Many good tips, but IMO the "...or else!" style threats are poor leadership. Examples: "All you contractors better shape up or you'll be fired on monday!" or "m

Many good tips, but IMO the "...or else!" style threats are poor leadership. Examples: "All you contractors better shape up or you'll be fired on monday!" or "managers will be insta-fired if they enforce chain-of-command communication!" This is toxic tone. Waving a baseball bat at your team shows— and instills— a mutual lack of trust. Simply lay out the standards of behavior clearly and frequently, and outwardly show that you trust in the team's good faith and desire to adhere to them. Most of the time, if you have hired well, you'll be right. Discuss individual shortcomings frankly, but do it behind closed doors. Dispatch corrections behind closed doors too. Simply calling out a mistake and making clear what's expected is often enough to incite a change in behavior. It's much healthier for culture, it's much better for retaining knowledge and talent, and it's much cheaper than hiring and firing with a hair trigger. If the person doesn't respond to corrections, or is acting in bad faith and not merely making a mistake, THEN you fire without hesitation. And you do it quickly, quietly, and without drama. Those kinds of cases are (ideally rare) pockets of toxicity, and they are the last kind of picture you want to paint in your team's mind of their workplace by broadcasting it across the company. Examples: BAD: "Any manager who attempts to enforce chain of command communication will soon find themselves working elsewhere." BETTER: "If you find your management is stifiling the free flow of communication, either intentionally or inadvertantly, please escalate this upward and we will support you, and get your team pointed in the right direction." What you're trying to do: - communicate to employees not to put up with stifiling managers - communicate to managers that stifling communication will make them look bad and get them reprimanded - encourage problem areas to actually be identified and corrected - make everyone feel good about all of the above so that the actually want partake in it - make it socially safe to change course BAD: "All contracting companies should consider the coming week to be a final opportunity to demonstrate excellence. Any that fail to meet the Tesla standard of excellence will have their contracts ended on Monday." BETTER: "Most large supply chains are ripe with waste and overspending, often brought about by backwards incentives to inflate costs. At Tesla we do not put up with this, nor cynically accept it as inevitable. Avoiding this kind of behavior requires the Tesla standard of good faith and efficiency at all levels. If you suspect cost inflation or task bloat, please call it out immediately and escalate it. We'll be paying close attention to this over the next week." What you're trying to do: - dispel complacency about cost bloat and gouging - reinforce the requirement / community standard to be honest and efficient - make people feel comfortable / emboldened to fight bad-faith behavior - let bad-faith contractors know you are watching them - make everyone feel united by this goal, instead of mistrustful and cynical about each other If you're walking down a road and you see a man angrily beating his horse, who's wrong? The man or the horse? Leaders that threaten fire and brimstone beyond the natural consequences of failure conjure the image of the horse-beater, for me. If you resort to flogging your labor, then the shortcoming is yours in failing to understand how to motivate and empathize; how to make the horse want to do the right thing on its own.