Listen to Victoria and Jeff’s Conversation on Leadership Here:
Great leadership is forged through adversity, not comfort. Leadership expert Jeff Hancher joins host Victoria Meyer to explore the evolving challenges of leading teams in today’s chemical industry—where post-pandemic disruption, hybrid work, and rising mental health concerns are reshaping expectations. Jeff shares how growing up in poverty, serving in the military, and climbing the corporate ladder from truck driver to senior leader shaped his views on feedback, resilience, and mentorship.
Victoria and Jeff discuss the mechanics of effective feedback, how to build robust leadership skills in a volatile world, and why personal investment in growth and mentorship is more critical than ever. Drawing from Jeff’s new book, “Firm Feedback in a Fragile World,” and personal stories from the chemical sector and beyond, this conversation delivers actionable insights for leaders tackling retention, talent development, and organizational change.
Get additional insights on:
- The changing landscape of leadership and how to build and apply leadership skills
- Jeff Hancher’s career journey and how mentorship shapes professional success at every level.
- Strategies for delivering honest, clear feedback while maintaining trust and team morale.
- How to leverage AI, digitization, and supply chain challenges as opportunities for leadership growth.
- Practical tactics for finding mentors, building confidence, and becoming a leader others respect and follow.
Killer Quote: “It’s not the load that weighs you down, it’s how you carry it. The greater the adversity, the greater the opportunity for impact.“ —Jeff Hancher
Additional Links:
Check out Jeff Hancher’s book “Firm Feedback in a Fragile World” here.
Watch Jeff and Victoria Talk Leadership Here:
How Chemical Leaders Can Thrive: Mentoring, Feedback, and Navigating Challenge with Jeff Hancher
Welcome back to The Chemical Show, where leaders talk business. Today I am speaking with Jeff Hancher, who has navigated the path from the Army into being corporate leader and now as a leadership expert running his own business. Jeff has recently published a book, Firm Feedback in a Fragile World, which we will link to in our show notes. We’re going to be having a great conversation about leadership feedback and frankly, how we all can be successful in our careers and leading teams.
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So, Jeff, welcome to The Chemical Show.
Man, it is good to be with you, Victoria. I love what you’re doing to support your industry and certainly to support leaders. Everything rises and falls at the hand of a leader, and I’m looking forward to the discussion.
Yeah, absolutely. I’m so glad that you’re here. And of course, you yourself host a really successful podcast. So we might get a chance to talk about that a little bit and certainly want to encourage people to listen to your podcast as well. So, Jeff, what’s your origin story? What got you onto the path that you are today?
I’ll give you the Cliff Notes because that could be a long episode, but I grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania, about 20 miles south of Pittsburgh. Grew up in rural America. Born into poverty. Had two parents that never worked a day in my life. A mom that battled a disease called lupus, a dad that battled chronic osteoarthritis that led to tons of surgeries on his feet and an amputation. It was really, really rough growing up.
When I became a teenager and had some freedom, things got worse. There wasn’t a lot of direction. My parents were good people, but they were literally fighting for survival. And being a teenager with not a lot of direction led to a lot of bad decisions. Brushes with the law, the wrong friend groups, you name it. Me and my brother kind of felt like the walls were caving in on us. When I graduated from high school, I never really saw college as an opportunity. One, because of affordability. Two, I just wasn’t a great student.
But I knew I wanted more, and I didn’t really know what to do. So I had a couple options. I could go into the coal mine, I could go into the steel mill, or I could join the military. And I joined the military, just because I wanted to experience something different. So I find myself in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in basic training, running Tank Hill and doing all the things that a new soldier does. After I transitioned from the military, I was going to use that GI Bill to go to college, which was unheard of. Like nobody had ever done that in my family.
So I was gonna give it a shot, and I was a few weeks from starting and my dad called and made me aware they were sending my mom home in hospice. And we had gotten that call before where she would get really, really sick. This time it was different because this time would be the time that my dad was also having a leg amputation while my mom was being sent home in hospice.
That is a lot for a family and a young adult to grapple with.
