The Hidden Cost of Bad Leadership: Turnover, Burnout, and Missed Growth With Rachel Platt

Burnout is not just a personal problem—it's a leadership crisis costing digital agencies millions in lost productivity, team turnover, and stalled growth. In this episode of the Catalytic Leadership Podcast, I sit down with Rachel Platt, founder of PLATTinum Consulting, to expose the hidden costs of poor leadership and the urgent need for a people-first strategy.

Rachel shares why most businesses—especially fast-scaling digital agencies—fail to implement feedback systems, leadership development, or team alignment strategies that actually stick. We unpack the connection between leadership blind spots and high client churn, low retention, and team burnout. If you're struggling to scale your agency or lead a small team through growth, this conversation is packed with insights on building a sustainable workplace culture, creating systems that retain top talent, and avoiding the mistakes that sabotage long-term agency success.

We also dive into the overlooked role of people strategy in mergers and acquisitions, and how ignoring the human side of your business can kill ROI. Whether you're a digital agency owner using GoHighLevel, part of a mastermind group like Seven Figure Agency, or a founder trying to lead through chaos—this episode is a must-listen.

Connect with Rachel Platt

Rachel is active on LinkedIn and always open to conversations around leadership, workplace culture, and strategic people systems. Visit www.PLATTinumconsulting.com or call/text her directly at 301-807-4334 to connect and learn how PLATTinum Consulting can support your team through growth, retention, and sustainable leadership.

Books Mentioned:

• Dare to Lead by Brené Brown

Right now, you can get an extra 20% off your ticket for the Scale with Stability Summit with my exclusive code CATALYTIC20 at checkout.

Visit scalewithstability.com to grab your ticket—I hope to see you there!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Rachel Platt
• 3:43 Rachel's Leadership Development Journey
• 6:45 Understanding True People Strategy
• 10:43 Addressing Burnout in Organizations
• 19:35 People Strategy in M&A Situations
• 30:15 Staying Current as a Leader
• 36:53 Leadership Recommendations and Resources
• 41:12 Episode Closing and Contact Information

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:37

I'm so excited today to have Rachel Platt on the podcast. was founded by Rachel in 2018. For over 20 years, she has helped organizations and individuals achieve lasting success through strategic human resource leadership. Through her roles as Chief Human Resources Officer, vice President and Regional Director in diverse corporate situations and industries, she's built her reputation based on her ability to develop pragmatic solutions to meet complex organizational and people challenges. Rachel creates relationships based on respect and a passion for challenging others to perform beyond expectations. has the expertise to accelerate people strategy and human capital related projects in the areas of organizational design, employee engagement, leadership development, culture assessment and improvement, performance management, staff training, communications, talent acquisition, dei and belonging and employee coaching.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:43

Rachel graduated with honors from the Gozweta Business School at Emory University. She's also attended executive education coursework at the Thunderbird School of Global Management. Rachel is both a SHRM, scp and Senior Professional in Human Resources Certified and is certified as a Women's Business Enterprise. She's co-chair of the Education Committee for the Inclusion Allies Coalition and is an active member of the Society for Human Resource Management. Rachel, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show.

Rachel Platt: 2:18

Thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to this for weeks, so I'm so thrilled to be here that this day has finally come.

Dr. William Attaway: 2:26

I think this is going to be a fantastic conversation, because we've had several and I'm looking forward to another one.

Intro/Outro: 2:33

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway: 2:50

I would love to start with you sharing a little bit of your story with our listeners, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Rachel Platt: 3:06

your development as a leader. How did you get started? So I think I probably have a story like many others, graduated and didn't know quite what I wanted to do, found a job and then was lucky enough to have several successive bosses that saw something in me and challenged me to move beyond what I thought I was capable of, and I've had bosses that have given feedback that was you know everything from. You're not in the right job. Your skills are better aligned over here, and I have always been one to take feedback as fuel. If someone gives me feedback that says you know this isn't right or you're not headed in the right direction on this, then my first reaction is to figure out how I can do better and how I can use that feedback. Sometimes they're spot on. Often they're spot on that they see something that I did not see and I've used that to guide my path.

