Do the Right Thing—Even When It’s Hard: The Leadership Playbook | Tara Landes | Episode 353

Scott McCarthy [00:04:19]:
Tara Map, welcome to the show. So good to have you here today.

Tara Landes [00:04:23]:
Thank you for having me, Scott. I appreciate it.

Scott McCarthy [00:04:26]:
So why don’t we just start off with a quick little bit about you, your background and how you got into this space in the first place to help the audience know who Tara is and what makes her tick and so on. How would we start there?

Tara Landes [00:04:41]:
Absolutely. Well, I’m a management consultant. I have a company based out of Vancouver, Canada called bellrock. And we do management training and strategic planning and we do foundational system implementation. So that’s things like job descriptions and dashboards and KPIs and sales process, things of that nature. We help organizations with that as well as strategic planning. And I got into it because basically I’m lazy and I was hiding out from the real world in business school. But eventually the real word came knocking and I had to get a job.

Tara Landes [00:05:22]:
And this seemed like a really great job to do small business consulting. I thought maybe I could treat it like a paid internship and go, you know, see what other jobs are out there. But I actually really loved doing the consulting work itself. And so here we are 25 years later.

Scott McCarthy [00:05:36]:
That’s awesome. Now, you know, I find things are changing at super rapid pace. So I’m interested to know some of the latest and greatest things that you’re experiencing seeing out there within this space that are affecting business owners, small business owners, companies and so on that leaders may not be aware, but they should be aware of right now.

Tara Landes [00:05:58]:
Yeah, well, I mean, I think it’s hard to hide from, but AI is already making huge, huge changes to my industry anyway. And one of the things that I’m really interested in is how we’re going to train the new, the up and comers. So when I first came into this industry, the way I got trained is I was put on billable projects at a lower rate. But I did things to gain experience that AI now does for free. So that job that I had 25 years ago is long gone. And it will be interesting, I guess, to watch in the future how junior people in professional services get trained because there’s no junior work to do anymore.

Scott McCarthy [00:06:44]:
Yeah, AI is definitely a game changer. You know, myself, I use multiple AI tools just to even produce this podcast. And the ability that it’s enabled me, like how much faster I’m able to produce the show in the show notes and everything related to the show, to how I can produce more stuff because it does it so much faster than what I could ever do it in. It blows my mind still on a daily basis. So I can only imagine the impact it’s having on business out there. Now, you mentioned something interesting, and that is how we developed junior members. How are we going to develop them? How are we going to train them and bring them up through. So is this something that’s being looked at right now that you know of?

Tara Landes [00:07:34]:
Well, I think I would hope it is. I, I haven’t figured it out yet myself. I think it’s possible that in the future people will go to university, but then they will also even pay to be employed at first to get the training. I don’t know, but it’s hard to pay people to teach them full time. But we’ll, I guess we’ll see. I mean, time will tell. I’m not, I’m certainly not an expert on AI, but I will say that it’s, it’s become a real issue in our business. And I think those companies that aren’t figuring this out.

Tara Landes [00:08:11]:
Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see what goes on. Even things like business coaching. AI is a really great thought partner. And so when we’re doing strategic planning, for example, even our own internal strategic planning, when there are questions that clients have, what should we do about X? What should we do about Y? I mean, the first step is to ask AI what it thinks. It’s not always right and it hallucinates and all the other things. We don’t take it at face value, but, but there are some interesting ideas that come out that maybe a human wouldn’t have or if you’re asking it, even really basic things, you know, what does a project manager do for a living? I could probably off my head, rattle off 10 things, but it’ll tell you the 12. The full 12. So there’s just a lot of places where we’re going to be seeing a lot of changes, I think.

Scott McCarthy [00:09:05]:
Yeah, that’s definitely one thing I noticed too. Like, I even have my own for my clientele, my own AI chatbot that they can access when, when we don’t have a call, when we don’t have a session. Like, it’s there all the time. Like, hey, what do you think about this? And sometimes, like, am I like actively replacing myself here? Right, but you’re also, you’re also. You hit the nail on the head in that, you know, sometimes it hallucinates, sometimes it’s not right. Sometimes it actually forgets stuff.

