IDD Leader

You can’t pay people to stay. You also can’t write them up into caring.

So how does one IDD agency keep its direct support staff year after year, with wages above its competitors and health insurance costs held steady for over a decade?

Nick, Susan, and Jessie of Core Services didn’t start with a raise. They started by flipping the org chart: the people on the front line matter more than the office. Then they backed it up with a shadowing program, new promotional roles, a night-shift support role, and a habit of looking at data they didn’t always want to see.

If you lead an IDD organization and you’re tired of watching good people walk out the door, this conversation shows what it looks like when retention is a leadership decision instead of a hiring problem. You’ll hear where they invested, what they learned the hard way, and the one move they’d tell any executive to make first.

Learn more about Core Services: https://www.coreservicestn.com/

Free resource: 7 Warning Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Staff: https://iddleader.com/burnout

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 "You can't pay"
01:39 The annual report and the key decisions behind it
02:25 Why DSPs matter more than the office
03:37 You can’t pay people to stay
04:36 Wages, and insurance costs absorbed for over a decade
05:35 The internship and shadowing program
06:33 The remote support specialist role
08:33 The data they didn’t want to see: “All the time”
10:06 Where they want to be in five years
14:41 Change before you have to
15:50 Push decisions to the front line
18:01 Humor and the office puppy
21:10 “I never said we were functional”
25:11 The one move to make

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Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout

Imagine telling your board you're about $150,000 in the red this year, and that you chose it. That's the call Susan Arwood made as the new executive director of a Tennessee agency in turmoil, when she put her staff through intensive person-centered training. She bets it paid for itself ten times over.

Susan, now with NADSP, joins Core Services' current leaders, Nick Filarelli and Jessie Dunn, to tell the story of how a small agency went from a place where staff weren't allowed in parts of the office to a model for the field.

You'll hear what she found when she walked in, why she invited her loudest critics to the table, and the other bets they made along the way: pay raises that could have blown the budget and a technology pilot that lost about $40,000 a year. You'll also hear the change Susan says she would make faster if she could do it over.

If you're weighing an investment in your people that looks expensive today, this one is for you.

Learn more about Core Services: https://www.coreservicestn.com/
Free resource: 7 Warning Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Staff: iddleader.com/burnout

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – The board's reaction to a very big deficit year
03:24 – The handoff Susan counts among her biggest successes
04:44 – What Susan found when she took over
06:45 – The workshop most people attended, and the pushback to closing it
08:47 – Why they chose better over bigger
12:08 – Why Core turns some families away
16:46 – The training bet that put them $150k in the red
18:07 – The pay raises that could have blown the budget
18:44 – The independent-living pilot that lost $40,000 a year
21:58 – Inviting the loudest critics to the table
24:13 – The rule that kept staff out of parts of the office
26:35 – Susan planned to watch quietly. She didn't.
32:06 – What Susan would do differently
33:21 – This week's action move


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Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout

You thank your team constantly. You write the cards, send the texts, say the words out loud. Then someone above you calls and says morale on that team seems low.

That's the exact moment Melanie Bazile describes in this conversation. She leads innovation and expansion at Compass, a provider with more than 1,000 employees. Her own appreciation was sincere, frequent, and not landing, because it was the kind she likes to receive rather than the kind her team did.

You'll hear how Compass figured out what her team actually wanted, and why they now expect every supervisor to know each direct report's primary language of appreciation. You'll also hear the difference between having a person-centered plan and thinking in a person-centered way (including a budget decision where the executive team's pay was cut before any service was touched), and the growth mistake Melanie sees most often in smaller providers: waiting to hire until you're already in pain.

If your recognition efforts are sincere and morale still isn't moving, this one is for you.

