Become The Leader

STAY INTERVIEWS: KEEP YOUR BEST PEOPLE BEFORE THEY DECIDE TO LEAVE

Become the Leader Podcast | Jody Holland & Meghan Slaughter

EPISODE SUMMARY

Why wait until employees resign to find out what went wrong?

In this episode, Jody Holland and Meghan Slaughter explore how stay interviews help leaders improve retention, strengthen workplace culture, and build trust before employees decide to leave.

Discover the questions that uncover what motivates employees, what makes them feel valued, and what might cause them to start looking for another job. Learn a practical approach to conducting stay interviews that creates meaningful conversations and stronger teams.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Stay interviews beat exit interviews. Learn what matters to employees before they decide to leave.

Money isn't always the real reason. Disrespect, poor management, lack of appreciation, and limited growth often trigger job searches.

Listen more than you talk. Aim for 80% listening and 20% thoughtful questioning.

Dig beneath the surface. Follow-up questions uncover the real reasons behind employee responses.

Make employees feel heard. Feedback builds trust when leaders listen and take meaningful action.

Discuss their future. Understanding employee aspirations creates opportunities for growth and retention.

Make it a habit. Conduct monthly one-on-ones and dedicate two conversations per year to stay interviews.

QUOTABLE MOMENTS

"Most people are not being recruited by another business. They are going and looking for another job, and there were some catalysts." — Jody Holland

"If I don't ask about your future, you might at some point go, is this it? Is this all there is?" — Jody Holland

"You serve your team just as much as your team serves you." — Meghan Slaughter

"The digging deeper gets you the real answer." — Jody Holland

FREE RESOURCE: STAY INTERVIEW GUIDE

Ready to start having conversations that improve retention?

Get our Stay Interview Guide, featuring practical questions and a proven conversation framework to help you conduct effective employee stay interviews in just 20–45 minutes.

GET THE STAY INTERVIEW GUIDE BY CLICKING HERE

Become the leader you would actually follow.

The Frightening Cost of Unclear Expectations

Become the Leader Podcast

Co-hosts: Jody Holland, Meghan Slaughter, Mike Grigsby, and Maleah Berens

Episode Summary

Unclear expectations can be one of the scariest problems in leadership. When employees receive conflicting instructions, lack proper training, or are expected to read their manager's mind, frustration grows, performance suffers, and great people leave.

In this Halloween-themed episode, Jody, Meghan, Mike, and Maleah share workplace horror stories and explore the hidden costs of poor communication. They discuss the curse of knowledge, the importance of managing expectations up, down, and across an organization, and practical strategies for creating clarity, accountability, and trust.

Key Takeaways

- Clarity is a leadership responsibility. Never assume employees understand expectations simply because instructions were given.
- Manage expectations in three directions. Effective leaders communicate clearly with their teams, their peers, and their own supervisors.
- Beware the curse of knowledge. What seems obvious to an experienced employee or manager may be completely unfamiliar to someone learning a new skill.
- Use the three questions of clarity. What do you want? When do you need it? How will you both know it was done correctly?
- Verify understanding and follow up. Ask employees to teach back instructions, provide regular feedback, and distinguish between a lack of skill and a lack of willingness.
- Make communication actionable. Clear processes, concise updates, and documented expectations eliminate confusion and increase accountability.

Quotable Moments

"You cannot expect what you do not inspect." — Meghan Slaughter

"The scariest thing about unclear expectations is that people can think that they're doing the right thing and feel like they're on the right path but still end up failing." — Maleah Berens

"Did I give the instruction the right way? Did I set the expectation correctly so that they knew how to behave?" — Mike Grigsby

"The quality of your communication is measured by the quality of the response that you get from others, not your intention." — Jody Holland

Final Takeaway

If your people don't understand what success looks like, don't be surprised when they fail to achieve it.

Great leaders don't expect mind readers. They create clarity, confirm understanding, and take ownership of their communication. The frightening truth is that many performance problems begin with expectations that were never clearly communicated.

