Excalibur Business Show → on Healthy Workplace Culture Interview

Hello America Welcome to the Excalibur business and life coaching show with host coach Jeff Arthur hey good morning everybody this is Jeff Arthur with excalibur business and life coaching show and i have with me in studio right here next to me you’re right here next to me guys yes this is Judy Ryan now Judy and I have connected before but she’s back today we had a great time together so judy tell our listening audience again who you are how they connect with you all the good stuff so that people can can find out more about you thank you i appreciate you asking i’m actually called a human system specialist because i specialize in the systems that help people to get along to get more done you know to get and stay motivated and inspired what happens is that executives and business leaders and community leaders and educators they hire lifework systems and my team because they want the advantages of a healthy workplace culture that help people to really understand why things work why things don’t work what kind of systems need to be in place so that people can be effective and productive together i’ll jump right in here and ask a question you said you help people identify and you help create a healthy workplace healthy health healthy culture in the workplace right exactly define that for our listeners well most people have kind of a standard way of doing workplace culture without real really realizing that they do and it’s often based on command and control sort of tactics so people do a lot of things that actually create it so that people don’t feel empowered they don’t feel encouraged they don’t feel connected or contributing or even like they’re cared for and they don’t mean to do that it’s just that in the way that we’ve raised up people is from children all the way into our workforce we don’t necessarily have things in place that really encourage collaboration and cooperation we have a lot of past control methods that we use that are more about creating conforming compliant people as opposed to creative and cooperative people so they’re told they’re on the team then they’re told this is how you’re going to be on the team this is how you’re going to work on the team and this is when you’re going to do it yes there’s a lot of belief that you can’t be a leader or a boss and be a friend you can’t be a parent you can’t be a friend and that’s just not true if you use healthy human systems so a lot of people don’t really they know that something’s wrong they know that their people aren’t engaged with each other they know that their people aren’t feeling very cooperative but they don’t really know exactly how to fix what’s broke and what it fixes that sure so i’m a business owner out there judy and i’m listening to this show and i’m thinking hey you know what i think what she’s saying makes sense but i don’t even know i i wouldn’t even know how to start doing that what right how do whenever if they say okay i wanted judy to come in and help me what what would they expect how do you help change their culture into a more healthy more stable more productive culture i appreciate you asking that because a lot of people don’t know that there are very specific steps for how to do that in fact i was recently at a talk i won’t name the author but he was a really great author but his whole talk was about how to create an accountable culture but when people in the audience asked well what what specific operational things do i need to hire and fire people and to do things a different way he said well there is no one two three steps and the truth of it is there really are what we do is we have an end-to-end process that begins with making sure that you have your executive leadership team all on the same bus and all understanding what are we transforming from into and then we take them through understanding the necessary components of a healthy workplace so the first step that we do is we assess the actual alignment of the culture and that’s called the strategic alignment assessment and what we measure is we measure four really big components the first is two components around trust and whether or not you have the components in place for building trust so for example the eight values that build trust are being straightforward being honest being receptive to other people being disclosing of your feelings and your thoughts and your opinions being respectful giving recognition seeking excellence and following through on commitments so what we do is let’s say you were taking that survey and straightforwardness was described and i would ask you on that survey on a scale of one to ten what would you give straightforwardness let’s say you give it a nine that it’s very important to you and then the next question is how well is it being fulfilled in this workplace and maybe it’s only a four well that gap of five is uh called the trust gap and you measure that for the whole organization for all eight values and what they found is that if you can reduce that trust gap that translates into greater retention of employees higher revenue higher profit all kinds of things happen as a result of building consciously building trust and even understanding where the trust is lacking so as you say that i’m sitting there thinking okay so for the listener out there maybe they don’t own the company maybe they’re maybe they work whatever and and if i’m them i’m thinking holy guacamole judy just identified what i’m saying whenever i say i don’t know what it is but i’m just not happy with where i work yes exactly i think a lot of times people know they’re unhappy but they don’t know how to put it into words they don’t know how to slice it i have no idea how to identify it i have no idea how to how to even begin to understand or recognize it and it all comes back to this is what i value but this is not what i’m experiencing exactly exactly so it’s a way for them to measure and identify what kind of the report card on what’s really happening so that’s