Rachel Platt: 4:15

And as I have gone throughout my career and had my own teams and managers who reported to me, had folks who reported to them, I've really tried to instill this sense of feedback is fuel, feedback is a gift, and yet everyone starts from a place where they're not good at things and owning our own sense of you know we don't start out as masters.

Rachel Platt: 4:43

We have to learn, we have to grow and be curious. That has been my path, and you know I moved through my career in so many. I moved through my career and finally got to the job that I thought was the pinnacle of my career and realized on my own, like I think so many people do grass was not greener and I had moved so far away from the things that I actually love doing. I might've been chasing a title. I quickly realized whether it was the place or the people, or just being mature enough to say this is I'm not having the impact that I wanted to have, and so that's what I try to create with all of my clients and as they're thinking about their leadership journey. So I think it's a story like so many other people's, nothing special.

Dr. William Attaway: 5:42

And yet everyone is unique. You know, yes, and yours has no wasted experiences in it. No, I truly believe. If we were to describe, if you were to yeah, if you were to describe the impact that you want to have and paint that picture with as many brushes and colors as you can, what would that look like?

Rachel Platt: 6:08

Probably like a Jackson Pollock. You know lots of different colors in all different places. I don't know if you know that artist, but lots come out.

Dr. William Attaway: 6:16

Yeah, absolutely.

Rachel Platt: 6:17

But absolutely. I mean I think that there are just so many key having an impact on an individual level when you're thinking about leadership and you're thinking about people's strategy. What people do in their careers has such an impact on every aspect of their life. I mean their financial future, their emotional in some cases their mental health future, how they view the world, how they feel that they have impact, and so creating the systems and the tools that allow an organization to have a level of consistency, but also a level of customization. Impact to me is about how do you recognize the strengths in every individual and surmise that to meet whatever the mission is, and that happens within your family and your home life, or that happens within your work life as well?

Dr. William Attaway: 7:33

You know, I hear a lot of people talk about strategy in their business, in their team, whatever organization they're leading, but there's not nearly as much discussion that I hear anyway around having a people strategy, and this is something that you talk a lot about. How would you describe that?

Rachel Platt: 7:54

So a lot of organizations they talk about human resources or they talk about talent management. Human resources to me, I mean, this is my background, this is my educational background, I have spent my entire career in human resources and yet so much of it is tactical or compliance based. And really what the strategy is about is how do I look at what the business objectives are? How do I think about the human beings that work here and strategically align them, their skills, their abilities, their leadership strengths? How do I look at each of those components and build so that the organization can be more successful? You can't look at it in a silo or in a vacuum. You need to look holistically at what are the business objectives and how can each individual contribute to that, and then how do you layer on top the systems so that the organization can those individuals to be successful.

Rachel Platt: 9:12

That's what people strategy is all about. It's the economic, the internal, the external, the economics, the political, the values of the organization, the values of the team. All of that comes together in a blender to make just a mix of all of the different things together and get your idea If you paint the picture. There's a lot of different colors and textures that need to go in to really maximize the organization's ability to be successful and to maximize each individual's ability to be successful.

Dr. William Attaway: 9:55

So, without an intentional people strategy, what are some of the ditches that you see companies or leaders drive into?

Rachel Platt: 10:06

They have retention issues. They struggle to give feedback, both to their top performers, who they're looking to retain, to their lower performers, who, you know, some tweaks can get them to be solid performers. But I haven't worked out an actual calculation on this. I've been thinking about this for weeks and months and years actually. But I feel like there's a calculation out there there that if you took all of your strong, fully contributing employees and were able to give them the feedback that allowed them to improve, even by 5%, 10%, what's the bottom line business incremental outcomes? What's the profitability change? What's the bottom line business incremental outcomes? What's the profitability change? What's the employee retention change? So people strategy for the organizations that do it, they are focused on just how to maximize without burning their people out, and those that don't see the repercussions from retention and growth and employee language.

