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August 23, 2023 • 23 mins
Rob Kalwarowsky, Leadership Coach and TedX Speaker
ROb is an impactful speaker whose quiet realizations give his audience loud transformations. Rob shares wise insights about toxic leadership, mental health and finding purpose in life.
Elite High Performance https://www.elitehighperformance.com/
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Episode Transcript

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(00:00):
This week on the Art of Improvement, I'll be speaking with Rob Kalbarowski.
He's a top leadership coach and tedX speaker. Have you ever had to
deal with a boss that is justbad, not a bad person, just
a bad boss. Well, thereare things that are impacting you by having
that bad boss, and there aredifferent types. Rob's going to tell you

(00:22):
all about it and how you canfix it. It's all coming up next
on the Art of Improvement. Thankyou so much for listening to the Art
of Improvements. I have a gueston today and I think everybody's going to
learn a little bit of something aboutbosses, whether you have the greatest boss

(00:42):
in the world today or you haveI guess PTSD because you've had horrible bosses
in the past. Rob cal Barowskiis a top leadership coach and ted X
speaker. How are you doing today, Rob, I'm doing great. Thanks
for having me, Karen. Andit's funny you start there right and actually,

(01:03):
statistically sixty five percent of the folkslistening out there have what's known as
a destructive leader or a bad boss. So we'll get more into it,
but it's a lot of folks outthere and you're definitely not alone. How
many did you say? Again,what's the percentage? Five percent? Yes?
Why is it that all these badpeople are getting promoted to be everybody's

(01:26):
boss? They're, first off,they're not bad people. Sure want to
I want to lead with that,right. And the big thing, right
is leadership is a different skill setthan being a top individual contributor. And
this is often what we see outthere, right, is like, like

(01:48):
I used to work, I workedten years and in engineering, and you
would see that, you know,good engineers would be the ones who would
be become the engineering manager. Sure, sure, And that doesn't mean they
know how to manage. That doesn'talso mean they know how to lead.
And the data actually backs this up. So Harvard Business Review has an article
out there and it says the averageperson becomes a supervisor at twenty nine,

(02:13):
but they only receive leadership development trainingat forty two. Wow, so there's
a thirteen year gap between when youbecome a manager and when you actually learn
how to be actually learn how tobe a manager. And like that's insane
because literally everyone gets trained for everyjob, right, Like from the folks

(02:34):
who work in fast food to Barberer'stattoo artists, like engineers and doctors,
lawyers, like everyone gets training beforeyou're able to do something, And yet
we think leadership's easy, so wejust give it to folks without anything.
Well, how did it come tobe that the top performers would always get
these managerial positions in the first place? Because I can tell you I didn't

(03:00):
join Corporate America for a very longtime and so I was never aware of
that situation until I actually got inand I was like, wow, did
they know, did they ever sell? Did they ever were they ever out
in the ranks, or did theyjust put somebody in there? And it
says do you want to be theboss? Because it was it was a

(03:23):
big question mark over my head tosay, you know what made I guess
management give this person that job totally? And that's partly what folks and most
people don't actually know, is likewhat are the elements that makes a good
or bad leader? And like whatskills and strategies do they need to use

(03:46):
to become one? Right? Andthis is you know, eighty percent or
so of the world is disengaged andit costs like eight point eight trillion dollars
a year according to gallup. Right, is like, it's we don't yet.
Sixty five percent of folks have abad boss, and it's because one
is, these folks were not pickedto have good leadership skills and then they're

(04:11):
also not trained, so we're gettingexactly what we would expect. Right is
like you know, is like wehave the wrong people in the wrong roles
and we're not setting them up forsuccess, and so that's why we're getting
what we're getting. But no onein their right mind that's in a company
would turn down a position to bethe managers. So I guess that's where

(04:31):
it all starts. Right, You'redoing great job and suddenly instead of getting
under percent commission, you are nowput on a salary. I mean,
and that seems like, wow,this is a great deal. Would who
would turn that down? But arethere people that recognize that even though they're
offered these positions, maybe they shouldn'ttake them. Yeah, So, I

(04:54):
mean, first off, for folksout there, like you should totally like
if you want to vance in yourcareer and you want to you know,
manage people, like, this istotally something that you can do, you
know, and you can learn howto be a great leader. Like I
coach leaders You can totally learn thisstuff. It's not like you come out
the womb with loss baby out there, right, like that movie and like

