Effort ≠ Results

Trying hard and producing results look like the same thing.

The problem is, they aren't. And rewarding the first when you need the second is how a leader can end up doing someone else's job for a year.

In this episode, I share the story of Nathan, one of our new hires everyone was excited about who tried hard, talked constantly about his plans, but never produced deliverable work. I kept fixing it myself instead of sending it back, for an entire year. Stating that effort ≠ results isn't some theory. It's a pattern I lived from the inside and eventually had to unlearn.

This episode names the pattern clearly: rewarding effort instead of results teaches your team that trying hard is the finish line, not the starting point, and it puts you on the hook for the gap they never learn to close.

I talk about the four reasons this feels reasonable in the moment and what it really costs.

In this episode:

• The story of the year I spent doing a new hire's job instead of holding him to a standard he was expected to meet 
• The four reasons that make rewarding effort over results feel completely reasonable, and why all four are wrong
• The five elements of fair leadership, and the one I was missing that let the pattern go on for a year
• What I do differently now
• The permission to stop treating effort as proof that the job got done

This week's permission: You are allowed to name the gap between effort and results without feeling unreasonable and demanding for doing it. Effort is not the finish line. Results are. Your job as a leader is to hold the standard, and let them meet it.