{"id":17703,"date":"2026-09-03T13:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T13:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/?p=17703"},"modified":"2026-09-03T13:38:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T13:38:15","slug":"having-difficult-conversations-with-your-employees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/having-difficult-conversations-with-your-employees\/","title":{"rendered":"Having Difficult Conversations With Your Employees"},"content":{"rendered":"    <div class=\"zm-cta\">\n      <div class=\"zm-cta__head\">\n        <div>\n          <div class=\"zm-cta__eyebrow\">ZenMaid<\/div>\n          <h2 class=\"zm-cta__title\">Brought to you by <em>expert cleaning business owners<\/em><\/h2>\n        <\/div>\n        <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zm-cta__mark\" src=\"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/themes\/zm-theme\/assets\/images\/zenmaid-logo.png\" alt=\"ZenMaid logo\">\n      <\/div>\n\n      <div class=\"zm-cta__list\">\n        <div class=\"zm-cta__item\">\n          <svg viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"21\" height=\"21\" fill=\"none\" stroke=\"#01676c\" stroke-width=\"3\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><path d=\"M20 6 9 17l-5-5\"><\/path><\/svg>\n          <p><strong>Tips and advice shared here have helped us grow our own maid services.<\/strong> The ZenMaid team currently has 5+ current and former cleaning business owners on our team, including our Founder and CEO, Amar. We&rsquo;ve been in the maid service industry for 10+ years and counting.<\/p>\n        <\/div>\n        <div class=\"zm-cta__item\">\n          <svg viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"21\" height=\"21\" fill=\"none\" stroke=\"#01676c\" stroke-width=\"3\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><path d=\"M20 6 9 17l-5-5\"><\/path><\/svg>\n          <p><strong>We partner with amazing leaders in the cleaning industry,<\/strong> including Debbie Sardone, Stephanie Pipkin, Angela Brown, Chris Schwab, and many more &mdash; all to provide you with the latest industry insights.<\/p>\n        <\/div>\n        <div class=\"zm-cta__item\">\n          <svg viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"21\" height=\"21\" fill=\"none\" stroke=\"#01676c\" stroke-width=\"3\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><path d=\"M20 6 9 17l-5-5\"><\/path><\/svg>\n          <p><strong>We&rsquo;ve built the easiest-to-use, comprehensive cleaning business software, built specifically for the industry!<\/strong><\/p>\n        <\/div>\n      <\/div>\n\n      <div class=\"zm-cta__actions\">\n        <a class=\"zm-cta__btn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/\">Check out ZenMaid<\/a>\n        <div class=\"zm-cta__chip\"><span><\/span>Easy 5 minute setup<\/div>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Listen on: <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/171-having-difficult-conversations-with-your-employees\/id1791590022?i=1000787639790\">Apple Podcasts<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/5gTVE6r20qBYQBCsZobITc?si=c130ff01b08846aa\">Spotify<\/a>, or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=b5nZUE2vFos\">YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: #171: Having Difficult Conversations With Your Employees\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/5gTVE6r20qBYQBCsZobITc?si=c130ff01b08846aa&amp;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-1\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Introduction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie<\/strong>: Hello everyone, welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean, and in today&#8217;s episode I want to talk about a continuing pattern that I see amongst all people, really, but especially owners this past week during different consulting calls that I have had, as well as just reflection on myself as a business owner and a person who is continually trying to grow and evolve her leadership. And that is on the topic of having difficult conversations and facing the music, if you will, with unpleasant things when it comes to managing staff or clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think it&#8217;s something that we all continually will struggle with. I know very few people in this industry who do not struggle with this \u2014 having tough conversations and saying things that need to be said, and the other person is not going to like it potentially, or they could be giving you a lot of negative feedback based on you being honest and being candid. It&#8217;s just at the top of my mind because I think that there is nothing that erodes a company culture more than when the leader is allowing things to happen that are unacceptable and the others are seeing it. And this is what I was seeing with several of my calls last week with two consulting clients in particular \u2014 incredible, kick-ass women. I love them. They are amazing. One of them is for sure going to be on the podcast soon as a guest \u2014 she agreed to it \u2014 and I&#8217;m sure we will go more into this concept during that conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s really just top of mind because I was thinking how much this has negatively impacted my life, both personally and professionally \u2014 not being able to have difficult conversations, not being able to say the damn thing that needs to be said to hold people accountable. Instead of just talking about whatever it is that they&#8217;re doing amongst myself, my friends, my management team \u2014 actually dealing with it head-on. When I think of all of the worst things that staff members have done at Serene Clean, whether that be stealing, lying, disrespect, insubordination, all of the things, just blatant disregard for quality, any type of whatever, right? Like intentional miscommunication \u2014 all of those things that people do when we have staff. When I think about all of those things, it really comes back to, for me, that stuff could have been prevented if I had said something earlier, if I had called it out earlier and made it very clear that that behavior is not going to be tolerated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are so many instances as the owner that I have had where I saw something happening that I absolutely was like, that doesn&#8217;t fly with me. That&#8217;s not what I want in my business. That&#8217;s not what I want for my customers. That&#8217;s not what I want for my company culture \u2014 that this is being allowed. And yet I didn&#8217;t do anything about it, because I did not want to have an unpleasant conversation. I did not want to have to look somebody in the eye and say, this is unacceptable. This cannot be. If you are gonna be on this team, this is the expected behavior, because this is not fair to your co-workers. I was unable to say things like that for so long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-2\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Wait-and-Explode Pattern<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A lot of times what would happen \u2014 and now that I&#8217;m in reflection, I&#8217;m really thinking about what happens with me, and I&#8217;m curious for you guys, leave it in the comments below if this is a pattern that happens with you \u2014 is I wait and I wait and I wait, and I&#8217;m noticing things. I don&#8217;t like that, I don&#8217;t like that. But because I&#8217;m afraid to say anything, because I don&#8217;t want to deal with the unpleasant, now it comes to a boiling point, and then all of a sudden Stephanie&#8217;s like, I&#8217;m done with this person. They have been doing this and doing this, and I am sick of it and I&#8217;m tired of it, and they&#8217;re gone. Right? Like, that&#8217;s it, no discussion, whatever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And the problem with that is that you have never said it. I never said it until it got to the point where it became absolutely intolerable, and you explode, you fire somebody, you absolutely chew their ass out \u2014 where, though appropriate, perhaps it is inappropriate. It&#8217;s appropriate because of the pattern, but it&#8217;s inappropriate because you&#8217;ve never called it out before, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-3\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Lesson From My Therapist<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I&#8217;m curious if anybody else has struggled with this. Something I&#8217;m definitely working on in general is just saying difficult things. Actually, last week \u2014 that&#8217;s why this is top of mind \u2014 in my therapy session last week, I was talking about an unpleasant bit of information that I did not want to share with somebody. I had known it for about two months, and I didn&#8217;t want to share it with somebody. And my therapist was like, what kind of relationships do you want to have? I was like, I want to have honest and transparent and open relationships. And she was like, well, then you need to practice that if that&#8217;s what you want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Just being afraid of how somebody else is going to react \u2014 if they blow up on you when this information has nothing to do with you, then that tells you that that person shouldn&#8217;t be in your life, because that is not the correct reaction to learning something. You could be unhappy with information, but it doesn&#8217;t mean that you, you know, shoot the messenger, because that&#8217;s what that would be. And I was so afraid of the messenger being shot \u2014 meaning me \u2014 even though that would have been a really unreasonable behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So it&#8217;s just top of mind to me. And I did share the information. I kind of vowed to myself that going forward, if I have a piece of information that needs to be shared, it needs to be done within 48 hours \u2014 just having a hard and fast boundary with myself, because I know that this is a pattern of my behavior, that I will withhold information because I know it&#8217;s unsavory. And that is not fair. And honestly, when I think of that \u2014 okay, I&#8217;m 30 years old now \u2014 when I think of the past seven years of business ownership, how many times has that exact behavior bit me in the ass?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because I am afraid to deal with somebody&#8217;s reaction \u2014 and sometimes rightly so. I&#8217;ve had bad reactions. I&#8217;ve had people blow up on me. I&#8217;ve had them storm out of my office, and all of these things. But when I say the amount of relief that is on the other side of sharing the information, of saying what needs to be said \u2014 I know you guys can relate to me, because think about how many instances we&#8217;ve all had where we are just dreading having a conversation. We&#8217;re like, oh my god, I do not want to have this conversation. I don&#8217;t want to sit this person down. I don&#8217;t want to lay it all on the table. It&#8217;s going to be very unpleasant and difficult. But on the other side of that, there is such relief. I know you guys have experienced this before. There is relief there, because now we are all playing with the same information, right? And then they are empowered to choose their behavior with all of the information, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that&#8217;s the beautiful thing \u2014 when we&#8217;re all playing on the same field with the same information, it is fair, and it is communicated what is expected to play ball, right? And that could be a client, that could be an employee, that could be your partner, that could be a friend, right? Like, that could be anybody that you&#8217;re in relationship with, because relationships are the hardest part about being human, I would say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-4\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Relationships Are the Hardest Part of This Business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that is why running a business is so difficult \u2014 particularly our business, right? Cleaning businesses. It is very challenging. Really any service-based business, I would say, where the majority of the work, or how you make money, is based on people working, right? Where I think that there&#8217;s a lot of companies \u2014 I look at my work with ZenMaid, where obviously there are staff members, there&#8217;s employees, it&#8217;s a good-sized team, but it is a software as a service, right? So there&#8217;s a lot of things that are happening within ZenMaid where it&#8217;s just not the same, and I&#8217;ve had multiple conversations with Amar \u2014 like, it&#8217;s just not the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So there&#8217;s a million different types of businesses that we can be in, and you and me have chosen to be cleaning business owners, and that means that the hardest part of our day is going to be relationships. It&#8217;s going to be dealing and having conversations with people and trying to get us all to achieve the same goal, right? Like, that&#8217;s hard. Especially the bigger that your team grows, the harder it gets, because you&#8217;re just dealing with whole different human beings. And so getting everybody to row the boat in the same direction gets increasingly harder the more people that you add, of course, and you have to be even more vigilant on this particular topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-5\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Nothing Erodes Culture Faster Than What You Allow<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so when I had these conversations last week with a couple consulting clients, they were describing these situations where staff members were blatantly disrespecting and disregarding what is acceptable just in general at a workplace, but specifically in that workplace culture \u2014 where other people were busting their ass, other people are doing what needs to be done, and these particular staff members are not. And not only are they not doing what needs to be done \u2014 it feels like spitting in the face of the owners with their behavior, and really, it almost feels like challenging them to call them out. To see, are you gonna call me out? And that may not be what&#8217;s happening. But when I was hearing these stories being described, where other people were coming to the owners and saying, hey, this is what&#8217;s happening at the job sites \u2014 the thing is, it wasn&#8217;t new information to the owner. It was finally being called to her attention by the other staff members, and the owner had already known that this was happening, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so now it cannot be ignored anymore. It is absolutely hurting the workplace culture, because literally nothing hurts our culture, guys, more than the good staff members seeing you allow absolute bullshit from others, and them getting away with it, or maybe just getting a slap on the wrist, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because there is a difference between someone who is genuinely messing up because of external forces, or it&#8217;s a genuine mistake \u2014 they didn&#8217;t understand something, they didn&#8217;t understand the policy, they&#8217;re a newer person, they had a quality issue because they&#8217;re not practiced enough, right? It just