(05:17):
you're just you know, I knowit says on the movie Posters Born Leader,
but like those I mean, somefolks have some leadership qualities, but
you can learn leadership, Like it'snot this thing that's just magical that's bestowed
upon you. Right. Yeah.But the other side of it is to
your question, Karen, is likewe do group programming with corporate and we

(05:41):
have folks from high potential individual contributorsto executives. And I've had some clients
who have done the deep self workand they've learned like what leadership truly entails,
and they've said to me, youknow what, I just want to
do the technical work because I likethat better. Yeah, I don't want
to spend time developing people or beingone on once. And I'm like,

(06:03):
you know what, that's a greatoutcome because you know what, if that's
what you truly love is you wantto like learn about the technical aspects and
do the best you know, engineeringjob or whatever job they're doing. Like
we need folks to do that too, it's so I don't know. I
guess. One, if you're talkingabout age twenty nine when this happens when

(06:27):
some employees or an average age oftwenty nine are promoted, sometimes age twenty
nine might not be you might notbe so self aware that that's not what
you want, and so you haveto do a lot of I guess,
introspective revealing of what it is thatyou want in life, because sometimes when

(06:49):
you start a job, you justget taken taken on the ride for the
job. Does that make sense atall? No, you're bang on.
And actually, for folks out there, self awareness is the number one leadership
skill, and you're all out theregoing I'm self aware, and because that's

(07:12):
what the research says. It saysthat ninety five percent of people think they're
self aware, when only twelve tofifteen percent of people actually are. Yeah,
yeah, I mean that that's notvery surprising to me. But it
may be that I was always awarethat I even though others would be in

(07:33):
a competitive and I'm competitive, butnot competitive into wanting to be a boss,
Like I would never want to bea boss because of what it entails.
And so I guess some people justsuddenly think, Okay, I've been
offered this job, and now I'mgoing to take it totally. And this

(07:53):
is what like I do a lotof mindset work with my coaches and my
people, and really this is whatwe're trained to do, like through our
entire lives, right is like we'retrained to strive to the next thing,
you know, get the job,become the CEO, you know, make

(08:15):
more money, get the corner office. You know, Like I was told
by my parents, Hey, likeyou know, do well in school so
you can get into the best college, so then you can get a great
job. So then you can basicallyyou know, you know, two story
house in the suburbs, white picket, fancis dog and a white and the
like one and a half kids orsomething. And I got that, and

(08:41):
then I was depressed and I youknow, was suffering from toxic management.
And ultimately, like I had todo the work because what really shifted for
me was I kind of came intowhere you were and it's like, you
know, I can't I don't wantto work in corporate. I don't want

(09:03):
to you know, use this commandand control style leadership which is out there,
which research is now showing that it'sineffective. But so many folks are
entrenched in this way of being thatlike it becomes this sort of self reinforcing
belief. Is like, Yeah,I got to the top because I,

(09:24):
you know, I took credit forothers work. I deflected blame. I
you know, use use fear andcontrol and bonuses to like make people behave
in the way I want them to. And so I'm not going to change.
Yeah. Yeah, I get it, and it makes me sick.
I don't want to talk about itanymore. Rob, if you could,

(09:45):
how can people get in touch withyou? Are you available as a coach
to companies or individuals? How doesit work? Both? Yeah? And
so if you're listening to this andyou have a bad boss, one is
I've been there and so many peopleare there, and I can help you.

(10:05):
I have a ted talk coming outon literally this topic. But for
folks out there, I have afree e book called how to Deal with
an a Whole Boss. You cango to how to Deal Boss dot com.
You can get the free ebook there, and there's also a program there
and if you use the promo codeart art all capital letters, you'll get
fifty bucks off the program. Thereso it's a low cost kind of program

(10:28):
and it's really for folks who,you know, they have a boss that
they're not sure about, and thenit'll help teach you not only the skills
to manage that boss, but alsomake these decisions about you know, is
this workplace to write place for me? Or you know, where do I
want you know, maybe where doI want my next job to be,

(10:48):
or what my life to look like? And so these are things that's available.
Also, I also do both oneon one coaching, and we also
coach leaders So if you listen tothat staff about you know, people not
getting leadership training until they're forty two, and you want to take your company
to the next level, you needto coach your leaders. And not only

