Your Team Doesn't Suck, You Do: Jane Helbrecht (Transcript)

Read the full transcript of Jane Helbrecht’s talk titled “Your Team Doesn’t Suck, You Do” at TEDxWinnipeg 2025 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

The Blame Game in the Workforce

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but apparently nobody wants to work anymore. It’s those lazy millennials or those entitled Gen Zs that are the problem.

Although as a millennial, I do appreciate those Gen Zs for coming onto the scene and taking the heat off of us millennials, maybe it’s the quiet quitting that’s the problem.

There seems to be a little bit of a blame game happening in the workforce today. I’ve been working in the leadership development space, coaching and training leaders for the last decade. And before that, I was in human resources roles. And I’ve noticed that there is a little bit of blame happening when performance is low, when people aren’t delivering results. And leaders are often blaming outside factors, blaming other people. And often they’re blaming the very people that they lead.

And leaders don’t always reflect on the tone they set for their team. I’ve had leaders burst into my office and say things like, “That’s it, Dwight’s out of here. He’s gotta go. He’s not motivated. He doesn’t care.” And when I say, “Well, what happened when you brought these concerns to Dwight’s attention?” They say, “Well, we haven’t talked to Dwight about it.”

The Importance of Building Strong Working Relationships

People keep trying to hack leadership. They want to find a process, a flow chart, something to make it easier and make it more efficient. But great leaders focus on building strong working relationships. And working relationships, even really strong ones, aren’t meant to be efficient. They’re meant to be authentic.

Now, leadership, it’s not easy. And leaders are often stuck in the middle.

They’re stuck between all of the organizational expectations, expectations of the C-suite and expectations of employees. And employees have higher expectations of their leaders than they ever have before.

Leadership is one of those things that’s kind of simple in theory, difficult in practice. We know most of the things that we should be doing on a day-to-day basis as a leader in theory, but it’s really hard to do those things consistently. And part of the reason it’s so difficult is that leadership is kind of this constant, everyday ongoing practice that never ends. No one ever hits a point as a leader where they go, “Wow, I’m just a leader now. I just lead. I don’t even have to try. Leadership just manifests off my body.”

The Misconception About Leadership

There’s also a little bit of a disconnect in terms of what leadership is. I’ve had some leaders share with me that they really like being a leader, they like leading a team, they just don’t really like the HR side of things. And when I say, “Well, what do you mean by the HR side of things?” They say, “Well, you know, I don’t like dealing with performance concerns or low morale, you know, like all the people stuff.” And I’m always like, “That’s not HR. That’s what being a leader is about.”

And caring about people is a part of your job. Leaders don’t get to outsource caring to somebody else in the organization. I have had a few leaders come by my office with an employee in tow, and they’ll say something like, “Hey, this person’s going through kind of a tough time. Do you think you could, like, care about them for me?” Maybe they didn’t use those exact words, but that’s kind of what they meant.

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People don’t stay engaged because of the relationship they have with HR. Nobody’s ever like, “Wow, my boss is a total jerk, but that HR lady down the hall, wow, she’s such a delight. I’m going to stick it out here for her.”

The Engagement Dilemma

How engaged do you think most people are on day one of a new job? Pretty engaged, right? Yeah. Very few people show up on day one, I think, wanting to have an impact, contribute, meet expectations. Very few people show up on day one just trying to do the bare minimum. And so the question is, what happens between day one and day 90? Or between day one and day 365 that starts to cause people to lose engagement?

At the end of the day, leaders set the tone for their team. Gallup research shows that 70% of how people feel about their workplace is directly related to the relationship they have with their leaders.

A number of years ago now, Jim Collins shared kind of a tough message with leaders. He said, “We usually get the employees we deserve.” Now, we’ve all been in a situation where we hired somebody, and despite our best efforts, our coaching, our support, it wasn’t going to work out. It just wasn’t a fit. That happens from time to time. But I think when we see a pattern, when we see a high level of turnover on a team, when we see people start out highly engaged, and then that engagement starts to plummet, it often goes back to the leader.

The Challenge of Leadership

I shared this idea as a part of a talk I did a few years ago. And a supervisor that was in the talk put up his hand right away, and he said, “Wait, wait, wait, Jade. Nobody deserves what I have to deal with on my team. Nobody should have to deal with this.”

So I asked him a few questions, and it turns out he was in a tough spot. He led a team of delivery truck drivers, and his company was paying a few dollars less an hour than most of the competitors in the area. And the work they were asking of their drivers was more physically demanding than competitors as well. So it’s going to be hard to hold on to good people, right? And as a result, this guy has had a lot of turnover on his team, kind of a revolving door.

The interesting thing is, there’s another supervisor sitting right next to him, works for the same company, also leads a team of drivers, dealing with the exact same challenges, the exact same constraints. And this second supervisor has a team that stayed with him pretty long term.

