Morgan Friedman: Hello, hello everyone. Welcome to the latest episode of Client Horror Stories. I’m excited to have with me the one and only Caroline Sangal. Did I pronounce your name correctly?

Caroline Sangal: You sure did. You did beautifully. Yes, gold star. Now I can retire.

Morgan Friedman: Pretty sure you were already able to retire, but thanks for being here doing this podcast. With that, I’m very excited to hear about your craziest client horror story ever.

Caroline Sangal: I have my drink in hand.

Morgan Friedman: Drink in hand.

Caroline Sangal: Yes, and it’s kind of a fun, stick-it-to-the-man kind of day here. I got this coffee cup from my former employer and it says, “You’re doing great.” And every now and then I love — because now I have my own company — I love to just drink out of this coffee cup and be like, “Yes, I am.” In contrast, the year before I got that coffee cup, I was given this one. Who in their right mind would ever decide to give somebody an employee coffee cup? Oh my goodness — nutrition facts. One awesome employee: hardworking, 100%. Determination, 100%. Passion, caring, loyal, all 100%. And regret, 0%. These facts are 100% correct, and I tell you right now, they are. And I’m no longer the employee. Part of the reason why is this client horror story that I’d love to share.

Morgan Friedman: Okay, so it’s from the same company that gave you the 100% employee cup?

Caroline Sangal: Yes. They gave me… Okay, so this particular company was a very niche, specialty recruitment firm for the chemical industry, and how it was framed was usually like everybody there worked as if they had their own company within a company. So I was 100% commission only. I got to choose who I worked with, what I did. I got to say no. It was amazing. So after all that touting, one year they get me this employee-of-the-year cup — the only time it made a difference was after somebody got a job, after the company got paid, then the following month I could get what was due to me, since I was 100% commission only. That’s where the employee part came in, because for every dollar that I brought in, I brought home like 40%. So even though I did 100% of the work anyway.

Okay, so I’m at this particular recruitment firm, and it was kind of exciting because back in the day I came from that industry — I actually have a technical background in it. So for me to get an opportunity where I had the flexibility to be home with my own family, help other people, make a difference in people’s lives, help connect really awesome people with really great companies — I was all in on it. I loved it. And for several years I was one of their global top performers, top 2%, blah blah blah. So I had this reputation of getting things done, making great matches that stayed.

And there was one particular assignment that I’d heard people talking about for well over a year, but it wasn’t my project. And after about a year of it not getting done, it was for a technical vice president role at a smaller, family-owned chemical company. So this is a tale of two small family-owned companies, their internal dysfunction, and the people who say no thanks.

Morgan Friedman: Okay

Caroline Sangal: It’s going to be a good one. All right, so the client company was a very small, family-owned chemical company. It had grown from nothing to over 200 people over the span of about three decades or so. It was founded by a gentleman who, at that particular time, was getting ready to make his exit strategy — to be more of an advisor than actually in the company. Yes, they also had an HR person. And interestingly, it was also getting ready for the owner’s son to step into the full operations leadership role. So that’s what’s going on on that side.

As part of doing that, they also decide — since the son grew up while the family business was also growing, over a span of more than three decades — I didn’t see any particular interest in the son, per se, to take over the chemical company, but lo and behold, that’s his last name, and he’s in line to do it. Fun fact: his degree was in Asian studies or something — cool, but not necessarily what you’d pick to run a chemical company. Alas, that’s why they’re looking for a top technical performer — somebody with brilliant technical skills, management style, and business skills, all of it. Leadership, all of it, in one.

So the job’s been open for over a year. Nobody’s getting it done at our company. And my boss was begging me: “Come on, Caroline, would you just take on this one, please? I bet you know some people from your time in this industry.” And I reluctantly — my gut had been saying nah. So lesson number one: when your gut says nah, you can skip a whole lot of heartache if you listen to that upfront.

I reluctantly said, “Well, if it’s still open after September, come on back and I’ll see what it is.” So I took it on, and now I’m coming into a project midstream. Typically, if I were starting a project, I’d work all sides — I’d work with the companies, with the candidates, and I would have an intake call and try to get to know every single detail and nuance about the company and the position, so I could represent it as best I could to the candidate.