(11:09):
that, is you need to hirefolks who have leadership strategies or skills instead
of just like being the best engineeror salesperson or developer or whatever. And
so yeah, I can definitely helpyou that too. Yeah, Rob,
it's so funny, but it makesme think of the different bosses that I've

(11:31):
had in my past, and thereare some of the best people that I
can think of, you know,in the year's past that we're just a
fabulous friend, a funny person,a positive person. But as a boss,
they were just they were just terribleand you I would have to go
outside of my work in order toget, you know, information about what

(11:52):
I needed. I mean, arethere different types of bad bosses besides the
one where you just can't you can'thelp but love them, but they just
don't know what they're doing. Absolutely, And so this is the part,
right, is like when everyone thinksof a bad boss, or at least
a lot of folks think about likethis. The research calls them the arrogant

(12:15):
and violent boss. So you canthink of this like either Darth Vader or
like, you know, Gordon Ramseywhen he started to kitchen nightmares. I
mean, I know he's now changedhis sort of leadership style, but like
where he was like yelling at peopleand you know, calling them names and
stuff. Right, yep, Andthat's what you think of when you hear

(12:35):
you know, bad boss or meanboss or a whole boss or whatever.
Right, Huh, that's actually onlyyou know two point or sorry, five
point five percent of the workforce actuallyexperiences a boss like that. They're not
super common, right, But thebad bosses like Karen even some of the
ones that you mentioned, right,is like, there's two types of bad

(12:56):
bosses that they are nice people.They're not out to get you. They
just want is like they don't knowhow to man it. And then the
other one is like they just don'twant to accept responsibility or accountability for things,
so they avoid confrontation or decision makingor like support. Right, yea.

(13:18):
And so I'm not saying like allbosses out there are bad and they're
trying to get you. It's actuallynot the case. But depending on what
type of bad boss you have,the way to manage them is different.
And that's the I mean, that'sthe crux of why you know, there's
actually six archetypes of bad bosses,and so understanding which archetype you have and

(13:41):
then applying the right strategy to eachone of them is really how you can
deal with them in the best way. Oh. I was just going to
ask you that because I was thinking, well, I mean, do you
do you just quit your job andgo somewhere where there is a great boss.
But you know, people don't dothat. They just get around what
their situation is. But it soundsto me like you are almost teaching your

(14:09):
boss how to manage you. Isthat right or wrong? It's both right.
And so fifty percent of folks intheir lifetime have actually quit a job
because of their manager. Wow,right, And you know this is like
this is true research, right,And like Gallup reports that seventy percent of

(14:31):
engagement is directly tied to the manager, not like the company and the corporate
vision and strategic on blah blah blah. It's like, literally, your boss
is the one who's going to makeyou feel engaged or not engaged, and
they're you know, and having,you know, a bad boss increases your
risk of heart attack, stroke,major disease, and mental illness. Like

(14:54):
this is stats. That is soscary it is. And there's there's a
study out of Stanford done by ProfessorJeffrey Feffer, and they did work and
they said that there's one hundred andtwenty thousand deaths in the United States alone
that are caused by the way thatcompanies manage their people. And so that

(15:16):
makes it the fifth leading cause ofdeath in the United States. I don't
know why that is so bad,but it's just so incredibly humorous to me
because you would think that people wouldknow, like quit your job. But
I mean, it's not funny,but you know what I mean, it's
just like so ridiculous that that's that'sa fact. It's a shocking statistics.

(15:43):
Shocking, that's what the word is. Absolutely. And the reason I'm so
passionate about this is I had abad boss and it almost cost me my
life. Tell me about it.Yeah, and I you know, I
had a bad balls early in mycareer and it shipped away like all my

(16:03):
self confidence, my self worth,even who I thought I was, and
ultimately led to a suicide attempt.And you said, You said, Karen
a few minutes ago, was like, why don't people just quit? Well,
I woke up the next morning andI went to work, and I

(16:26):
knew my job was killing me.I knew my boss was killing me,
and yet I could not choose toleave because I had all these beliefs in
my mindset about well, I gottamake money, I gotta have a job,
I gotta you know, contribute tosociety. I had to la la
la la la. Right, Andstatistically the research backs this up too.

