with fewer people to survive in the open market.

Overall, Didier had to fire 1/5th of the staff, a staff of 130,000 people. But there's a catch; France Telecom may have lost its state protection, but its employees didn't. In fact, every one of its 130,000 employees had a shield of invulnerability around them, and their jobs were guaranteed by the state until they quit, or the company folded. Do you see where I'm going with this? Didier needed to lose over 20,000 legally protected employees, and every one of them had to choose to walk away from their cushy job. Thus, began what French magazines dubbed management by terror. 

With his team of stress-making executives, Didier conspired to rearrange workers' duties without warning. He took away workers’ computers, assigned impossible schedules, and moved family men and women in positions hundreds of miles away from their homes and made them commute for hours. In addition, Didier took his construction workers out of the field and had them sitting in front of screens answering phones without training and sent engineers outside to do construction jobs. In short, he built his company into a process of humiliation and told his managers to outright bully people into quitting.

In the criminal trial, Didier was quoted after he gave an order to his executives in a 2007 meeting. He said they would all have to make the employees want to quit one way or the other - by the window or by the door. And it worked; employees quit - but not enough Didier. So, he turned the stress to 11, which is when the suicide started. Overall, 35 protecting employees would end their lives directly blaming France Telecom and Didier for their death. One man, 28-year-old Nicholas Grenville, hung himself with an internet cable while wearing a friend's Telecom t-shirt. Didier stayed firm until finally the law got involved. 

I know this is an extreme example of workplace pressure. A boss is using stress as a tool to get results. But I think we're waking up to the fact that it is a tool, and business leaders are reaching for it more often. High-pressure bosses create an atmosphere of stress to get the next quota met and to con you into covering an extra ship to get a little more speed out of the team, which naturally becomes a new standard work speed. But stress is such a common leadership tool, a study revealed that when people quit, uncaring bosses and overworked are the top two reasons for leaving, just behind low salary. In fact, out of all the top 15 reasons for quitting, bad management is third of everything. 

So why do we let bosses carry stress in their tool belts, especially while the world is piling stress onto us already? Climate crisis, economic inequality, medical insurance, student debt, housing inequality – you’d think the growing walkout would send a pretty clear message to management: We already have an Armageddon of anxiety that life is giving us. We don't feel like adding your deadline jitters on top of it. Who wants to fight for their lives in a very real sense, then come into work Monday to find Didier has moved your desk into a dark closet or reassigned you to answering phones or filled everyone’s inboxes with emails about overtime crunch? 

But let’s be stoics for a moment; Let's focus on what we can do. We can't solve climate change alone. We can't fix a political polarization that social media and Facebook have nudged into motion. But maybe if we work together, we can change a social norm around pressure-based management, and it starts with us inoculating ourselves against that very pressure. You know, if an airplane is going down, you need to secure the oxygen mask on yourself before helping anyone else. If you pass on the way down, you won't be much good to anyone. Well, that's first. We need an oxygen mask for work stress. But instead of silicon and rubber, we are building ours out of stoicism in strategic optimism. Now, optimism and stoicism aren't mutually exclusive. When the University of Pennsylvania teamed up with the military to find the secret of mental toughness, they discovered it was optimism. Soldiers who showed the highest degree of mental toughness viewed setbacks and stressors as temporary, isolated the issue at hand and knew it was something they could change if they worked at it. 

That's realistic, no bullshit optimism. Temporary, isolated, and changeable would be the new live laugh love for the American worker. Because when we forget that a setback is temporary, we catastrophize it, a term coined by cognitive psychologist Albert Ellis. The result is that the stress itself stands in the way of us overcoming the obstacle. When we forget that a problem at work is temporary and changeable and catastrophize it, it paralyzes us. We can't breathe with the problem in our face. It smothers us before we can pull out our defusing kit. Right now. I can hear wet clicking sounds as managers everywhere roll their eyes in unison. Anyone with experience running a business can tell you if employees slack off and get away with it, the entire workforce turns ineffectual. After all, if Brad can’t be bothered to turn in his work on time, why should we? And when the tension level of work drops to zero, takers come out from the woodwork, and givers fade back. But we're not arguing for a zero-stress policy. Misquoting Buddha, if the harp string is too tight, the string will snap; if it's too loose, it won't play. A productive work environment is great, but 5 million people didn't quit their jobs because the environment was too productive. We need to recognize as a social movement That stress as a policy is causing companies big money and cortisol, a stress that is leadership poison. 

We all know what cortisol is, right? When our body perceives a threat, it releases cortisol, making us sweaty and pumped to fight or run away. Stress is a great tool when you need to run from a bear. It’s also great for running away from jobs. This is why it's strange that bosses insist on ramping up the cortisol whenever they want to emphasize the seriousness of a deadline. If you don't think cortisol is serious business, let me put it in economic terms. Of all the National Health Care spending, stress is 8% of it. Out of all the things we pay hospitals and pharmacies to fix - heart issues, colds, cases of flu, cancers, and infections - stress is 8% of everything, mostly from work. That 8% accounts for $190 billion a year from the workplace, and one-third of Americans lay that stress directly at their bosses’ feet. 