Well, at this point, since it was mid-stream, my boss said no — he was the client owner — and he said, “No, I can’t have you talk to them directly, because that would make us look bad, like we don’t know what we’re doing a year later.” And I’m thinking, pretty sure they already know we’re struggling a year later. But on one hand, my company touted itself internally — everybody was always saying, “We’re open, honest, and transparent.” And I actually was open, honest, and transparent on both sides, good or bad. That’s just how I operated. That’s how I thought the company was. I believed the words I was told, and I learned, in this case, that open, honest, and transparent has limits.

Morgan Friedman: By the way, I want to jump in and make two comments on what you just said. First, it’s noteworthy that your boss was the client owner, so you couldn’t talk to them directly. And I want to point out — this is a formula I’ve seen in a lot of client horror stories and disasters, where one person is the owner, but someone else is, in practice, the real-life actual owner.

Caroline Sangal: Yes.

Morgan Friedman: And that messes up incentives. It always adds an element of broken telephone — like the children’s game — so that’s a risk factor worth calling out.

Caroline Sangal: Absolutely, absolutely. And so I’m trying to learn all I can, and now I have to rely on the notes that were placed in the system — and not everybody places detailed notes. But I came from a science background, where we have lab books, and you write down everything — you write down more than you need, because you never know what’s going to happen. And here I am with this form that, when I did this kind of thing, would normally be like ten pages single-spaced, and I’ve got maybe a page and a half total, because most of the fields were blocks of questions that should have been answered but weren’t.

One of the things that was filled in was salary, and the salary looked kind of respectable for what I had seen for other VP of technology-type positions. Now, interesting — when people start chemical companies, typically, if you’re making a newer one, you don’t necessarily make it in the biggest metropolis that would attract people. So this particular company was in the Appalachian Mountains — nowhere that anyone in their right mind would ever have on their list of places they’d love to move to. So we’ve got a location challenge as well. But the salary, at this point, looked decent.

So I research as much as I can into the company — what’s up? And then I start thinking: who do I know? Who do I know beyond who’s already been looked at in our database? And I recall one particular awesome guy that I happened to go to graduate school with. So now it’s an interesting thing, where it’s not just some random person I’m getting to know, but a friend with a history. So now it’s doubly important — I always tried to be the recruiter I wish I had, and to genuinely help people get to know all about an opportunity, so they could make a logical, data-driven decision, knowing the good, the bad, and the ugly. But on this one, there’s this personal tie also that makes it extra interesting.

I realized this guy is in a metropolis in Texas, working for a very well-known, respectable chemical company. However, he’d been kind of blocked from the next level of advancement. So we’re set up in a way of: here’s an opportunity — and I know this guy absolutely loves challenges, absolutely loves the joy of seeing things through to fruition. So I pose it as, “Hey, there’s this chemical company — they need a strong technical leader. There’s a lot going on here. They’re poised for growth. They’ve grown from serving just a tiny area to now the entire United States. They’re getting ready to expand to international markets, and they need somebody phenomenal. Would you be interested in getting into the process?” And he says, “If you’re bringing it to me, absolutely.”

Morgan Friedman: Putting yourself on the line.

Caroline Sangal: Okay. Now, also, we catch up on the decades since we’d been in grad school, and I realize he has three children — one who just started college, another currently in their junior year, and a third in elementary school, about to make the middle school transition. So, should this all work out, it would require his family to move from a metropolis in Texas to the middle of nowhere — with children, one of whom would be having their senior year, another moving into middle school, and moving away from the child in college.

And lo and behold, he’s still all in. He talks to his family before he even gets involved in the interview process, and they give him the green light: “Of course, Dad, do what you need to do.”

So his first interview is with the senior guy who’s getting ready to move on — the father, right on that side. That father grew the company from nothing to over 200 people, had done a lot in sales — a very compelling, engaging person. Now, I’ve still never talked to him to this day, but these are the things I’ve heard — very compelling, very engaging. And of course, the idea of compensation comes up. He says, “No problem.”

So now, my candidate — who was my personal friend — worked for a big chemical company already in a director-level position. So, in addition to his salary, he also had short- and long-term incentives. If somebody in that case is moving to another place, typically the company trying to attract them will understand what the entire total compensation is, and how to make it actually work. And that’s what was promised to him in the initial conversation with the senior guy.

He has a few more phone interviews. Now it’s turning into right about the time of Thanksgiving — in fact, Thanksgiving week — he’s invited for an on-site. He’s kind of excited. It’s going to be a multi-day affair, even though it’s a 200-person company, because they’re really trying to mesh.