LEARN MORE
Melanie Bazile on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanie-bazile-bb3073163/
Compass: https://www.compasscares.com/
Compass on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/compass-llc/posts/?feedView=all
Melanie's podcast, A Side of Hope: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-side-of-hope/id1763108245

FREE RESOURCE
7 Warning Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Staff: https://iddleader.com/burnout

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – "I'm telling them thank you all the time. It's not possible."
01:23 – Why Compass tracks turnover but leans into retention
04:00 – The interim manager job where the thank-yous weren't landing
05:02 – What her team actually wanted instead
07:08 – Could your supervisors name each person's language?
08:30 – The four languages of workplace appreciation
12:31 – Person-centered paperwork vs. person-centered thinking
14:20 – The first cuts came from the executive team
17:50 – The growth mistake that starts in pain
19:09 – When "the way we've always done it" quietly stops working
23:37 – The spreadsheet that took twenty minutes instead of weeks
24:59 – Two organizations that shared one recruiter
26:29 – Why leaders avoid discomfort
28:45 – What's giving her hope right now

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Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout

Somewhere on your team right now, there's someone with real potential and no real path — and no one's ever asked them what they actually want out of their career, let alone their life.

Melanie Bazile is Director of Innovation and Expansion at Compass, a 1,000+ employee organization that's built an entire culture around a simple, almost uncomfortable question: what are you dreaming about? Not your five-year plan. Your actual dreams — the ones that have nothing to do with your job title.

In this conversation, you'll hear why Compass hires slowly but fires fast, and the very real cost of tolerating the wrong fit for too long. You'll hear a genuinely unplanned succession story — one where investing in someone else's growth mattered in a way Melanie never could have predicted until she needed it most. And you'll get a look inside "Dream Culture," from its origins in a book about a struggling janitorial company to a CFO who went skydiving to keep a promise, to an employee writers' group that's now produced six published books.

If you've ever wondered what it would look like to build a team that's actually thriving instead of just surviving, this one's for you.

Learn more about Melanie — www.linkedin.com/in/melanie-bazile-bb3073163
Learn more about Compass — https://www.compasscares.com/

Free resource — 7 Warning Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Staff: https://iddleader.com/burnout

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – A "dream culture"?
01:49 – Why Compass hires slowly but fires fast
04:15 – Still curious after 34 years in the field
06:49 – A provider, a software company, and a consulting arm
08:36 – The real challenge of growing an organization
09:33 – The "behemoth" comment, and 30 years mapped in sticky notes
13:53 – What got you here won't get you there
14:52 – Inside Leadership U, their year-long leadership investment
19:23 – The succession story that changed everything
22:01 – "That's gutsy" — the conversation nobody wants to have
23:31 – Taking the lids off people
25:18 – Where "Dream Culture" actually came from
29:42 – The CFO who went skydiving to keep his word
30:49 – The writers' group that's produced six published books



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Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout

You're short-staffed. Which means your team gets burned out. Which means people leave. Which means you're even more short-staffed than before.

If that loop sounds familiar, here's the uncomfortable part: the way most leaders respond to it usually keeps it running rather than breaking it. In this episode, you'll walk through five of the most common responses to that cycle — hiring harder, adding perks, just trying to survive the week, chasing efficiency, sending out another survey — and why each one, well-intentioned as it is, can quietly make things worse instead of better.

For each one, you'll get the reframe: what to look at instead, and what it actually takes to interrupt the cycle rather than just outworking it.

If you've ever felt like you're doing everything right and the turnover numbers still won't move, this one's for you.

Free resource — 7 Warning Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Staff: https://iddleader.com/burnout

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – The turnover trap that keeps repeating itself
00:36 – Five mistakes, and the opposite direction to move in
00:59 – Mistake #1: "We just need to hire more people"
04:16 – Mistake #2: "Let's add more benefits and bonuses"
06:36 – Mistake #3: "Let's just make it through this weekend"
10:07 – Mistake #4: "Let's get really efficient"
13:06 – Mistake #5: "Fill out our survey"
15:11 – The bear metaphor (and what it says about listening under pressure)
16:51 – This week's action move

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Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout

You've probably had a version of this moment yourself: someone on your team says all the right things about wanting to grow as a leader, and when you ask what "getting better" would actually look like, day to day, the answer gets vague fast.

