Welcome back to the HR Connection, the podcast built solely for those managing HR and a 1:500 employee organization. Why do we carve that out? Because HR in that small organization is different. It's not "smaller HR," it is its own discipline. My name is Sabrina Baker, I am your host, and I'm going to be honest that I had a completely different topic planned for today. I plan content weeks out in advance, and I had something else that I was going to record today, but then I got a message on LinkedIn and I thought, you know what, this is too important not to go ahead and talk about on the podcast. The message came from a practitioner who is sitting in about a 75-person firm, she is an HR department of 1, and she had stumbled across the podcast and had been listening to a couple of episodes, and definitely listened to the episodes around when you have toxic employees or when you have people who the founder doesn't want to let go, they're toxic but, you know, maybe they had been there from the beginning. She then found the HR happy hour episode we did about sacred cows, I'll make sure that's linked for you, and she sent me a message and said, "All of your advice is great, but what happens when that toxic person is, in fact, the founder?" And when I say that small business HR is unique, this is one of the reasons why. Because you don't have the level of toxicity in larger businesses that affects HR directly like you do in a small business. That ripple effect of any toxic employee, but definitely when that's the CEO or the founder, is massive in a small business. It can be better absorbed in a larger organization, never in a small business can it be absorbed. So that's what we're going to do today. Rather than the topics I had planned, we'll save those for a later date, I'm going to talk today about what happens when the toxic employee, the person you are dealing with that is really just wreaking havoc in the workplace, is at the top. There's nobody else that they report to. They are the top person. Now, I want to be really clear, because we've talked about a couple different things on this podcast. This is not an episode about how to manage up, or how to influence without that authority, or any other of the softer framings people use when they don't want to say what they actually mean. I tend to be really direct, and I'm going to say what I mean today. It's a really practical episode about a real situation. Like, what do you do as a person who needs to make a decision? It requires a clear head, a deliberate strategy, and some really honest self-assessment about what you're willing to tolerate and where your line is. So if you have ever sat across from a founder who promised something to an employee they had no business promising, or watched leadership make a decision you knew was the absolute wrong decision and was going to hurt people and they just didn't care, then this episode is absolutely for you. We are going to cover three things. First, how to assess whether your situation is fixable, or whether it's crossed into something else entirely and it's not fixable. And then second, the specific moves that protect you professionally if things escalate. And third, and finally, where the line is between HR advocacy and organizational complicity. Let's get into it. Before we talk about what to do, let's talk about specifically what I'm saying here. When I say the owner is the problem, that's kind of a broad range. It could be owner, founder, the person who started the business, could be the CEO who came in after the founder, but the person at the top who really doesn't report to anybody else. Most small businesses don't necessarily have a board, so this person potentially reports to no one else. There's no one to go to to say they are toxic. Whoever that person is, that's who I'm talking about. But when I say toxic, or when I say they're the problem, that could mean a lot of things. So let me define how I think that fits, and really where I see it most often, because we certainly have had clients where the owner is absolutely the problem. So if we look at this on a spectrum, on the one far end of the spectrum, you have somebody who is just committing legal violations all the time. They are making decisions that really expose the organization. They don't care about the laws, so wage and hour issues, they're not paying people correctly, they're, you know, maybe there's harassment just running absolutely rampant. Usually they are the bully, or they are the person who is harassing. You know, there's discriminatory hiring practices, firing decisions, they just fire people because they don't like them, retaliation. I mean, like, seriously, blatantly illegal things. That is on one far end of the spectrum. On the other far end of the spectrum, you have personality issues. The owner is just really, really difficult. They're super reactive, they do not communicate well, they have a very short fuse, they change their minds every single day, and so one day the business is going in this direction and the next day we're going in this direction, and everybody feels like they're on a roller coaster. And they don't see themselves as the problem. They think that everybody else being able to execute on their ideas is the problem. They see themselves as some kind of visionary who just knows what, you know, needs to happen, and everybody else is the problem not being able to do that. They don't carry this legal stakes that the other end of the spectrum does, but they're still creating a lot of problems, right? They're affecting culture, retention, the ability to do your job certainly as an HR person, because all of that complaints then is coming to you. So that's the other end. So one end is our legal group, the other end is our personality group. And then there's the middle ground, which I think is where most people live. This is where I see when people are saying the owner is the problem, it's usually somewhere here in the middle. And the middle looks like this. You have a founder who is incredibly visionary. Most founders are very visionary. They are risk takers. They started the business because they saw something they could do, and they genuinely wanted to be able to do it. But on the flip side, they can be very poor