Interesting surprise — when he gets there, and this was not said to us ahead of time — they want him to meet, for an entire day, the first day, with a clinical psychologist, to do an entire psych assessment of him. Now, this is not after an offer. This is not after you’ve accepted an offer. This company is making an assessment of your personality and psychological history as part of the selection process. And again, this guy, in for the challenge, is like, “Sure, why not?”

Morgan Friedman: By the way, I want to observe that I actually think doing psych assessments like that is great, and I like them. If it’s a big, serious, expensive candidate hire, then a full-day detailed one is amazing. So it seemed like the issue here isn’t the psych assessment.  It’s the surprise, they didn’t tell them.

Caroline Sangal: “SURPRISE”, right? There was no consent ahead of time. There was no — and of course I tried to be like, “Help me understand the steps of the process.” And I wasn’t able to talk to the father or the son. I was only able to talk to the HR Leader, a “Leader” — who has the position but not really the authority, because that authority defers to the family. And it was never brought up that this was part of the process.

Now, in any interview — job, whatever — I’m pre- and post-talking at every single step of the way. I usually would have done it with both sides: pre and post for the client, pre and post for the candidate, to try to be that matchmaker in the middle who smooths it all out, so everybody has their best outcome. And I was only able to do it on one side.

Okay, he has the interview, he meets with everybody, it goes well. Now, it’s the Monday after Thanksgiving. I get to talk to the HR guy again, and we start talking. I’d already pre-closed my candidate on — zero to ten, what would you say about stepping into this opportunity? “Oh, it’s a nine.” “And what would it take to get to ten?” “Well, a compelling offer — but I’m all in as far as the challenge, and even though I’d have to put my kids in private school and all of that, I’m all in. I’m so excited about the future of this company. I can see a lot of places we can go.”

Okay — closed him on a number, understood again his short- and long-term incentives, and gave all of that information to the HR person. Who now starts going, “Oh, okay. Well, the son says our compensation is some lowball baseline number — nothing close to what this guy’s done” — after he’s already invested multiple days of interviewing, plus going on-site.

And I said, “Well, I’m telling you, if you want this guy — from this caliber of a company — to relocate to your small, middle-of-nowhere place, this is what it’s going to take. Take the data, do what you want. I’m just giving you the information.”

They decide to offer this guy the job, and they decide to put in writing a very lowball offer, without even a good relocation package or anything. The salary would have been lower than what he was currently making, plus not making up for the short- and long-term incentives, because they decided — being a small-town chemical company — they wanted to consider internal equity and i get internal equity but internal equity when you’re in a very low cost of living area, low salary compensation like —

Morgan Friedman: I get equity, but I don’t know this phrase, internal equity.

Caroline Sangal: Oh, internal equity — yeah, I’d heard that. Okay, so — and I don’t know if it’s a chemical-industry thing or what — but if you have a leadership team in a large enough organization, you’d have sales and marketing, maybe the same person, you’ve got the technology person, maybe the finance person, the overarching president person, maybe the HR person — and they could all be that leadership team, all making salaries roughly in the same ballpark — at least the same first digit of compensation.

Now, you’re asking for — and none of these other people have PhDs, either — you’re asking for the top of a technical person who also has business and management skills, and an MBA. So: technical PhD, an MBA, and decades of experience. How do you think you’re going to offer this guy something on par with your poorly paid current people — who are able to have nice lives and aren’t complaining?

So they decide to bring this in at the eleventh hour. Interestingly, fun fact I also learned — the son, back when he was in Asia—

Morgan Friedman: Oh, I just realized — you said equity, and I was thinking equity as a percentage of the company. But now I think what you meant is they wanted him to be comparable to the other people at a similar level — so it’s equity in the sense of equality between the internal folks. Internal equity — I get it now. 

Caroline Sangal: Yeah, yeah. So meaning, on a salary basis, look at that line — this whole leadership team is making similar amounts of money, even though they have very different expertise, backgrounds, and skills.

Morgan Friedman: Yes, I see. 

Caroline Sangal: Okay, so they’re trying to set up for why it’s okay to lowball.

Morgan Friedman: Okay, interesting. But I just want to observe — it’s interesting how values compete with each other, and everything is a balance, because I see both sides. He’s so awesome, there are so few people like him, he deserves much more. On the other hand, in a company, a formula for companies exploding politically is, “Oh my god, he’s making twice as much as me, I can’t believe it.

Caroline Sangal: I’ve been here all these years and he’s just walking in. Who is he?”

Morgan Friedman: Right. Exactly, exactly. 

Morgan Friedman: Yeah, so this lowball comes out, and I learned also the son got involved, and the son — back when he was doing East Asian studies, he worked for a while at an East Asian company as a recruiter in IT for a few months. So now the son thinks he’s the world’s best recruiter, who knows everything about how this goes.

Now, in that kind of very transactional, large-volume IT recruiting space, yeah, you have multiple people with the same skill in a programming language — if one doesn’t work, no problem, you’ve got ten more to choose from. In this particular case, this job had already been open for over a year. Really qualified people — I’d looked at who’d gone in and didn’t make it. Something was up, and there weren’t a lot of other people to pull from. But the son decides he knows what’s up. He’s getting ready to take over the company, and he’s going to make the offer, and this guy better be very excited and fortunate to be able to join such a company.

Okay, so my friend, still like the Energizer Bunny, keeps on going, believing this is a great thing.

Morgan Friedman: So, question — let’s model your friend’s mind after they come back with this lowball offer, less than he’s making now. Why is he still going? What’s keeping him excited?

Caroline Sangal: He believes what he was first told from the senior guy, that it’s no problem, and he’s a very amiable kind of guy, and he’s thinking, surely this is just a misunderstanding that we’ll be able to sort out. And so he’s kind of in this mindset of, “Well, thank you for the offer, it’s great that they want me.” He’s also starting to figure out when he could start, and trusting that this is all going to resolve itself, no problem. He’s like, “Well, let me go back and try to work with them.”

Now, the whole point of me pre-closing a candidate, and telling the HR person exactly what it would take to make it happen, is to skip a lot of the back-and-forth. If you’re on your own, negotiating for a company, yes, you have to do that back-and-forth. But if you’re working through a well-qualified, trusted recruiter, you shouldn’t need to do that — that should already be sorted out between you and the recruiter, not dragged out later. But here we are — this guy is still believing in the opportunity.

So much so, now this is between Thanksgiving and Christmas. By the time I talked to HR and the offer actually came out, it was like a week or two before Christmas. This guy is like, “No problem, let me think about it, figure it out, go back again, figure out my short- and long-term incentives, and then have another conversation.” In the meantime, he wants to make sure his family actually likes the area. So what they decide to do, as a family, is rent an Airbnb in this middle-of-nowhere location, because they’re going to go out and check it out and have their first Christmas there.

Morgan Friedman: Wow. By the way — this guy sounds naive, but he sounds like such a good guy — so thorough.

Caroline Sangal: He is not naive. He’s just hopeful, living the American dream fully — believing in the land of opportunity, believing in small-town, good-people values, believing this is entirely just a misunderstanding with Junior.

Morgan Friedman: Yeah, I love it — I want to hire the guy who’s so excited that, on his own, he takes his family to see it in person.

Caroline Sangal: Yes, yes. So now, when the offer was given, I don’t even have a copy of it. They cut me out — they cut my boss out. They did not give the recruitment firm any details of what the actual offer was.

Morgan Friedman:  They cut out the whole firm. They’re trying to avoid the commission or something?

Caroline Sangal: Well, I don’t know that they were trying to avoid the commission — they were just trying to take it all on their own. They wanted us involved to a point, and then they didn’t want us anymore. Selectively utilizing. That was weird, because we’d worked with this company for years — I’d heard their name before, so I’m not quite clear if every transaction with them was this weird. But — I asked the guy, “Is there a deadline on the offer?” “No, no. Think about it.” Typically, if you’re putting out an offer, the company is going to say, “Oh, by the way, we’d like a decision by this date” — that’s not unusual to hear. But he was told there was no deadline. I asked the HR guy, post-offer, “Hey, is there a particular day you need to know by?” “No, no, he can take his time and think about it.”

Okay, so now he’s planning this Christmas trip — the week of, I think, December 23rd or 24th — he’s on his way, driving, my friend, in the minivan , on his way to the middle of nowhere for his first Christmas there. And I see a phone number from the area code of this location flash on my phone, but I’m trying to get to one of my kids’ holiday parties right before school lets out, and I think, this can wait, my kid is here. So for once, I do that.