Dr. William Attaway: 11:28

You know, burnout is nothing new. I mean, we've known this was a very real thing for a very long time. But in a post-COVID world, I hear so much more from people who are saying I'm experiencing this, I have experienced this. I have experienced this, I see it ahead and I think it's very real, but I'm still watching way too many companies and way too many leaders treat it as though it were a preference or a wish. You know something that oh, we'll just get over it kind of a thing. You know, having a people strategy and I love how you talk about this is understanding that people are people, are resources that you have to steward well. You have to treat them as actual human beings instead of as cogs in a machine that are just interchangeable, and part of that is helping them understand and right sizing your expectations around what a healthy and sustainable pace looks like. How do you do that with companies that may or may not have placed a value on this in the past?

Rachel Platt: 12:35

So how you do it? That is an excellent question, because there are some organizations that are not bought in on this and you can give them the data, you can show them the ramifications, you can do storytelling of real life examples, you can talk to them about how this is impacting their organization, them about how this is impacting their organization and if they're not going to get it and not going to make a change, ultimately people are going to vote with their feet and they're going to leave the organization and that may take a long time. It may not be directly attributable to or people may not be honest in their exit meetings about what was happening, but at the end of the day, you can lead the horse to water, isn't that the expression? And I have all of the data and I talk with my clients about the data.

Rachel Platt: 13:38

For me, the good news, personally, is that often my clients are the ones who are ready and they really aspire to be an organization that goes beyond just basic compliance. They aspire to be an organization that really they want the business to thrive and be more profitable and they want their employees to thrive. So it is easier to get those organizations on board with some very specific and actionable ways to avoid burnout, or actually actually said, a better way is. I mean, yes, avoiding burnout is 100% a goal, but, said in the opposite direction, is how do you actually create a sustainable workplace? We don't want to get to the point where people are burning out. We want to be long-term sustained.

Dr. William Attaway: 15:55

Right? Do you find people push back on this, and if they do, why? Why is this not as real? Everybody is capable of burnout, I think. If you're running at an unhealthy and unsustainable pace, why do you?

Rachel Platt: 16:13

think there's pushback on this. In my experience, there is more communication, there's more talking about this than there has ever been before.

Rachel Platt: 16:27

But one of the challenges that I really think exists in a lot of industries is that the leaders, so many of the folks who are leaders now they grew up in this environment of high stress, high burnout. You're not talking about this and it's kind of a little bit. You know, I had to push boulder uphill both ways in the snow, barefoot and I turned out okay, so doesn't everybody have to do it that way. Think about the changes that have happened, like in hospitals, in you know, the healthcare industry, when you had your ER doctors who were supposed to be on like 48-hour shifts. Think about your public accountants whose busy seasons were, you know, 80-hour weeks.

Rachel Platt: 17:20

We're still seeing some leaders who are like, well, I did it and I survived Toughen up folks. It's just not happening quite as quickly as we would like in many cases and in other cases people just don't know how to fix it. They can't see any other way. And that's where some outside resources to help leaders, to facilitate conversations so often the answers exist within the that organization, the people who work there, can solve these problems if we're actually interested in listening and implementing. And change is hard, but change, you know resiliency and change and the ability to recognize that what we're doing is not sustainable, that constant curiosity of how to make things better. Those are the best leaders that are out there, in my opinion.

Dr. William Attaway: 18:26

I think we froze.

Rachel Platt: 18:27

Did you?

Dr. William Attaway: 18:28

Yeah, I think so too.

Rachel Platt: 18:31

So that part we might have to edit.

Dr. William Attaway: 18:33

And we will, no worries so. So part of it is well, I paid my dues, so you have to pay your dues. You know, with the hustle and grind and the, you know the overwork, I get that and I think that's. That's something of course I've seen. I know you've seen it. This is, this is not uncommon at all. That's that's understandable of a great leader is to understand that you are, you are to be the biggest cheerleader for your team. You want for them to win and not just at their kpis. You want for them to win as people, and I think that's great leadership. For me, the struggle point that I have here is if somebody's firing a flare saying I'm not good, yeah.

