Why Your Best Employees Leave (And What to Do About It)

In this episode of Great Talent Great Business, Rob Levin chats with Mark Taylor—CEO coach, entrepreneur, and leadership expert—on what truly separates great leaders from the rest. They dive into why leadership development is often overlooked, the power of CEO peer groups, and how Positive Intelligence helps leaders manage stress, build resilience, and stop self-sabotage.  

Key Takeaway: 

Great leadership isn’t just about strategy—it’s about mindset, and that has a critical effect on the success of small and mid-sized businesses. Through CEO peer groups, leaders can gain valuable insights and uncover blind spots that hinder progress.  

Positive Intelligence is a powerful tool for managing stress, building resilience, and shifting from self-sabotage to success. By identifying personal saboteurs (like the hyper-achiever mindset) and strengthening mental fitness, leaders can create a more engaged, high-performing team while improving their own decision-making and well-being. 

Questions I ask Mark:  

[2:04]  What’s the best advice you can give small and mid-size business owners to spot and grow strong leaders? 

[3:26]  What traits have you seen work really well when it comes to spotting potential leaders? 

[4:08]  Why should a business owner consider joining a CEO peer group? 

[5:46]  Can you tell us more about Positive Intelligence and why it’s important for business owners? 

[7:45]  How does Positive Intelligence help business owners shift their mindset and build more resilience? 

 [12:58]  What percentage of your Positive Intelligence clients that go through the program, roll this out to some of the members of their team? 

[15:11]  What are the strongest leadership characteristics you’ve seen in the most successful businesses? 

 

More About Mark Taylor:  

Check out Mark Taylor 

Connect with Mark on LinkedIn. 

 

More About Rob Levin  & WorkBetterNow: 

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Visit WorkBetterNow.com 

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Episode Transcript

Mark Taylor (00:00):
You know, most of the people that I'm familiar with run companies between 10 million and maybe 150 million in revenue, and they have no leadership development. It's the big organizations. For me, I find it interesting that the number one reason why people leave companies is their manager.

(00:01):
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Rob Levin (00:02):
Yeah, so, Mark, many small and mid-sized businesses struggle with leadership development and the business owners struggle with leadership development within their companies. What's the best advice that you can give to these business owners to spot and to grow strong leaders?
And at the same time, research has shown that those managers have had no leadership training or management training whatsoever, so my advice would be, develop your leaders. As a Vistage chair, we have leadership development programs, not only for the CEOs and the key executives, but we have them for the middle managers as well as the emerging leaders, and these programs are programs where it could be one day a month or one day every other month where they get introduced to how to manage people.
Makes sense, switching gears just a little bit. You've worked with, I think, hundreds of CEOs. Certainly, as you're in your capacity as a Vistage master chair. What makes these groups so powerful and why should a business owner consider joining one?
That's why they're called blind spots, they say that an alcoholic's anonymous, that it takes a drunk to know another drunk in a, in any of these peer groups, in a CEO peer group, another CEO is going to call you on your bs; they're going to help you see your blind spot. So, if you're really committed to growth and you're hungry to become a better leader, this is a place, one of the only places that I know you have the opportunity to do that.

Mark Taylor (00:06):
Positive Intelligence is your ability to respond to negative events, which, as business owners, you're dealing with on a daily basis, with a positive rather than a negative mindset, so that's the simple definition of it.
I mean, they're younger, most of them have younger children, less than 18 years of age, and they have older parents that, maybe they're having to support. And they have executive jobs with the stress of the jobs. They got it coming from them in all different directions And this is a tool that really helps them Ground themselves and deal with the stress and anxiety that executives and leaders face on a day-to-day basis
How does Positive Intelligence help people, and let's say, just focus on business owners right now, kind of shift their mindset? And you mentioned Grit earlier; How does it help them build more resilience?
So how do you deal with that inner voice? And it teaches you several different ways that you can do that. And then we have our specific saboteurs, you can go to positiveintelligence.com and take the saboteur assessment for free, and you learn what your top saboteurs are. In working with hundreds of CEOs, the top saboteur that I see is one that we call the hyper achiever, now the hyper achiever, and it happens to be one of mine as well, is a saboteur that constantly is pushing you, pushing you, pushing you, pushing you, and it becomes a saboteur when you're experiencing stress, anxiety, frustration, annoyance, and you get annoyed at people around you, or your team, that aren't moving fast enough or aren't moving in the direction that you think that they should be, and the impact that you have, just like you said, of the leader, is that if you're stressed, they can see that. You think that you're holding it all inside, and it might be coming out overtly in some cases, but covertly, and many that they can see that you're frustrated and is it inspirational working with this leader that's pushing and pushing and pushing.
So how do you deal with that inner voice? And it teaches you several different ways that you can do that. And then we have our specific saboteurs, you can go to positiveintelligence.com and take the saboteur assessment for free, and you learn what your top saboteurs are. In working with hundreds of CEOs, the top saboteur that I see is one that we call the hyper achiever, now the hyper achiever, and it happens to be one of mine as well, is a saboteur that constantly is pushing you, pushing you, pushing you, pushing you, and it becomes a saboteur when you're experiencing stress, anxiety, frustration, annoyance, and you get annoyed at people around you, or your team, that aren't moving fast enough or aren't moving in the direction that you think that they should be, and the impact that you have, just like you said, of the leader, is that if you're stressed, they can see that. You think that you're holding it all inside, and it might be coming out overtly in some cases, but covertly, and many that they can see that you're frustrated and is it inspirational working with this leader that's pushing and pushing and pushing.
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The research shows that when we're triggered, when we're upset, when we're angry, when we're frustrated, that our intelligence goes down like 20%. And imagine leading from that place versus a higher place. So they're able to respond to those negative events much faster, the people around them notice the difference.

Rob Levin (00:13):
That was my next question
So you get an app that you can follow every single day, because mental fitness is like physical fitness, if you don't do it every single day, you're not going to be in the shape to handle the challenges that you have; when I first started this course, it was during the pandemic, and I was doing it for six months, and we were learning these different mindfulness techniques to deal with those triggers and, I remember I was having an argument with my wife and one of the techniques is you rub your fingers together, so you want to get out of your head and into your body so that those thoughts don't escalate, and I'm rubbing my fingers, and I'm doing okay, I'm doing okay, and then it starts escalating, escalating, escalating.
Mark, if we pull all this together, the peer group concept, Positive Intelligence, we, you and I were talking earlier how we we partnered together, I don't know how many years ago, to bring a great session on tribal leadership, and if you boil down, you've had hundreds of members in your Vistage group.
I think it's coaching, and mentoring your people, developing a leadership team where coaching is part of the culture, where learning is part of the culture, and it's certainly hiring great talent. I think that there are certain stages of a business development, and sometimes, what got you here isn't what's going to get you where you want to go, so, the most successful leaders I've seen have top-graded their people, or they've developed their people to be able to handle bigger challenges that you face when you grow your company.
And I think we always have to remind ourselves as business owners. One of the reasons many of us went into business ourselves is to do things our way, and yet people don't realize that all of this stuff is somewhat within our control, and yet, is one of the biggest drivers of results.
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