Robert Gardner: Well firstly, Felicia, thanks for having me on your podcast. If I think about my leadership roles, it probably started when I co-founded Redington, which was the first company I started 18 years ago. Obviously, you start out as co founders, but I mean that business today, I don't work there, but that business today has got over 200 employees. And so I was co-CEO of that business. And then in 2009, we co-founded another business called MallowStreet, and I remain a non-executive director on that board. I also founded a charity redSTART for financial education, which is now one of the largest providers of financial education to primary schools in the UK, and I'm a trustee and we have a full time CEO and in place, and we should come back to that, because it's fascinating how you build and grow something where you don't pay people, you don't have bonuses, and how do you motivate people to do stuff outside of traditional incentives?
And then I was on the executive board of St. James's Place, which is the largest wealth manager in the UK. And I was basically in charge of investing all of the money on behalf of our clients. So we had almost a million clients at about 150 billion pounds. And I had a team of people reporting into me of about 450 people, and I'm now back in startup life. I left that job and I've just started a new business. And I'm now back to me, my co-founder, I've got my personal assistant, and we've got one other colleague. So we're now back to four people, so leadership is more about convincing the outside world that we've got a good idea.
Leadership goes in phases, depending on where the company is at. Gotch-you.
Robert Gardner: Seasons.
Felicia Shakiba: Right, seasons. Haha. I love that you mentioned that because I feel like a lot of people talk about leadership as a general term, but there's leadership for different parts and different pieces, so many variations you've shared already.
Robert Gardner: (03:05): I'm gonna say it's cheesy, but I'm also a dad. And I think parenting me and my wife, ultimately, are leaders to our children. I think any parent is really providing a leadership role for their kids. So I think it's important to call that out as well.
Felicia Shakiba: I would never disagree with you on that. Never.
I think that there's a lot of similarities when people become parents, and then they look at the way they talk to their colleagues and so forth. But another episode, right?
Robert Gardner: The parallels of parenting and leadership.
Felicia Shakiba: Absolutely. That's a great one, I have to follow up with that one.
Today is about toxic talent, identifying learning more about them, what did they look like and so forth. So given your extensive experience and leadership, which we've already clearly outlined, what are some signs that someone has become a toxic talent? What does that term toxic talent mean to you?
Robert Gardner (03:59): Yeah, I think I first came across the term, probably about 10 years ago. And I think the way you experienced it is when you have an individual normally, who is extremely competent in their role, let's say they're a sales role and they're very good at winning new clients, bringing in new business, selling your product or service. And the risk is, A you live in fear of them leaving because of that the impact that they might have, but at the same time, these people are normally extremely good at managing up.
But you start to get a sense that the people around them don't like that person. And it's more than just jealousy about their capability. And we talked about seasons of a business, and I think there's- you become of a size and scale where the performance of the team is more important than the individual. And once you recognize that it doesn't matter how good someone is, whether they're an exceptional coder, whether they're an exceptional COO or lawyer, or an outstanding salesperson. If ultimately the behaviors of that person are undermining the performance of that the team, then that's toxic talent. Well, that's how I would find it.
What are those behaviors, what's maybe one or two examples that you could share of someone behaving in a way that identifies them as toxic?
Robert Gardner: I think the world's changed it. I've got almost 25 years now of working career. And I started in investment banking, I started on the trading floors of London, which probably not a million miles away from the trading floors of Wall Street in the late 1990s and early 2000s. There, it was common to just scream and shout at people, and literally have that hairdryer treatment. I just don't, that just doesn't happen. I think there's stuff now that has become just unacceptable on every level, but I think it's a treatment of colleagues that is belittling, that is not respectful, that is undermining, it might be political, especially if that individual has maybe more influence than others with their boss, or the leadership team.
And all of that ultimately creates resentment with that individual team and colleague. And yeah, and the danger is good people leave or good people just pull back and say, I can't be asked with this, and they're not gonna give all of their effort, because they think that individual's just gonna take the credit anyway. So it can manifest itself in many different ways. But effectively, they're undermining the health of the team. But the power that they have, is if you become overly dependent on that person. And also you don't have the mechanisms to call it out in doing so.
I liked your Wall Street reference, do you mean that the Wolf of Wall Street movie is not real? Or it shouldn't be?