one area is around trust the second one is around alignment and what we do around measuring alignment is most people in even in larger companies they jump in and they really focus a lot on goals and they focus a lot on procedures and who’s going to do what but they don’t focus on what are we trying to cause beyond profit what are our core values and how do we make those really operational and in front of us day-to-day and then what are the specific visions for expressing our purpose at this time and then being able to break that down into the goals procedures and roles and so when we measure this we ask people a lot of questions that help to clarify whether people understand the purpose values vision goals procedures and roles and whether they approve of them and that alignment is has everything to do with how well people function together as a team because if i’m on that team and i don’t understand what we’re trying to cause or i don’t understand how we have to behave to get there right and i don’t know what you’re really trying to accomplish then i don’t know my part on the team i don’t necessarily do the right things or i don’t do them in the right way that’s going to say either you’re then fumbling along not really sure what you’re doing or you actually are getting in the way of whether consciously or unconsciously but you’re actually you’re actually uh inhibiting the where the team’s trying to go or where where the group’s trying to go or where the company’s trying to go yes and you’re actually stumbling over yourself because you don’t you don’t know what you don’t know well not not only for the company but what we do is we help managers move from a management role a traditional conventional management role into a mentoring role so what we call the blueprint is the purpose values vision goals procedures and roles it’s we do one for the company but we also do them for projects we do them for when they’re selecting software or tools we also have everybody in the organization creates their own blueprint so that becomes a communication tool right to use i’ve got two new clients that are really growing quickly one just got a multi-million dollar contract and she’s very small because she’s going to leapfrog into some really big work and she doesn’t have her blueprint in place so she will be more effective if she can put that together for her team absolutely absolutely it’s kind of goes back to whether you’re talking about a business plan or whether you’re talking about understanding your the industry you’re in or whatever the more you recognize what’s going on around you in you with your team in the company all that kind of stuff the more prepared you’re going to be well it’s so exciting because we’re in a time where people really do understand that they need to work on their business as gerber will say instead of just in their business absolutely and so they’re eager to they’re aware that there are more solutions now and so it’s exciting to work with leaders that say i want excellence in the human systems as well as the other absolutely and not only that but what i find with my clients is that the the associates of the company are so appreciative of the ownership that are saying hey you know what judy i respect you and love you and and actually value you as a human being not as a piece of meat that produces money for me and the company i’m bringing in a coach i’m bringing in and somebody who can help the whatever to help you be even more stronger as a person where the associates are going this is great i i love working for a company who actually invests in me right the the all the uh research shows that people don’t leave necessarily over money issues in general they leave over the way that they feel cared for or treated in an organization right and so if you do a good job building a healthy culture people will stay you’ll have a lot more loyalty a lot more growth creativity in fact the last thing that i’ll just quickly go through that we measure is the engagement level of people we have three descriptions that we use one is actively disengaged people who are really saboteurs that are in the environment gossiping doing a lot of negative things you know they’re suing all over the place they’re doing a lot of harassment that type of thing and then there’s a level of engagement called just disengage where you’re not really a big troublemaker but you’re just kind of there as a body during the week kind of for the paycheck and then there’s a person that’s really fully engaged and they’re collaborative and they take good care of themselves and they’re positive people so we actually ask organizations what percentage of your group or your division or your company fall into these three categories and that’s quite enlightening the statistics nationally are that only 29 of the population falls into this fully engaged category 55 are disengaged and 16 are actively disengaged costing the companies at least sixteen thousand dollars a year per person it’s interesting because whenever you give those statistics i’m actually shocked that the number is that high of the fully engaged yes well most of them will not stay in an environment that is not healthy because they actually are revenue generators on average 32 000 a year per person but they won’t they won’t hang out so yeah it’s interesting well i as i work with business i was like well i lost this person or that you know they didn’t stick around or whatever else and it’s like okay well let’s look at the culture here because uh were they good you know are you sad to see them and go oh my gosh i wish we’d get out of anything to keep them yeah well then there’s probably something going on here you don’t even realize what’s happening and it’s healthy it’s good to look at it as a culture or system because then you don’t have to be throwing blame around it’s really about what system is just missing that if it weren’t in place we wouldn’t have lost that person or we would have been able to turn around that person that’s disengaged or