Dr. William Attaway: 19:30

Help why does a leader not step into that and say how can I help?

Rachel Platt: 19:39

Unfortunately, I have seen too many folks who either have I don't want to say that it's diagnosed, but like a little PTSD from their own experiences. As far as nobody helped me and I turned out, I figured it out, I had to tough out on my own, and that is so unfortunate. I think that there's also a situation, I think there's two other situations. One is where the leader really is either staffed so thinly or they don't have a toolbox of resources to be able to solve the problem in a different way, problem in a different way, um, and that's that is truly a challenge. But if you are lucky enough that someone on your team actually speaks up and says I'm on the edge, um, you've got to find a solution, because otherwise the next thing that they're going to tell you is I'm out, whether that's I need a medical leave of absence, whether that's I'm quitting, whether that's you know, hopefully not some sort of self-harm, or physically sick, emotionally sick. You know all of that. You're going to have to solve the problem and either you can solve it together with that employee or you're going to be solving it on your own without that employee and often without that employee available to answer your questions or to help transition it as you lighten their load. And the third thing, just kind of to get back.

Rachel Platt: 21:36

We're also really struggling right now. There is still stigma and people's concern for their job, for their job, everything that's happening, I mean right now in the economy, people are concerned about their ability to keep their job. What happens if layoffs happen? What happens if this happens? And so, unfortunately, not everyone is speaking up and so, as a leader, there's real opportunity to just asking folks on a pretty regular basis how are you, what did you accomplish today?

Rachel Platt: 22:17

Not what did you do for me? But like how are you? How's it going? What can I do to support you? What can I do to support you? What can I do to remove obstacles for you? How can I help? Those are the types of questions that employees, in all the data, all the surveys, employees are consistently saying. When my supervisor shows that they care about me as a human being, my willingness to go above and beyond, my loyalty to that individual, my satisfaction at work, my desire to remain with this employer, every one of those goes through the roof. So checking in with your people is a really, really easy, low cost thing to do. I'm not saying that it's not hard to solve for some of the answers that they may bring to you, but at least asking the question can have such a tremendous impact. I love that.

Dr. William Attaway: 23:33

You know, a lot of my clients are in various stages of mergers and acquisitions, and this is this, of course, is not new. The M&A world is replete with examples, especially, I think I seem to see it more in recent years. You know, there's a whole lot of moving parts to any type of acquisition or merger, but one thing that is not often thought about is having a people strategy, like we've been talking about throughout this conversation. How important is it to have a people strategy, first and second? What does that even look like when it comes to a merger and acquisition situation?

Rachel Platt: 24:11

Can I go shout this from the rooftops?

Dr. William Attaway: 24:14

Please.

Rachel Platt: 24:16

Can we just scream this into our megaphone you have the greatest accountants, the greatest lawyers, the greatest dealmakers in the world, but you're not going to get your return on investment for your merger or acquisition if the people and the culture are not aligned. So, having a people strategy I do a lot of this work and really thinking about where the alignment is beyond just hey, we pay on this cycle and we offer this benefit or that benefit that is all very, very important work that needs to be done kind of in the due diligence process. So you need to so that you can understand the change aspect, but really understanding. How did decisions get made around here? Who has the power to make those decisions? How do we communicate? How does the staff communicate back to the leadership? What are the values of the organization and are those values just written on the wall or they actually lived and breathe? You know something that you live and you breathe, and people are rewarded and recognized for their demonstration of those values.

Rachel Platt: 25:54

Doing that work before you sign a deal not just can the C-suite get along and have beers together and can we talk about business development together.

