Your Employees Are Talking. Are You Actually Listening?

with Mary Baird, PHR

What if the biggest problem with employee engagement isn't that people aren't speaking up?

It's that leaders aren't really listening.

In this episode of Rebels Worth Knowing, Janet sits down with Mary Baird, PHR, founder of The Simplifiers and author of Squash the Sunday Scaries, for a candid conversation about what's actually happening inside today's workplaces.

From pizza parties and ping-pong tables to employee surveys that disappear into a corporate black hole, Mary challenges leaders to stop assuming they know what their people need and start asking a much more useful question:

What's broken here?

Janet and Mary explore why well-intentioned workplace perks can completely miss the mark, what psychological safety actually looks like in practice, and why the people managing your employees may have more influence over your culture than any company-wide initiative ever will.

They also dig into Mary's simple but powerful philosophy:

Better employee experience → better customer experience → better business results.

You'll hear:

• Why employee listening has become a lost art
• The question managers should be asking their direct reports every other week
• Why pizza parties, happy hours, and other "culture builders" can sometimes backfire
• How assumptions quietly damage trust
• Why people managers need better training and support
• What leaders can do when an employee tells them something isn't working
• Why your manager's real job may be simpler than we've made it
• How experimentation, iteration, and being willing to get it wrong can actually make you a better leader

Janet also shares a powerful story from her own corporate experience about noticing employees physically withdrawing from a company happy hour and what she discovered when she stopped assuming and started asking questions.

Because great leadership isn't about having all the answers.

Sometimes it's about being brave enough to ask the question, shut your mouth, and actually listen.

And that might be one of the most rebellious things a leader can do.

Connect with Mary: https://www.thesimplifiers.com/

Check out her book, Squash the Sunday Scaries

What if the most important negotiation of your life happens before you ever learn how to negotiate?

At 19 years old, Rick Czaplewski was diagnosed with cancer.

He went to class, walked to the hospital for radiation, and walked back to his dorm. He did it 50 times without telling anyone. Years later, that experience would become the foundation for his work and his belief that no one should have to walk through difficult situations alone.

But this conversation is about much more than negotiation.

It’s about human behavior.

Why do some leaders push too hard while others struggle to ask for what they need?

Why do employees stop speaking up when they no longer feel safe?

Why can two people look at the exact same business, property, opportunity, or deal and assign completely different value to it?

And what happens when emotion, identity, history, and legacy enter the negotiation?

In this episode of Rebels Worth Knowing, Rick and I dig into:

• Why self-advocacy may be one of the most important negotiation skills you can develop
• The danger of relying on one go-to leadership or negotiation style
• Why healthy conflict can actually signal a healthy culture
• What it means when people in your organization suddenly go quiet
• The psychology behind the “endowment effect” and why we overvalue things we feel personally connected to
• Why understanding what someone truly values can completely change a negotiation
• How leaders can create better outcomes without damaging the relationship on the other side
• Why preparation matters long before you ever reach the bargaining table

Rick also shares the story of negotiating an exception from his college dean while undergoing chemotherapy, a lesson in advocating for yourself when the answer is initially no.

Because as Rick says:

“You don’t get what you want. You get what you negotiate.”

This conversation is funny, deeply human, occasionally uncomfortable, and packed with lessons about leadership, conflict, courage, communication, and what really happens when humans bring all of their emotions into the room.

And yes, there is also a story involving Rick’s dad, a car dealership, cruise control, and the word “Ebenezer” being yelled approximately 20 times.

You’ll understand when you listen.

🎙️ Rebels Worth Knowing with Janet C. Bernstein

If you know someone who challenges convention, thinks differently, and is doing work worth knowing about, send them my way. I’m always looking for the next rebel worth knowing.

What if the thing holding you back as a leader is something everyone else can see... except you?

We love to talk about confidence, communication, emotional intelligence, and leadership. But knowing the language does not mean we can see our own patterns.

And those patterns are speaking before we ever realize it.

In this episode of Rebels Worth Knowing, I sit down with Andrea Mancuso, a former New York City school psychologist turned emotional intelligence expert, speaker, author, and founder of Intentional Healing & Wellness.

After 14 years inside the NYC public school system, Andrea walked away from a stable six-figure career when she realized the system she was working in no longer aligned with the work she felt called to do.

What followed was a deeper exploration of leadership, human behavior, emotional intelligence, and what happens when leaders have not dealt with their own stuff.

We get into the parts of emotional intelligence that rarely make the LinkedIn quote graphics: triggers, stress tolerance, impulse control, assertiveness, self-awareness, and the uncomfortable gap between how we think we show up and how other people actually experience us.

We talk about:

• Why great leaders can still have massive blind spots
• How unresolved patterns show up in leadership
• Why perception matters more than intention
• The difference between assertiveness and aggression
• How people-pleasing affects communication and authority
• Why emotional intelligence is much bigger than empathy
• What happens when leaders believe they already have all the answers
• Why the skills AI cannot automate may become some of our most valuable ones
• Andrea’s upcoming book, The Space Between, and what it really takes to keep going through the messy middle

We also talk about rebellion in a way that has nothing to do with breaking rules just for the sake of breaking them.

Sometimes rebellion is questioning a system that no longer works.

Sometimes it is saying the thing everyone else is afraid to say.

And sometimes it is being brave enough to look at yourself and ask:

What am I not seeing?

Because you cannot change a pattern you refuse to notice.

And whether you realize it or not, the people around you are already experiencing yours.

Follow Andrea on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamandreamancuso/

Grab Andrea's new book: https://link.amazon/B016sdPqg

🎙️ Welcome to Rebels Worth Knowing.

If this conversation makes you think of a rebel whose voice deserves a bigger platform, send this episode their way and tell me who I should interview next.