There’s a rant on my voicemail: “We can’t have this kind of person — the offer is done, rescind it. We can’t have anybody wishy-washy. This guy should have given us some information. He hasn’t said yes. We put a very compelling offer on the table, and there’s no way we could have someone so wishy-washy be the leader of our technology.”

What? Like, seriously — like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? What the heck is this?

Caroline Sangal: So now, remember — open, honest, and transparent. I am open, honest, and transparent. So I call my friend, who puts me on speaker while he’s in the car, driving with his family. And I say, “Hey buddy, I don’t know what’s happening — have you talked to them since the offer?” “No, no, no, I’m on my way right now.” I said, “Okay, I just got this weird voicemail, and I’m not sure what this is, but I want you to be aware, so you can have a fully informed understanding. This guy went off on my voicemail, saying something about not being able to be wishy-washy, and that you were supposed to tell him a decision.”

Now, I understood there was no deadline. “No, I told them I was coming for Christmas with my family, and after we got home, I would give them the decision and the start date.” “A decision and a start date means you’re leaning yes, right? Why would you be doing all this if you weren’t?” “Well buddy, I don’t know if somebody’s going to just fly off the handle like this.” “I’m not sure — to me, this is a huge red flag, in addition to the smaller ones we’ve already ignored. I don’t know that I can say this is a good decision for you. You definitely want to feel this thing out.”

So he decides to confront it at its source, and calls the guy who left the voicemail.

Morgan Friedman: Was the guy that left the voicemail Junior?

Caroline Sangal: Junior. Of course it’s Junior. Well trained, well-groomed Junior, right? Yeah. He calls him, and that explodes even more, because he’s just trying to say, “Hey, I don’t understand what this is — by the way, I’m on the way with my family, and I don’t understand the confusion.” Again, this guy tears into him — “You’re wishy-washy, there’s no way, the whole thing is called off, we can’t have somebody like you join our company.” And now this guy is dumbfounded, because he’s already rented the Airbnb, his family’s in the car, they’re hearing parts of this conversation on the way to have Christmas in the middle of nowhere.

Then Junior, after that, calls my boss, who then decides to call me on Christmas Eve and tear into me for how horrible I was for representing the company. And I’m like, what happened to be open, honest, and transparent? I thought we were open, honest, and transparent — until we’re not. I don’t understand. 

Morgan Friedman: It’s easy to be open, honest, and transparent when everything’s nice, simple, and happy. The test of it is when things get difficult.

Caroline Sangal: Yes, Now, years before, there was a different client of my boss’s that was having a hard time filling a position, and I came in at the eleventh hour to try to help out. That client made people who were interviewing cry — in the middle of the interview, just absolutely demeaning, completely cutting people down. The candidates would cry and tell me  about it, and I’m like, what the hell? So I told my boss, “We’ve got a problem here — why in the world would we want to represent a client that’s making people cry? That’s not moving in the right direction, that’s not a positive work environment, I can’t stand behind it. I’m going to bow out of working on this assignment, because it’s not aligned with who I am.” And at that time, my boss fired the client.

So I had no reason to think that reporting — see, here’s the thing — when you report problems, it can backfire, and turn around so that you’re the problem. In this case, me reporting to my boss the really poor behavior on behalf of this client — that was a complete miss, and honestly, I still don’t understand what happened there — and also reporting it to my candidate, “Hey buddy, you probably want to fill this out, I don’t know that this is something that could be a good move for you and your family, given they’ll fly off the handle like this. What would it be like if you were there? You certainly don’t want to move and then find out.” That was a challenge. But yeah, so my boss decided to rip into me on Christmas Eve — the same Christmas. 

Morgan Friedman: Sounds like a very merry Christmas. While you take a swig of coffee, I want to point out — I try to get at least one new lesson per episode, and we’ve had almost a hundred episodes — and this last point you made is worth calling out, because I think it’s a new lesson that hasn’t come up before: when you report problems, it can backfire and turn you into the problem. Because I feel like most people have the instinct — “hey, there’s a problem, I want to tell everyone so we can solve it” — but you actually need to be really careful about who you tell, and how you tell it. Often, when you bring up problems, you never know the political alliances — it could be that he’s really close friends with this person, and values that friendship more than he values you.