Rachel Platt: 26:11

Yes, that is important, but it goes way beyond that. And doing that during the due diligence, if nothing else, so that you know how much of a change exercise your organization is going to need to go through, so that you can plan for, and then, once you're in the integration standpoint, really, as the deal has been signed and you're planning for integration, people's strategy is all about change management, transparency. Change management transparency, communication, helping people feel like they as individuals are valued and that they belong at this new organization. People want to know that things that they aligned with previously are going to be continued at the new organization or, if they're not going to be continued, they want to know about it so that their expectations are set properly. In my experience, the reality is, in the absence of information, people make stuff up, they're just trying to fill the void and that's how the gossip starts and that's how the us versus them starts, and you really have to put that together in an overall people strategy from the beginning.

Dr. William Attaway: 27:43

I love that, I love the intentionality of that and I love the people-centeredness of that, and I think this is a piece that is not often talked about in the M&A space or thought about, but it is so incredibly important because on both sides of the merger or acquisition you have people and if you're not thinking about that, if you're only thinking about the numbers on the spreadsheet or the contracts, language, like you say, that's not enough. You could have the best of those things and you will not have a successful merger or acquisition.

Dr. William Attaway: 28:17

Your outcomes will not be whatever ROI you're looking for from that deal you're not going to hit those outcomes if you can't retain or hire the but that they feel seen and heard and known in the midst of that. Without that, you're missing something that really can make a huge difference on your bottom line, and I don't know a business leader or business owner that doesn't want to see that yes, if you look at all of the numbers, you know if it costs three times the annual salary to replace um a high performer.

Rachel Platt: 29:25

If you look at the data as far as what happens to morale, what happens to client service and this is certainly true in a merger or acquisition, but just in general if you invest time and yes, there are some financial investments as well but if you really just invest time and think both think with your head and lead with your heart and I'm not trying to make this all woo-woo, I'm not a woo-woo person. I look at the data, not a woo-woo person. I look at the data, I look at the statistics that are out there about what it takes to make an important investment in your people. And giving timely, actionable feedback, being transparent in your communications and demonstrating human care for your team are three top indicators for organizational success.

Dr. William Attaway: 30:37

I love that. Let me talk about you for a minute, Rachel. I mean, we've been talking about you the whole time, but I mean specifically your leadership. You have to lead at a higher level today for your business, for your clients, for your team. You have to lead at a higher level today for your business, for your clients, for your team. You have to lead at a higher level today than you did five years ago. Yes, and that same thing is going to be true five years from now.

Intro/Outro: 30:55

Yes.

Dr. William Attaway: 30:55

How do you stay on top of your game? How do you level up with the leadership skills that you need to be developing so that you will be the leader that your clients and your business needs?

Rachel Platt: 31:08

developing so that you will be the leader that your clients and your business needs? That is such a great question and is one that I have been spending a lot of time thinking about. I do a lot of reading. I read books that are out there, but one of the things that I have really found so engaging lately is not listening to the big names that are out there, but are listening to people that are the practitioners, the people whether it's a podcast, whether it's an article people who are thought leaders on LinkedIn. What they're seeing experiencing there's just, I'm curious. I think people are fascinating why they do the things that they do and the business behind that, and so I'm really spend a significant amount of time.

Rachel Platt: 32:01

I used to think of it jokingly oh, my goodness, I'm wasting a lot of time on LinkedIn social media I'm not talking Facebook or Instagram, anything like that, but even just on LinkedIn, I'm wasting a lot of time, and once I reframed that for myself, I realized that actually, this is where I'm learning. This is how I'm upscaling myself. This is how I am. Yes, I'm paying attention to the big trends that are out there and the big surveys that are released and the articles that are out there but really talking to people about what they are experiencing and listening and reading about it. It's an MBA in organizational development. Every single day, just being out there in the world and hearing what people have to say, yeah.

Dr. William Attaway: 32:56

Yeah, and I think part of that is having that teachable mindset, that teachable spirit. You know where you are, always in a learning posture for those things that come your way, for those things that you do encounter, whether it's on LinkedIn or wherever you are, so that you can recognize. I need to learn that. I didn't know that. That's helpful. I think you get to choose whether you will have that mindset or not.