people leaders. So they have great vision for what the product or service could look like, and they can sometimes see four, five, ten years out, but they are really not great at the people stuff. Someone who, you know, maybe they do change company direction, maybe not as quickly as the other person, but it's, you know, every couple of months things aren't working, so they want to go take this risk and move into this direction. They expect you then to manage the fallout of those decisions. Someone who's promising employee things like promotions or salary bumps, flexibility, title changes, without consulting you or checking with you about whether you can actually deliver that. Is that equitable? Is that fair? Someone who refuses to hold people accountable because they don't want the conflict, and then they, you know, wonder why that's a performance issue and they think that that's your problem. These founders aren't, they're not bad people. Many of them have built something significant. I mean, she, the person who reached out to me, is sitting in a 75-person firm. That's significant. That's a great business that that person has built. But the skills that make someone a successful founder, things like high risk tolerance, conviction, and ability to move fast, make decisions in ambiguity, those are frequently the exact opposite of what good people leadership requires. And when no one around them has talked to them about that, it compounds over time. I have a YouTube video, I have a series about what breaks at each headcount level, so 15, 25, 50, 75, 100. And around the 75 mark, exactly where she is, the person who reached out to me, is around the time when I say the founder has to ask a question. And that is, are they best suited to still be the leader of the organization leading the people stuff, or should they let somebody else come in and do that while they step into more of an advisory, visionary type role? It's very different. And I definitely see this breaking around 75, because by 75 you need real people structure. And so I think that a lot of times we have these founders who are so good at building something, and they're so energized by building something, but they're not great at this people stuff. And it's not, it's not so egregious that they're doing illegal things. It's not so egregious that they are bullies and they're absolutely toxic. It's somewhere in the middle, but it's still significant. So if you're listening to this and you think, "Oh, my owner is the problem, my founder or CEO is the problem," I want you to assess your situation. And when I ask you to assess it, I'm asking you to be very specific. What category are you in? Are you in the far legal category, the far bullying, harassment category, or somewhere in the middle? Because the middle ground is something that we can navigate in ways that the legal exposure end cannot be navigated. And kind of confusing the two, or either treating a personality problem like a legal crisis, or treating a legal crisis like a communication problem, that's going to cost you personally. And so before we get into the fix for this, I really want you to think about what are you dealing with really. You have to figure out what you're dealing with really before you decide how to deal with it. So kind of sit down and think about what is it that the owner does, the founder, the CEO does, that is the problem. What are the things that are the problem? And if you have a whole list of legal exposure, that's a different conversation than this middle ground where they're just maybe not so great at the people stuff. Okay, once you know which situation you sit in, you've sat down, you've made your list of what it is that makes the owner the issue, the person at the top the issue, then you have to think about whether it's fixable. Is this fixable? And I want to give you a real framework for this, some questions that you can ask to just kind of sit down on your own. I'm going to encourage you to do this not in a time when you are stressed, not in a time when you are busy. This may be something that you sit down on a weekend when things are calm, or in an evening, or just some time when you can really be thoughtful. Because if you're mad in the moment and you try to answer these questions, you're going to have a different answer than if you were in a more calm state. So maybe you go on a walk, whatever it is that puts you in a place where you can really answer these questions thoughtfully. Because the answer to these questions determines what you do. And what you do affects you personally, because we could be suggesting it's time to move on at the end of this. And so this is a big, big decision. So I want you to be in a really clear state with the ability to think long and hard about these answers. Okay, question one. Does this person have self-awareness? This is the bottom line question. Everything else really depends on this. It doesn't necessarily mean that the founder is emotionally evolved or particularly introspective. I will tell you that most aren't. It means, do they have any capacity to receive feedback about their own behavior and take it seriously? And you would know that from things that you have witnessed. So is there even a small window where you have seen someone maybe give them feedback, and it doesn't have to be you, but maybe someone of their other leaders has given them a feedback about their behavior and they have taken it well. They have considered it. I'm not saying they changed their behavior, but they at least listened. They at least heard it. Or have you seen them or heard them maybe mention of, "Hey, I know I do this," or "I know that I'm like this and I'm trying to work on that," or, you know, "I've been told that I do this and I know that I do that"? Have you seen any glimmer of their ability to be self-aware of their opportunities? If the answer is no, if you have a history of watching this person dismiss, deflect, or retaliate when anyone raises a concern about their behavior, then the fixability question of, "Is this fixable?" is kind of already answered. And I don't think that that necessarily means it's a hopeless situation, but I do think it means that the lever required to change the behavior doesn't exist in your toolbox. You're