maybe in some cases gotten rid of that person that’s disengaged absolutely so here’s a softball question for you judy so you go in and you do the assessment you do analysis you talk to people even going back to the first thing you talked about where that trust factor where are you at with with you know where you value things and what that looks like the authenticity and et cetera et cetera and you realize okay what i value is not really where we’re at or i got a i got a terroristic attitude here or i got somebody who’s not not engaged completely how do i what do you do what can i as a business owner what’s the next step okay i gather the information but then how do i change that what are what what’s the what are the steps you take to begin to change the climate to where it’s more healthy the long uh next step that happens generally is a period of training where everybody understands what it is to be in a value-based company in a responsibility responsibility-based company the managers learn how to move from control methods into being mentors everyone in the whole environment is taught the skill set not just the select few that get to go off and take a workshop somewhere and and no one else gets that information so once that’s established what we begin to do is we begin to start to use the tools in real time with them so as an example say a company has defined their own core values for the company plus those eight values that build trust particularly at the leadership team an exercise that i’ll give you in as an example is we’ll have a team of say eight leaders around the table and we’ll have a matrix and it’ll have everybody’s name and it’ll have the eight values that build trust and the core values and then everybody measures what they would give everybody so let’s say you’re the person on the hot seat and i’d say what would you give yourself for straightforwardness and maybe you say right now i’m around it at a seven and i’d say tell the group why you gave yourself a seven and what would make it an eight and then they go around and tell you what they would give you for straightforwardness and what and the only thing they get to comment on is what suggestions they would give you to help you to be more straightforward they won’t do anything around criticizing you just wanting to lift you to a higher level with that sometimes in that setting a person will get very low marks and they’ll even give themselves very low marks and at that point there’s a conversation around well here’s the options you can either work with your team to change the core values or you can find out what you need to do to get on board with the core values or you can let the organization gracefully and helpfully help you find an organization that’s better suited to your values see it’s interesting one way or the other though you’re saying action is taken upon the knowledge that is received yes where it’s non-negotiable those especially those high-level elements of purpose and values there’s a really good example of that with the zappos company their purpose is to create a wow experience through service one of their core values out of 10 is humility they’ll do a whole set of interview questions on the skill set but then a whole set of interview questions on the core values and that’s what what i do with my clients as well recently a client was doing some hiring they said the person that had the highest skills was not a good fit for their culture so they hired the next in line who had a little bit more to learn but they felt it would be easier to teach them the skills than the culture that than the values well it’s yeah uh yeah i can teach you how to i can teach you how to manufacture the widget but i don’t know that i can teach you to be trustworthy i don’t know i don’t know how to treat you to teach you to be honest or or team oriented or be a team player or realize that it’s not all about you and and there’s a much bigger picture out there and yes and all that we’re going to make an assessment but everybody understands going in that we’re not just getting information we’re actually going to change or actually going to make decisions or we’re going to actually take action based upon what we learn so that the climate does change and that means that we’re going to have to do something differently than what we have before which can be very scary so we’re talking about how you’re actually having people assess evaluate how whatever word you want to use their their co-workers and where they identify themselves you know with where they’re at in those values and where i think i’m at with stuff is not where i’m at at all right exactly because one of the questions we ask on the assessment is how engaged are you and say you have a company with 50 people almost everybody’s giving themselves fully engaged sure but then when you look at the group readout it’s very different looking so a lot of times we have a perception of ourselves that is not necessarily the perception of our co-workers right and that’s a big shock it’s kind of like going to the doctor and finding out you have a cholesterol reading that you didn’t know you know you were going to have absolutely so the other thing that i wanted to kind of circle back to just a little bit is you were asking about how does a person understand what is part of a culture change one of the things that i recently started doing that’s been very helpful to people so i offer this to your listeners is we have an assessment on the front of our website our home page and there’s an assessment for corporate systems there’s an assessment for family systems for education systems and really what that document does is it allows people to understand do i have this in place do i have this in place do i have this in place and it sort of teaches the person that’s actually filling out the survey what are the components that i need to put in place for a healthy workplace culture so they actually find that and go and see that right off the bat if you go to the home page and uh there’s it says corporate systems education systems family systems and at the bottom of the description there’s would you like to assess your culture and that process helps you to say oh this is what i have in place or don’t have in place because it’s a bit of a large thing to get your head around and yet there was an article by lencioni saying that the last competitive advantage of business is is to have a healthy culture absolutely that’s that’s the that’s the that’s the difference there yeah i can i can i can get the latest equipment i can get the nicest facility i can understand the greatest whatever i can cut the costs or whatever but i still have to have the healthy system within this system to create this system that’s going to produce the system where it’s going to actually work yes exactly and most people aren’t used to thinking that way we sort of jump in at the activity level we we’re not so strong on strategizing yes and that’s really where the big bucks pay off because if you do your work well on the strategy level then the implementation and the tactical levels happen more gracefully and the right work gets done and it gets done right as opposed to being kind of muddled right well that’s a great way to say we’re jumping in on the activity level we don’t don’t think about the strategy level and even going back to what you’re talking about where you’re you’re identifying where you’re at with the values and how that comes across whatever i don’t think that i think it’s scary to people to think about being openly evaluated right you know you’re gonna i so i’m gonna evaluate where i’m at with trustworthiness where i’m at with communication where i’m at with whatever and then you’re gonna actually ask susan over here where i’m at you know what the heck are you talking about i don’t want her to talking about because i don’t like susan anyway and she’s going to give you know that you can get all kinds of political whatever back and forth but yeah i still got to be honest i still got to be willing to be vulnerable to learn and grow and develop yes and most people are actually relieved to be asked the questions so that they can say you know we want it better here and we want something done about this but not from a place of demand especially what’s really important is having leaders that are truly committed to change one of the things that we ask in our work is what is the most important relationship if you’re a leader and i’ll just play this game with you if you’re a leader what’s the most important relationship you have to manage you know in in being able to help your direct reports what would you say that is with me exactly now most people get that question right let’s see if you get the next one okay what’s the next most important relationship that you need to manage to be able to be effective with your direct reports is it with your direct reports i’m going to say the next person is going to be my vice president or my finance person or anything like that no it’s actually any place in your life as a leader that you have issues with authority so for many people they still have issues with certain authority figures in their life i had a man that was in a car one time with me that i was on a date with and i said why don’t you wear your safety belt i’m just curious and he says well i’m not going to let the government control me that’s a person with an authority issue so one of the things that happens is for example for me one of my authorities were my clients i would go to a client site and i would say are you willing to show up for every event that you are needed for to lead the charge and they would say yes they’d even sign off on it but the first time that they wouldn’t show up at a training session that they had agreed to in the past i wouldn’t feel the courage to go to them and say because i would be worried about losing the account or what you know what if everybody’s disappointed so now because i’ve worked through those authority issues i would go to that person and say you know are you going to cancel the meeting or do you want me to and then then they recognize that i’m really gonna hold you to your agreements and so the leadership is absolutely crucial to any kind of transformation how easy it is for us to not recognize how i’m undermining what i’ve said we what we’re going to do because well you judy you don’t understand this is my daughter’s uh piano recital and it’s i have to do that yes i do understand that congratulations on her piano recital but you’ve identified to this team or this company or this group that this is what we’re going to be doing and you’ve now made an exception that you will not allow them to make whenever it’s their daughter and their parent recital and so you’ve undermined your authority before you even get started exactly and it’s just about really making the culture change the top priority and really putting you know the rubber hitting the road when it comes to taking the action and so that’s really a big challenge but if you’re the top leader and you have authority issues you won’t stand as an authority you’ll just be an authority figure as opposed to a real authority absolutely and therefore anybody that’s leading under you will also suffer from those same blind spots that you have as the authorities absolutely well and i was going to say of what you’re saying there if i have problems with authority issue and you walk in and you say okay so do you want to cancel the meeting or do you want me to cancel a meeting and i the business owner going hey look you know what judy i hired you to help out whatever but don’t be telling me what to do with my company and don’t be telling me what to do with my meeting uh this team is going to be just fine without me today uh it’s my son’s baseball game and it’s a beautiful day and i’m gonna go do that then i don’t think that they understand how much information they’re giving you exactly by by reacting like that because you’re going okay so now we’ve identified six other areas that are problem areas in this company that are total blind spots because you don’t even know what you don’t even know what you’re saying at all because that’s the reason why they don’t trust you or that’s the reason why there’s so many issues here going on about keeping your word because of the very thing you’re doing right here and jeff you working in the same field in this you know that if we’re not doing our work we can’t be in right relationship to the authorities that we’re working with absolutely so i remember one time i wrote an article called you’re not the boss of me because i went on a little self-imposed retreat and i looked at all the places that i had unfinished business in my own thought processes around what it meant to be a leader and it really helped me to start to clear that and to make sure that i’m a real authority not just an authority figure absolutely so so that’s really key that is the main determining factor of whether a culture is successfully developed let’s say that again what’s the key determining factor a leader who is 100 committed in word and deed not just to your program but to what they’re doing what they’re doing to the company to what they’re trying to accomplish to their people to the overall strategy to the small things all that kind of thing absolutely absolutely it’s the leader that really runs the show on that and it shows it’s chosen the end result right absolutely well that’s going to come back to the the great key things that you know are buzz words in our society now but are so important of that vulnerability and that transparency and that willingness to to be out there even though it’s going to be difficult to be held accountable because i’m gonna have to look at my own warts or my own deep darks on my own whatever judy you’ve got an article in front of you that you have written tell us about what uh you know what you just go however what direction you want i’m actually a columnist in several journals one is a national journal it’s the women’s journal i’m in saint charles and st louis but i’m also picked up my articles are picked up on topics of emotional intelligence around the country and then i also have a business column in the saint louis small business monthly that that comes out once a month on your extraordinary workplace so i just happened to bring to share with you some information on the importance of shifting from being a victim to being a victor so wait a minute what what article i mean uh what magazine is this in this is in the st louis and st charles women’s journal very good just so they could find that there if they wanted to uh if they wanted to to catch up on yes it’s the current uh april may article right now very good but really what i wanted to just share with you is that i’ve always been drawn to very unconventional ways of building community and building building culture because some of the questions that really make me think and actually it’s the purpose of our company is to create a world where people love their lives and that means love their lives at work so the questions are you know how can we shift the processes of how we create good citizens whether it’s in a company or in a community so that people thrive instead of just survive and they don’t feel so squashed and part of the reason that that’s difficult is that we haven’t really developed people from the inside out we’ve done a lot of things to try to shape them from the outside in and i think there’s a natural rebellion against that now so what we teach is how do you become a person who is accountable from the inside out a person that’s asking the questions in your life instead of doing what i think i should or i have to i ought to what would make me move from being just resentfully compliant or rebellious to being somebody that’s really committed to what i’m saying whether it’s a yes a no or some other option and you were talking a little bit before about if the leaders could be more vulnerable or the people in general could be more vulnerable to looking at maybe where there’s some blind spots part of the reason we don’t want to do that is we are so perfectionistic we’re so hard on ourselves we believe it’s difficult for us to admit when we’re wrong and i was going to give you this quote because brene brown is somebody that a lot of people know and really love her work she’s a very funny intelligent researcher on shame and a vulnerability and she said it’s really important for us to remember that we’re the most overweight over medicated in debt addicted cohort in the history of time because we’re afraid to be courageous and live wholehearted authentic lives and that really those issues show up when you’re building a healthy culture because people have to be willing to confront themselves and some of the the behaviors and practices that have not been so pretty all the time in my discovery with people the reason that they are afraid to do that one of the major reasons i would not say the reason but one of the major reasons is because they are they are struggling with the judgments that have it they’ve had to deal with either real or perceived in their life yes absolutely it all comes down to shame and this see she talks about this brene brown i love it because she says you know one of our deepest needs is a sense of belonging with people and yet to really feel belonging you have to be yourself you have to be authentic and we’re afraid to be authentic because we’re afraid then we’re going to be rejected so it’s kind of a vicious cycle you have to get to the point where you are so committed to living by certain values because you know that ultimately they work and they make you happy but until you really have the courage to do that and in some sense let go of what other people think that’s the biggest trick yes and i will say this for the benefit of our listening audience and you can jump on this all you want the that is the trick and the struggle with that in people’s journeys so often time is that i can’t flip that switch that’s a process within