That gap — between the lofty language and the actual, nameable behaviors — is the entire subject of this episode. Every organization has a scorecard for compliance, for finance, for scheduling. But ask yourself how you'd actually know whether one of your supervisors is genuinely good at managing people, and odds are the answer gets fuzzy just as fast.

In this episode, you'll get a look at why that gap exists, what Chick-fil-A's "my pleasure" can teach you about turning a vague value into something coachable, and four concrete, observable behaviors worth considering for your own team — not as the definitive list, but as proof of what's possible once you stop treating leadership development as something fuzzy your supervisors are just supposed to figure out on their own.

If you've ever tried to coach someone on "being a better leader" and watched the conversation go nowhere, this one's for you.

Free resource — 7 Warning Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Staff: iddleader.com/burnout

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – The confession that changed how Nate sees leadership development
01:50 – Welcome to IDD Leader
02:29 – Why there's a scorecard for everything except this
04:32 – The core problem: you can't develop what you haven't defined
06:51 – Why this gap hides in plain sight
09:46 – The Happy Days Agency example
12:25 – "Are you familiar with Chick-fil-A?"
18:34 – What "my pleasure" actually teaches about leadership
19:43 – Skill one: lead with good questions
23:17 – Skill two: listen intentionally
25:06 – Skill three: celebrate specifically
26:43 – Skill four: coach immediately
29:51 – Why common sense doesn't equal common practice
30:41 – This week's action move

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Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout

Somewhere on your team right now, a staff member hired last month is quietly deciding whether they'll make it to ninety days. Not because of one bad shift — because of a growing handful of small things nobody's asked them about yet.

If you've ever sat across from someone who just gave notice and thought, "how did I not see this coming," this one's for you. Kris Foss and Nate walk through why the usual approach — waiting for the exit interview to learn what went wrong — almost always arrives too late to help anyone. You'll hear how to use your own turnover data to know exactly when to check in before you lose someone, the real difference between a response that sounds caring and one that actually builds trust, and what happens in the space between hearing a concern and doing something about it — the gap where trust is either built or quietly lost.

You'll walk away with a clearer sense of what to ask, when to ask it, and how to respond in a way your staff will actually remember.

Learn more from Kris Foss — [email protected]
Learn more from Nate — [email protected]
Free resource — 7 Warning Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Staff: iddleader.com/burnout

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Why this episode looks a little different
02:50 – Meet Kris Foss
05:50 – The big idea: stay interview or pre-exit interview
07:21 – The one-in-ten marriage question nobody would actually ask
09:42 – The tech issue that almost became a resignation
11:03 – What are your conversations really about?
14:50 – What a stay interview is (and isn't)
20:10 – Checkup, not autopsy
23:47 – Building your own framework from your own data
25:39 – The stat that changes your timing entirely
29:38 – The response that builds trust vs. the one that doesn't
36:58 – What this data reveals beyond individual fixes
39:59 – Why listening alone isn't enough
41:29 – The listen-to-change gap
49:53 – Turning friction into a genuine opportunity

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Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout

If some version of this story sounds familiar, you're not alone: There's a rebranding effort — new logo, new shirts, new colors, the whole thing — that lasted about a month before nobody could find the shirts anymore and half the company forgot it ever happened.

Most change efforts in most organizations follow the exact same arc: a lot of energy at the launch, and then silence six months later. Dr. Manny Rodriguez has spent his career studying exactly why that happens — and more usefully, what separates the initiatives that actually stick from the ones that quietly die.

In this half of the conversation, you'll hear a one-line definition of culture blunt enough that you'll probably start using it yourself, a story about a workplace ritual that started almost by accident and ended up cutting turnover by half, and a simple reframe on retention that reveals why "they didn't leave" is a much lower bar than most leaders realize.

If you've ever watched a good idea fizzle out in your own organization and wondered why, this one's for you.