needs more training. There is a difference between that and behavior that is blatantly disregarding what is respectable, what is expected, what has been clearly communicated via policy, on and on and on, right? There is a difference there. And so when we&#8217;re in that second category, and employees are doing things that are unacceptable, and your other team members are seeing it, guys \u2014 it is eroding the rest of the team&#8217;s respect for you. It absolutely is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that&#8217;s how we have to see it. I don&#8217;t want to have this hard conversation \u2014 but by me avoiding calling this behavior out and really laying the hammer down on, no, this is not acceptable, this is not good enough, this is not good enough for my team \u2014 if you do not do that, you are literally, before your eyes, eroding the respect of the rest of your team members for you. And that&#8217;s how you have to see it. You have to see it every time that this situation comes up. And what I mean by that is, you&#8217;re clocking something that you see, and if it&#8217;s not being said, that&#8217;s on you. Okay? That is 100% on you. It&#8217;s not gonna go away. Even if it only happens sporadically, it&#8217;s not gonna go away. We cannot ignore these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And again, this is calling myself out, okay? I have done this 1,000 times, guys, throughout the history of Serene Clean, where I have noticed something, and it&#8217;s not okay. I know it&#8217;s not okay. They know it&#8217;s not okay. And by me not calling it out, by me not saying, hey, we don&#8217;t do that here, that&#8217;s not how we do things here at Serene Clean, refer to this policy or XYZ, and just so you know, if this behavior continues, this is what is going to happen \u2014 right, being clear, explaining the consequences of that path forward if we continue down that path \u2014 I have avoided that so many times, and it has hurt me. It&#8217;s hurt my company. It&#8217;s hurt my culture. It&#8217;s most importantly hurt my other staff members who don&#8217;t do that, because it&#8217;s not fair. It&#8217;s not right. And at the end of the day, it hurts my clients, because if there is dissent amongst the team, if there are some staff members getting away with something that the others would never dare to do, well, that&#8217;s a problem for everything. So it just hurts literally every layer of your business. And at the end of the day, it will absolutely hurt your bottom line, because when your culture is hurt, people are going to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Okay, I guarantee \u2014 leave it down in the comments below \u2014 you have left a job not because of the pay, not even because of the work, but because of the company culture being fucked up, right? We&#8217;ve all had jobs like that, where we did not respect the boss. We did not respect our manager. We didn&#8217;t respect our leader, because they wouldn&#8217;t do the hard thing. And by us signing up to be a business owner, now that&#8217;s us. And now that&#8217;s us who is causing people to not have respect for us, because we&#8217;re not acting respectably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I&#8217;ve really been thinking a lot about respect recently, and just how that comes about, how that showcases \u2014 like, why do I respect one person? Why do I not respect another person? And it all just comes down to behavior, right? They are not behaving in a respectable manner. So I really want us to analyze ourselves. Are we handling ourselves and managing our business in a respectable manner? And in this context of what we&#8217;re talking about, respectable means to say the difficult things \u2014 sit down and be honest with somebody about what the hell&#8217;s going on, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-6\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">One Chance, Then Stick to It<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so that was the one owner. The other owner, who I&#8217;m gonna have on \u2014 and maybe we can talk about this more, but I&#8217;m gonna respect her anonymity. I can say it now, guys \u2014 I&#8217;m gonna respect her anonymity, and if she wants to talk about it, we can talk about it. But I will say this anonymously: the staff member was being absolutely, ridiculously disrespectful to her \u2014 yelling at her, throwing a fit at her \u2014 and she called it out. She did a really great job of being like, this is unacceptable. This is your one chance. This can never happen again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I&#8217;m definitely a proponent of giving another chance after it is very clear this is the one and only \u2014 and then you stick to it, right? You can&#8217;t just keep \u2014 you know, for anybody who has kids or who has been around children, you know that if you do that, right? You say, if you do that again, this is what&#8217;s gonna happen \u2014 and then you don&#8217;t do the consequence you stated. Why would they listen to you? Right? Why would they listen to you? Because they don&#8217;t believe you, because