Caroline Sangal: Yep, yep, yep. And this was the case, because the senior guy was around the same age as my boss — they’d been friends for decades, as this company grew up. And even though, for five years, I’d been a global top performer — even though I single-handedly brought in enough money for this man to build his lake house, and as I went to visit it one day, walking from paver stone to paver stone, I’m like, “That’s mine, that’s mine, that’s mine, you’re welcome” — in that moment, my open, honest, and transparent boss chose the bro club over an employee. And that was one of the final straws.

Morgan Friedman: Difficult situations bring out people’s true character.

Caroline Sangal: Yes, and your true meaning of who you are to them — because it was like, we’re operating a business within a business, we have so much freedom and integrity, oh you’re so valued, we’re so appreciative, this is so great, thank you so much for all you do, blah blah blah blah — until you don’t, until you tell the truth. So, wow, that was one of the final straws. I’d been questioning a couple of other values and integrity alignments over time working at that company. Even though, externally, I was extremely successful by multiple measures, internally I was not fulfilled — internally, my body was telling a different story. I was having health challenges that I didn’t realize were tied to this particular pattern, but in hindsight, when I left and felt this huge weight off my shoulders, I no longer had those health issues and challenges. That was the thing.

Morgan Friedman: Wow. Yeah, I like that. I was going to make a comment, but I forget it. So — you got called out by your boss, and you had this eye-opening revelation about his real character. What happened with your friend, who was driving to Appalachia?

Caroline Sangal: He went there, because he’d already paid for it, and everybody was already packed and ready to go. And then he went home and decided not to move forward, because they’d already basically rescinded the offer. I do believe now he’s in a higher-level position at a different company, closer to the metropolis he was already from. Our firm had nothing to do with that, but he’s continued to advance in his own career. I haven’t spoken to him since then. It’s just kind of awkward, because I felt like I let him down — even though I gave him all the information I had, when I had it. And a good friend tells you some difficult news.

Morgan Friedman: Absolutely. In my experience as a CEO and director, the single most important skill you have to have is the ability to have difficult conversations. And it’s not just saying the bad news — it’s having a difficult conversation in a way that’s productive, in a way that doesn’t destroy relationships. And it’s really, really hard for most humans to do.

Caroline Sangal: Yeah. Most don’t want to be part of it. I’m okay with having difficult conversations. I’m okay with solutions. I’m okay with realizing somebody failed, even if it was me. I told a different company one time — there was a large chemical company that had a safety guy, and they needed to build up their safety program. So I brought him in, and it was a mess, because when he went for the interview, the plant manager answered three phone calls during the time he was sitting in front of him. It was a cluster mess of who he was even supposed to meet, and when.

Morgan Friedman: I like your phrase cluster mess — I usually use the dirtier version, and I’ve never heard this one.

Caroline Sangal: Oh yeah — well, my dad frequently says, “Girl, I don’t know what you’re doing.” I’m like, if people aren’t saying swear words and they don’t want to work with me, I don’t think they’re my people. I’m okay with that — but still, you’ve got to keep a level of professionalism, so, all right, I’ll just be me. But cluster mess is one I modified — thanks, Dad.

So that candidate had an interview, was driving home from one Texas metropolis to another, got a phone call asking him to turn around and come back, because they’d forgotten to have him meet with somebody. And I told that client, “You failed, guys. You had once-in-a-lifetime — from this huge, sophisticated company, and your teeny-tiny chemical company messed it up. I had to be careful — from the candidate’s experience side, there’s no way he wants to come there.” And they took it to heart, and said, “Thank you so much, we vow to do better, this will never happen again.” And I said, “Also, you’re probably never going to get a candidate of that caliber again, but I’ll go find you somebody else.” And they did improve.  So, it’s just fun dynamics.

Morgan Friedman: So, I have a couple of observations I want to throw in. This has been a unique episode in a few ways. One, I love your storytelling ability. Usually I interrupt and throw my comments in along the way, but I have a few interesting observations I’d like to make.

First point: it’s interesting how you wrapped the end back to the beginning. You started off about how your company had this job open for a year, and no one could fulfill it. There’s an interesting, powerful lesson about life, which is: when things are a failure, there’s usually a reason why. So even before the whole story began — knowing nothing else, no clue these guys had disaster after disaster after disaster — knowing nothing more than that, likely there’s a deeper problem there that you won’t be able to solve.

Caroline Sangal: Yeah, yeah.