Stress is real, it’s measurable, and it does economic harm. Most importantly, if you own a business, a high-pressure boss might be the reason you just lost your labor force and are facing shifting wages. So, here's where I'm going to suggest something controversial – something hiring managers and CEOs will hate me for. What if we start treating stress-based leadership as a final offense? What if we treated managers who keep the stress temperature in the office high to motivate workers as social paralysis? Or like Didier, someone we could take to court for losing measurable time and money. We let bosses hand out stress like it's our weekend assignment. But we don't have to; we need to be able to tell them our collective mental health isn't a flotation device for company profits and work stress isn't a seasonal chill either. Bosses treat deadline stress like it's temporary, but effective tools don't stay temporary. We'll turn down the stress in the room once our deadline is over, once we meet our monthly quota. The boiling will stop if we move just a few more units. But of course, it won't end. Stress gets results. Jeff Bezos and Amazon have turned atmospheric stress into a business model. Their whole warehouse divisions and supply chains run off stress, which is maintained by middle managers hired to pull the oxygen mask away from your face. 

Stress is a pressure in the capitalism pipes, and it works very well until it doesn’t, and everyone quits. If you're in management, you've probably heard complaints about Millennials. Amazon sells books on how to manage Millennials. We can answer that question in two sentences: Less stress. More money. It doesn't matter what techniques you adopt from these books. It doesn't matter what generation you came from or how entitled you think your workers are. You cannot stress them into working faster. Anyone working today, especially Millennials who have lived through criminal student loan practices, shady medical systems, burning social safety nets, and two major economic crises. Do you know what stress is to a Millennial? It’s air. Stress to a millennial is just another raindrop in a hurricane, and while adding their daily sense of urgency might get them delivering boxes a little faster or encourage them to finalize the report, adding stress to a Millennial’s air intake as a management style is the same as handing them a red pen to circle when they plan to quit.

This isn't going to change either. Gen-Zer’s will be even less forgiving in the workplace. According to the APA, Gen-Zer's are likelier than any other generation to speak up about mental health, stress, and unfairness. If you're a boss and you're annoyed at the 35-year-old whining about work hours, I have terrible news for you. The next generation is even less likely to roll over and accept that stress. And if you think paying more money will solve the complaints of walkouts from younger workers, think again. This year, Goldman Sachs came under fire when a petition went public published by its first year, fresh out of college analysts who are tired of work stress, work abuse, and mandatory overtime. These analysts make a hundred thousand dollars or more a year. We're finding out there's no compensation package big enough to justify drinking the boss's Kool-Aid. 

Toughness comes from optimism. A Harris Poll found that 87% of Americans aren't ashamed of mental health disorders. And believe it or not, it can get better too with treatment and a supportive work environment. If we can't get that supportive work environment, we’ll share about it online shamelessly and openly. Three things’ people love to share on social media: funny cat videos, stories from the office, and their mental health. Take away the cats, and you're left with a whole internet's worth of people who think we should treat work stress like mental health poison. The office should be treated with the same scorn as cooking fish in the lunchroom microwave. So, why do we keep excusing stress like it’s a legit management strategy?

I have a secret for you. Everyone in the office would have made more money if the sales leadership kept stress low. Do you know that low stress is a Hallmark of high performing leaders? In 2016, Harbor went looking for the link between stress and leadership. They found the leaders with high testosterone and low cortisol were the managers with the most subordinates. Low stress and high drive were the most dominating leaders they found. I want to unpack that for a moment; testosterone, which is in both men and women, is associated with risk-taking and boldness. Low stress plus boldness equals the magic leadership formula. We will call this the James Bond combo for now, the cool cucumber leader who can play life-or-death poker with a bold smile but unshakable. Would you rather work under that boss instead of the high-stress boss - the guy who talks boldly in the boardroom but turns red-faced and sweaty under pressure?

There's an infamous story about Franklin D. Roosevelt. During a secret mission in North Africa, the president's convoy accidentally launched a torpedo straight at the Destroyer FDR was sitting on. While everyone else was freaking out because they could see the torpedo bubbling towards them, FDR did something funny. He didn't ask the secret service to wheel him to safety. He was in a wheelchair, and he knew there wasn't time. Instead, he told them to move him to the railing so he could watch the torpedo approaching through the waves. That's a low cortisol leader. Did you know that Franklin D. Roosevelt also owned his own day spa and a boat, which he vacationed on after he lost the use of his legs? When he eventually died from a cerebral hemorrhage, he was at his day spa vacationing just before the Japanese officially surrendered to him. FDR's winner's circle was a day spa where he died de-stressing. It might also explain why bosses are so keen to take vacations and why workers under them demand equal vacation time. Vacations and family leaves shouldn’t be considered perks; we are the only civilized nation to treat them as such. 

The good news is there's change in the air. Do you know what the great resignation really is? It's not a revolt. It's not a disaster. It's 5 million people grabbing the oxygen masks for themselves while their boss is screaming for them to flap their arms because the plane is going down. Remember Didier from France Telecom? After establishing a policy of humiliation and high stress, he and his executives were forced to step down just after the France Telecom suicides were published by the news and his high-pressure management style was exposed to in the headlines. He and two of his executives were jailed and fined 80 thousand dollars because workers stepped up to report the awful working conditions. 