Yeah, so you have all of this going on. My brother’s in a career, so I did what anybody would do and I put college on the back burner and I helped get all the nurses set up and get things a little bit stabilized, helping my dad through rehabbing, how to figure out how to use an artificial leg and all this stuff. I didn’t want to be a burden on my parents. So I went and look for a seasonal job. I didn’t have a lot of skill, so I needed some kind of grunt work. I ended up applying to be a truck driver at Cintas Uniform Company. And what I thought was going to be a seasonal job ended up being nearly a 25 year career in that Fortune 500 company.
I went from entry level fill in truck driver to a senior leader in that company. And it’s not because I’m anything amazing. I worked hard, but I had that level of success because I had leaders that had a lot of belief in me and supported me along that journey. I thought I was going to retire from that company, and in early 2019, I started a leadership podcast to kind of give back what’s been given to me. That led to a lot of great feedback and a side hustle of doing leadership trainings and executive coaching. In December of 2019, I felt the conviction very strong to leave the company I loved and all the unvested stock and the risk of starting your own company. And I branched out and started Jeff Hancher Enterprises.
It’s been an amazing ride. So that’s kind of the Cliff Notes.
Yeah, I think it’s great. To your Point, there are people in our lives along the way that are powerful stewards of our journey. Giving us the right support, the right mentorship, the right belief. Because who would have thought, that you’d go from a seasonal worker to a senior leader and then beyond. So that’s really cool. When we think about this, and of course, you’ve been working a long time, you started out in the military. What’s different today? So when you look at leadership and I know you’re a student of leadership, what’s different about leadership today versus what it was 25 years ago?
I say it’s never been harder to lead. Make no mistake, we are still very much post-pandemic. You know, are we coming back to the office? Are we still going to stay hybrid? Is it going to be a blend? Well, if you make me come back to the office, I’m quitting. I don’t want to come back to the office. We had to battle through the great resignation. Probably every leader listening to this episode has an open requisition. They’re not fully staffed. It’s harder to attract top talent than ever before.
It’s harder to retain top talent than ever before. Leaders are tasked like never before with these types of challenges. The numbers of mental health challenges are on the rise like never before. And guess what? Leaders that are “unqualified to manage” that are needing to lead teams that need this kind of mental health support. And this has left a fear, I think, in leaders of don’t rock the boat, just get through another day. Don’t call out the problem. Don’t challenge people.
Just don’t cause ripples. What we know is, that’s not good leadership. We’re all a product of feedback. We’re all a product of a tough conversation. But I think now more than ever, leaders are fearful of it because things are already so fragile. They just don’t want to rock the boat anymore. There’s plenty of challenges that leaders are navigating.
Yeah, that’s so interesting because you hear it from both sides, where people struggle with having a not great leader and a not great boss and they can’t believe certain things that are happening or that certain people get away with. And then, on the other side, leaders are struggling. So you kind of touched on some of these things, but we’ve got this whole aspect of all these changes, I think about AI and digitization, the whole return to work. Are you in the office? Are you not in the office? What the holy heck are you doing? Certainly in the chemical industry, we’re in a period of disruption, so tariffs, supply chain, depending on where you sit. There’s some major shutdowns taking place as the world shifts a bit. How is that influencing corporations and leaders when they think about going to work and how they lead effectively? And what does that even look like today?
Yeah, it’s challenging because guess what? Last I checked, leaders are humans. They have feelings, they have emotions. Leadership can be a heavy load, but what I’ve learned about the greatest leaders is it’s not the load that weighs you down, it’s how you carry it. You know, if you wear a backpack low to your back and there’s 50 lbs in it, it’s going to feel like 100. That same 50 lbs, though, if it’s secured tightly to your back and high on your shoulders, it might only feel like 20. It’s not the load that weighs you down, it’s how you carry it.
Here’s the thing about adversity. The greater the adversity, the greater the opportunity for impact. And I’ll tell a story to drive this point. If you think about a trauma surgeon, this is somebody that spent 10 to 13 years of their life to get started, to be good at what they do. This is a person that covers the most traumatic events that come through an emergency room. This is gunshots, stabs, head on collisions. They’ve been trained to take care of the most adverse acute health situations that come through the hospital. And can you imagine being a trauma surgeon and day after day, day after day, day after day, not one case comes through the ER. You find yourself one day sitting there as the trauma surgeon and you look over to the nurse and you say, this really stinks.
And she or he says, what stinks? There’s no trauma cases coming in. And the nurse says to you, the trauma surgeon, are you saying that you want people to get hurt? And you, the doctor, sit there and you think about that and you say, that is kind of a crazy thing to say. Yeah, I really don’t want people to get hurt. But it’s what I’ve been built to do. So much so that if trauma is not happening in this city, I’m gonna go find a city where it is. Why? Because I’ve dedicated my life to this. It’s what I’m good at. It’s what I’m built to do.
I can make a difference in the most serious of situations. If a leader takes this posture, when the chemical industry is under attack, it’s under political strain, all of these things are happening. There’s going to be a leader that represents a brand that’s going to look at all this adversity and say, this is my moment. This is the opportunity that I’ve been waiting for. I will tell you, when you take on this posture, what we know is that everybody listening to this show is going to face adversity. You’re going to face the death of somebody that you love dearly. There’s people right now that have just been told that their 15 year old is addicted to drugs. There’s somebody listening to this show that has just been told that their husband or wife has stage four cancer.
This is real, Victoria. This is the real workforce that we’re leading. But here’s what I know. None of us are going to escape tragedy. None of us are going to escape adversity. There’s going to be competitive pressure, political distress, social injustice. It’s all going to happen and it’s going to keep happening. The leader that steps up and says, you know what, this is my opportunity to shine. I have developed myself in a way that this adversity is actually going to give me a competitive advantage.
The leaders with that mindset are going to win and dominate.
So it prompts a couple questions here for me, Jeff, which is, number one, how do you develop those skills? And number two, how do you recognize the opportunity and when to apply those skills? Because I think many of us are excellent practitioners, but sometimes we just apply that at the wrong time in the wrong way and it screws things up. So how do you build the skills and how do you apply them correctly?
I always say that everybody on planet Earth is in one of four camps. Camp 1 is, I hope it doesn’t come up. Camp 2 is if it comes up, I’ll wing it. Camp 3 is if it comes up, I’m ready to talk about it. But then there’s camp 4 people. Camp 4 people have this mindset of if it doesn’t come up, I’m bringing it up not because I’m arrogant, but because I see it as a duty and an obligation.
Think, you’re at Walmart and somebody yells help, help. They’re not breathing. And you know CPR. You’ve been trained in CPR and you hear this cry for help. In this moment, you’re in camp 4 because you know CPR. You know how to use a defibrillator. So you run to the lifeless body. You’re not thinking this is arrogant. You’re not waiting for somebody else to do it.
This is a camp 4 moment. So you forget everything else and you run to death and breathe life into it adversely. If you don’t know CPR, you’re walking into Walmart hoping it doesn’t ever come up. So then the question comes, which is your question, how do you get into camp 4? Well, it’s really simple but not easy. Camp 4 requires you to consume and to get around people that have been where you want to go.
I need to be hungry for knowledge. I need to be in the workshop. And by the way, we’re talking to people listening that believe in this. That’s why they’re listening to the show. But I need to get content. I need to watch YouTube, I need to pay out of my own pocket, if need be, to go to the leadership workshop or to hire the executive coach. Why? Because I know I need the knowledge.
You’re not going to get something by doing nothing. So we have to invest in our growth. But it can’t stop there because we’re not here to win leadership trivia. You can be book smart and not be effective as a leader. That would be like trying to be great at golf and reading Tiger Woods’ golf book. That’s never going to make you a great golfer.