Morgan Friedman: So I wanted to call that out as an insightful observation of yours. You also made a comment in passing that I want to call attention to — I feel bad for not stopping you at the time, but you were on such an exciting story, don’t apologize, I’m just going to listen, drink, and enjoy it — you also made the offhand observation about how, yeah, they had an HR leader, but in a family company, your phrase was, had the responsibility but not the authority. And I think, for our listeners, that’s a really insightful point in two different ways. I want to flesh it out — a real, healthy, good position has both responsibility and authority. If you have one without the other, it’s kind of a formula for disaster.

But even more subtle than that, in my experience, this sort of responsibility-without-authority is endemic to family-owned companies, because if some guy starts a company and it grows, it never develops this traditional managerial class of serious professionals — and as a result, it’s basically family drama playing out on the business stage, and everyone who’s not in the family never really gets any sort of authority.

Caroline Sangal: That’s right. And even if they try to tell you — even the supposedly well-meaning family company tries to tell you, “Oh, you could advance, this and that in your career” — that was another one of the things when I took a hard look, and I’m like, I was at that company for about nine years, and if I projected another nine years into the future, I’d be doing exactly the same thing. There was no other position, because their last name wasn’t my last name.

And then I also found out — this was fun — they were telling everybody, everybody, “I can see you as the next leader of this company,” and I believed them. And then I was talking casually to another person about their relationship, their dynamic with the leadership team — they were newer to the company than I was — and they let it slip: “Oh yeah, he told me I could be the next leader of the company, and he was looking forward to me doing that.” And I’m like, really? Because he told me that same thing. And then I went and asked a couple of other people, just out of curiosity, “Are you slated to be the next leader of our company?” “Yeah, he told me that too.” Even the well-meaning, beautiful-personality admin of our company was also told the same thing.

Morgan Friedman: That’s hysterical. The third of five comments I thought of during this that I want to share — I love the sub-story about how your company had this open, honest, transparent worldview, and you slowly discovered that it was just marketing. I wanted to point out, in my experience, I’ve found that the companies, and the individuals, and the groups or teams that scream the loudest that they have a particular value or virtue, tend to be the ones that have the least of it. Like Margaret Thatcher —

Caroline Sangal: —If you have to tell somebody you’re a lady, you’re not.

Morgan Friedman:  Exactly. Yes, you read my mind.

Caroline Sangal: I had that quote in my cubicle in grad school — every now and then I could look at it — I was a woman in a male-dominated field. I had that one right next to Henry Ford’s, “Failure is an opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” Both were in my cubicle, to the left, and I’d look at them every day.

Morgan Friedman: Wow, amazing. By the way, in college, I had the full version of that quote — for the listeners who don’t know it, it’s, “Being powerful is like being a lady — if you have to say you are, you aren’t.” I actually had that as my email signature for a couple of years. I think it makes a really powerful point, which is: telling everyone you are something literally implies the precise opposite. And where I think this gets especially interesting is in politics — and what I’m about to say refers to both sides equally, I’m not making a partisan point in any way — every side that’s screaming, “We are really for whatever — freedom, equality, you name it, insert word X” — every single time, no, they’re actually doing the exact opposite of that. While the people who are quietly working away at something tend to be the good guys and good girls who are really trying to make it happen.

Caroline Sangal: Yeah, definitely.

Morgan Friedman: So it’s interesting applying this to companies as well — companies that consistently give the propaganda, we could call it, to their own employees and team members: “We’re the most like this, we’re the most like this, we’re the most like this.” For Margaret Thatcher reasons, that feels like a red flag to me, because the companies that don’t have to say it — as a simple example, sophisticated companies have a career path: there’s a path to partnership in this company, L1, L2, L3, and so on. But the fact that they didn’t have any formal processes meant they needed to scream it, in order to attract talent. Once you have the processes, you don’t need to scream it.

Caroline Sangal: Yes, 100%.

Morgan Friedman: Fourth of five, and then we can wrap up. I spent a couple of years managing a company in Bombay, and I’ve also spent a lot of my career running companies in different capacities in Latin America. So I have quite a lot of experience dealing with companies at a sophisticated, large level outside of what we could call — I hate the word first world, there’s probably some better phrase — the developed Western economies. And a pattern I’ve noticed is what we’re calling the family-owned business style, where everyone is family or good friends, and they’re very impulsive, and they make decisions, and there’s no HR, and everyone below them has no power at all. Without this managerial class, I’ve found this is much more common as soon as you leave the U.S. — and the model I have in my mind, and this is a theory, is that these tend to be countries that don’t have much of a middle class. Countries that don’t have a middle class just have the rich and powerful and the peasants, and very few in between. And that style, in my experience, is reflected at the corporate level as well — the corporation reflects society itself. A couple of guys at the top who have all the power, and everyone else is a peasant making ten cents a month.

Caroline Sangal: Yeah, yeah. Interestingly, my boss, prior to having this recruiting firm, did work in a different country abroad for the longest time. So perhaps he picked up some of that management style from the environment.

Morgan Friedman: And not just that — what stood out in my mind about your story was, the son was an East Asian Studies major, and worked as an IT recruiter for three months, and to me, that’s also very consistent — because when he has very little career experience except for the family company, that little experience was in one of these more impulsive, non-developed-world-style environments, which would have reinforced all the bad patterns.

Caroline Sangal: Yeah. He should have been thankful to have an offer from them.

Morgan Friedman: Exactly. 

Caroline Sangal: The company he’d never heard of, ever, in a location nobody wants to move to.

Morgan Friedman: Yeah, exactly, 100%. Last point I want to make — it feels like one of the subtexts of the story, on multiple levels, is a story about people living a life without empathy. By that, I mean there’s the son, and there’s also your boss, who, in different ways, both manifested it — both were very much, “No, this is exactly how it is, the only way to do it is with a tiny salary” — and then impulsively getting angry, not communicating internally, no processes. And by working that way, it actually makes it impossible to see, think, or feel it from the other guy’s point of view. “Oh wait, this guy’s going on a family vacation, that’s a sign of disinterest.” “Oh, we never actually gave him a deadline.” And so on — that empathy not being there. There’s actually a saying from a classic software developer, Alan Cooper — maybe you’ve had this on your show before—

Caroline Sangal: No, I don’t think so. You had me at software developer.

Morgan Friedman:  No, Alan Cooper has a classic phrase — he says a change of perspective is worth eighty IQ points. And I think it’s a very powerful and deep point.

Caroline Sangal: I see you writing it down.

Morgan Friedman: Yeah, it’s a great observation — that merely being able to say, “Okay, let me see what this guy that I offered the job to is thinking, experiencing, how he’s going through it” — guess what, your whole analysis, and reaction, and strategy on the situation gets to the level of someone who’s eighty points smarter than you are.

Caroline Sangal: I love it, I love it.

Morgan Friedman: I think this is also a story of two other kinds of points. One: any interview process is a two-way street, and a company has to convince a candidate that they’re a good fit, and show their best face — or their realistic face — as much as a candidate has to show the company that they could be a good fit. And secondly, it’s a story of knowing your own worth and value. If an employer, or any team member, or anything, can no longer see or celebrate your worth — your value is never in question, where you decide to spend your time, effort, and energy is something to consider. But if somebody can no longer see your value and celebrate how awesome you are, then they may no longer be your people, and you can choose yourself.

Caroline Sangal: So it’s like — some people say, “Oh, how could you quit a job where you were making all this money, consistently, year after year after year?” And I’d like to say — it was partially, my husband said at our twentieth wedding anniversary, “I’m terrified we won’t have another one of these, because you’re literally killing yourself from the stress at your job.” And to hear that, I said, “Well, we have a kid getting ready to go to college.” And he said, “So what?” And I said, “So — don’t we need the money?” He said, “What does money matter if you’re not here? I choose you. So figure out whatever you want to do — I support you 100%.” And so — did I leave that company after my commission checks came in? Because the hell if I was going to work for free — yes, I did. But I like to say I didn’t quit, I chose me. And that’s kind of the work I try to help other people with now — choosing their own selves, figuring out what they’d love to do next.

Morgan Friedman: I love it — beautiful, inspiring, powerful words, and the perfect words to end this episode on. Yeah — thank you, this has been a great story, you’re a great storyteller, so many new, interesting insights, and it’s been fun getting to know you. Thank you for coming.

Caroline Sangal: I appreciate you, Morgan. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Morgan Friedman: And to all of our viewers, we hope you’ve made it to the end, and if so, thank you for watching, and we hope you’ve had as much fun as we have. Until next time.