Speaker 1: Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of
Speaker 1: performance through strong human relations, team building and GOLA GV.
Speaker 1: This is the seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host
Speaker 1: Paul fella Aledo.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to the seven Minute Leadership Podcast.
Speaker 2: It's episode seven sixty nine. Today. I want to share
Speaker 2: one of my favorite leadership analogies. It's something I tell managers, supervisors, executives,
Speaker 2: and officers all the time because once you see it
Speaker 2: in your mind, you'll never look at employee behavior the
Speaker 2: same way again. So I want you to picture an
Speaker 2: old Western movie and you know the exact scene I'm
Speaker 2: talking about. There's a dusty street. Horses tied up outside
Speaker 2: in a saloon with those little swinging wooden doors. They're
Speaker 2: not very tall, they don't latch, they don't lock. Someone
Speaker 2: walks up, gives them a gentle push, and they swing open.
Speaker 2: Now here's the interesting part. They swing both ways. You
Speaker 2: can walk in and you can walk right back out.
Speaker 2: That's leadership. And throughout every organization there are invisible saloon
Speaker 2: doors or gates. Employees make the decision to push through
Speaker 2: them every single day. Nobody forces them, nobody locks them inside.
Speaker 2: They simply make one small choice that slowly becomes a habit.
Speaker 2: The first gate is the call off gate, and it
Speaker 2: usually starts with a legitimate reason. Someone gets sick, a
Speaker 2: family emergency happens, life gets in the way. No reasonable
Speaker 2: leader has a problem with any of that, And then
Speaker 2: something changes. One call off becomes two to who becomes four,
Speaker 2: and soon mondays become suspicious, Fridays become convenient. Every holiday
Speaker 2: weekend has a familiar pattern, and before long, the employee
Speaker 2: is standing on the other side of the call off gate.
Speaker 2: Here's the mistake many leaders make. They assume that person
Speaker 2: is now a bad employee. I don't. I believe they're
Speaker 2: simply standing in the wrong place. The gate isn't locked.
Speaker 2: They can walk right back through it if they want.
Speaker 2: Leadership's job isn't to scream across the gate. It's to
Speaker 2: walk over, have the difficult conversation, explain what they're seeing,
Speaker 2: and re mind that employee of their value, and help
Speaker 2: them push back through that gate, because that's where their
Speaker 2: best version still exists. And here's another gate. I call
Speaker 2: it the just enough gate. In this one might be
Speaker 2: the most dangerous because it's quiet. The employee still shows up,
Speaker 2: They still complete enough work to stay off everyone's radar.
Speaker 2: Nothing spectacular, nothing terrible. They're living right in the middle.
Speaker 2: No energy, no initiative, no ownership. They're doing enough to
Speaker 2: collect a paycheck without creating much value. Organizations are full
Speaker 2: of people standing behind this gate. Again, it isn't locked.
Speaker 2: Sometimes one honest conversation changes everything. Sometimes recognizing good work
Speaker 2: wakes someone back up. Sometimes giving them a challenge reminds
Speaker 2: them why they took the job in the first place.
Speaker 2: Sometimes people simply need someone to believe they're capable of
Speaker 2: more than they've been Showing leadership helps people find the
Speaker 2: handle they forgot was there. But let's keep walking. There
Speaker 2: is another gate, the gossip gate. At first, it feels harmless.
Speaker 2: A conversation in the hallway, a complaint in the breakroom,
Speaker 2: a sarcastic comment after the meeting. Soon people aren't solving
Speaker 2: problems anymore. They're collecting complaints. The negativity becomes entertainment, and
Speaker 2: before long they've walked completely through that gate. Notice something interesting.
Speaker 2: Nobody wakes up on a Tuesday morning saying today I'd
Speaker 2: like to become the office gossip. They drift one conversation
Speaker 2: at a time, one complaint at a time, leadership interrupts
Speaker 2: that drift, not with punishment first, with awareness first, because
Speaker 2: people don't always realize which side of the gate they're
Speaker 2: standing on. And then there's the victim gate. Everything becomes
Speaker 2: someone else's fault. Management, scheduling, the economy, the weather, coworkers, policies, technology.
Speaker 2: Every setback has an explanation that points somewhere else. Personal
Speaker 2: responsibility quietly disappears. I've seen incredibly talented employees spend years
Speaker 2: standing behind this gate. Years. One day they finally decide
Speaker 2: they've had enough. They push back through. Suddenly they own
Speaker 2: their decisions again. Their performance improves, their attitude changes, nothing
Speaker 2: magical happened. They simply walk back out. And here's another
Speaker 2: the comfort gate. And this one catches experienced employees. They've
Speaker 2: mastered the job, they know the routine, they're respected. Then
Speaker 2: learning stops, training becomes optional, Innovation becomes annoying, new ideas
Speaker 2: become something to criticize. Comfort slowly replaces curiof That's another
Speaker 2: swinging door. The leader's responsibility is to gently remind people
Speaker 2: that growth never ends. The best employees never stop learning,
Speaker 2: never stop asking questions, never stop improving. The gate swings
Speaker 2: both ways. One of the biggest leadership lessons I've learned
Speaker 2: over nearly three decades is this, don't define people by
Speaker 2: the gate they're standing behind. Today. I've watched employees completely
Speaker 2: turn their careers around. I've watched poor performers become supervisors.
Speaker 2: I've watched difficult employees become outstanding mentors. And I've watched
Speaker 2: burned out people rediscover why they love the profession in
Speaker 2: the first place. Why Because none of those gates had locks.
Speaker 2: Leadership is often guilty of labeling people permanently for temporary behavior,
Speaker 2: and that's dangerous. When you label someone is lazy, toxic,
Speaker 2: unreliable or difficult forever, you're quietly telling them there's no
Speaker 2: point in walking back through the gate. I don't believe that.
Speaker 2: I believe accountability and belief can exist together. You can
Speaker 2: hold someone accountable while still believing they're capable of becoming
Speaker 2: who they used to be, or even better, who they've
Speaker 2: never become yet. And there is one final gait. I
Speaker 2: want to leave you with the leadership gate. One day
Speaker 2: someone decides to step through it. They volunteer for a project,
Speaker 2: they mentor someone new, They solve a problem nobody asks
Speaker 2: them to solve they stop saying that's not my job.
Speaker 2: They start acting like an owner. Leadership begins long before
Speaker 2: someone gives you a title. That gate swings both ways too.
Speaker 2: You can walk through it today. No permission requires no application,
Speaker 2: no promotion, only a decision. The beautiful thing about leadership
Speaker 2: is that every morning, every employee walks past dozens of
Speaker 2: invisible gates. Some lead towards excellence, some lead toward mediocrity,
Speaker 2: some lead toward excuses, some lead toward accountability. The gates
Speaker 2: themselves aren't good or bad. They're simply choices waiting to
Speaker 2: be made. As leaders, don't spend your career trying to
Speaker 2: build bigger fences around people. Spend your career reminding them
Speaker 2: that the gates were never locked. People can change, teams,
Speaker 2: can recover, cultures, can improve, performance can come back. Sometimes
Speaker 2: all it takes is one conversation, one decision, and one
Speaker 2: push in the right direction. This has been the seven
Speaker 2: Minute Leadership Podcast, and I thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: For more Paul fell of Alito Podcasts, visit Paul fellovalito
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