Speaker 1: Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of
Speaker 1: performance through strong human relations, team building, and goala giving.
Speaker 1: This is the seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host
Speaker 1: Paul Fellavledo.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to the seven Minute Leadership Podcast.
Speaker 2: It's episode seven seventy. Today's episode is called Comfort versus
Speaker 2: Performance at Work. Here's a question every leader should ask themselves.
Speaker 2: Have I accidentally built a workplace where people are more
Speaker 2: committed to being comfortable than being great. Comfort is attractive.
Speaker 2: Every employee wants it, every leader wants to provide it.
Speaker 2: There's nothing wrong with creating an environment where people feel respected,
Speaker 2: supported and psychologically safe. The problem begins when comfort becomes
Speaker 2: the destination instead of the foundation. High performing organizations are
Speaker 2: rarely uncomfortable all the time. They are also rarely comfortable
Speaker 2: all the time. They live somewhere in the middle. Think
Speaker 2: about your own career, when did you grow the most.
Speaker 2: It probably wasn't during a period when everything was easy.
Speaker 2: It was when you were challenged, when expectations increased, when
Speaker 2: someone believed you could do more than you believed about yourself.
Speaker 2: Growth has always required a little discomfort. I see this
Speaker 2: in ems all the time. A new emt is nervous
Speaker 2: on their first difficult call. A new paramedic questions every decision.
Speaker 2: A new lieutenant feels uncomfortable supervising people who used to
Speaker 2: be coworkers. That's exactly where growth begins. Leadership isn't a
Speaker 2: about removing every uncomfortable moment. Leadership is helping people move
Speaker 2: through those moments. Some workplaces slowly drift toward comfort. Standards
Speaker 2: get relaxed, Deadlines become suggestions, performance reviews become softer. People
Speaker 2: stop challenging ideas because nobody wants difficult conversations. Meetings become predictable,
Speaker 2: Innovation slows down, and eventually everyone feels comfortable. The organization
Speaker 2: quietly becomes average. Average is comfortable. Excellence usually isn't. One
Speaker 2: of the biggest myths in leadership is believing employee happiness
Speaker 2: and employee performance are the same thing. They're connected, they're
Speaker 2: not identical. Your job isn't to keep everyone happy every
Speaker 2: minute of the day. Your job is to help people
Speaker 2: become better than they wor yesterday. Sometimes that requires uncomfortable feedback,
Speaker 2: Sometimes it requires accountability. Sometimes it requires telling someone they're
Speaker 2: capable of much more than they're currently delivering. Those conversations
Speaker 2: may feel uncomfortable for both people. There often the conversations
Speaker 2: employees remember years later. Think about sports, The best coaches
Speaker 2: don't spend practice making athletes comfortable, They make them better.
Speaker 2: The athletes may leave practice exhausted, they also leave stronger.
Speaker 2: The same principle applies to business. Comfort can become addictive
Speaker 2: when employees begin protecting their comfort more than the organization's mission.
Speaker 2: Performance starts slipping. You hear phrases like that's not my job,
Speaker 2: We've always done it this way, nobody else has to
Speaker 2: do that, or I'll get it. I'll get to it tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Those aren't performance statements. Those are comfort statements. Leaders must
Speaker 2: recognize the difference. Now, let me say something equally important.
Speaker 2: Performance without humanity eventually burns people out. Nobody wants to
Speaker 2: work in an organization where every day feels like a crisis.
Speaker 2: High standards should never mean constant pressure. The best organizations
Speaker 2: know when to push and when to recover. Elite athletes
Speaker 2: don't train at maximum intensity every day. Neither should organizations.
Speaker 2: Great leaders understand rhythm, push, recover, learn, improve, repeat. So
Speaker 2: here's a practical exercise. Walk through your workplace this week
Speaker 2: and ask yourself four questions. Where have we become too comfortable?
Speaker 2: Where have we become unnecessarily stressful? What standard have we
Speaker 2: quietly stopped and forcing? And where could one small improvement
Speaker 2: create a much higher level of performance? Those four questions
Speaker 2: can reveal more than any employee survey that you send out.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite leadership observations is this, Employees don't
Speaker 2: always need easier work. Sometimes they need bigger challenges. People
Speaker 2: are often far more capable than they realize. Many simply
Speaker 2: need someone to believe in them before they believe in themselves.
Speaker 2: That's leadership. Leadership is seeing tomorrow's employee inside today's employee.
Speaker 2: Your role isn't to protect people from every challenge. It's
Speaker 2: to prepare them for challenges they'll eventually face without you
Speaker 2: standing beside them. That's how organizations become resilient, That's how
Speaker 2: future leaders are created, and that's how cultures outperform their
Speaker 2: competitors year after year. Comfort has its place, respect has
Speaker 2: its place, Psychological safety absolutely has its place. Performance deserves
Speaker 2: a seat at the same table. When leaders balance both.
Speaker 2: Employees don't merely enjoy coming to work, They leave work
Speaker 2: knowing they accomplish something meaningful. That feeling lasts much longer
Speaker 2: than comfort ever will. So as you go into your
Speaker 2: workplace this week, ask yourself another simple question. Am I
Speaker 2: creating comfort that supports performance? Or comfort that quietly replaces it?
Speaker 2: Your answer may reveal the next opportunity to strengthen your leadership.
Speaker 2: And if you want more free leadership resources, head over
Speaker 2: to Paulfalovalito dot com click on free Stuff. I have
Speaker 2: twenty five free leadership PDFs you can download and start
Speaker 2: using today. This has been the seven Minute Leadership podcast
Speaker 2: and I thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: For more Paul Fallolito podcasts, visit paulfllovalito dot com