not going to be able to fix it because they're not going to listen to you. If there's zero self-awareness, then no amount of conversations are probably going to get them to that space. Now, I do want to just put a little caveat in here because I don't want this to be like, "Well, if they're not going to, if they're not self-aware and I don't think they're going to take feedback, then I should just stop." I will tell you that I have seen owners who it takes the right person to give them feedback. So in years of doing this, I've seen owners who are, you know, kind of in that middle. They're not toxic, they're not doing illegal things, but they're kind of in that middle space. And people have tried to give them feedback. They would dismiss it. They wouldn't necessarily retaliate, but they would definitely dismiss or deflect it. But then somebody else would come in. It would just be a different leader that they hired, maybe somebody that they were really excited to have on their team. Or they would get an advisor. They would have, you know, an advisor, somebody in a different business that would come in and advise them, and they would hear that person. And so sometimes there is someone who can get through to them. And so I don't want you to completely give up if they're not being able to take feedback right now or they're not having any self-awareness, because something could happen that will trigger them to listen to someone. It's just that in your toolkit right now, they're not going to hear you. And so I don't want you to expend, you know, weeks and months and years of energy on trying to get them to if that's just going to continue to damage the work that you're doing. On the flip side, if there is a window, so even a small one, if you have seen them take some kind of feedback and at least listen to it, then I think that's your opening. And it tells you that a conversation is worth having. All right, question two is, can you have this conversation safely? And when I talk about safety here, I'm talking about two different dimensions of safety. So physical safety is rarely the issue, I don't think. I mean, certainly if there's a physical safety issue, that's a big deal. I'm more talking about psychological safety. That's, you know, kind of real in these situations. Can you raise a concern about this person's behavior without it being held against you? Is there a structure, a board, an investor, an outside advisor, a trusted leadership partner that creates any checks on their authority, or are you completely exposed? So what I mean by that is, if you have this conversation and they don't like it, they get upset, they're mad at you, and they want to retaliate against you, is there anybody that would check that authority? And if there isn't, if there is no board, if there's nobody outside who would say, "Hey, I don't think we're going to, you know, go down this path of firing this HR person just because she brought this up to you," then you want to think about this conversation. So that safety piece, that psychological safety, really I want you to think about that. So when I'm asking you, can you have this conversation safely? I don't necessarily mean physical safety, but, you know, think about that, more about that psychological safety. If you can have the conversation safely, so if you feel like you can have it, they're going to at least listen to you and it's not going to be this thing where they completely turn on you after. Let me give you a little framework for going through that. This conversation should not be a confrontation. It is absolutely not a list of grievances. It's really about your observation and then a direct ask. So if you think about a couple of episodes that we've had, if you've been here for a little bit, definitely this year, if you've been listening to the podcasts that we have released this year, then we've talked very specifically about how you can, when you can connect behaviors to business outcomes, CEOs are more likely to listen. I think about an episode I did even last year where I specifically gave examples of, you can say this to a CEO and get nowhere, or you can go and say this, and you're saying the same thing, but it's just in the words. There's a whole episode I did on the difference between a CEO and a founder and the reason that that matters. I'll also make sure that one's linked. But that, the language that you use is really going to matter here. But you want to have an observation and then a direct ask of them. So you want to focus on the behavior, not the person. So you want to focus on the behavior that they're doing, not their character, not who they are, not them as an individual. And then name the organizational impact. So don't think about your personal frustration, but how is this impacting the entire organization? And that's really an important point. Sometimes when I sit down with HR leaders and they give me their list of grievances with their leader or their CEO, it's things that they don't like, but it's not really having an organizational impact. It's things that they think the CEO could do better, but when I ask them, "Well, how is that impacting everybody else?" they really can't give me an answer. So you want to name specific behaviors that you can tie to an organizational impact. And then you want to make a direct ask about what you need them to do differently. So let me give you an example of how this could go. If you have a CEO who is like promising raises or promising bonuses or promising things that we're not sure we can follow up on or that are even equitable, maybe they're promising a raise to this person and not this person, then you could sit them down and say, "Listen, founder, CEO, when you make compensation commitments to employees before they go through the review process, I end up in conversations I'm not prepared for, and we create expectations we can't always honor. Can we establish a check-in point before those conversations happen? Would that be something we could do?" Now, of course, you want to put that in your own words. But when you ask that way, "Can we establish a check-in point before those conversations happen? Would that be something we can do?" it would be really odd for them to say no, right? It would be really