Robert Gardner (06:44): No, no, I mean, if I look back to some of the behaviors, and some of the characters that I worked with, in the late 90s, and early 2000s, met some really unbelievable behaviors that are thankfully just completely unacceptable today, but were acceptable then, I mean, I was openly described as lower than whale shit at the bottom of the ocean. So I mean, it's pretty clear where you are, you've got sea level, you've got the bottom of the ocean, and then we've got whale shit, and then that is where I am. And I used to have a boss who used to call up at like nine o'clock at night, and he'd be like, 'Baba, baba, where is six month, Euro-Swissy vol(atility) or dollar- yen vol(atility)?' and if I didn't know it like that, he'd scream and shout at me.
At the same time, though, he paid me extremely well, he promoted me. When the big global boss would walk over, he'd be like, come on over, you've got to meet Bobo is the star. So it's a bit like a psychotic parent in some kind of Netflix/Amazon Prime movie, where they're overly generous and overly punishing, I would say that was the management style. And then within the trading floor environment, we're all these different fiefdoms between the different desks and it was like Game of Thrones. You'd walk around when -and as a young graduate, who was wet behind the ears and a bit naive. Now looking back, I'm amazed I survived. I mean, just as another little anecdote, a lot of finance uses Excel and excel modeling. And if you were caught using a mouse, if you didn't know all the shortcuts from Excel again, that was like
Felicia Shakiba: You're out of here.
Robert Gardner: Yeah, you're out of here. What are you doing? So that's a different era, thankfully, those behaviors have have changed and no longer acceptable.
Felicia Shakiba: You were golden, handcuffed, sounds like.
Robert Gardner (08:27): Yeah, at the same time, it was exciting. And I learned a hell of a lot. And there were some also some amazing people. And, and we did some great works. It wasn't all bad, like everything in life, it's a full pallet of experiences.
Let's say a leader determines that a team member is not toxic, per se, but can still have a negative impact on the team. What does a scenario like that look like?
Robert Gardner: Again, lots of people like to use that nine box grid for assigning their team. And just to explain what that is, if you imagine on one axis, you've got potential rather than the other, you've got performance, and you divide that into low, medium, and high. So you've got high performance, high potential, those are your Vonda, kids who are coming through and you want to promote them and grow them and invest in them. Clearly, the people on the bottom left, you need to move out. But it's there's people in the middle. And I think what happens is sometimes you over promote things.
I think my lesson is there are people who are okay at one level, and then you over promote them. And by over promote them, I mean, just literally up one level and they're out of their depth. And that's a nightmare, because often that person might have been there a long time is likable, people like them.
But all of a sudden, you have promoted them and therefore the performance you demand of that person is greater than before, and they don't have the growth mindset or the ability to move. They don't have the negative behavioral characteristics that go against your company values or that accept. So you can't really let them go on that basis. But then the real danger is if you have someone who's top right hand corner, high performance, high potential, who is working for that person, and the danger with companies, especially if they're not fast growing companies, when the growth rate slows down, is you basically end up with that man shoes. And so that person underneath is like, I'm looking for someone who I don't really respect. And then if you're the overall boss of that team, so I'm just -a team of many layers, like, what do you do?
Felicia Shakiba: Yeah, happens all the time.
Robert Gardner: That person who promoted has probably been there, like 10-15 years is loyal. So really interesting thing to double click onto his loyalty and how important is loyalty? What is someone's expectations? I don't like it when people describe their company, team as a family. I think that's a really unhelpful way of describing things. But again, it's about context. I think, unless you set the context that this is going to be a high performance team, and you define what a high performance team is, in the same way that you need to define what your values are in order to be able to ultimately exit or coach, and if you can't coach them makes it toxic talent. If you don't have that, what does it mean to be high performance? How do you rate it, someone who is not so badly underperforming, so they're not in the bottom left, but they're in the bottom left of that middle grid, it's a real nightmare. In the UK, it's a lot harder to get rid of people in than in the US.
So one of the things that I've really learned is to spend a huge amount of time, upfront, I mean, I really like the Salesforce V2MOM's - so the Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, Measurements, but there are different versions of that. But ultimately setting a job description, and a V2MOM for everyone cascading down. And then setting very clearly what the purpose and values of your team are. And at least twice a year doing a proper performance review.