Tara Landes [00:09:40]:
It’s sort of like working with a really, really well educated, like PhD intern that’s never been in the workforce.

Scott McCarthy [00:09:48]:
That’s Pretty close to what someone else has said to me about how you need to treat it. Yeah, that’s just a little bit of a extension of the previous definition or previous way to look at AI and stuff like this. No, definitely, yeah, we’re talking about AI here. Is there any other big things that you’re seeing right now in the workplace that are affecting leaders and small businesses?

Tara Landes [00:10:14]:
Well, the other major thing right now are the incredible political and economic uncertainty that’s hitting North America because that’s where we operate. And I’ve got clients that are absolutely scrambling with the tariffs and not knowing what’s happening one way or the other with those. Again, I don’t think that that’s any new in the sense that we always have to deal with uncertainty. We always have to deal with the. You never know what’s coming next. But it’s just hit after hit after hit so quickly. And so again, I think people are struggling with the volume of change and trying to keep up with that volume of change. But on the positive side, because those are negative things, I’ll say one thing, and this is more in the last five years, but, you know, I used to spend three or four hours in my car every single day, not trying to get to work, but commuting from client to client.

Tara Landes [00:11:11]:
And when Covid hit, that disappeared. And it’s not that I don’t go see people in person anymore, of course I do, but I do it a lot less frequently. And the impact hasn’t been that significant on the business from a not being face to face in person perspective. It’s also really broadened our ability to work with people all across different time zones without being on planes all the time. So I would say that on the positive side, in the last five years or so, I’ve probably found four or five hours a day just with the lack of travel or arranging travel. And that’s been a great productivity boost.

Scott McCarthy [00:11:52]:
Hallelujah to that. I hear you. It’s always been fanta amazing to me that, you know, we’re able to now connect with literally people across the globe. Like, I’ve had guests on this show from literally across the globe. I’ve had, I’ve received emails from people all across the globe. I can tell you that the podcast is downloaded in something like 150 different countries right now, the last time I checked, which is absolutely insane to me. It still blows my mind, which is fantastic. Now you hit.

Scott McCarthy [00:12:25]:
It hinted at something earlier after the good. Before the good news stuff, you know, the lack of travel and that’s, that’s amazing. But the thing you hinted at was resiliency. You know, leaders out there are getting hit, you know, tariffs, uncertainty, AI. How is that going to affect my business? How is that going to affect my team? All this uncertainty being piled on top of them. What are your best advice to leaders out there? You know, small business owners out there listen to the show right now, I’m like, how can they best navigate this uncertainty? How can they manage it and how can they flip it just like you just did at the end and turn it into something positive?

Tara Landes [00:13:04]:
Yeah, I think actually with every challenge is opportunity. And I think the leaders who are going to do the best in this are the ones who have recognized that really leader is important, but there are a lot of people working there to support that leader. And so the more they can stay connected and have really a strong, safe team that they’re working with and provide that psychological safety for their team. It sounds counterintuitive, right? We’ve got AI and we’re going to lay off all these people. How are we supposed to provide psychological safety? But I think one of the main things leaders can do is be really open with what they’re thinking and be known as a leader that doesn’t blindside people. So there may be, I mean, there are changes coming, we all know it. So the leaders who try to hide that or pretend, no, everything’s really, it’s fine, it’s all going to be fine. It’s fine.

Tara Landes [00:14:02]:
Those are the ones that are going to, I think, suffer more. And the ones who are open and saying, I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but I think this is where we’re going to go. And so until you hear otherwise, this is the plan. I think those ones are going to do much better.

Scott McCarthy [00:14:19]:
Now, to play devil’s advocate, aren’t I supposed to have all the know everything, to have all the answers? Like, am I, am I, am I not to not show weakness in front of my team? Like, I hear these things from leaders constantly out there.

Tara Landes [00:14:38]:
Yeah.

Scott McCarthy [00:14:39]:
And you’re saying the opposite here.