weird, and they know that, for them to say, "No, absolutely, we're not going to do that." A lot of times what I find is they're not trying to do something wrong. They're not trying to make your life hard. They just don't realize what they're doing. They really don't realize the impact of what they're doing. And so if you can share with them the impact of what's happening, then tell them, "Here's a simple way for us to make this better. Here's a simple way for us to talk through this." Then 9 times out of 10, they're going to say, "Oh, yeah, right. Okay, that makes total sense." Assuming that they're a reasonable person, right? So that's it. You're really just giving them one behavior, one impact, one ask. Now, here's what I'm going to say to you. Do not make this a laundry list. You are not going to go sit down with your CEO and have six of these little statements about all these different things. Pick one. Pick the one that is causing you the most heartburn. Have that conversation. Give it time. Then pick another one, right? Have that conversation. Because sometimes these conversations need two or three conversations. So if you go and you have this compensation commitment conversation, for example, well, they may forget the next time. And so then you go back to them and you say, "Hey, remember when we talked about kind of what happens when you make these commitments and we promised that we would have a conversation you and I before you had those conversations? Then, you know, that didn't happen this time, so can we recommit to doing that?" And sometimes it'll take them two or three times before they finally get it. I will tell you this exact thing happened with that CEO I was talking about earlier who eventually needed another advisor to kind of come in and get him to see what he was doing. But I went to him with these compensation conversations and finally, about after the third one, he said, "You know what? I'm just going to direct everything to you now. I think it makes the most sense. I seem to be creating a lot of problems here. So when people come to me and they want to talk about their pay, I'm just going to direct them to you." And that was brilliant because we had just done all this work on creating their compensation role categories and their pay ranges and all of this. And so we had a very, very detailed and easy to follow and systematic compensation process. And so by him agreeing to defer to me, it was the best thing he could have done. And he realized it took the pressure off him. He didn't like it when employees came to him and talked about their pay. That was kind of a pressure thing. And he just wanted to make them happy and promise them whatever. And so by being able to say, "You know what? Sabrina handles all compensation discussions. Go talk to her." It was so much easier on him. It took that burden off of him. So you're going to go in with whatever on your list of behaviors is really like the one you feel like needs to be fixed the most. Create your statement of one behavior, one impact, one ask. And then what happens next tells you really everything. If they engage, even imperfectly, so even maybe they slip or they forget, but if they've at least engaged, they take it seriously, they try, then you have something to work with. You know that that pattern is going to work for you. You just have to give it time. You can't go in and ask them to fix everything at once. If they absolutely dismiss it, they minimize it, or they say it's your problem and you have to deal with it, then you know that this may not be fixable. This is not going to be something that they're going to change. And then question three is, what is the legal exposure here? And this question kind of functions as an override to everything else. If your organization is engaged in practices that create legal liability and you are aware of those practices, you have a professional and potentially legal exposure that self-awareness and productive conversations don't necessarily resolve. So I want you to go through the first two questions, but if we've got a legal exposure here, that's kind of a different matter for your own self-preservation. This kind of is the point where the situation stops being a management challenge and becomes a personal risk question. And the answer, when the legal exposure is real and the owner is unwilling to course correct, I'm just going to be really direct with you here, is to get out. You have to think about your own exposure. I'm not trying to be dramatic, but I just want to say that staying, depending on the legal exposure, right, depending on it, could make you complicit. So when we think about things like bullying, sexual harassment, you knowing that those things are happening and not doing the proper investigation, follow-up, disciplinary actions that are required makes you complicit. And that is, you know, can create real consequences for your professional standing and then potentially your own personal liability. We're going to come back to that kind of complicity question in a few minutes, but I just want you to think about this. The three questions I just gave you are sequential. You know, self-awareness is the prerequisite for all of this. Safety determines whether you can actually have the conversation, but then legal exposure determines whether any of that matters. So if there is some legal exposure and they're not self-aware or willing to hear you, that's massive. And I need you to really understand the gravity of the situation that you are in if we're talking about major legal exposure. Okay, so regardless of where you are in this assessment, one of the things that I shared with the messenger on LinkedIn was start documenting everything. And we say that all the time. I mean, in HR, right? There are, I was in an HR office, I think last year we had an offsite, and in the office that we were renting, it said, "But did you document it?" Right? Because everything that we do in HR, we want documentation for. And so this is a place where we have to take our own advice. We absolutely have to do as a good HR person would and document and counsel, document your counsel and your objections. It's not about building a case against them. It's about creating a clear record that you exercised