Serve, Solve, and Thrive

In this episode of Become the Leader, Jody Holland is joined by Mike Grigsby, Meghan Slaughter, and Maleah Berens to explore how customer service shapes business success. Through stories from hospitality, retail, banking, healthcare, and public safety, the group shows how small moments of care can build loyalty—and how dismissive experiences can drive customers away.

Key takeaways

What you’ll hear

 Guest advice

Greet people warmly, see them as individuals, and take a moment to connect before moving into the transaction.

Ask more thoughtful questions that invite people to share something meaningful.

Treat customers as people with their own hopes and challenges, and recognize that they chose to do business with you.

Listen to feedback, examine the underlying issue, and start with leadership when improving customer service.

How to Retain Top Performers

Become the Leader Podcast

Why do great employees stay, and what finally pushes them to leave? Jody Holland joins Mike Grigsby, Meghan Slaughter, and Maleah Berens to explore the experiences that shape employee loyalty. Through personal stories and practical leadership insights, they examine why autonomy, appreciation, clear expectations, meaningful work, and opportunities to grow matter so much to high performers. They also discuss the hidden costs of overloading dependable employees, tolerating poor performance, and adding unnecessary workplace friction. The central message: keeping your best people requires leaders who coach, recognize, and develop them—not simply manage their output.

"Your job as a leader is to show the compass, not a map."

— Mike Grigsby

"Lead with humility and spend time intentionally learning what people's work is and not just what you're paying them to do."

— Maleah Berens

"You want to try to make sure that they get to do their area of brilliance, not just everything you can throw at them."

— Jody Holland

"Lead with intention and respect because you have to earn your position just as much as they do."

— Meghan Slaughter

"If you ever believe that you're done learning the skills of leadership, you are going backwards."

— Jody Holland

Top performers don't simply want more work—they want meaningful work, trust, recognition, and a future worth staying for. The best retention strategy starts with leaders who keep growing themselves and create the conditions for others to do their best work.

Explore leadership development resources at www.jodyholland.com.

EPISODE SUMMARY

Most annual plans fall apart quietly. Goals get set in January, and by November the team says it "ran out of time." Jody Holland and Meghan Slaughter explain why that happens and how a disciplined quarterly review fixes it. They cover breaking annual goals into quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily targets, putting facts before causes, scoring every quarter on two measures, and making progress visible so the whole team stays accountable.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

QUOTABLE MOMENTS

"We didn't run out of time. We just didn't have the right priorities." – Jody

"Without something measurable, you don't know if you're actually going to be successful." – Meghan

"Am I really committed to getting better results this next quarter? If the answer is no, then I like my excuses better." – Jody

"Celebrating our wins together gives us a reason to not let each other down." – Jody

RESOURCES MENTIONED

- The 12 Week Year by Brian P. Moran
- The Gap and The Gain by Dan Sullivan
- Good to Great and Great by Choice by Jim Collins
- Monday.com, Goodreads, and Fable
- Previous episode: The Habits for Success

CONNECT

Enjoyed the episode? Share it with a friend and leave a rating. Do you have an idea for a future show? Send it through the contact form at jodyholland.com.

Become The Leader You Would Follow.

Habits of Success

What if nearly half of what you do every day happens without you consciously thinking about it?

In this episode of Become The Leader, Jody Holland, Mike Grigsby, and Meghan Slaughter explore how habits shape our success, leadership, energy, and personal growth. Rather than relying on motivation or willpower, successful people intentionally build routines and systems that move them toward their goals.

Jody shares his personal Key Three—learn something, teach something, and create revenue—and explains how identifying a few repeatable behaviors can make progress far more automatic.

Key Takeaways

1. Your habits eventually become part of who you are.
The word *habit* is rooted in the idea of how you “hold yourself.” Repeated actions eventually become second nature and help shape identity.

2. Identify your Key Three.
Ask yourself: *What three things, if I consistently did them every day, would make success significantly more likely?