It’ll make you more knowledgeable about the game and you might win trivia night, but you’re never going to be an effective golfer. Now if I could go play 18 rounds with Tiger every Sunday, the odds of me being a pretty good golfer are going to go up. So you have to consume, but so many people spend their life consuming and never executing. When you get mentorship, which is basically what people are doing by listening to this show is they’re saying, I want to get around people that have been where I want to go. So those are the staples that I would tell you that’s going to build a foundation of confidence. When you have confidence in something, that’s where the execution comes. Which is the second part of your question.
One of my favorite quotes is this from Marcus Garvey he said this once, “If you lack confidence in self, you’re twice defeated in the race of life. But with confidence, you have won before you start.” This confidence thing is the ultimate wildcard for anybody and especially a leader, because when you have all of the knowledge and you understand through mentoring or leadership how to execute it, now you’re in camp 4 and you can run into the biggest problem.
Yeah, that’s really great. I do think this whole aspect, to me it points to maybe a growth mindset and being around the right people. You and I both know, having gone from corporate to entrepreneurship, first of all, inside of a corporation, you may or may not have those right people around you. I have had the opportunity in my career to have some great leaders and mentors who sewed into me, who were great examples. In fact, the thing that comes to mind is I met somebody a couple weeks ago at an event I was speaking at and we were talking about his wife was going back into the office five days a week, blah, blah, blah, they have a young family. And just this whole aspect of managing a family while you’re also corporate.
And I said, what I still remember is I had some great women around me when my kids were very young. I mean, today as well, but when my kids are very young and I was at Shell working in corporate, who basically taught me how to have a nanny and what do I do with the nanny and how do I help balance this for my family? That was something I needed to learn and I needed people to show me. I have some great leaders that help me with the commercial aspects of my business and commercial acuity, the great leaders that help me be a leader of people. So I think this aspect of having that around you, and then if you don’t have it, creating it, finding it inside your company, outside of your company. Again, as an entrepreneur running a small business, you have to go out to create that community and create that mentorship and make that happen.
Man, that’s so true. Think about, like what you said, some of the things that you just said transcend business results. Like somebody that sat you down and said, this is how you can still be a good mom and be successful in business. I had a leader that took me in the men’s room once and taught me how to tie a Windsor knot because I just became a white collar worker from a blue collar world and I didn’t know what collar stays were and I didn’t know how to tie a tie. I didn’t know anything. It wasn’t his responsibility to teach me those things. He went beyond the business results to make deposits into me. And I’ll bet this, if I were to ask you or anybody listening to think about your Mount Rushmore of leaders, these are the four people that you would say, I would not be who I am if these people never came in my life.
I’ll bet you if I were to ask you the question, were those four people tough on you? They probably all were. But if I were to follow that up and say, did you know they cared? Yeah, because they also taught me how to be a great mom and they also taught me how to tie a tie. And they also took me, this leader did, to Jos. A. Bank and taught me how to dress. Now, here’s what happens to your example and this is why mentoring and getting around great leaders matters. When you achieve that, what you just talked about and what I just described, you’re no longer a boss that people report to. You’re a leader that people don’t want to let down.
Now you want to earn the right to have a tough conversation in the face of quiet quitting, high turnover, trying to attract top talent. You want to be a leader that leads with confidence and doesn’t fear tough feedback. Earn the right, because then you become a leader people don’t want to let down. We know that the best recruiting and retention tool there is on planet Earth is the leader that’s listening.
Yeah, that’s true. And so this is perhaps a bit of what your new book is about. So you’ve just published Firm Feedback in a Fragile World. When we look across, heck, every industry but let’s talk about the chemical industry, there’s a lot of what we do that is kind of just required.
We need to have a safe operating environment, compliance from a regulatory product perspective, dealing with operational complexity, safe and secure supply chains. So many different things. Things can go right, things can go wrong. When things go wrong, tragedy can happen. Of course, we all seek to avoid that. How do you deliver that tough feedback? Is there a formula for tough feedback without breaking trust or employee morale and continuing to build on that?
Yeah, there is a formula. The framework we talk about in the book is that of expectations, feedback and accountability. Making sure expectations are clear, reasonable people understand why the expectation is good for them. They’ve been adequately trained to meet or exceed the expectation. But then this feedback piece. I’m a big fan of frequent and scheduled one on one debriefs for everybody in your company. I always get pushback and I’ll hear people say, we don’t have time for that. Well, then you need more leaders.