And too often, I had a role where I had a boss, and their idea of a performance review was a one hour walk with you. And I remember telling them so this isn't good enough. You've given me feedback based on anecdotal stuff. This is working in financial services you carry under the UK what's called SMCR risk. So I carry material financial risk, because I'm managing people's money, I'm managing- if things go wrong, and extremists, I could go to prison. You have to take care and attention. I used to prepare 90 minutes for a one hour performance review with a member of my team. I used to collect 360 feedback against our values and our criteria.
Felicia Shakiba: Love it.
Robert Gardner: By the way, I'm going to ask Felicia, what do you think of me and what you think of x, y, and Zed, so it's a full 360. So you've created that open, and so you all know you're doing it. I get you to self rate where you are on the framework, and then I would rate you, and play it back. But I think the challenge is you cannot exit someone or you can't performance coach someone unless you have that sort of data. And unless you put that framework in place, I think too often, performance appraisals are just taken lightly. And it's like, Oh, my goodness, we got to do the performance appraisal, let's go and grab a coffee. Let's have a chat. It's very based on the last two weeks. There's no real sort of data or 360 basis to it.
Felicia Shakiba: Recently bias.
Robert Gardner (13:19): Yeah, recently bias. Again, I'd have all of my leadership team we'd all have done for Hogan profiles. So I know who my Hogan opposite is. So who are the people? Who are almost my kryptonite? And who are my kryptonite to? And then again, how do you need to overcome that? But I think the most valuable lesson I've learned over the last five years is the importance of setting up front the context of how are we going to be as a team, what are our norms and behaviors and set a vision for what we do? And then hold ourselves accountable, and then really invest the time and effort as a team during those performance reviews, whatever you want to describe them at least twice a year, being really clear and being able to say, look, Felicia, this is what we discussed last six months this, is what you're doing.
This is what you said you're going to do six months ago, where are we? If things are changed, that's okay, but give me a good reason. Or we need to understand why. Understand the feedback from colleagues. And I want to see, again, it goes back to what you define. But for me, personal growth is extremely important. And having set that context, I want to know what sort of personal growth you've done, invested in yourself. Most companies have quite big learning and development budgets. And people never really make use of those things.
Felicia Shakiba: I think -and that's like the meat and potatoes. I always think of performance as that's just the starting point. That's the assessment.
You don't actually do anything in your performance review. That's just telling- that's knowledge that you have, so you can do something, right? And then the succession planning is like, where are you going? L&D is the, like I said the meeting and potatoes, and it's what you actually do. But without those three things -like those three compartments, it's, I don't really don't know what companies do. But just to stay on track, because you talked a lot about feedback and how important this is, especially in an interview, when you're giving feedback to someone who's might be toxic, what does that look like for you?
Robert Gardner (15:23): Well, I think the first thing is you need to again, I remember, I think it was probably 2016 when I first came across the book, radical candor and this idea of radical candor, which again, is a two by two matrix around really giving constructive feedback, and how do you do it? So on one axis is do you care or not care? And then the other axis is how will you do it? I think another lesson that I learned is not everyone's like me, it's obvious to say that, but I think too often, it's easy to just see the world through your own eyes and your own ears.
And I'm naturally very tough skin. I grew up my parents sent me to boarding school, I was highly independent. I started my career in the city in London at a time where it was pretty much sink or swim, I was fine. I swam, and I was fine. But that's for everyone. And so you assume people take it with that. I never got upset about the stuff that was said about me. But you can see that in a different person they might receive it very differently. If on top of that you layer into you, you work for a very hierarchical organization, all of a sudden, any feedback that you give, I think I'm giving you some feedback, Felicia, I think I'm saying it -well let's say a five out of 10 level of impact, but because I'm the big MD, the big boss, you feel like it's like a sledgehammer, like nine out of 10.
Felicia Shakiba: I couldn't agree more with you. I can feel a jammer.