Jody’s business Key Three:
- Learn something.
- Teach something.
- Create revenue.

3. Forget the 21-day rule.
Habit formation varies significantly by individual and behavior. Research discussed in the episode suggests an average closer to 66 days rather than the commonly repeated 21-day claim.

4. Design your environment instead of depending on discipline.
Willpower is difficult to sustain. Build routines, cues, environments, and systems that naturally lead you toward the behaviors you want.

5. Turn goals into daily behaviors.
A goal tells you where you want to go. A habit determines whether you actually get there. Ask:

What habit would make this goal almost automatic?

Five Habits of Successful Leaders

Create clarity each morning.
Identify your top one to three priorities before allowing email, notifications, and other people’s priorities to take control of your day.

Protect your energy.
Sleep, movement, nutrition, and recovery aren't separate from leadership performance—they support it.

Write your goals and connect them to habits.
Don't simply identify what you want. Determine what you need to consistently do to achieve it.

Reflect and prepare.
Take time at the end of the day to evaluate what happened, learn from it, and prepare intentionally for tomorrow.

Grow deliberately.
Read. Learn. Attend training. Seek coaching. Participate in conversations that stretch your thinking. Growth rarely happens accidentally.

Quotable Moments

“ What are the three things that, if you did those things every day, your success would become automatic?”
— Jody Holland

“If I learn, teach, and bill for it, my success becomes automatic.”
— Jody Holland

“Doing something to grow every single day will set you up for success down the road.”
— Meghan Slaughter

“What habit makes the goal automatic?”
— Jody Holland

“The engine that drives your habit is your character.”
— Mike Grigsby

“Character is who you are when no one is watching. Habits are what happen when no one is applauding.”
— Mike Grigsby

“The public applause that's missing is actually substituted by fulfilling the promise you made to yourself.”
— Mike Grigsby

“Don't rely on willpower. Rely on habits and systems.”
— Jody Holland

The Leadership Challenge

Take a few minutes and identify your own Key Three.

What are three behaviors that, performed consistently, would dramatically improve your leadership, health, relationships, business, or personal success?

Then stop waiting to feel motivated.

Build those behaviors into your environment and your routine until success becomes less dependent on how you feel—and more dependent on the systems you have intentionally created.

Become the leader you would follow.

Change is inevitable—but leading it well is a choice.

In this episode of the Become The Leader Podcast, Jody Holland, Mike Grigsby, Meghan Slaughter, and Maleah Berens explore what actually happens when people experience change and what leaders can do to reduce resistance, create clarity, and build genuine commitment.

We discuss:

• Why people naturally move through shock, resistance, exploration, and commitment
• Why leaders often underestimate how much time employees need to process change
• The importance of clearly defining what success looks like
• Why communication must happen repeatedly—not just once
• How giving people input into the process increases ownership
• Why leaders should honor what worked in the past before introducing what comes next
• The difference between announcing change and actually leading change

Jody also breaks down his C.H.A.N.G.E. Model:

C – Clarify the Case
H – Honor the Ending
A – Align a Coalition
N – Navigate the Neutral Zone
G – Generate Quick Wins
E – Embed It Into the Culture

The key takeaway:
Don’t expect people to instantly arrive at a change you’ve had weeks or months to process. Give them time, clarity, conversation, and a meaningful role in moving forward.

Become the leader you would follow.

Why do some people at work instantly click while others clash?

In this episode of Become The Leader, Jody Holland, Mike Grigsby, and Meghan Slaughter explore how personality, temperament, and behavior shape workplace relationships, communication, leadership, and team performance.

They discuss tools like DISC, PXT Select, Myers-Briggs, and the Enneagram, while emphasizing that assessments should create better questions and greater self-awareness, not labels or excuses.

A central idea of the conversation is that we often do not dislike someone’s personality. We dislike the behaviors they express.

