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Most new managers unknowingly fall into the hero complex, feeling like they have to have all the answers, fix every problem, and impress the team to earn respect. Marc Haine, author of Lights, Camera, Action, breaks down why that instinct is quietly destroying your credibility and what to do instead.
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Marc’s Book Lights, Camera, Action - https://amzn.to/4rUE7lH
Marc’s Website - https://marchaine.com/
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Takeaways
- Extraordinary experiences are designed, not accidental.
- Every interaction has touch points that can be improved.
- Training is essential for effective leadership.
- The hero complex can hinder effective management.
- Intentionality in leadership leads to better outcomes.
- Recognizing and rewarding good behavior is crucial.
- Communication is key to managing expectations.
- A crisis can lead to reverting to old behaviors.
- Writing a book is a process of discovery and reflection.
- Serving others is more important than impressing them.
Sound Bites
"If I train people, they might leave."
"Impressing or serving, pick one."
"We need to be coaches, not managers."
Chapters
00:00 Meet Marc Haine: Theater Thinking for Better Leadership
05:00 What New Managers Get Wrong About Expectations
12:18 How Company Culture Shapes Team Behavior
19:30 The Leadership Lesson That Became a Book
25:12 Perfectionism vs. Micromanagement: A Leadership Dilemma
31:32 Intentional Leadership: Serving vs. Impressing
41:17 How to Build Real Trust as a People Manager
If this episode challenged how you think about leadership, subscribe to new episodes that drop weekly for first-time managers navigating real team dynamics.
Legal Disclaimer
This content is for educational purposes; your results may vary. No guarantee of results is claimed. The publisher of this content is not responsible for any actions taken or not taken as a result of watching or listening to this piece of content.
Transcript
Paul Leon: Paul Leon here. I want to take my hat off for a moment and speak directly to you, the listener or watcher of our show here at the Manager's Mic. Thank you so much for being a consumer of the show, and I want to take our relationship a step further.
When you join our newsletter at TheManagersMic.com (again, that is TheManagersMic.com), I will give you a free resource called a selling script to skyrocket sales.
And my promise to you is that this resource will help you evaluate your current script and see where it might need improvement.
Thank you so much for being a listener and watcher of the show. And now, back to the episode.
[EPISODE]
Paul Leon: I have with us today Marc Haine. He is a customer and employee experience strategist, professional speaker, author, and founder. With more than 30 years in hospitality, retail, and customer-facing industries, Marc has lived the reality most leaders face: they were exceptional at the job, then asked to lead a team with little to no leadership training.
Marc believes extraordinary experiences do not happen by accident. They are designed.
Marc is the bestselling author of Lights, Camera, Action: Business—Operational Excellence Through the Lens of Live Theater, where he blends operations, leadership, and live performance.
Marc was also the driving force behind TEDxDevon, the global TEDx event in Devon, Alberta, where he brought together 11 bold innovators, community leaders, and change makers.
Marc hosts two podcasts: Marc Haine Live and Experience Leadership, a small business podcast. He is also the co-founder and president of nonprofit organizations, including Walk the Talk Sustainability Society and the Arts Association. He is an active member of the East of 60 Production Society and is a past national director of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers.
Whether he is on stage, behind the mic, or helping organizations curate the right voices for their events, Marc’s promise remains the same: to empower organizations to transform everyday operations into extraordinary experiences for customers, employees, and leaders alike—to dare to be the exception.
Marc Haine: Thank you very much. What is interesting about this is I had an epiphany back in 2015. I was working with a community to help them run a service excellence program, and one of my colleagues walked into my office and said, “Marc, you act, right?”
I said, “What?” She said, “You act.” I said, “Sometimes I act silly, sometimes I act goofy, and most times I act immature.”
She said, “No, no, no—like on stage.”
I had never done it. I had never acted. I always secretly wanted to, but I never bit the bullet. She told me there was a role and she thought I would be great for it. She encouraged me to audition. I went, and I got the role, which scared the bejesus out of me because I cannot remember what I had for breakfast. How was I going to remember lines?