Robert Gardner: Yeah, it took me a long time to figure out that the person on the receiving end is like you just don't get it's just like, you've just suddenly like bam, I'm like, Well, I was just telling them... Look, Felicia, like when you did that Excel model, it just wasn't good enough. And here's this, this and this. And I just know I'm not being rude. But I've just dismantled that person. I know you have it in the UK in the US. But in the UK, we have the shows like Strictly Come Dancing, and we have cookery ones, where you have the judges, people go on and dance. And people give an eight and nine out of 10 and give feedback or like Simon Cowell in Britain's Got Talent. And I know you've got US Has Got Talent. The reality is always have two or three judges who are a bit generous and all the rest. And then you've got one judge who's like quite tough, Simon. But ultimately everyone wants their feedback. So it's how to calibrate it. Clearly, this is not a TV show, or or anything else.
And so I think I've had to learn how to understand different personality profiles, some people who I can be really direct with, and know that they'll receive it on the same if I'm giving them a six out of 10 feedback, they're receiving a six out of 10. Or I need to be more self aware and go find giving a six out of 10, that person is probably going to feel it like a nine out of 10. And I need to dial that down.
I think the second thing is not doing when you're rushed, or stressed.
Again, it's back to your personality type because on my personality is fiery red on an insights profile. So to someone who's a yellow or a blue type personality, so not blue, but a yellow or a green. Again, that's going to be forceful. I know there are lots of different models, Hogan insights, but being mindful of that, but I do think the job of leadership is to hold people to account because ultimately a leaders job is to set the vision and direction of where we're going is to set the milestones, the KPIs the objectives to achieve build the best team, and then get that team to deliver. And ultimately, by the way, if the team doesn't deliver is the leaders fault. And if the leader doesn't upgrade and replace the team, either through training or coaching, or it's the leaders fault.
So you can't sit there 12 months later and go, 'Well, we didn't achieve that because that person's rubbish,' and go well, at what point did you see that person was rubbish and why didn't you do anything? Once we've got through the calibration? And I think this goes back to why you have to write down and define what are objectives, what are goals? What are we trying to achieve? And be clear and say, 'Look, Felicia, this is what we agreed', be better at using I feel when this is what happened. Can you explain to me before just jumping to I'm gonna jump down your throat and be like, you've not done this. You've not done this and you've not done this to be three months ago, we said you and your team, we're going to deliver this. We haven't delivered this. We've slipped, we're over budget. I feel that you've mismanaged me we have our weekly team meetings. You haven't really told me just I'm feeling disappointed. Can you walk me through how we got here?
Felicia Shakiba: Yeah, absolutely. The context is so important, right? It's just giving people the benefit of the doubt. And they think that once you have all have that context and someone's still underperforming, then you have some reason you have even just the ability to say, 'Hey, let's figure out how we can do that differently the next time or better than next time, right?' And then I think after that person maybe doesn't improve.
I guess the other question, too is, when do you decide that toxic talent needs to go? Are you giving that radical candor for a year until they finally do something? Is you have a window? Is it situational? Like when do you pull the plug? Especially when a business is very highly dependent on someone, for example, I once was working with a company whose top talent top sellers, right, who probably held a quarter or half of the company's clients in their hand. And they said this seller was literally going around talking to whoever however she wanted to. And they kept her. And of course, everything crumbled after, but when is the right time to let go? And what does that look like?
Robert Gardner (21:00): Look, I think the reality is in the UK, once someone's worked for over two years, the minimum is a 12 month period. So you've got to be on it. And I think this is where people are sloppy, and you need to start the performance appraisal, you then need to put someone where you have a three month window, but you're managing it the whole way. And I think if you have toxic talent, and it's undermining the team, at least the team can see that you're on it, people need to know as a boss, that you are aware of the situation, and that you are managing it, and it's fair. It might be different in the US, but just the league to avoid being sued for unfair dismissal or anything else. And I think this is where what's changed in the last 2025 years is much more being clear on job descriptions on roles, but job descriptions not just being about tasks and functionality, but about values and behaviors and making sure - actually it's how you pay and promote people.
So I think we're I got called out, so early in my career when I was co-CEO at Redington is where use pay and promote some and people, and you go, 'Well, why did they get promoted? And you're like, well, they're the best salesperson,' and then under their breadth are like, 'Yeah, but they were a dick'. And you're like, 'Well, what do you mean by that? And then you go off, and they're like, they just don't want to tell you that there's something on you've got to explore that. So I think a you need to go back to your pay and promotion cycle to make sure that you're not promoting that toxic talent through. You can feed back to people who are demonstrating elements of toxicity and say that, 'Felicia, your bonus should have been 75 out of 100. But actually, you knocked the ball out, like you're 90 on performance. But on value like this is how your colleagues and all the rest score you against our own team values that we've all signed up to. And therefore that's why I'm giving you a bonus of 75.' So and you're like, Yeah, hit all my targets on the best salesperson. Well, that's that. I think the second thing is being comfortable that no one is indispensable that if you are dependent on someone, then that's a failure of your strategy.