Last I checked, you’re only as good as the people that you’re developing. You could have the best product in the world and if your leadership is weak, you’re going to lose adversely. If you have superior leadership with moderate or even inadequate product and service, you’re going to be a fierce competitor. Because what we’re talking about here is culture. And I talk about this in the book, but it leads to then, well, why is it that leaders fear or have this anxiety about having a tough conversation? We’ve all had that tightness of the chest, that sweaty palm whenever you have to address that employee that degraded you or interrupted you in front of everybody in the team meeting this morning. And by the way, they’re our peak performer and if they quit, we’re going to be screwed. That person. And we gotta have this tough conversation.
I talk about the acronym FEAR in the book and of why there’s this feedback avoidance. The F is fallout. What if I have this hard conversation, people don’t like me anymore or it ruins my brand or my reputation? Then you have the E, which is emotion. What if I have this conversation and they get angry or they feel embarrassed or if they cry? Here’s what I’ll tell you. If you haven’t made anybody cry in leadership yet, you’re probably not doing it right. Not that we want people to cry, but we gotta have hard conversations. The A is amateur, which is probably a big one. This doesn’t mean you’re new to leadership.
Amateur means you’ve never really been taught a framework of how to deliver feedback. You could be in leadership for 15 years. Believe me, these are the people coming to my workshops who at the end of a workshop say, nobody’s ever told me this. I know that’s a common response. So you might feel like an amateur. An amateur means, you know what, I’m not going to do anything because I’m afraid to get it wrong. But then you have the R, retaliation, which is very prominent in the corporate world. What if I have this conversation, it doesn’t go like I want it to, and they report me to HR or they tell my boss? You know what, I don’t want to rock the boat.
I’m not going to do anything. Well, the good news is this. If you have confidence, and we’ve already proven that the leaders that have made the biggest impact on you were tough on you, that means you got to get tough. What I’m not saying is be aggressive, because there’s a leader listening that says, see, I’m doing it right. I’m not talking about getting a stick out and whacking people. I’m talking about finding the balance of earning the right to have a tough conversation. That’s the framework in the book. Expectations, feedback, meaning feedback’s not the same for any two people. You, Victoria, might need supportive feedback in the morning, but by the time afternoon hits, you might need collaborative feedback.
That new employee, they don’t need collaborative feedback. They need directive feedback because they don’t know what they’re doing. That peak performer that has stopped performing for you, they need supportive feedback. So we have to at least understand that there’s multiple types of feedback and the best scenarios to deliver the feedback, which is what we talk about in the book.
Yeah, I like that. It’s actually a great segue to one of my other questions, which is going to be around, when people are under stress, leaders, employees, everyone. But if you’re a leader under stress, a lot of times you revert to, like, your worst behaviors, right? So you’ve been really good, great feedback, consistent. And then whatever your old comfortable habits, ways of communicating, ways of giving feedback, whether it’s being directive or explosive or what have you, often come through in those stress moments. How do you maybe recover from that? If you recognize that, but also, how does that change the way feedback is received? How do you just find your path through it? Because the reality is, we’ve all seen this, right? We’ve lived it, we’ve experienced it, we’ve been it at times. How do you navigate that?
What we know about the greatest leaders that have ever walked the planet is, they all have one common thread, probably many, but one of them is they’re composed. Great leaders are composed. Rarely, not never, but rarely is anything personal. A lot of times a leader can get bent out of shape because they become triggered, because somebody said something they shouldn’t have said, somebody did something they shouldn’t have done, and we become emotionally triggered. Remember this, and this is going to set somebody free today. They’re not trying to hurt you, they’re trying to help them. This isn’t personal. If they show up on your porch with clenched fists, now it’s personal. It’s rare that that’s going to happen.