What’s the difference? Well, the second supervisor has gotten a little bit more flexible about the way that he leads his team. He’s let his drivers have a little bit more say in their route. Maybe they can do an errand here and there during the day. Maybe when they really need to, they can start or end their day a little bit closer to home. He’s decided that he can forgo a little bit of day-to-day efficiency to overall be more efficient with a seasoned and committed team. He’s been flexible, he’s been responsive and people-focused, and it’s made a big difference.

The Organizational Role in Leadership Success

Now, it’s not all on individual leaders. Organizations also play a pretty important role in setting leaders up for success. And in some ways, I feel like we’re setting leaders up to fail. We’re asking leaders to lead their team often to ambitious goals when they’re understaffed, when their own well-being isn’t being cared for, and often when we’re asking leaders to still maintain a full individual contributor role while also leading a team of people.

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I’ve even seen organizations that have incentivized leaders more on the individual contributor tasks and duties they do than they do on the role as a leader. No wonder leadership is coming last.

Two Key Focus Areas for Leaders

I’d like to share with you two things that leaders can focus on to be more intentional in their role, and I’d like to share one thing that organizations can do to support them. Let’s start with leaders first.

First, leaders need to become relationship managers. They need to shed their identities as task managers and doers and focus more and more on building relationships with the people in their team. Many of the task management workflow things that leaders are responsible for will be automated over the coming years. The one thing we can’t automate, relationships.

This means that leaders need to become experts in learning to balance the performance and the well-being of their team. They can’t ask so much of performance that they sacrifice people’s well-being at work. They also can’t only focus on well-being and how people feel about being at work all the time without getting a certain base level of performance.

When I think about well-being, I often think of it on the Sunday scaries scale. Are folks familiar with the Sunday scaries? Anybody here ever experience the Sunday scaries? Yeah. So that’s that anxious or nervous feeling that people start to get on Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening about the fact that they have to go back to that awful place on Monday morning. Maybe it’s a place where they don’t know what’s expected of them, don’t know how to succeed in their role. Maybe they’ll run into a toxic coworker or worse, a toxic leader.

The young people that are entering the workforce today expect organizations to prioritize their well-being. They want to work places that are flexible, and they want to work places that let them plan their work around their life instead of planning their life around their work. When we think about the future of work, organizations will be measured based on their level of well-being. And corporate results and performance that come at the expense of people’s well-being won’t be seen as a win.

Number two, leaders need to make time to lead. I put time in my calendar for every other major deliverable and objective that I have on my plate. I set time aside to work on various projects. I set time aside to work on building an important talk that I’m going to be delivering. But how many of us set time aside on a regular basis to think about how we’re leading, to think about the team dynamics, to think about how we’re building engagement, how we’re driving results? How many of us set time aside intentionally, not just once a year at performance assessment time to think about our people, but all year round?

Because here’s the thing. People leadership isn’t something you do off the side of your desk just when you have time, when there’s a fire, when there’s an emergency. If you are a leader of people, this is your job. So I actually encourage leaders, when I’m training them, to start putting time aside in their calendars, 30 minutes, once a week, as a recurring meeting, time that is just for them, where they can take a minute and think, how am I leading? What’s working with the team right now? What’s not working? Am I showing up for my team in the way that I need to? Who on the team is doing great, and how am I going to recognize that? Who on the team is struggling? What’s my next move there? What tough conversation have I been putting off?

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You know how we tell entrepreneurs not just to work in the business, but take time to work on the business? I think we need to tell leaders to not just work in the team, but take time to intentionally work on the team.

How Organizations Can Support Leaders

Now, how can organizations support leaders? Well, I think organizations need to give leaders time to lead, and they need to make taking that time an expectation of the role. Leader well-being has been decreasing over the last few years in many industries, with many leaders experiencing their own levels of burnout, and I know that I find myself coaching far too many leaders who feel they don’t really have the time, the resources, or the direction to have an impact in their role as a leader.

And leaders are kind of the glue holding the culture of your organization together. They’re the ones that are driving performance, but they’re also the ones that are making individual employees feel seen, heard, and valued day in and day out. Let’s give them time and resources to do that. I believe that when the C-suite puts leaders first, leaders can put their people first and set them up for success. And then the people on your team can focus on the work that they have in front of them. They can focus on getting stuff done and hopefully having some fun while they do it.

Conclusion

I don’t believe that nobody wants to work anymore. I do believe that people want to work differently, and I do believe that it’s easier to blame others and outside factors when performance is low. Bottom line is, you can’t fix or change other people. You can only fix or change yourself. As a leader, it always starts with you, how you interact with the team, how you build relationships, how you set expectations.

And how would it feel to have a team that is highly engaged, that is high-performing, that’s aligned, that’s enjoying the work that they’re doing? If you want to reach your people goals and your team goals, you have to work at it. If you want to motivate your team, if you want to engage your team, it starts with you. So I encourage you, look in the mirror.

Your Team Doesn’t Suck, You Do: Jane Helbrecht (Transcript)