you&#8217;re not acting believable, because you don&#8217;t do what you say you&#8217;re gonna do, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I just want to highlight this, because I think it&#8217;s not something that only I am struggling with. It&#8217;s clearly something that so many of us struggle with \u2014 having those hard conversations, because it&#8217;s unpleasant. And I am just letting you guys know that on the other side of those unpleasant conversations, it&#8217;s clarity, it&#8217;s respect. And it&#8217;ll give you respect if that person chooses to change and they choose to correct their behavior. They are going to respect you a lot more for it, right? And that&#8217;s truly what we want. We want a team that all respects each other, because it&#8217;s a two-way street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-7\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">My Biggest Failure as a Leader This Year<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I think of my biggest failure in this area, it was actually with a manager this past year. I was not being clear. I was seeing, for months, behavior that I was not happy with, that was unacceptable to me, but I wasn&#8217;t saying it, because I did not want to deal with a difficult conversation. Because as you guys know, I&#8217;m very, very close with all of my managers. They&#8217;ve all worked with me for years, and so I never dealt with it before. It was fairly easy, I should say, for me to have a conversation with a cleaning tech \u2014 though I will say, 100%, I have delegated difficult conversations pretty much out of my life when it comes to the team, when it comes to the cleaners, right? Very rarely am I having to get involved, because I have a director of HR now, right? So that is something that I&#8217;ve actually made easier on myself, because I don&#8217;t like having these difficult conversations, so I&#8217;ve now made it somebody else&#8217;s job, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But that means I&#8217;m not getting as much practice. What I&#8217;m doing is being an armchair quarterback and saying, Crystal, you need to go talk to this person, and you need to chew them out, and you need to do this and you need to do this, right? So I&#8217;ve actually delegated away a lot of discomfort, which is an absolute luxury, and it&#8217;s also made me not practice this skill of having challenging conversations. So that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m being very honest about this \u2014 I continue to struggle with this because I&#8217;m not practicing it. And anything that we do, guys \u2014 the more we do it, the easier it&#8217;s going to get, even if it&#8217;s incrementally. Doesn&#8217;t mean it&#8217;s not gonna be unpleasant. Does not mean you are not gonna dread it, right? But it will get easier. It&#8217;s a muscle, just like any other aspect of our business is a muscle that we can grow. Sales \u2014 we can grow that. The actual skill of cleaning, right? We get better at everything the more that we do it. And so by me getting rid of this off of my plate, it makes it really, really hard when it does have to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so when it had to happen with one of my managers \u2014 my management team, I should say \u2014 I let it go for way too long, and that is 100% on me. I was scared to have a conversation and say, hey, these are the behaviors that I&#8217;m noticing. Like, what is going on? This isn&#8217;t okay. It&#8217;s not fair. It&#8217;s not right. And I&#8217;m not gonna talk about this ever on the podcast, actually, but I will say that that was 100% on me for not nipping it in the bud so much earlier. Right? And we all have reasons. We logic our way out of it \u2014 why don&#8217;t we have this conversation? We always are saying, you know, oh, well, they&#8217;re going through a hard time, I don&#8217;t want to put more on them. But you know what makes somebody go through an even harder time? Them not doing their job well, and you not being the manager and the boss and sitting them down and being honest with them, so that they can have that come-to-Jesus moment and say, you know what? Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I&#8217;m gonna work on this. And giving them the opportunity to improve \u2014 because you are literally stealing away that opportunity because you are afraid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that&#8217;s exactly what I did to this manager. I stole her opportunity to improve and to turn the bus around a lot faster, because I was afraid, and I just kicked the can down the road. And I was like, god, this is really bothering me. And there was all this resentment building in me, yet I wasn&#8217;t saying or doing anything about it. I was just letting it get worse and worse until it was this huge thing. And it could have ended in a very bad way \u2014 and I&#8217;m really happy it didn&#8217;t end in that way \u2014 where I would have lost a manager and a friend, frankly. And that is not what happened. Because of this conversation, this candid truth that was very uncomfortable \u2014 it was