professional judgment, you communicated it clearly, and that the decision made was contrary to your recommendation and that it was made by somebody else who has authority over you. That's what you're trying to document here. So here is the language that we will often use at Acacia, and I want you to write this down because I think it matters. If you went to a CEO and you said, "Hey, I think that the timing of these layoffs is suspect. I think that, you know, the optics on this are not great." Right? It's not necessarily illegal what they're doing, but the optics are not great. There could be some exposure and that somebody could bring a suit. They're not necessarily maybe going to win that suit. Again, you're not technically doing anything illegal. It's just an optic situation. It's really going to hurt employee experience, employee morale, and just bring the team down. And you get overridden the founder CEO is like, "Nope, we're going to go down this path anyway." Here's what we say. Here's what I've taught my team to say, and here's what I have often said to clients. I will say, "As the owner and CEO of this business, you own that risk. I'm going on record with what I believe is the right approach, but if you choose differently, that is your decision to make. I won't be held liable for that outcome, but you could be." I will tell you that when I say that, they often will come back and say, "Well, what do you mean? What liable for what outcome? What could happen?" And that'll give me a chance to usually repeat what I've already told them and they just didn't hear about what their action is going to do to morale or experience or, you know, whatever it could be, or if there is legal exposure, what that looks like. There's something in that statement and the way that you say it that makes it really real for them because they see that you are really separating yourself from this in records. This statement that I just gave you would be in writing. It's something that you would definitely put in writing into an email follow-up with them so that you, one, have proof that you are going on record saying you don't agree, but they have it in writing and it makes it very serious. I think sometimes they don't take us as serious as they should. They hear our objections. They hear what we're saying, but they just don't think we're very serious about them. Putting it in writing does something really, really different. So this email becomes your record. It timestamps your objection before whatever event is coming down the pike. It names the decision maker. It does so in very plain language. You're not mincing your words here. And I understand that this could be uncomfortable. It feels like you're being adversarial. It feels like you're being confrontational. But I want you to reframe that in your brain a little bit because this is what professional accountability looks like in every other field, right? Lawyers document their advice when clients go against it. Accountants document their recommendations when clients choose something different. HR practitioners should operate by the same standard. We want to be seen at that level. We have to operate at that level. You are not doing this necessarily to protect yourself in the event of litigation, though it certainly can do that. You are doing this because it is the professional standard for someone who gives counsel for a living. And that is what we do inside of a small business. If we are the only HR practitioner or the lead HR practitioner, we are giving counsel. The other piece that I would do, the other documentation piece that I would suggest, is to keep a private log. So this would not be on company equipment. It would not be in company systems, but a personal record of the situations you've encountered, the counsel you've provided, the decisions that were made. Again, it's not ammunition. It's just more protection and clarity for you. So that six months from now, when you're trying to assess a pattern, you have a record instead of memory. Memory fails us. And so if you are coming to a point where you think, "Can I stay in this anymore?" You can go back and look at your log and look at the things that have happened and really think with a clear head, "Is this a pattern that's ever going to get better, or is this a pattern that I need to get out of?" Okay, so I said I was going to revisit this complicity line. And so let's talk about that for a second because there is a line between HR advocacy and organizational complicity. And it's partly a legal question and partly a personal one. And I think you have to really think about both. So the legal threshold here is really clear. If you are being asked to execute something you know is illegal, so process a termination that you know is retaliatory, or document a performance issue you know is manufactured, to maybe participate in a hiring or pay decision you know is discriminatory, you have crossed from advocate into participant. Your professional standing and potentially your personal liability are at stake, and there is no gray area here. In that situation, I would document your objection, refuse to execute if you can, and if you can't, start making your exit plan. I understand the economic times we are in, and I'm never telling anybody to just go up and quit your job. That's not what I'm saying. I am saying document for sure. If you can get out of it, if you can refuse, do that. If you can't, then you may have to do it, but start making your exit plan because they don't care about you, and they are putting you and your professional and personal liability at stake. But below the legal threshold, so when we're talking about something that's not blatantly illegal, the line is then more individual. And I think it's really worth talking about. And I don't want to pretend that there's some universal answer here because there's not. The risk tolerance for everybody or what they feel is the line changes for every person. So some HR practitioners, what I found, they're very content to be implementers. They are good at executing policy, managing process, keeping things compliant, and they're not particularly invested in having a strategic voice. That's a total legitimate choice. Nothing wrong with that. If you're in an