The team also explores why great leaders learn to adapt their communication, recognize when people are stretching outside their natural strengths, and avoid using personality as an excuse for poor behavior.

Key takeaways include:

Personality and behavior are not the same thing.

Self-awareness helps you become more adaptable.

Assessments should create conversations, not labels.

Different people require different communication approaches.

Personality should never excuse destructive behavior.

Curiosity is more productive than judgment.

Leadership begins with learning to lead yourself.

Mike summarizes the mindset with two powerful words: compassionate curiosity.

The better you understand yourself, the better equipped you become to understand, communicate with, and lead others.

Become the leader you would follow.

In this episode of Become the Leader, Jody Holland and Meghan Slaughter explore Patrick Lencioni’s Six Types of Working Genius and how understanding the way you naturally work can improve performance, teamwork, and job satisfaction.

They break down the six geniuses—Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement, and Tenacity—and explain the difference between your areas of genius, competency, and frustration.

Jody and Meghan also share their own Working Genius profiles and discuss how different strengths can either create conflict or become a powerful advantage when teams understand how each person contributes.

Key Takeaways

The episode also explores an important leadership question: Are people burning out because they are working too much or because they are spending too much time doing work that drains them?

Understanding how you and your team naturally approach work can create a shared language for collaboration, reduce unnecessary friction, and help people spend more time doing the work they were built to do.

Become the leader you would follow.

Hosts: Jody Holland, Mike Grigsby, Meghan Slaughter, and Maleah Berens

A vision should do more than hang on the wall.

It should give people a future worth pursuing.

In Episode 35 of the Become The Leader Podcast, Jody Holland, Mike Grigsby, Meghan Slaughter, and Maleah Berens explore what organizational vision really means, how it differs from mission, goals, and objectives, and why the strongest visions become something people genuinely want to be part of.

Mike introduces a simple way to distinguish the major elements of organizational direction:

Vision is the horizon.

Mission is the vehicle and route.

Goals are the waypoints.

Objectives and KPIs are the instruments that tell you whether you are moving.

The team then explores where powerful visions come from, why many are born out of problems leaders personally experienced, and why a vision ultimately has to become bigger than the founder.

The conversation moves beyond simply having a vision and asks the more important leadership question:

How do you lead a vision so effectively that other people begin to own it?

Organizations often use these terms interchangeably, but they serve very different purposes.

A vision describes the future you continually move toward.

A mission describes how you intend to pursue that future.

Goals establish meaningful milestones.

Objectives and KPIs measure whether you are actually making progress.

When these are confused, organizations can end up with tremendous activity but very little direction—or high levels of inspiration with very little accountability.

Being “number one in the market” might be a legitimate business goal, but it rarely gives employees or customers something emotionally meaningful to rally around.

A true vision answers larger questions:

Why does this matter?

What becomes possible if we succeed?

People usually do not wake up inspired by KPIs, efficiency ratios, or quarterly targets.

Those measures matter because they help the organization reach somewhere worth going.

Jody shares how his own leadership journey was shaped by repeatedly experiencing both exceptional and poor leadership.

Eventually, the frustration created a conviction:

Somebody needs to fix leadership.

Many meaningful businesses, nonprofits, and movements begin in a similar way.

Someone experiences a problem and decides:

Nobody else should have to experience this.

That pain creates a picture of a better future—and that picture can become the beginning of a compelling vision.

A founder may originate a vision, but the organization cannot remain dependent on that individual forever.

When the vision exists only inside one person's head, it requires that person to continually push it forward.

A sustainable vision becomes something other people understand, influence, believe in, and ultimately take ownership of.

The leader's responsibility is not merely to own the vision.

It is to lead the vision.

Vision describes where the organization is going.

Culture determines how people behave while they are getting there.

Culture shows up in:

how decisions are made,

how resources are allocated,

what behaviors are rewarded,

how people treat one another,

and how the organization responds when things become difficult.

A compelling destination without a healthy culture can make the journey miserable.