incredibly uncomfortable \u2014 but since then, it has literally been like night and fucking day, guys, because I was honest, finally. And her work has been incredible for months now. For months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so this happened obviously at the beginning of the year, I think, and I have not talked about it here, and I finally am feeling comfortable to talk about it. And again, I&#8217;m not gonna go into more detail, because I want to be respectful, and I don&#8217;t think that it&#8217;s my place to put that out there. But I want to talk about it, because when I think of my biggest failure as a leader this past year, that was it. It was my inability to be honest and share what needed to be said so that she could have the opportunity to improve. And so the reason I&#8217;m sharing this, guys, is to let you know that, one, we all deal with this. We all struggle with this. Number two \u2014 that doesn&#8217;t matter. Just because it&#8217;s hard doesn&#8217;t mean we don&#8217;t need to do it. Okay?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-8\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Staff Member Who Stole From a Church<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I think about last year, when I had that staff member who stole from a church, right \u2014 she stole a wallet on camera from a church, and then she lied to my face several times about it, because I was trying to give her an opportunity to be honest. I don&#8217;t know what I would have done if she had been honest, because at the end of the day, stealing is stealing. But I would have respected her a lot more if she had just been honest from the get-go and just fessed up when we confronted her. Instead, she kept lying. She kept digging herself in the hole. And even to this day, she does not admit that she stole it. She said that she lost it \u2014 she picked it up and she lost it \u2014 which is bullshit. It&#8217;s not true. That is not the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I was at a crossroads. I know I&#8217;ve described that several times, but for any of you new listeners, this was so hard for me, because this cleaner wasn&#8217;t like a new cleaner. She&#8217;d been with me for four years. We had our company cookouts and pool parties at her house. Like, this was my friend, right? This was my friend. It was absolutely heartbreaking. I was so incredibly disappointed, and my managers were too. And we were sitting at the worst part of the year \u2014 we were having a horrific turnover. This was a full-time commercial cleaner that the accounts all really liked. So it was just so painful to do the correct thing in that moment, because there was that little devil on my shoulder saying, it&#8217;s gonna really fucking suck if you fire her right now. You need her. You need her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And one \u2014 you don&#8217;t need anybody. All right? And that sounds harsh. You don&#8217;t need anybody. If somebody is doing shit like that, they do not belong in your company. And the second that you let them do shit like that and stay, you&#8217;re done. You&#8217;re done. Your whole rest of your team is never gonna respect you. They&#8217;re always gonna remember that, if they know. But at the end of the day, what matters is that you&#8217;re not gonna respect yourself. And that&#8217;s what it came down to. One \u2014 I cannot allow this person to be in clients&#8217; businesses. Clearly, they&#8217;ve proven that they will do this, right? And obviously, anybody could technically steal, especially considering the business that we&#8217;re in, right, guys? Like, we&#8217;re cleaning houses and businesses. We have ample opportunity. So if somebody shows you that they are willing to take that opportunity that arises all the time \u2014 we&#8217;re exposed to things every single day that could be stolen, of course \u2014 if somebody shows you that they&#8217;re willing to do that in any capacity, well, it&#8217;s not a mistake. It&#8217;s a choice. It&#8217;s a choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so we can&#8217;t allow that for our clients. More importantly, we can&#8217;t allow that for our team. Because if my team knew that somebody got away with that \u2014 and I&#8217;ve been saying for years now that one of our core values is integrity \u2014 what does that mean? It means nothing. It literally means shit if I say that integrity is one of our core values, and that that is how we make decisions, by leading with integrity, and then I allowed that. What I say doesn&#8217;t fucking matter at that point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-9\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Self-Respect Is Built by Action<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So finally, what&#8217;s most important is I wouldn&#8217;t respect myself, because I would always know if I backed down in that moment, if I didn&#8217;t do what needed to be done \u2014 the unpleasant thing. Really, both were unpleasant. Letting her stay or letting her leave were both unpleasant in that moment. But if I didn&#8217;t do the hard but necessary