environment where the owner makes decisions without your input and you're okay executing within that structure, assuming they're not illegal, that's your call. That's totally something that you can do. But I know that many of you may not be that person. You went into human resources because you believe in the work that we do. You want to contribute to how the organization treats its people. You want your counsel, your advice, your coaching to mean something. And when you are consistently overridden, when your recommendations are heard and dismissed, when the same patterns repeat, that environment erodes you. It just absolutely strips away your confidence, and it's not energizing and not where you want to be. So the complicity line for you isn't just legal. It's, "Am I an accessory to outcomes I would never choose? Am I lending my professional credibility to decisions I disagree with? Am I over time becoming the person who processes the paperwork for things that I think shouldn't happen?" If the answer is yes, that's not a compliance problem. That's a fit problem. And fit problems have one solution. I would love to tell you that there is something you could do to change the organization, but I'm going to tell you in all of my years of experience, if everybody else inside the organization is complicit, everybody is going along with it, and you as the HR person are the only one who's uncomfortable, an exit plan is probably the only way to move forward and feel good about the work that you're doing. Now, look, I know that none of this is black and white. I know that saying creating an exit plan is way easier said than done. I understand in the times that we're in, you are taking a chance by moving into a new organization that could be worse. You don't know what you're stepping into. So I certainly am not suggesting that anything I'm doing today is so easy. I give you three questions. I give you a little framework, and it's like, "Oh, this will be fixed in a week." No way. This is huge. This is a big deal, and it's a big conversation. And I completely understand that. But what I don't want you to do is just continue to sit in unhappiness and to sit in legal exposure and to sit in a place where you're not thriving. And so when I say think about an exit plan, create an exit plan, that could be an exit plan for three years from now. I'm not saying in the next month. I'm saying when it makes sense for you and your family and when you feel like you've got something else good lined up where you're not just trading one bad job for another, then that's your plan. I certainly am not suggesting that this is a very quick thing by any means. So let me close by giving you just something concrete here, something you can kind of latch onto if you're listening to this and you recognize your situation. Then let me give you three more questions that you can work through potentially for yourself. So the first one is, "What category is my situation in?" So am I looking at personality and leadership gaps? Am I looking at complete dysfunction? Or am I looking at legal exposure? Is this really a big legal issue? So I want you to be really specific about that because I think that that category where you sit determines the response to everything else. Two is, "Have I exercised my professional obligation? Have I tried to coach? Have I tried to counsel?" Not softly, not implied, "Have I called it out?" So if I feel safe to do so, have I had a conversation where I have tried to change behavior or I have tried to ask for a different approach? And then if I didn't get it, have I written my objections in writing? So have I gone back to them and said, "I understand this is a decision. I don't necessarily agree with it." So is there a record that I did the job I was hired to do, regardless of what decisions were made above me? And if not, I think that's your immediate action. Start doing that. Go back to our earlier three questions. Can you have this conversation? Here's how, right? One behavior, one impact, one ask. And then document that. Kind of start your log and document when you don't agree with something. And then the third question, and this is the one that I think you're going to have to think about for a little while. This is not a quick answer. Is, "What am I actually willing to own?" Not what you think you should be willing to tolerate, but what are you actually willing to own with your name, your professional reputation, and your time? That answer is extremely personal. It's going to be different for everybody. And it's the one that tells you what you should do next. These situations are hard. They're really difficult because they're structurally hard. You have expertise. You have professional standing. You have a clear view of what's happening. And you report to a person, potentially, if you report to this person, or at least at the top of your organization, you have someone creating a massive problem. And that's not necessarily a solvable structure. It could be one you navigate depending on everything else we've talked about today. So I just really want to encourage you to know what you're dealing with, document your position, and then decide what you're willing to carry. I love to hear from you about these things. If you have thoughts about this or you have thoughts about anything else going on in the small business life, obviously, I want these episodes to be something that you're actually dealing with and that I can maybe give you just some insight in working with small businesses for the last 15 years. So if you have thoughts on this one, you can DM me privately on LinkedIn, or when I post the episode there, you can add a comment. But I just love to hear from others who have navigated this and what have they done and what have they found and what worked for them or what didn't work for them. That would be so great to hear from people who are doing this in the trenches every single day. I hope this was super helpful. If you haven't already subscribed, please do so. Check out the other episodes that I put in the show notes because they're great companions for this, including our episodes that are on the HR Happy Hour Network, which are exclusive to that network. Thanks so much for being here. I'll see you next time.