Tara Landes [00:14:40]:
I am. I am saying the opposite because there’s this little secret that maybe those leaders don’t know, which is that they are humans. Even AI is prone to error, but humans are really well known to be prone to error. So we have to sort of start with the assumption that we are all fallible human beings who will make mistakes. And the question isn’t, are you the all knowing, all seeing wizard behind the curtain? We know you’re not. We know that already. So any leader who thinks people think they are, they’re a bit delusional. And it’s hard to trust someone who’s a bit delusional.

Scott McCarthy [00:15:18]:
I like that. I really do. It’s hard to trust somebody who’s a bit delusional. I like, I like that a lot. So let’s, let’s dive into, you know, we. You’ve. We just hit on, okay, this is the way we think we’re going to go. This is how I, I foresee it.

Scott McCarthy [00:15:37]:
How should a leader approach that and communicating that with their team? Because I think this is one of the most important, you know, aspects of, of that is that communication bit. And reality is like, myself included, this is where I screw up and most leaders screw up all the time, is that communication. But we forget to take consideration one thing. We maybe rush a little bit too quick. We do something like we. It’s always like, you know, it’s honest mistakes, but at the end of the day, it costs something. We didn’t mean it to go that way, but it went that way. And suddenly we find ourselves into a scenario.

Tara Landes [00:16:11]:
Yeah. So first of all, building that trust means that you’re allowed to make some mistakes sometimes, just like your people are allowed to make mistakes sometimes. But one of the things I really advocate for is uncovering, if they haven’t already, uncovering the organization’s core values. So values are the way we behave. Right. People like us do things like this, and when we break those rules, rules of behavior, it can be like even a fireable offense. And we can hire around that and we can train around that. And what I’m talking about, though, are not aspirational values, which I think many organizations adopt.

Tara Landes [00:16:49]:
And aspirational values are like, I wish it was this way in our organization. Let’s strive to make it this way in our organization. And there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with striving to do things differently or better. But in the meantime, you have core values. Those are the ones that are already there. We’re already behaving this way. It’s hard for us not to behave that way.

Tara Landes [00:17:14]:
And if we can put language around that again, I think it builds trust because then people have these behavioral guidelines under which they are supposed to be working. So, for example, one of our core values at Belt Rock is we do the right thing even when it’s hard. And we’ve got all sorts of process and procedure actually around that, so that we make sure that we do the Right thing. Even when it’s hard, especially when it comes to our clients, but even our staff. So having difficult conversations, for example, somebody’s not performing inside our organization or at a client organization, do you kind of hide behind, like, well, we’ll let it go this time. Well, maybe it was okay. Or do you just confront it respectfully, head on? Like, I know that if I was sitting here right now and I had spinach in my teeth, I would want you to tell me that because I don’t want to go around the world with people looking at my spinach teeth. And it might make you uncomfortable to tell me, and it might make me uncomfortable to hear it, but overall, I want to know.

Tara Landes [00:18:18]:
And so that’s one of the assumptions in our organization. It’s a core value. Like, we can’t help but tell you those things, even though it can be an uncomfortable conversation. That’s not to say everybody should behave that way, but we know at our. At our core, that’s who we are at Bellrock. We just can’t help it. It also means that sometimes we’re going to come off as a bit abrasive or a bit rude, and we know that, too, and we apologize for that and we try not to do that. That is an aspiration of ours to try to be more gentle in our feedback.

Tara Landes [00:18:54]:
But the feedback piece, that’s core. You’re always going to know where you stand.

Scott McCarthy [00:18:58]:
Good time to mention you got spinach.

Tara Landes [00:19:00]:
Yeah, thanks for letting me know.

Scott McCarthy [00:19:04]:
Fifteen minutes into the show.

Tara Landes [00:19:06]:
Yeah, exactly.

Scott McCarthy [00:19:09]:
For the audience, though, she does not have spinace in her teeth at all.

Tara Landes [00:19:13]:
No, it’s poppy seed.