thing, I would not respect myself. And I think that the biggest thing that&#8217;s changed in me since opening my business is belief and respect of myself. And that is built by action, guys. That is built by choices that we make. And every time I think back to times where I did not act respectably \u2014 I acted like a coward, I lied, I was deceitful in a variety of ways, I was lazy, all of these things \u2014 those are the things that erode my self-respect. And it is very difficult to genuinely command respect from others if you do not respect yourself. And that&#8217;s why I think that this is so important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so when I&#8217;m having these conversations with you, and you guys are describing these things, I&#8217;m literally watching your own self-respect be eroded, because you know what you should be doing, and you&#8217;re not, and you need me to tell you that. And I literally will say, listen, I know this is hard, but your team is seeing how you&#8217;re acting. They&#8217;re watching you right now. They&#8217;re watching you right now, and they&#8217;re watching what&#8217;s going down. They may not say something, but you know, and they know. And you&#8217;re going to know, most importantly, what you are allowing. And I oftentimes will just lay it out, like, look, I&#8217;m gonna tell you right now \u2014 this person is not going to last long-term. The decision is, how long are you going to let them hurt you and hurt your business and hurt the rest of your team? Like, how long are you gonna give them that power? Because power is given while you allow them to remain on your team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And yes, it sucks. It absolutely sucks, because you&#8217;re short-staffed, you got to go clean, you&#8217;re having just a horrific turnover time, you feel like you can&#8217;t find any good people recently, and you&#8217;re just down on your luck, and you&#8217;re so exhausted. But you know what&#8217;s not gonna help? Leaving somebody on the team who fucking sucks. And by fucking sucks, I mean their morals and values do not align with you, right? They may have morals and values, but they&#8217;re just not aligned with what you are choosing for your business. And that is gonna hurt way more than going in and cleaning. I promise you. I promise you, it&#8217;s gonna hurt you more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So please, if anything comes from this podcast episode \u2014 you have one conversation that you&#8217;re putting off right now. You flex that muscle. We start working out that muscle more, because that&#8217;s definitely my goal. I&#8217;m working very hard at just saying things that need to be said. And it&#8217;s actually easier for me in my business than in my personal life. I can think of literally a handful of examples within the past couple months alone where something happened and it really, really bothered me \u2014 it was not okay \u2014 and I didn&#8217;t say anything, because I didn&#8217;t want to deal with their reaction. Because I was like, oh, maybe they&#8217;re gonna cry, maybe they&#8217;re gonna have a really emotional reaction, or they&#8217;re gonna make me feel guilty for bringing it up, and I don&#8217;t want to deal with that. So instead, I allow myself to feel like shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So it&#8217;s just something that&#8217;s really top of mind that I really want to work on. And I think that there are so many things about us as people that are hurting us in our business, right? Like, we are the limiting factor. We are the thing that is slowing our growth down, slowing the business down, because of a variety of things \u2014 but a lot of times, it has to do with us not having the difficult conversations that we need to have, because we&#8217;re afraid, we don&#8217;t want to deal with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-10\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">How to Frame the Hard Conversation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I just urge you guys to practice this. And it may not go perfect, and you may say something wrong. Don&#8217;t expect perfection. The point is that you tried. And saying, listen, I&#8217;m sitting you down because I care about you, and I want you on this team. And in order to stay on this team, this is what this is gonna look like \u2014 okay, this, this, and this. You can&#8217;t be showing up late. All right? Because that&#8217;s not fair to your team. That&#8217;s not fair to the client. All right? It&#8217;s not fair to yourself, because I know you can show up, because you show up all these other times on time. You have it in you to do it. So I am holding you to this standard, and this is what&#8217;s gonna happen if it doesn&#8217;t happen. Because I believe in you, and I&#8217;m pushing you, because I expect a lot out of you, because I know you can be great. You&#8217;ve proven it to me. All right? And I want only great people on this team, and I know you&#8217;re great. You just need to align your actions with it. And really come at it from that angle. Come at it from \u2014 this