So I have a very simple heuristic that I do every week, where I write down all my problems, and I put it into, 'Is it a people problem, a strategy problem, an execution problem, or a funding problem?' And every issue is normally related. But I think if you have a people person issue, toxic talent, can't afford to get rid of them, then you've got a strategy problem, then you need to work on finding a way to not let that person have so much control or influence over either the execution of your software that you're trying to deliver or the revenue that you need to hit to deliver that quarter or that year.
So once you have that, that gives you the freedom and it's like a game of chess, that's why I think it does take you 12 months, because you're like, Well, if I want to get rid of that person, I need to hire that or I need to move these two people to compensate for the loss of revenue, or impact my finances to do this. And I do think leadership is like a Rubik's cube, it's this multi dimensional problem. And again, I think that's quite often why people get when they get promoted, they're just not very good at that multi dimensional problem. They might be very good at their task or function or selling or producing, coding or producing legal, whatever it is. But the moment you've got to go into this a 3D chess and I've got a team and someone's not performing and I want to move them out, but I don't have enough money. I need to hire them. When I hire them what position that's not something you can just figure out on a coffee on the tube on the way to work that requires beginning with the end in mind and going okay, what being really clear about what your problem is.
But I think radical candor isn't just about giving feedback. It's about like feedback on yourself. It's having that mirror and go, How have I gotten myself in the situation where I'm so dependent on this person? What am I dependent on? And working backwards from that? There are always constraints. As I say, budget constraints, delivery constraints, if I lose that person, I'm not going to be able to deliver that on time, how do I unwind and get out of this situation?
And I think you need to be practicing that almost every week, every weekend, use the opportunity when you're not working. And you can just let your brain catch up and sleep on things. I always just box everything into those four quadrants, people strategy, execution and funding, sleep on it. And then you can normally get clear what the problem is.
I'm lucky that I get to mentor or coach a few companies that I invest in. And I can see that they get stuck because they aren't able to deal with that. And they're like, Yeah, but you don't understand, it's so easy to see that they've got a people problem, you've just got to get rid of your CTO. But it's like, I can't get rid of my CTO, you don't understand...
I can't just fire my tech leader. It doesn't work on a dime like that, right?
Robert Gardner: I think the other lesson is that people problems only compound and get worse. So the moment you want those people issues, I think start working on them. As I say, I just take the view that it takes at least 12 months to sort things out. I'm also not a lawyer. So I think you also need to know when to bring in HR or legal support. If you're working in a large company, there should be good people in HR that you could work with and understand what you can and can't do. And then becomes incredibly complex, because you might have older people increasingly now post COVID, many people pull the mental health card that suddenly in the UK gives them protected status. You might have an employee that I joined a team where no one had never been a redundancy round in 30 years. And I started my career, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch, where the bottom 5% cleared out every year.
Felicia Shakiba: The bell curve.
Robert Gardner (26:42): Yeah, if I'm honest, I sit more at that end, not saying that you just have to, but I think you do need to be clear on holding people at the bottom to account and moving them on. That doesn't necessarily mean you need to let go off 5%. But I think you need to have that discipline and be like, who is not making the boat go faster? Who's slowing them down? And are we actively managing them? Too many organizations don't want to have these difficult conversations- don't want to actively manage people. You end up with a whole load of well paid overly promoted people.
And when you ask, 'Oh well we need people that are...' and, 'You can't like, they've been here for 15-16 years, you go,' yet, but that was back in the day, I need them to do this job today going forward. And when I looked at my people budget, they're like a significant part of my people budget, I can hire three people for the price of that one person, and they're not performing at the level of those three people. So I understand being loyal. But we're not paying people for past performance. So that's not toxic talent. But you do end up with a lot of what I call coasters. And I think it's interesting when you work in a small firm, there's no place to hide. Even in the Merrill Lynch isn't in the Deutsche Bank, you realize that some people are really quite sneaky at being able to get away with quite mediocre for a long period of time and not being called out and paid quite a lot of money to not add a lot of value.