Scott McCarthy [00:19:17]:
Yeah, exactly. No, but, you know, let’s go ahead, hit back at core values, because I think that’s super important. And the thing that I find is, like, a lot of people treat their values as, like, oh, it’s the slogan up on the wall. It’s those couple of words we walk by when we walk through the front door. We see it on the header of our newsletter. What have you. Like, you know, like, we have these core values at the same time. You know, they almost feel aspirational, too, because, like, you question, you go, are we actually like that? I know that’s how we say we are, but are we actually like that? And if you question it, my gut feel is probably no release less than 50% of the time.

Scott McCarthy [00:20:05]:
So how do we actually, one, I guess know what values we are, we are personing and following. And two, how do we, you know, turn the ship a bit to make sure we are following those ones that we say are our core values, that we want to be our core values, we know we should be, our core values kind of aren’t right now.

Tara Landes [00:20:27]:
Yeah. So there’s two things there. One is uncovering them in the first place. And as I mentioned, you don’t create them. You uncover them. They’re already there in the organization. And so figuring out what they are, putting language around it and putting stories around it about the time when this thing happened. And so we.

Tara Landes [00:20:47]:
We do the right thing, even when it’s hard. For example, one of the things we do at bellrock is. Sounds like a bellrock commercial. I don’t mean it that way, but one of the things we do is we don’t sign contracts with our clients. So if they’re not happy, if they don’t feel like they’re being delivered value, they don’t have to pay us, and that’s totally fine. And I can tell you a couple of examples where it happened, where we worked really hard and a lot of hours and we invested a lot of time and what we thought we were going to be rewarded for financially. And at the end of the day, the client said, actually, no, we’re not going to pay you. And in both of those cases, that was okay.

Tara Landes [00:21:25]:
I mean, we wanted to know why. We wanted to try and repair whatever they thought was wrong. But at the end of the day, we stood by it. We do the right thing even when it’s hard. And when we were trying to decide, okay, what do we do here? Because these were some circumstances that it felt very unfair to us. But at the end of the day, that was the promise that we made. And we would rather put our money where our mouth is. And so that’s how you reinforce the core values, is by your behavior, it’s by your words, but also by your deeds.

Tara Landes [00:21:56]:
And companies should be routinely looking. If they have value statements to begin with, then they should be routinely looking at whether they’re still aligned with those statements from the top to the bottom. And they should have stories about their people and about their process that they can demonstrate. See here, look, we did it. We did it this year, we did it this week. Here are the examples. And they should always be using that, I think, as touchstones. Sometimes they’ll find that it’s getting a bit off, like it’s not quite right.

Tara Landes [00:22:28]:
And when that’s the case, it might be time to change it. It might be time to recognize, okay, actually, this one isn’t quite right. We need to go back to the drawing board. And it usually takes a while to really figure out what your core values are in your organization. Like maybe a year or two even of trying them on for size, seeing if it really works, seeing if it doesn’t. But from my perspective, the value in doing that is just so significant right at the foundational level, because every single person then knows exactly how they’re supposed to behave in all the crazy, uncertain circumstances that we are in right now.

Scott McCarthy [00:23:08]:
No, I, I think you nailed a lot of points in there. And I really like the. I really like the part about, you know, let’s find the examples, show the evidence. This is how we’re operating. And that was a powerful example you give of your own. Like, can’t imagine how difficult that would be to just walk away and go, yeah, we did a lot of hard work here, but we’re not being rewarded. Reward it for it.

Tara Landes [00:23:34]:
Oh, let me. Let me tell you. Let me tell you the story. So it was an Internet company. This was a long time ago. And they were basically, they were web builders. Now you. You don’t have to pay anyone to build your website, basically.

Tara Landes [00:23:46]:
But. But back in the day, it was a really big business. And we were working with a husband and wife company. They had maybe 20 employees, 30 employees. And the husband was in charge of sales, and he was the head of the company. The wife was in charge of operations. They were a young couple. They just had their first child about a year earlier.

Tara Landes [00:24:03]:
And I was working with the guy on a Friday afternoon, and he wasn’t feeling great. Like, he just. He was kind of sick. He had a bit of a flu. He wasn’t feeling great. We weren’t making a lot of progress. We were there to help with accountability. He was having trouble with accountability.