They’re trying to help them. They’re not trying to hurt you. They’re trying to help them. This isn’t personal. If they show up on your porch with clenched fists, now it’s personal. It’s rare that that’s going to happen. Think about it this way. You’re driving down the road one day and you see a stray dog.
Think about it this way. You’re driving down the road one day and you see a stray dog. You can see its ribs. You can tell this dog is probably days away from dying. It’s been neglected. So you pull the car over and you say, hey Skippy, jump in the car. I’m going to save you. The dog’s not jumping in the car. It’s not doing that. So you walk over to the dog and you talk nice and you say, hey, I’m here to help. You look like you’re having a bad time.
You go to pet the dog, and what’s that dog do? It bites you, and you say to yourself, how dare you? I’m just here to help. Well, why is the dog biting? Because it’s been beaten. It’s been neglected, it’s been abused. It hasn’t eaten in days. And here’s the thing. You don’t give up on the dog. You go and you get treats, and you can maybe get a blanket.
You sit down in a less intimidating posture, and you start feeding the dog some treats. Why? Because it matters to you so much to save the dog. You know you have to build trust. So over time, the dog starts to trust you, and it gets in the car and now you’re able to help it. Now, look, all due respect to animals, but this is a dog. I find that too often leaders give up on people too fast. They’re not trying to hurt you, they’re trying to help them.
That dog wasn’t trying to hurt you, it was trying to protect itself. Composure is having a perspective that’s completely different than average leaders, that I’m not moved by my situation, and I always know I can either change my perspective or change my environment. This adversity, it sucks, compared to what? That’s freedom. This sucks compared to what? That employee just called me a jerk. That sucks, compared to what? Fighting for your life in an emergency room, being in a foxhole taking bullets? This sucks, compared to what? We have to fight for perspective, and we have to realize we are leaders that have been put in this position to navigate challenges. A fireman never says, oh, here goes the alarm again. Looks like we got to go into a burning building.
No, in some kind of sick way, they get excited about it because it’s what they get to do. When we feel this emotion that we’re losing composure, that’s when we gotta take a breath and we gotta check ourselves and we gotta build this level of confidence and change our perspective so that we can lead through the toughest of times. We’re not literally going into battle. That’s a whole different level of stress. We’re navigating business challenges. So that would be my advice to somebody that is fighting to not be so emotional.
Yeah, that’s really great. You talk a lot about firm feedback, and we’ve been talking about feedback and mentorship here. Can you share a story maybe from your own experience or from working with a client where giving or receiving feedback created a real breakthrough situation? Because I sometimes think we think of feedback as a correction and it’s kind of keeping people on the inside, the straight and narrow, so to speak. But when does feedback create breakthroughs? Do you have any examples around that?
Chapter one, yeah. So I’m a truck driver, I’m a blue collar guy, dirty job, picking up nasty, dirty clothes. I would see these really fancy looking people around the office. They wore nice suits and nice ties and had shiny shoes and they drove these real fancy cars. You probably heard of them, Honda Accords. I mean, these were fancy people.
I inquired about who these people were and I heard that they were salespeople and I wanted to be that. I finally get my break and I have a sales manager, Sean. And he took a chance on me. I was a good driver. I won awards and trophies and I was a hard worker. That was known. But he was taking a chance. I had no sales experience at all.
This guy would stay after work with me and role play with me. He would teach me interest creating statements and how to overcome objections. He would jump in the car with me and go on sales calls and coach me after a call. He would take sales calls and let me observe the master doing it. He’s the guy I told you about that taught me how to tie a Windsor knot, that told me what a collar stay was so my collars weren’t flapping. He’s the guy that took me to Jos. A. Bank on a lunch break once and taught me that your belt and shoes were supposed to match and the difference between a sport coat and a suit. This is a guy that went way beyond a balance sheet and a key performance indicator. And I gained so much respect for him.
I was fighting hard in this position, Victoria, because I came from nothing. I have two sick parents that are still living in the high rise one bedroom apartment. My mom many times would cut pills in half to spread them out because the co-pays were so expensive. I wasn’t trying to buy a Rolex. I was trying to give my family a better life. And I was on my way to my first sales call one morning and I got a call from my dad. He said, I just arrived at the hospital with mom and I think it’s different this time.