The process was so intriguing. We had four months of rehearsals. And I can tell you, no matter how funny a comedy is, after about three months nothing is funny anymore. At three and a half months, you are thinking, “Why did I say yes to this? This is so hard. We go live in two weeks. Why are we doing this?”
Then opening night comes. If you have ever been backstage at a production, there are no lights on—just a couple of tiny bulbs. You are mostly in darkness.
I am ready to go on stage. I have my hand on the doorknob, ready to step onto the set. The lights go down, the music comes up, and then the stage lights come on. That is my cue.
I step on stage completely blinded because I have all these spotlights in my face. I cannot see anything. I say my first lines, and 250 people start laughing together.
Paul Leon: That is a good feeling.
Marc Haine: And I thought to myself, “That is why we did everything we have been doing.” It was such an epiphany.
The next day, I came in two hours before showtime. I walked into the venue and turned on the stage lights. It was the first time I had actually seen what the audience saw. The lights flooded the stage, and you get a sense of time, place, and purpose.
I stepped on stage and looked at everything we had done. We are a nonprofit dinner theater group. We had to coordinate volunteers, hire caterers, coordinate the bar, sell tickets, set up the room, build the stage—everything—just to put on six shows.
And I thought, “After 25-plus years in hospitality, if businesses put this much time and attention into their business as we do to put on six shows, we would have amazing businesses.”
That was the catalyst for Lights, Camera, Action: Business—Operational Excellence Through the Lens of Live Theater. It made me realize that if we take business principles and reframe them under a different light, we start seeing the ridiculousness of what we do in our day-to-day. We forget why we are doing what we do.
For new managers, and for people who have never been trained in leadership, this problem is everywhere. I wrote the book so people could buy it for themselves and their frontline managers, go chapter by chapter, apply it, and even create a book club around it. Every chapter has worksheets.
You consume part of it, then apply it to your business. And I guarantee you, by the time you get through the 20 chapters, your business will be entirely different from beginning to end.
Paul Leon: I did stand-up for five years, and I had to pause it for my MBA. I do not think most people realize how much work goes in, and how much relief you feel when you get that first laugh.
What is one principle you learned leading up to that night that became a key part of Lights, Camera, Action?
Marc Haine: The overarching premise is in the prologue: experience expectations. Any time we enter an interaction, we have expectations.
Coming on this podcast, I expect you to be a great host. You expect me to bring value to your audience. We hope I am entertaining and not doing anything weird. We all have expectations of what an experience will be like—whether it is a storefront, online shopping, or a live event.
There are three outcomes. One: you meet expectations. That is fine, but not memorable. Two: you disappoint expectations—what I call the “what a shame” effect. Three: you exceed expectations—the “wow” effect.
A clean hotel room is expected. You do not notice it. But you notice a dirty entranceway or a wrapper behind the nightstand. And you also notice a handwritten note from housekeeping, because that is unexpected and thoughtful.
Every interaction is made up of touchpoints. Every business has touchpoints, whether leaders realize it or not.
On my website, markhain.com, I have a customer touchpoint assessment. You can give it to a supervisor and say, “Walk through like a customer and see what you see.”
Paul Leon: Have you seen any success stories from people who used that?
Marc Haine: One of the biggest challenges is that we are so engulfed in our business every day that we stop seeing things.
I remember a pizzeria owner who got a secret shopper report and called me in angry. He slammed it on the table and said, “Why should I care about fingerprints on my doors? I make great pizza.”
I said, “A new customer does not know how good your pizza is yet. They only know how the place feels when they walk in.”
There is also the idea that if you want to see how clean the kitchen is, go into the bathroom. If the bathroom is neglected, what about the areas customers cannot see?
That is why I use the stage and live show framing. When we build a set, we add details the audience may never notice, but the actors do. Those details help actors feel time and place and purpose.
In business, we also have to ask: are we setting employees up for success? Are we mentally preparing them? We all play different roles in life, and roles have different “costumes.” So I ask leaders to look at their business: does the “costuming” reflect care and professionalism?
Paul Leon: Some people hear “costumes” and think it means being fake. I see it more as culture and context. Do you have a strong example of costuming done well?
Marc Haine: Disney is a high-level example. Casinos are another good example. At a card table, how are the dealers dressed? Do they look professional and trustworthy? Same with food and beverage servers—do they look prepared to serve?
I also walked into a welding shop once that looked like it “lost some love.” Dusty flowers, old seating, and you could smell the dust. I am not expecting chandeliers in a welding shop, but if they are not paying attention to the front area, will they pay attention to the details of my project?
Paul Leon: I have always judged restaurants by the bathroom. If it is dirty, I do not want to eat there.
What else in your Lights, Camera, Action framework can help new managers?
Marc Haine: The book walks through what it takes to put on a live production and compares it to business operations.
In hospitality, leaders often hire someone and say, “You have experience. Great. Here is the menu. Here is your uniform. Start Tuesday.”
That would be like hiring an actor and saying, “You have done Shakespeare? Great. Here is your costume. Here is the script. You go on in 10 minutes.” That would never happen. But businesses do it all the time.
Then leaders wonder why someone is not performing. We are not training effectively.
Many leaders became leaders because they were great at the job, not because they were trained to lead people. Then they are told, “Train everyone to be like you.”
That is a problem because leadership requires different skills. We cannot get the best performance from employees if we do not invest in training.
And there is that saying: “If I train them, they might leave.” But worse is if you do not train them and they stay.
Paul Leon: How did you actually write the book?
Marc Haine: Once you have a message, you have to pick the medium. I had a lot in my head and did not know how to get it out.
I started with a simple three-step framework: Lights, Camera, Action.
Lights: the foundation—what do we want our business to look like when the lights come on?
Camera: being “camera ready”—how prepared are we?
Action: service delivery.
That helped me create topics. It was a fluid process. The first thing I wrote ended up being my last chapter.
Some days I would stare at a heading and write, “I do not know what I want to do here, but this is important to me because…” Then I would write why it mattered, and a story would come, and the lesson would follow.
Ideas often show up only when you sit down and start doing the work.
Paul Leon: How long did it take to write the book?
Marc Haine: About two and a half to three years. Editing took the longest.
I made a conscious decision: I was either writing or editing, but not both. First, I wrote the first rough version. I dumped the ideas out. Then I came back later to clean it up.
If you edit while you write, you lose momentum.
I had an editor in the UK who would edit every Saturday. We would edit live. Then the publisher’s editor gave recommendations, but it was not as interactive. Honestly, working with the publisher was tougher than working with my editor.
Paul Leon: I struggle with perfectionism. Some people label that as micromanaging. What do you think?
Marc Haine: “I’m a perfectionist” is often an excuse micromanagers use to justify bad behavior.
If someone says they are a perfectionist, that does not mean every part of their life is perfect. Micromanagers use perfectionism to control people.
Caring about the work is good. But when you chase perfection, you need to accept you will not be perfect. Like stand-up comedy: you go up to learn what does not work, not to be flawless.
Many managers focus too much on the “how,” and not enough on the “why.” If someone fills out a form differently but gets it done correctly, does the order matter? Usually not.
When people do not meet expectations, it is often because expectations were not communicated clearly. The responsibility is on the communicator.
Paul Leon: Since we both have stand-up experience, what is your worst bomb?
Marc Haine: My biggest bomb was a presentation for a group of professional speakers. I was scheduled to speak on Saturday. On Wednesday, I decided my content was not good enough, so I rewrote the whole presentation.
On Saturday, I went on stage and both versions got mixed together into a rambling mess. It was terrible. I bombed.
About 18 months later, I begged them to let me come back. They did, and I crushed it.
The difference was this: the first time I was focused on the audience judging me. The second time I went up to serve the audience.
If you are trying to impress, you are not serving. When you serve, you show up differently.
Paul Leon: I agree. Intent matters. I do not think most managers are toxic on purpose. I think it is often unawareness.
If I use your Lights, Camera, Action framework, I used to be all action and not enough lights and camera. Would you agree most new managers spend too little time in steps one and two?
Marc Haine: I appreciate your transparency. Many leaders have to stop and ask, “Why am I reacting like this?”
Here is a simple idea: recognize and reward good behavior, and it will be repeated. If you see bad behavior and do not address it, it will get worse.
Specific praise matters. People feel seen when feedback is clear and specific.
Everything you do for the customer experience also applies to employee experience. You cannot demand respect for customers if you disrespect your team.
People do not come to work planning to be toxic. Often they have not been trained, or they are in constant crisis.
When you are in crisis, you fall back to old habits. Leaders need a way to pause and regain intentionality in the moment.
Paul Leon: You mentioned a “hero complex.” Can you define that and explain how you moved past it?
Marc Haine: A hero complex is wanting to be the king of the castle.
I grew up in a strict home where kids were seen and not heard. I felt shy and like I did not matter.
When I got promoted at 17 at McDonald’s as a swing manager, I felt noticed. Now I was “the boss,” and I kept trying to prove I was important.
I created systems that forced people to come to me for everything, so I could feel needed. That habit continued for years.
But when you have 85 people coming to you for everything, you eventually realize you cannot do it alone. You have to build others up.
A lot of managers fall into this because they are not trained, and they want to look good for their boss. But you have to choose: impress or serve. You cannot do both.
I believe we need to be coaches, not managers. Coaching changes everything.
Paul Leon: Where is the best place for someone to learn more about you and your work?
Marc Haine: Go to markhain.com. There are resources there. The book, Lights, Camera, Action: Business—Operational Excellence Through the Lens of Live Theater, is on Amazon, including the audiobook.
If you are a leader, read the book first, then consider getting copies for your managers and going through it as a weekly book club. Read a chapter, discuss what you learned, and apply it.
One Sobeys general manager told me they went through the book over 20 weeks. Within about 25 weeks, employee satisfaction improved and turnover stopped. People stayed because leaders showed they cared.
Paul Leon: As we close, what is a story or idea that anchors you to this work?
Marc Haine: Early in my leadership journey, I went through trial and error. When I got promoted at 17, my friends became my employees. At first I thought it would be easy. Then I felt people took advantage of me, so I became a hard-ass.
We all go through an evolution. If we have the humility to admit we are not perfect, and the fortitude to learn from mistakes, we grow.
Crisis is what knocks us off track. When crisis hits, we fall back to our default behavior. Toxic behavior often comes from pain and old habits.
We need a way to snap ourselves back to intentionality in the moment. The more we practice that, the more we improve—just like stand-up. You test, you learn what does not work, and you evolve.
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Customer and Employee Experience Strategist, professional speaker, author, and Founder of Elite Headline Speakers
Marc Haine is a Customer & Employee Experience Strategist, professional speaker, author, and Founder of Elite Headline Speakers—a boutique speaker bureau built on one simple belief: booking the right speaker isn’t about star power, it’s about outcomes.
With more than 30 years in hospitality, retail, and customer-facing industries, Marc has lived the reality most leaders face: promoted because they were exceptional at the job… then handed a team with little to no leadership training and a quiet, “You’ve got this.”
His work is grounded in a truth many organizations learn the hard way:
extraordinary experiences don’t happen by accident—they’re designed.
Marc is the bestselling author of LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!: Business Operational Excellence Through the Lens of Live Theatre, where he blends operations, leadership, and live performance to show leaders how to choreograph culture, align teams, and create show-stopping results—without burning people out in the process.
He has delivered impactful presentations for a wide range of organizations across Canada, the U.S., and beyond, including the Government of Alberta, Sobeys, Champion Pet Foods, Alberta EcoTrust, Lions Club International, the Edmonton Chefs Federation, the Frontier School Division in Northern Manitoba, among many others.
As the driving force behind TEDxDevon—the first global TEDx event in Devon, Alberta—Marc brought together 11 bold innovators, community leaders, and changemakers. He is also the founder of Elite Headline Speakers, a modern, planner-first speaker placemen…Read More