Learn More
--Dr. Manny Rodriguez — https://www.linkedin.com/in/mannyarodriguez
-- Free resource — 7 Quiet Warning Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Staff: iddleader.com/burnout

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – The culture definition that says it all in one line
01:06 – Meet Dr. Manny Rodriguez, back for part two
02:28 – Why does change fail to stick?
05:55 – The book that changed how he thinks about "sticking"
07:39 – Big antecedents in your face
10:09 – The welcome ritual that started almost by accident
11:12 – The turnover drop nobody planned for
12:03 – The blunt definition of culture, straight from the source
13:26 – What a problem-centered culture actually sounds like
15:24 – Why "they didn't leave" is too low a bar
16:54 – The leadership habit called reciprocity
18:41 – The billboard sentence for every human services exec
21:45 – Two upcoming books, and the compass that inspired one of them

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Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout

Turnover was sitting at 60% year after year, and Dr. Manny Rodriguez says the first question nobody was asking wasn’t “how do we fix this,” it was “why do we assume we already know why people are leaving?”

You’ve probably felt this tension yourself: exit interviews that never quite tell you the truth, and a gut sense that pay alone can’t be the whole story. Manny is a behavior scientist and organizational performance consultant who’s spent decades working inside organizations to figure out exactly that. In this conversation, he walks through what actually turned a 60% turnover rate into 20% — without a single change to pay or bonus structure.

He also shares something heavier: a story from outside human services about what happens when an organization’s stated priorities and its actual attention quietly drift apart, and why that gap matters just as much in a group home as it does on a factory floor.

If you’ve ever suspected there’s a real answer buried under your own turnover numbers, this one’s for you.

🔗 Dr. Manny Rodriguez — https://www.linkedin.com/in/mannyarodriguez

📥 Free resource — 7 Warning Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Staff: https://iddleader.com/burnout

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – The alarm nobody wants to hear
01:04 – The retention myth this episode debunks
02:37 – What pattern are most leaders missing?
05:24 – The accidental start to a 26-year career
10:00 – Meet the godfather of organizational behavior management
14:32 – A story that makes it all tangible
15:01 – The retention problem everyone thought they understood
16:16 – Why exit interviews rarely tell you the truth
19:19 – The stay interviews that revealed what was really happening
21:21 – The turnaround: from 60% to 20%
24:54 – What a chemical company taught him about priorities
30:30 – The alarm that changed everything
32:40 – What this means for rapidly growing organizations
35:36 – This week's action move

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Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout

Take a full two weeks off — no email, no check-ins, phone off — and watch what happens to your organization.

If that thought makes you a little uneasy, you're not alone, and Wes and Kristy Mast built their entire leadership system around exactly that discomfort. They lead a multi-state home inspection company, a world away from human services, but the problem they solved is one you'll recognize immediately: how do you build something that doesn't quietly depend on you holding it all together?

In this half of the conversation, they get specific about how that actually works. You'll hear the test they run to find hidden bottlenecks before those bottlenecks find them, why they treat "replaceable" as a compliment instead of a threat, and a three-part framework for difficult conversations that keeps them from turning into either avoidance or a blowup. There's also a moment where a leader on their team was convinced her staff had stopped caring — until the data told a completely different story.

If you've ever wondered whether your organization could actually thrive during a season without you, this one's for you.

🔗 Learn more about Wes and Kristy — https://www.levelup2lead.com/
📥 Free resource — 7 Warning Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Staff: https://iddleader.com/burnout

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – The line that reframes what leadership ROI really means
00:55 – Would your organization survive if you got hit by a bus?
02:54 – How do you turn a good leader into a leader-maker?
03:59 – The highest ROI move any leader can make
07:02 – The two-week test that reveals your real bottlenecks
10:08 – The silly bottleneck almost nobody thinks to fix
11:02 – Why "replaceable" is actually a compliment
12:30 – What tolerating incompetence really costs your culture
16:01 – The art of a difficult conversation
18:31 – The scheduling story that changed how she read her own team
22:08 – When Nate's own assumption turned out to be wrong
23:24 – The trick for making sure people actually understood you
26:14 – Why performance issues are almost never really about performance
29:10 – The legacy lesson Wes & Kristy hope their team remembers


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Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout