One of the biggest lies people tell in leadership is that you “can’t teach work ethic.”
And sure, effort isn’t something you can program into someone. You can’t flip a switch and make someone care, but what most people miss is this.
You can kill effort.
You can take someone who shows up motivated, who wants to do a good job, who takes pride in their work, and you can snuff that fire out with the right combination of disregard and betrayal.
I once worked a job for a company that said they ran their business like “one big family.” The job was pitched as “just like running your own business.” They made it sound entrepreneurial. Empowering.
Spoiler alert. It was not.
I was running a route, managing deliveries, and dealing with customers. One day, I got a call from a client who ran a grimy little bar-and-grill in a small town. The kind of place where the floor is sticky before it opens and the menu is mostly deep-fried regret. He was furious about a bathroom supply listed on his invoice. It was something that was billed weekly but only replaced monthly. Standard stuff. But this guy lost it.
I was nowhere near his town that day, but I explained that I’d make it right the next time I was out there. That wasn’t enough. He wanted immediate resolution, even though there was no actual problem beyond his inability to read a billing cycle.
What did the company do?
They sent someone out immediately. Not because it made sense. Not because it solved a real issue. But because the guy yelled loud enough. Just like that, my plan, not to mention my credibility, got tossed out the window.
By the time I showed up the next week, the guy was emboldened. He treated me like I owed him something beyond the service I already promised to deliver. I do work for my customers. That’s always been my mindset. But I also expect to be treated like a human being. What he expected was submission.
I drew a line. I told him that whatever game he was playing with other vendors wasn’t going to fly with me. I called my manager and said I was done with the stop. The customer was harassing me, and I wasn’t going to tolerate it.
At first, they said all the right things. “We’ve got your back.”
Then a few days later, my manager wanted to “talk it out.”
Then came the plan. We’d all meet together.
I siad fine, but the guy needed to apologize to my face. That was my line.
Cue to the next week. I show up at the stop. No manager. I call him.
“Oh, we handled it already,” he says. “Everything’s good.”
Everything wasn’t good.
I was standing outside a business where I’d been treated like garbage, expecting support, expecting a boundary to be honored. Instead, I got, “We talked it out without you.”
That was the moment the job broke for me.
I kept working there for a while, but the switch had flipped. I stopped going above and beyond. I stopped trusting leadership. They’d proven that a customer’s comfort mattered more than my dignity. And no amount of company slogans or empty praise could put that fire back in me.
That’s what people forget about effort.
It’s not a resource you extract.
It’s a gift people give. Until they realize you’re not worth giving it to.
So yeah, you can coach effort. But if you’re careless, you can absolutely kill it. And when you do, don’t act surprised when your best people start looking for the door.