Bryan Howard

I've seen 100+ leadership teams up close. I write about what actually works and what quietly destroys teams. CEO @Peoplyst

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

Reference checks are supposed to tell you who you're about to hire.

In reality, you're calling a handpicked list of people who agreed to say good things.

You're making a six-figure decision on a curated highlight reel.

The real reference check happens in the interview.

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

Everyone loved Daniel in the interview. Great energy. Said all the right things.

Six weeks in, the team was quietly fixing his mistakes.

Your best performer left. Daniel stayed another year.

Shame you hired for comfort, not culture.

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

@OsamaGodwin Absolutely. It's often more compliance than commitment. And it's hard to succeed on compliance alone.

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

Daniel's team hadn't disagreed with him in six months. He called it alignment. His best engineer quit on a Friday with zero warning. Turns out every "sounds good" in those meetings was someone deciding whether to update their resume.

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

@LizWiseman Boss?

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

Sarah told her manager the onboarding process was broken. Gave specifics. Offered to fix it. Her manager said "that's just how we do things." Sarah stopped raising problems after that. So did everyone else who was watching.

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

@Gift_O_Nwankwo And they have very vivid imaginations.

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

When gossip spreads fast through your team, pay attention to what it's about. Nine times out of ten, it's something leadership never communicated clearly.

Gossip fills the gap when people stop trusting the official channel.

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

@OsamaGodwin And those explanations will not be good for the company.

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

"We want honest feedback," the CEO said.

Rachel believed him. She laid out exactly why the strategy was failing. Data and examples.

Two days later, her project was "reorganized."

Leaders ask for honesty. They mean validation.

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

"Victimhood" is a convenient word for gaslighting people on poor corporate behavior.

Someone raises a real problem. Instead of fixing it, leadership slaps the "victim mentality" label on them. Now the person with the complaint is the problem.

Who's really the problem here?

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

Most leaders think their job during layoffs is to protect information.

Your real job is to protect trust. Information comes out eventually. Trust doesn't come back.

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

@Tim_Denning One of your best posts.

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

@matt_gray_ Doing this right now!

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

Every employee needs three things from your business:

A way to grow.
A chance to show.
A place to go.

I call it the Grow, Show, Go method. Give people all three, and they'll perform well and never leave.

Take one away, and they start looking.

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

@rahulkunwarX @acq_official @AlexHormozi It's definitely coming. And when it gets here, I hope it knows better than me which of my wife's clothes go in the dryer and which lay flat to dry.

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

@FreeDrThug @acq_official I don't see him talking about things he doesn't know about. But what he does talk about, he knows first hand from failing at it and doing it successfully.

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

We learn a lot more from museums than from gravesites.

Every leader holds on to something past its expiration date, a process or strategy that once worked well.

Put it behind glass. Study what it taught you. Then walk to the next room.

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

@SahilBloom Divorce from my first wife.

Love is grand. Divorce is two hundred grand.

Best money I ever spent.

[Bryan Howard @bryanhoward]

She applied on Monday. They said they'd be in touch later that week.

By Friday, she'd heard nothing.

Two weeks later, she got a form email. "We've decided to go a different direction."

Two weeks felt like two days to the hiring manager. Two weeks felt like two months to her.