Tara Landes [00:24:17]:
I said, you know, let’s just call it a day. We can pick this up. Monday morning, you’re not feeling great. And he’s like, yeah, thanks very much. Well, by Monday morning, he’d be admitted to the icu and he had what turned. He was in a coma. But what turned out to happen is he had some, like, crazy, weird virus that had attacked his nervous system. System.

Tara Landes [00:24:35]:
So he’s out now, but so is the wife, obviously. So now the senior leadership team are absent from the company. So we show up on Monday morning, and remember, this is a company that had. Was having difficulty with accountability. We show up on Monday morning, there’s no leadership. And when we started with this company, they were at negative 5% profit. Okay. So we had to make a decision.

Tara Landes [00:25:00]:
We couldn’t get in touch with them. I mean, even if we wanted to, which we honestly didn’t, we didn’t really feel, although it was really important, this was their livelihood. So we decided, we made a decision. We do the right thing even when it’s hard, we’re just going to stay, we’re going to run the business for them until somebody, we’re going to send them, you know, an email that says, hey, until you tell us to stop, we’re going to run this thing. Because if we don’t, we didn’t know what else was going to happen. And so we did, we stayed for a month and when the wife finally got her feet under her and started coming back into the business, we were like, okay, like, here you go, here’s your company back. And we charged on a per project basis. So we had completed our project in that time, but we also had been basically contract managing for a month.

Tara Landes [00:25:49]:
And we didn’t ask her to pay us for that contract managing for a month. We just asked for our bill to be paid for our original project. Now when we started with them, they were at negative 3% profit. We had told them we probably thought they could get to 10 or 15% net on the bottom line. By the time we left, they were at 7% net. Now think about that. The sales, the key salesperson, the leader and the head of operations were completely absent for a month with no notice. And we turned that company around and she decided that she wasn’t going to pay us because we didn’t meet what she thought was this promise of 10 to 15%.

Tara Landes [00:26:32]:
So what do you do? This woman is like suffering and she’s got this baby and this husband who is now disabled forever. What do you do? Do you sue them for that? Well, in our case, no. You say, well, we didn’t have any contracts and this is our brand promise. So, okay, I guess we’re not going to get paid. Now the craziest part of that whole story is she called us a couple years later to see if we could help with something else and we didn’t. We declined.

Scott McCarthy [00:27:06]:
So I want to flip the script on this story. How do you lead your team through that? Because, no, that, that’s a shock to them. You know, we don’t need to get into the inner workings of your business and stuff like this. But when we think of it gross and modal. I’m sure your team’s aware that the company’s not getting paid. Therefore suddenly they get worries of am I going to get paid? Is the company going to survive because you just spent well over Elite, well over a month. Obviously, with this company, you’re running it for a month. So how do you run your team and keep them focused and believe in the mission and so on moving forward through this turmoil within yourselves?

Tara Landes [00:27:54]:
I think that’s such a good question. And the answer is you put systems and process in place so that you can be true to your values. So in our case, we had a pretty significant payroll buffer in the bank, and so we were able to ride it out like we could afford it. Basically, we’d put ourselves in a position where if something, if a crisis occurred, we could afford to take that kind of hit because it’s so important to us to be able to do that. And I got to tell you that the team in general was quite resentful that this woman didn’t pay us. They really were. But they also, I think, were really grateful that we stuck to our word. So if, if others behave sort of out of integrity is how it felt, that’s fine.

Tara Landes [00:28:44]:
But we didn’t behave out of integrity, and that’s all we had in our control.

Scott McCarthy [00:28:48]:
You, lady, just took the word out of my mouth. You know, you controlled the control wall. Yeah, in this case. Right. But I think you, you highlighted something super important. So here at the podcast, I’ll talk about three domains of leadership, and those three domains are leading yourself, you, the leader, that is Scott and Tara, in these cases, leading your team, which is the Scott and Tara on your team that you. You lead and then leading your. Leading your organization.