Strong leaders build both.

A powerful vision may never be completely “finished.”

That creates an important leadership challenge:

How do you keep people motivated while pursuing something that continually remains on the horizon?

One answer is to intentionally celebrate progress.

Recognizing small and large wins reminds people that movement is happening.

The organization may not have arrived yet, but people should regularly be able to look backward and recognize how far they have come.

Stories help transform an abstract vision into something people can experience emotionally.

Jody describes an effective way of thinking about organizational storytelling:

There is the world as it is and the world as it should be.

The vision describes the world as it should be.

The problems, obstacles, and injustices keeping people from that future become the enemies worth fighting.

The customer or person being served becomes the hero.

The organization becomes the guide helping them reach that better future.

Organizations can become trapped when they define themselves according to what they currently do instead of the problem they ultimately solve.

A railroad company that believes it is only in the railroad business can miss the evolution of transportation.

A company that understands the deeper purpose behind its existence can adapt technologies, strategies, and methods while continuing to pursue the same vision.

Vision creates direction without creating unnecessary rigidity.

Near the end of the episode, Jody introduces a simple framework leaders can use to articulate organizational vision.

Paint a picture of the world as it should be.

What becomes possible because your organization exists?

The vision must reach beyond revenue, growth, or organizational success.

What is worth fighting for?

Why does the work matter?

Clearly identify the people whose lives, organizations, communities, or futures you intend to improve.

What becomes different because they interacted with your organization?

What pain disappears?

What capability increases?

What possibility becomes available?

Transformation happens on both sides.

As your customers, employees, members, or community change, what kind of organization must you become in the process?

A simple starting point for articulating organizational vision is:

We exist to create ____________________ so that ____________________ can experience ____________________, and together we become ____________________.

This turns vision from a collection of corporate words into a meaningful statement about:

the future you are creating,
the people you serve,
the transformation you create,
and the organization you are becoming.

Vision should describe a future people genuinely want to pursue.

Mission explains how you pursue the vision.

Goals create milestones along the journey.

Objectives and KPIs measure progress.

Vision must eventually become bigger than its founder.

Employees need the opportunity to understand, influence, and own the vision.

Culture determines what the journey toward the vision feels like.

Celebrating wins maintains momentum during a long pursuit.

Storytelling helps people understand why the future matters.

Great visions focus on transformation rather than organizational ego.

The strongest organizations are simultaneously transforming the people they serve and becoming something greater themselves.

“Vision is the horizon.” — Mike Grigsby

“If your vision does not inspire your people and inspire your customers to want to be part of it, it's probably not a vision. It's a goal or an objective.” — Jody Holland

“Everybody deserves to work for a great boss and have a great workplace.” — Meghan Slaughter

“Make the vision bigger than yourself.” — Mike Grigsby

“We're talking about leading a vision, not owning the vision.” — Mike Grigsby

“Vision and culture are two sides of the same coin.” — Mike Grigsby

“The world as it should be is what we're chasing.” — Jody Holland

“You can be good and still go to great.” — Meghan Slaughter

“Be honest about who you are, be inspired by where you want to go, and build the kind of culture people don't want to get off the ride from.” — Jody Holland

Is our current vision truly inspirational, or is it actually a financial goal disguised as a vision?

Can our employees clearly explain where our organization is going?

What problem or frustration originally inspired our organization to exist?

What better future are we trying to create?

Who ultimately benefits if we succeed?

How should those people be different because we served them?

Does our culture reinforce the future we say we are pursuing?

Are we celebrating progress often enough for people to recognize momentum?

Would our vision survive if the founder or CEO disappeared tomorrow?

Who must we become as an organization in order to fulfill the vision?

Great leadership is not simply getting people to accomplish today's work.

It is helping people see a future they believe is worth building—and creating an environment where they can become something greater while building it.

When vision becomes shared, culture becomes aligned, and people understand how their work contributes to something meaningful, an organization can become more than a workplace.

It can become a movement.