(16:48):
Is not about suicide attempts, althoughthe vast majority of suicide survivors actually do
continue their lives and there's no likebreakthrough moment for them. But also,
folks that have a toxic boss stayin their jobs two years longer than other
folks's. And what it is isit's like your boss is bullying you into

(17:11):
submission and you start to lose likeconfidence and all these things. And it's
like, I mean imagine, likeI can't I was doing job interviews,
but I can't imagine listening to meon a job interview when I was depressed,
like I get a job because I'mlike, I'm dying. That's so
funny, don't You don't have toexplain to me And I don't need to

(17:33):
imagine because I know what that feelingis. I totally do, and it's
it's devastating and it's so horrible tome that I and I hope somebody listening
right now is like that is me. That is me. There, you
know. It isn't just that I'ma depressed, unproductive person. It's just
that you may be in the wrongposition, the wrong scene. I guess

(18:00):
totally right, and none of thisis bad, right, And I don't
Also, like, if you googlehow to deal with a bad boss,
the vast majority of articles poll intotwo kind of advice. One is quit
your job and the other one is, you know, suck up to your
boss, right, yeah, Andthis is sort of like I always joke

(18:22):
about this, but it's like,imagine you went to a therapist and you
were like, hey, I don'tlike my you know, I'm having problems
with my wife or my husband,and like, you know, what should
I do? And she's either like, well, you could quit your job,
or you can you can get adivorced, or you can just you
know, put up with their toxicityand make them feel good about being toxic.

(18:45):
It's like, yeah, that's horrible, yeah, right, and I
would I mean, my therapist wouldnever say that, but that's it's like
that, Yeah, there's just somuch work you can do internally that changes
your situation. And then it's likeKaren, like your boss, like the

(19:07):
one who is really nice to youbut just didn't know how to manage right,
It's like you don't have to quitthem. You can just teach them
how to manage you, and thenthat boss becomes a good boss. Okay,
you gotta tell us, as we'rewrapping up here once again, where
do we get that information? Howdo we learn all of this information and

(19:29):
how do people get in touch withyou? Yeah, just go to how
to Deal boss dot com that willhave there's the free book there. If
you sign up for the program,you can get a fifty dollar discount with
the promo code art art and thenyou can also contact me there and I
do one on one coaching. Twoyou can send me an email. I

(19:53):
mean obviously I'm on LinkedIn, Instagramand TikTok as well. But yeah,
if you just go to how toDeal boss dot com you can find everything
there. And I feel badly,so badly right now, bad because I
didn't say your name a hundred timesand this is Rob Kalvarowski. Is that
right? And so absolutely this issomething that so many people probably need to

(20:19):
get to get their head around.One thing I want to ask you,
when you're talking about the people thatare like miserable with their with their bosses,
maybe not necessarily their jobs, dofind that they're older, younger or
is it really just doesn't matter.It doesn't matter. I mean the older
you are, the more likelihood you'vehad different types of bad bosses and you

(20:42):
can think about them and as you'relistening to this, right I do think
a lot of what I see innow, especially with my you know gen
X boomer clients, is they strugglewith managing gen z's And that's a whole
all their conversation that like the genzs and the younger folks that are coming

(21:07):
into the workforce now, they wantdifferent things and they're willing to leave to
go get it. Yeah, soyou can't just continue down this path of
like this work for me up tothis point, because those folks aren't going
to stick around. Yeah, Iknow, I mean this year, right,
It is an entirely different conversation thatwould take maybe five days, not

(21:30):
twenty minutes. But what do theywant? What does gen Z want?
I don't even know myself, andI have a couple of them as my
daughters, totally right, And theywant actually what most people want. They're
just more open and willing to talkabout it. And they're also more open
and willing to like actively go andsearch for it. And so what they

(21:52):
want is a focus on their strengths. They want to be developed, they
want to have purpose and meaning.They want like ongoing conversations about like how
their development is going and feedback andstrengths and like these types of eilpments and
they want a coach not a boss. Wow, that is so fantastic to

(22:15):
know that. That's incredible. Well, I'm going to tell you this has
been a great conversation. I hopeso much that people take the time so
that they don't have to go throughyears of misery in a job that they
thought they loved and somehow it turnedugly just because of the way that they're

(22:36):
managed, instead of figuring it outfor yourself and making it much better.
Rob, thank you so much fortalking to me today, and I hope
I get a chance to talk toyou again. Thank you so much for
having me, Karen and the folksout there right is You're not alone,
and come join the community at howto Deal boss dot com and we'll support

(22:56):
each other and getting out of thesebad boss workplaces absolutely. Thank you so
much. Rob,
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