Rachel Platt: 33:24

Do you also think I'm just curious? I love to hear from people that have very different opinions than I do, 100%, I mean, I want to learn from what their experience is, even if I disagree. I want to know that so that I can be aware and be sensitive to different opinions, different leadership styles. That helps PLATTinum to be better able to serve our clients, if we have the broadest possible view. And so having a growth mindset, having a learning mindset, frankly, just being curious, um, yes, you know, I feel like I'm some days. We're back in our three-year-old stage. Well, why? But why? It's actually a really mind-expanding place to be and I love it.

Dr. William Attaway: 34:27

Well, you know, I mean. The average two or three-year-old asks 125 questions a day. The average adult asks six.

Rachel Platt: 34:37

I did not know. I did not know.

Dr. William Attaway: 34:39

Yeah, I am not average, right. Why did we stop asking questions? Why did we stop being curious, you know, and there's so many answers to that question. But I believe there's a way back and I love the way you're describing that. I think that's so healthy and approaching with curiosity, and if you're only listening or reading people that you already agree with, all you're creating is an echo chamber, and if you're a leader doing that, let me just encourage you to stop it. Right now. You need to be exposed to ideas that are far beyond that. I read people I disagree with all the time because it helps me to understand different positions and perspectives. I may still disagree at the end, but you can learn from anybody. Sometimes you learn what's not helpful or what not to do, but that can be incredibly valuable, so I agree wholeheartedly.

Rachel Platt: 35:30

Yeah, some of my best experiences now looking back, were some of my worst experiences how not to do this, how not to treat football, how not to be a leader Boy. Can you learn a lot from those things? We could do a whole other segment on that.

Dr. William Attaway: 35:49

I've got a drawer full of t-shirts. That's right. Yes, yes, is there a book that has made a big difference in your journey as you've been growing and learning as a leader, a book that has really resonated, that you would recommend to the leaders who are listening?

Rachel Platt: 36:10

I feel like, if you have done 200 plus episodes, I feel like so many people have must have said this before, but I am a Renee Brown believer. Um, I dare to lead any articles she puts out. Um, I mean, I don't think she and I could be more different, but I just find her way of thinking, her way of being curious. What she talks about in terms of vulnerability, shame, how to be a better human being, how work advice goes to parenting, relationship advice, family advice, all of those things I would say, if there's anyone she has had. And her books have had the biggest influence on me personally and tend to be books that I recommend to up and coming leaders, even if it is just to say this doesn't resonate with me, because it doesn't resonate with everyone. It resonates with me, but it doesn't resonate with everyone, and I just think it's a really good grounding for folks as they're moving through their leadership ability.

Dr. William Attaway: 37:41

I definitely would agree Highly recommend her books. She has taught me quite a bit over the years and I continue to learn from her, so I will concur most heartily with Brene Brown. So every time we talk, I walk away having learned something, and this is no exception today. I'm so grateful for your generosity and your transparency and sharing from your journey so far and the things that you've learned, and so generously sharing that with our listeners. I'm so grateful. I know many of them are going to want to continue to learn from you and to connect with you and find out more about what it is that you're doing. What's the best way for them to do that?

Rachel Platt: 38:21

Well, I am active on LinkedIn, rachel Platt. Just so everyone knows, platt has two Ts, which is how we spell Plattinum in . Our website very simple , with the two Ts, and you can also just pick up the phone, give me a call. I actually answer my phone 301. You could even text. So there's just so many ways to be in touch and I look forward to learning, growing and helping others be successful and meeting more of your listeners. So, thank you for having me, thank you for being such a kind, caring and curious host. All of your episodes that I've listened to it comes through loud and clear. You're just so genuine and so real and it's really fun.

Dr. William Attaway: 39:22

Well, I greatly appreciate that. That is the goal, thank you for being here.

Rachel Platt: 39:24

Rachel, truly, thank you for having me.

Dr. William Attaway: 39:26

I appreciate it. Thanks for joining me for this episode today. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Dr. William Attaway: 40:03

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Intro/Outro: 40:47

Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr William Attaway. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. Want more? Go to catalyticleadershipnet.