And so I did what I did hundreds of times and I drove to the hospital. And dad was right. This day, it was different. This was the day that I would hold my mom for the last time and she would pass. And Victoria, it broke me in every way imaginable. I went into a very dark place emotionally.
I didn’t care about the Honda Accord anymore. I didn’t care about the fancy suits anymore. The very thing that I was working so hard for, it was gone. I didn’t care about work anymore. When I would show up, I would be a shell of a person. I was emotional. I would sit in the stall sometimes and cry at work, I was a mess. And one day Sean pulled me into his office. This was about two weeks after we had buried my mom.
He said, enough’s enough. I’m not gonna let you continue to do this. My heart breaks for you and your family, but I’ve spent the last how many months pouring into you? I see your potential. You have an 18 month year old son, you want to have more family. Your dad is still here and he needs you. And you’re about to throw all of this away and I’m not going to sit by and watch it.
But you know what? I’m going to give you 24 hours and we’re going to meet again and you’re going to make a decision. You’re either going to become the person that I know you’re capable of being or you can’t be on my team. This was a crossroads, I thought about quitting. Who’s this guy to tell me? I’m not gonna be told what to do? I’m over it. I’m done. And I came back the next day and I looked Sean in the face, it was a turning point.
Wow, that’s amazing. Thank you for sharing that because that, I know, is a very personal story and very vulnerable story. But to your credit and to Sean’s credit, to have somebody that was that committed personally to you is really critical. And he probably stretched the boundaries of what was typical acceptable boss activity at your company. At Cintas.
To be able to do that, to feed that into you, and then obviously, here you are. To have that level of trust between the two of you to make a difference like that is huge.
I mean, think about it. If you don’t earn that right and you have that conversation, you might get punched, for goodness sake. That’s extreme. But he earned the right to have that tough conversation and think about what’s happened since then. From that moment of that tough conversation, I went on to win multiple presidents’ clubs awards in sales, 11 more promotions, I launched a business, a podcast, a book.
Yeah.
I don’t know, but I wonder often, had he not done what he did and was the leader that he was and leaned into the tough conversation, would I be who I am today? And I honor him in the book, and I honor that story in the book because I want leaders that read that chapter to say, you know what? This is bigger than climbing the Fortune 500 ranks. There are people that are counting on leaders to show up and lead. Well, that’s what has to happen and when you do that, guess what? It’s great for business.
I think that the takeaway for me on this as well, Jeff, is have a conversation. We often have regrets. We let people maybe stew in their miseries. A little bit of a strong phrase, but we’re afraid. We’re afraid sometimes to have those conversations, to say, hey, okay, I know this really sucks, but I need you to buck up.
I need you. The team needs you. You, yourself, need you. And having those tough conversations is really critical. And it’s hard for both people because I’m sure for Sean, it was not an easy conversation for him to have. Just as it was not an easy conversation for you to hear.
Yeah, it’s true. I often get asked, especially because of the recognition that the book’s getting. I’ll have leaders messaging me on LinkedIn and so forth saying, I want to be that leader. How will I know when I’m doing it the right way? And there’s this one little report card that I give. Do you think it is more impactful to tell somebody, good job, or I’m proud of you? What would you say is more impactful?
I’m assuming I’m proud of you.
Yes.
It’s got personal resonance.
No doubt about it. But here’s the thing. Not everybody earns the right to use that word, I’m proud of you. If you can look somebody in the face and say, I’m so proud of you, then you have hit a different level of leadership. Now check this out. They’re doing something they shouldn’t do. What hits different? What were you thinking or what you did really disappoints me.
The disappointment every time, man. That’s that good Catholic guilt, by the way.
Yeah, but you can’t say that, it feels so weird to say proud or disappointed unless you’ve earned it. If you haven’t earned it and you say it, the other person is going to give you body language that says, I don’t really care.
Who are you to tell me you’re proud of me? That’s designated for my grandmother, not you. When we can earn the right to say these two words, we are on the right track.