can be the breakthrough conversation, because somebody needed to say it to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And sometimes you need to say it to yourself, right? I expect greatness out of myself, and I am not behaving in a great manner. I need to hold myself accountable. We&#8217;re not honest with ourselves, right? But at the end of the day, when we&#8217;re not honest with ourselves, our self-respect starts to erode. And I want you guys all to respect yourselves, and I want your team to have a respectable leader. Okay? So is that you? Are you doing that right now? Are you being respectable in your behavior? And that&#8217;s going right back to me, too \u2014 like, am I being respectable enough that they should want me as a leader, that they should follow me, that they should be on my team at all? Right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-11\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Final Thoughts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So \u2014 big topic. It is 9 a.m. on a Monday morning. I&#8217;m about to have my team meeting, but this was top of mind. I was thinking about this last night, and I&#8217;m like, I want to talk about this. I know it&#8217;s not exactly super tactical, guys, but I hope that you enjoy some of these types of conversations. Let me know in the comments down below what you think \u2014 if you have any examples that you are courageous enough to share of where you did not say something you should have said, where you did not call out behavior that you should have, and you let it go on for far too long, right? And that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re going to be working on together as a community here on Filthy Rich Cleaners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you are not in the ZenMaid Mastermind, I would love to see you guys there. It is completely free. It&#8217;s on Facebook. We&#8217;ll put a link down below. I actually just posted this past Friday a video of how I am working through video marketing material with AI and having it help me with my online marketing content for Serene Clean. So if that&#8217;s something that you&#8217;re interested in, I just posted a 10-minute video. You won&#8217;t find that stuff anywhere else. That&#8217;s the type of thing I put in the Mastermind \u2014 that kind of behind-the-scenes of me working through things, sharing my screen, and showing you how I work through things. I&#8217;m gonna try to do that a little bit more often, because oftentimes I just do my work and I&#8217;m like, this would be really great to show my friends in the Mastermind. So I&#8217;d love to see you there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;d love to see you subscribe to the ZenMaid newsletter \u2014 also completely free, and you don&#8217;t need to be a ZenMaid customer. We&#8217;ll put that down below as well. Great newsletters coming out every single week on very pertinent topics to us specifically as cleaning business owners, because that&#8217;s who ZenMaid is built for. And finally, I would love it if you liked and subscribed to our channel. We put out two new podcasts every single week \u2014 one guest, and one where it&#8217;s just me talking to you guys, typically. Sometimes we switch it up a little bit, but that has been the cadence, and it has been an absolute joy to make content for you guys. I love it so much. I love hearing from you. It&#8217;s really exciting when I can wake up and have emails in my inbox talking about the impact that our work has made, because that is why I am here. So I hope you guys have a wonderful rest of your day \u2014 whether you&#8217;re cleaning, you&#8217;re driving between jobs, whatever you&#8217;re doing, I hope you&#8217;re having a great time. And let me know what you think of this topic down below. I&#8217;ll see you in the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Bye, guys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you enjoyed this episode of the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast, please be sure to leave us a five-star review so we can reach more cleaners like you. Until next time, keep your work clean and your business filthy rich.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listen on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Introduction Stephanie: Hello everyone, welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean, and in today&#8217;s episode I want to talk about a continuing pattern that I see amongst all people, really, but especially owners this past week during [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":17704,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"Having Difficult Conversations With Your Employees","_seopress_titles_desc":"Stephanie from Serene Clean on why avoiding hard conversations erodes culture \u2014 and how cleaning business owners can start saying what needs to be said.","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-podcast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17706,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17703\/revisions\/17706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}