Scott McCarthy [00:29:13]:
So in your case, Bellrock, I argue that we need to balance across the three. Balance doesn’t equate to 33.3 to infinity percent across the three. It just means, you know, you need to balance so that it equals out like a thousand pounds of feathers on one end of a scale and 1,000 pounds of lead on the other end of the scale. You know, it’s not the same size, but you get the same effect, right? It balances out. And I think in this case, you were able to balance out leading your organization so that in that moment, you’re able to lead your team through that saying, we got you, we got you. You know, don’t worry. You’re like, yeah, you’re worried, but we got you. We’ve, we’ve been, you know, we, we haven’t been making it, you know, we’ve making it rain, as in, you know, throwing money, dollar bills around.

Scott McCarthy [00:30:07]:
And you don’t see me cruising around this million, you know, 2 or 20 million dollar yacht or anything like that? No, no, it’s. We’ve had systems in place. We’ve prepared for this rainy day. We’re here at the rainy day, and we got you. And to me, that is showing balance across those, you know, two domains. Now, I’m sure the third one was having the resiliency yourself to be able to walk in front of your team and even mention, you know, talk about that.

Tara Landes [00:30:34]:
Well, it was, it was easier to walk in front of my team and talk about that than it was to walk in front of my family who thought we were crazy. But, but, but, but at the end of the day, you know, like, I mean, there are other ways we could have handled that, but at the end of the day, um, we were, we were, we were clear in what was right. We knew what the right thing was to do it. It was, There wasn’t a lot of gray. And I think that ultimately is the value of having core values is, you know, there are lines on the road, and as long as you drive within those lines on the road, you can be a little to the left or a little to the right or whatever, as long as you stay within the lines. And so that’s what we were doing. We were staying within the lines, you.

Scott McCarthy [00:31:14]:
Know, and if we wrap this up by swinging back to the beginning and talking about, you know, AI and all the changes and the chaos that’s going on, uncertainty. I think you bring up a super good point to wrap this up in that, you know, you just, you stay within those lines of those values, you make the best decision that you can based on the information that’s in front of you, guide it by those values. And end of the day, I think, you know, you’ll come out all right. Will you come out unscathed? Probably not. But you’ll make it through.

Tara Landes [00:31:45]:
Yeah, you’ll make it. You’ll make it through, and you’ll feel good about it. And I think that even if you don’t make it through, you’ll have done the right thing. However you define the right thing.

Scott McCarthy [00:31:55]:
That’s awesome, Tara. Wow. I did not expect this show to go down this road, but here we are nonetheless, and that’s what makes great shows. Before we wrap up, you know, we talked about a lot of different things. I, you know, and I had a list of all the different topics that you talk about, and we’ve, like, kind of nibbled at a bunch of them. But there’s one last thing that you want to leave the audience with, which is not your email address because we’ll get to that in a minute. But, you know, one last nugget to leave them with. What would that be?

Tara Landes [00:32:29]:
Just get started. I think way too many people get way too caught up in trying to figure out all the different ways things could go right or wrong and all the permutations. Just get started. What’s the worst thing that could happen? Just. Just take the first step.

Scott McCarthy [00:32:44]:
That’s awesome. Just get started. No matter what it is, get after it. It’s funny, I saw a photo literally before we got on the call and it said the water isn’t getting any warmer the longer you wait. Which is basically, you know, in the air.

Tara Landes [00:33:00]:
Exactly. Jump in.

Scott McCarthy [00:33:01]:
Right. Basically what you just said. So jump in and see where we go. This has been a fantastic conversation to wrap this up. How can people find you? Follow you shameless plug. Have at it. Now is the time for the email address and whatnot you got right.

Tara Landes [00:33:14]:
Well, they can find me on LinkedIn at Tara Landis. T A R A L A N D E S or they can go to my company bellrock ca and there’s lots of fun free downloadables that they can take a look at and. And lots of good resources there.

Scott McCarthy [00:33:29]:
Fantastic. And for you, to listeners, always it’s easy. Just go through the show notes of this episode which is lead don’tboss.com the episode number in digits ie 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, which is not this episode number. But again, Tara, thanks for joining me. Thanks for jumping on the call. This has just been a fantastic conversation today. Really appreciate it.

Tara Landes [00:33:51]:
I appreciate you too, Scott. This has been great. Thank you.