Yeah, and I would also say we should be willing to use those two words. I think sometimes we hold ourselves back from giving that kind of feedback, positive and negative. Yet it’s powerful with the right people. It can’t be overused, because to your point, you have to have the right relationship in order to do that. But we should be using those words.
Absolutely. Yes. They’re impactful.
So, Jeff, this has been really great, and you’ve given us so many nuggets, but I always like to ask my guests as we close, you’ve obviously had a really successful corporate and entrepreneurial career and quite a journey. What advice would you give to someone early in their career? Maybe a young Jeff Hancher that wants to achieve your level of success.
I talk about my mentors throughout Feedback in a Fragile World. I would tell you, mentoring has literally changed my life. I don’t mean just in the business sense. I’ve been around some amazing husbands that taught me how to be a good husband, not perfect. I’ve been around some amazing fathers that have taught me how to be a better father. Certainly I’ve been around some amazing mentors that are sales experts that taught me how to do that. I would tell you early in your career, and it should never stop, quite frankly, is seek mentoring.
We do polls and so forth at our company. It’s sad to me how many people have never had a mentor. And a lot of the things that I hear is, well, Jeff, I wouldn’t even know how to. How do I even get a mentor? There’s a lot of strategy that goes into that. If you are listening and this is you, I’m going to give you one question that can expand your network and at least give you greater odds of finding mentors that can change your life. When you’re done talking to your boss, when you’re done talking to somebody at church, when you’re done talking to somebody at the family reunion, let them know what you’re trying to accomplish. I’d love to be a better dad.
I’d love to be a better husband. I’d love to be a better salesperson. Someday I’d like to be a leader. Before you close that conversation, you ask this question, who do you know, based on our conversation, that I don’t know that you think I should meet? This will start opening up, you know what? Based off what you said, Jeff, you should meet my buddy Joe. Now you go and you meet with Joe, because now you got an introduction to Joe.
You go to that meeting. Very intentional. You have questions ready. When Joe gives you advice, you execute. You report back to Joe what you did. This starts to build. The greatest gift that you can give a mentor is execution and results. You do that, they will come running for you. Obviously, you have to consume. So mentoring number one, consume number two.
I don’t mean well, Jeff. I do consume, my company, we have training every Wednesday morning. Listen, if you do what everybody else does, you’re going to get what everybody else has. There’s a scripture that I love. It says, where your treasure is, your heart is.
I believe this is true. I could tell you how serious you are about success if you gave me your last 12 months bank statements. How much is on your bank statement for your personal growth and development? When’s the last time you jumped on a plane to go hear a speaker that could literally change your life? When’s the last time that you paid to go to a chamber event? Paid $100 out of your own pocket? Or are you waiting for your company to help you be successful? I hope that they do, but it’s never going to be enough. You have to go chase success. That would be my advice to somebody that’s starting out.
Love it, love it, love it. Such a rich conversation. Jeff, thank you so much. Thanks for joining me. I really appreciated this conversation.
Grateful for you, grateful for your listeners.
Thank you. And thank you everyone for joining us today on The Chemical Show. Keep listening, keep following, keep sharing and we will talk with you again soon.
About Jeff Hancher:
Jeff Hancher
JEFF HANCHER is a leadership expert, executive coach, and keynote speaker dedicated to helping individuals and organizations reach their fullest potential. Growing up in southwestern Pennsylvania, Jeff faced significant challenges as the son of parents medically unable to work. Those hard- ships instilled in him a deep drive to create a better life for his family and inspire others to do the same. After serving in the United States Army, Jeff began his corporate journey as a blue- collar worker and, over twenty-three years, rose through ten promotions to advanced leader- ship roles in a Fortune 500 company. Along the way, he discovered his passion for developing others, combining strategic insight, coaching, and hard work to empower those around him. Today, Jeff focuses on leadership development through executive coaching, training, and keynote speaking. He also hosts the award-winning Champion Forum podcast. His mission is to equip leaders and teams to grow, thrive, and leave a lasting legacy.