the journey to accomplish the bigger process and that means that i have to be able to learn how to not let the the voices are the opinion of those very important people in my life that have i’m going to use the word control that’s a pretty strong word but i’ve influenced me so so heavily to not influence me as much anymore right but that process to get there is extraordinarily difficult it is as those voices continue to say judy you can’t do that what what what are you thinking are you smoking something or what are you trying to do no i’m trying to be authentic and i’m trying to be courageous and i’m trying to be myself well okay but that doesn’t work for me yes and what you’re doing i mean because you’re not playing the game right so let me give you an example of how to do this how we do this in sort of a wrap-around way let’s say one of the things that makes it unsafe for people to be authentic is gossip because everybody’s gasping about each other you’re afraid your reputation could be smeared not only in the office but on social media right so in our work for example just that issue alone we teach people how to take to do certain tools so that they don’t use gossip anymore and certain commitments so that they don’t use gossip anymore and how would you do healthy venting instead of venting which is really just a cover for gossip and how do you make sure that you’re having those face-to-face conversations instead of going around somebody or not having those conversations when you do that on the table when you do that in an operational way where it’s it’s brought up and it’s talked about on a regular basis and it’s talked about in mentoring sessions all of a sudden the environment becomes safer something that people never even thought about actually putting on the table and moving through and then that’s just one more piece where i have the safety to be authentic because we’ve all agreed as a community we’re not going to make it unsafe for us to be imperfect or to be authentic yes so as a again picturing the listening audience out there they’re driving along going yes that would be fantastic but i’ve already i’m already dealing with that crap in my life i’m already i’m already being the the subject of the gossip so how judy how do i deal with that well if you guys i’m trying not to interrupt you but as i’m i mean even putting in more of a of the spectrum here while i’m trying to become this courageous authentic person and live the life that i understand that i can how do i deal with the gossip or how do i deal with it back bite or how do i deal with the people who are going judy stop doing that because that’s not playing the game that i need you to play for my life and it’s making my life uncomfortable well one of the things that has to happen is for people to actually be willing to talk about the elephant in the room which is the gospel i’m using that as one example i understand so let’s say somebody so as a manager if you bring in training around what are the understandable reasons why people gossip let’s have some compassion on how did we get here where it’s so comfortable and so easy for us to gossip and what are some of the core needs we’re trying to get met by gossiping that we could get met a different way and if we are not able to come to people directly instead you know we feel this need to sort of do something to diffuse our own angst if if i had somebody teaching me the skills and the confidence to go to somebody directly instead of going around them all of those things collectively work together it may never eliminate gossip but it will certainly minimize it and it begins to make it something that people are conscious of if i for example one of the things we teach is called a mind trust and it’s simply saying jeff if i i commit to you i’m not going to talk about you behind your back right and if i have an issue i’m going to find a way to come to you directly about that and i’m not going to let anybody else talk about you well if i make that commitment to you now i’m going to think twice before i do i gossip about you if i don’t make that commitment to you you’re going to have more of awareness that there’s something intimidating between us right now what’s really going on that there’s something else going on yes right absolutely well what i have discovered in a lot of those times whenever i’m attacking you it’s it’s so many times because of the the problem with me it has nothing to do with you absolutely it’s it’s my it’s the either see the thing i see in you that i see in me that makes me uncomfortable or it’s the it’s my own issue that i’m struggling with that has nothing to do with you you’re just the one who is getting the benefit of the attack it’s a little segway into just a quick reply about our redirecting negative behavior because two things that we do in an organization is we help them create encouraging healthy culture which in itself eliminates tons of misbehavior and relationships absolutely but despite that you’re going to have people coming into the workplace having a bad day having a bad relationship at home or something that’s discouraging them and they’re not gonna and most people don’t know how to handle that without resorting to harshness punishment or just burying your head in the sand and enabling them so we teach a skill where you can actually redirect negative behavior in a way that’s not harsh and punitive it’s not bribing it’s not enabling and most people are like well what else is left right but there are other there are healthy responses that are actually very healing and life-giving we’re out of time wow amazing you got like you got like 20 seconds here judy tell them how they can find you please go to our website there’s tons of articles and information assessments and tools all of our classes are listed under the events and the training it’s www.lifeworksystems.com

you can email it me judy at lifeworksystems.com or you can call me at

business and 314-239-4727 coaching show that’s judy ryan judy thank you so much goodbye