These are the types of bosses we should be saying no to, and we should be finding them. Stress is a company-wide tool. We should be treating pressure bosses like the oxygen-sucking killers. They are the stress and pressure. We need to report stressful jobs and raise awareness about it. The best option for all of us is to recognize and agree that stress causes too much time and money to allow it to continue. It isn't the norm. It isn't about leadership. Tactic stress makes future leaders hide and lay low. It robs the workplace of invaluable talent. Make it known at your job in any way you can. No amount of money justifies a high-pressure boss for his bad behavior. We do background checks before hiring CEOs to see if they broke laws or ruined their credit scores before handing them the company keys. Why aren't we doing the same background checks to see if they'll suffocate the talent around them? 

Joe: Could we talk about your weekend? Basically, you underwent what we talked about in this speech and in past episodes. When you arrived, what gave you a sense that they were trying to unveil something or motivate something with pressure?

Todd:  Well, they did some hinting and teasing that this is going to get harder during the day. They kind of set me up for it. 

Joe: Okay, and this started in a meeting room? 

Todd: It started over the phone. They set expectations about what would happen when I went on this interview. I felt like at the end, it was so they could say, "we told you so." But if they had been transparent, nobody would ever come to these interviews.

Joe: Do you remember the episode we did about Facebook's moderation groups and how they try to freak them out and stress test them before they get the job? Do you think this is something similar?

Todd: What I think it is this is people's own psychology of: if we can see people at their worst and how tough they are, then they're always going to be that tough, and I think toughness and stress relief comes in waves. 

Joe: When you arrived there, what did it look like? 

Todd: The big red flag was that I traveled thousands of miles during a pandemic and during the holiday season - that caused a lot of stress right off the bat. Travelers during the holiday season, everybody knows, are nail chewing with masks on. 

Joe: When you got there, how many people were in the room when you stepped in? What did it look like? 

Todd: It started with one and went all the way up to four. I was the only applicant, and the rest were the board I was interviewing in front of. 

Joe: Wow, so that is like CIA level grilling.

Todd: At first, they were supportive and encouraging, but then that changed to negative. They just stopped answering and not saying anything, so there was that awkward silence that salespeople are never comfortable with. It was a Regional Manager Sales position. 

Joe: How did you respond? 

Todd: I took a deep breath. I pulled myself aside and said, this is just a test. This is just an interview, and you've done lots of these. I thought I was in the right place mentally. 

Joe: Was there a point where that revealed to be untrue? Or did you feel like you had a hold of that the whole time? 

Todd: I might have underestimated it. They warned me that they were going to grill me, and I thought they were joking. But I don't know how I could prepare it any better because I didn't have anything to prepare from. They didn't say read this, and there will be a test on this. Saying you need to do a sales presentation about our company that you know nothing about it was an unrealistic expectation for an applicant. 

Joe: From what I gather, they are stress-testing you as a potential manager. Do you think they do that company-wide? Is it justified to do that to a manager? Is it fair to do that to a manager just to get them to operate better? 

Todd: I don't think it's that fair to treat anybody that way. As I've gotten promoted and gone higher up the food chain, I got treated better. But to just have it as a “you're lucky to work here,” I think of that as very 1970s 1980s. 

Joe: Ironically, this is the exact thing we've been presenting on for the past year. 

Todd: To me, it felt like I was being controlled. To do that for someone interviewing seems to say how they will treat you in your work there, which is poorly. What they are paying you is not worth what they are doing to you. There is zero accountability because 

we don't know what happened to the people that didn’t get hired.  

Joe: That is such a beautiful statement. If they were to track the folks who didn't get hired, how many people would have actually made a great fit if they were given a chance?

Todd: They could have been the best manager but caught them on a bad cortisol day, so they were dismissed on wrongful stress testers. 

Joe: I have one last question. If you were to interview and not use stress as a training tool, what would you use instead? 

Todd: I would do a lot of it, by my whole process of hiring them, such as how punctual they were, how polite they were, the references, etc. I would follow up on references and hear what those people say about them. Overall, I don’t think interviews work. I think if you could just sit down and talk to somebody for 10-20 minutes and knew what kind of worker they were, Amazon would hire you for fifty million dollars a year if you could if you're that good. 

Joe: We have done episode after episode where we have talked about these college studies that say you are in an interview, you're really testing somebody’s socio-economic scale and how well they speak - not necessarily how capable they are. We've done episodes where we talk about how your friends will know more about you than you know, so calling and checking on their references can kind of work. We've done episodes about pretty much all this stuff, and college degrees don't necessarily mean they're going to be bad or good at the industry. 

Todd: It's just intimidation until the people say something that they wanted them to say or that they're forcing them to say. It's not a skill; it's bullying. 

Joe: I really believe, like an interrogation, this is just sitting with somebody in a room until they give you the narrative that you need to hear to continue the process, whatever narrative that is - whether you want to hear them say they're great at the job or whether you want them to say I'm not going to be that good at the job.