Felicia Shakiba: (28:00): And to be fair, I think that a lot of company cultures are really looking at the people who make a lot of noise as the ones to exit the business. And so people are culturally inclined to coast because of the culture that the leaders provide for the business. It's like if you speak up, or if you cause too much angst or anxiety it's not good and we're gonna just promote the one that's coasting, because they don't talk up against you or whatnot.
But I think that the cultures that I think are actually quite healthy are the ones that allow that like, healthy debate, right? And encourage the healthy debate, especially at the top that allows for diversity and innovation. But I think some leaders for sure, and I've seen it, and I've witnessed it as you speak up too much it's the problem. And so I think that a lot of what we've been talking about today, around toxic talent, what people can get away with, the coasters, how you set up your performance appraisal, and so forth, that is really driven by the culture that leaders present in the first place? So I think having that at the top is really important and that trickles down to all of the things that we've been talking about. But again, it's a preventative, right, preventative measure too.
Robert Gardner (29:24): Look, I think for me, the key to business, full stop is trust. I think as a leader, you have to build trust with your leadership team and trust is it's okay to disagree. But you have to invest time in that. It's not just that meetings I used to with my leadership team go away once a month, we go away for one day, but it will be an evening, and we do all of our work there. But I deliberately didn't want it to be in the office. We try and go somewhere different. We'd all go out for dinner and drinks or not everyone's drunk but we'd spend social time together, and then once a quarter we'd normally do a two day one. And I think really investing in that, because that's what fills up that the trust battery, the trust to have the conversation to disagree and go, I just don't see that I just don't think we can deliver that in that time. Let's talk about people on your team, let's talk about when we're going to do promotions, if Felicia, you've got your team to promote, I've got my team, let's have an honest conversation and go, 'Well, I know you think so and so is great, but actually, I think you've got a bit of a blind spot for that person.' I think actually, when we think about our values, tell me, when, as a leadership team, we start to discuss each other's promotions, and bonuses in a very open way, rather than a hub and spoke where you might be the leader.
And I say, okay, you've got your pot and your team that walk me through it, and run it on spokes, rather than let's all get in together, let's take a day, and we're gonna go through all of our promotions from the most junior people all the way through, and we're going to really do it properly. And you might go, Well, that's a waste of time to do that. But actually, as much of it is about building that ability to challenge each other, and then also be challenged by your colleagues, and expect to have to justify things is actually all of us will have soft spots for individual members of our team, which others will, it will either be really obvious or maybe it's just a little bit, but that's healthy to call out. But I think that the performance of teams falls over when the trust goes.
So I think the number one job of leadership is trust. I think the other thing is you're not there to be friends, and being comfortable when you're the boss.
And I think this is why people struggle when they're promoted, because they're so used to being friends with their colleagues, going for drinks, maybe playing sport, maybe being in a band, whatever people do to suddenly when you're in a leadership position that changes, you do have to make the tough calls. And if you're not performing, I need to switch you out. And that's very hard if you're good friends outside of work, if you and your families hang out, if you do stuff with the kids. And I was in finding your own company at the beginning. I think that is the danger you form friendships. I was very deliberate when I took my last big executive job of like, I'm not here to build friendships. Now, actually, it turns out there having left there, I built some good friendships. But I deliberately sort of wanted to keep that line. Again, it doesn't mean you can't have fun, but you need to be really clear on that line.
Because at the end of the day, as the leader, I'm accountable to deliver a whole lot of stuff in order to do that my most important asset is my human capital. And in order to do that, I need to get that team to perform as well as it can. And it's hard to do that objectively, if you're overly friendly with people because I think it clouds your judgment.
Felicia Shakiba: Absolutely, yes. Everything that you've shared today. I loved that the perspective on everything that you've shared today, and I think it was super authentic. So Rob, I love that you have been on this episode on CPO PLAYBOOK. This has been such a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. And I'm excited for the next episode, right?
Robert Gardner: Yeah, life lessons in parenting and leading so we'll put that in for next year.
Felicia Shakiba: That's Rob Gardner, co-founder and CEO at Rebalance Earth based in London.
