Culture Focused Practice

All right. Hey. Hey there. Dr. Tara, Vossenkemper. You are listening to the Culture Focus Practice podcast and I am your lovely host or not lovely. I am your host at the very least. This is the third episode in a three part series on culture, and the series is titled, the Culture Isn't Really What You Think Series, what Really Shapes Your Team's Experience.

The focus is why good vibes and quotes and team building aren't enough to build a strong culture. This episode in particular, we are going to focus on culture driven leadership. I am fucking here for it. What great leaders do differently to build a thriving team.

If you are just joining us, episode one is culture is what You Allow. You can go back and listen to it. Episode two is the energy audit, which is why some team members are dragging the whole practice down. And again, today we're gonna focus on culture driven leadership. So. I'm very pumped.

Make sure you subscribe before we go further. That way you could stay up in any future series as well as binge listen to any of the previous episodes and get notified when shit comes out on a weekly basis.

So there, I need you all to gear up. This is gonna be a dense episode. Maybe it's not. For me, it feels like a dense episode even in advance of doing it. So I'm hoping I'm wrong and y'all can just stay with me the whole time.

Alright, let's dig in. You set the culture more than anybody else, but not in the way that you think.

So when we talk about setting tone and culture, I don't mean that we say, here's a vision statement. Here's our mission statement, here's our core values. Make sure you live them out. What really sets the culture helps to set the culture is your behavior. It is your consistency. It's your clarity of expectations, your communication about those expectations.

It's your follow through. It's if and when you let things slide and why and how, I should say if and when you let things slide, that sort of thing can become the culture. So when I talk about consistency and expectations and follow through and behavior, that's really what the culture is about. So you can have core values until you're blue in the face.

I would highly encourage you to have some, they need to be lived out. It's useless if you just have them in writing and you never look at them and nobody knows what they are. You need to be actively living out your core values, actively assessing your team for these, including yourself.

It's the behavior. The behavior has to match the thing that you say that's the important part to culture. It's not what you say, it's what you're doing. That's the key piece here. Your behavior teaches the team what's okay and what's not okay. So it's not, of course, words are important. I love words. I like to, I like to clarify, you know, what is it that we're moving towards?

What is it that we're doing? What are the values? Words give us a, I mean, the start of a shared experience. If I can verbally say, this is what. I want to do, this is where we're going from that point on. People have the option of saying, oh, fuck yeah, that sounds awesome. Or, oh, no, no, no, I don't think I wanna do this.

So words are shorthand. They're a way of getting on the same page pretty quickly. But after those words are spoken, what matters more is that your behaviors in alignment with those words, and that you are holding your team to the same level as you're holding yourself, in terms of behaviors, being in alignment with the words you're, what you do has to match what you say. If you're talking as an example about accountability, but you never enforce it, nobody gives a fuck. It's optional. People start to not trust what you say. I know for a fact I'm a man.

I got a lot of ideas. I'm a, I'm an ideas type person. I, my brain goes abstract. I think big. It can just sort of keep going in that direction. I'm not short of ideas. Hardly ever. My point is I have a lot of ideas and what I know from my team, I would share these ideas and then they would not come to fruition. There were some people on my team, they would talk about feeling like they don't know how to trust what I say.

And it dawned on me, not everybody wants to hear my ideas. Some people get overwhelmed by this, some people get, it is too much for them to hear everything that's sort of going on, or even the next directions that I wanna go into because they start to plan and, you know, attempt to plan for this thing. They're starting to try to move in the direction of making it happen, whether they're on leadership or not. And the reality is it's just a, it's just an idea like whether or not it comes to fruition now or in five years, it sort of doesn't matter. Like it just lives there. Free of charge takes up mental space sometimes.

My point is, that was a hard lesson because what I realized is that the people who I was sharing ideas with, they started not to trust what I was saying. It started to erode some of that culture, some of that relationship, so I had to learn how to rein it in.

That's not about accountability as much as it is about like trust. Trust in the people, people trusting you, trust around you, so to speak. So maybe a caveat to the accountability piece is that. If we are sharing ideas, clarifying from the outset, being clear in our communication with people that we're not seeking to move forward with this, we're just sort of sharing something out loud so it's clear from the outset. Nobody's gonna get worried or start to prep around you.

And then that trust might be right there and saying, I will share with you at the time that we are going to start to implement something new and then actually doing that. So holding yourself accountable in that specific way is an example.

Another example is if you say something like, we value feedback, and then you get defensive when people give it to you.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, no, no, no, no. Isn't that Consuela and Family Guy? No, no, no, no. You can't. You can't do that. You just literally can't do that.

If you do that, what is the implied message? Don't give me feedback. That's the implied message you are implying. Something very different than what you've said.

You've said, come to me with feedback. I would love to hear it. I really wanna know what's going on for you. And then you've sent a message. Very implicitly, and maybe directly even maybe you said, I don't wanna hear that right now. I don't, I don't give a fuck. I I've got too much else on my plate. But maybe you get defensive, maybe you get like, I can't hear this.

Your body shuts down, even your nonverbals. What are you saying in response to somebody giving you feedback if you're not hugging the messenger? Metaphorically or literally if they like hugs, but I would say more figuratively, metaphorically hugging the messenger, thanking them for sharing with you, and instead you're getting defensive, that is the exact opposite of the message that you have said with your words.

You have said, come to me with feedback. What you really said is, I'm gonna tell you this, but don't actually come to me with feedback. I don't wanna hear it. Defensive. You don't wanna hear what they have to say. You say, well, yeah, but you blah, blah, blah.

Don't, oh my gosh, don't do that. Please don't do that if you don't know what defensiveness, it can take two forms that I, I think about, broadly speaking, two forms. One is almost like righteous indignation. This is a Gottman concept from their defensiveness as one of their four horsemen. So one is righteous indignation. Like I would never do that. I never, that's a form of defensiveness. Or I can't believe you would say that about me. Oh, I can't believe you think that I would. Dot, dot dot. There're just it's, that's defensiveness. There's nowhere to go from there.

But the other form of defensiveness is a combatant response. Sort of a, yeah, but, or what did you expect me to do? It is sort of this like intense response to what somebody has gifted you with.

You get gifted with feedback. It's a gift, a fucking gift. Do not crap on that gift. Say thank you. If you hate it, you can throw it away after they leave, but it might be really valuable and the fact that you are crapping on it right away. Terrible. I'm getting caught up now in defensiveness, so. These are two examples of your behavior really mattering more than what you say.

It's not just what you say, it's absolutely how your behavior lines up with your words.

There are a few key habits I'm gonna keep going. A few key habits for leaders who build strong cultures. I will tell you from the outset, I have told you before, whether or not you've heard this is, you know, sort of beside the point.

I have said it before on this podcast a handful of times. I love Daniel Coyle. I'm a very big fan girl of his work. And The Culture Code is abso-fucking-lutely where it's at. So if you haven't read that book, please read that book. Please download. Please listen. So incredible. So this the things we're gonna talk about for leaders who build strong cultures, there are heavy, heavy leanings with the culture code because of how powerful and impactful it is.

Three things here. One is radical consistency, two is clear communication. Three is visible accountability. Okay, now we're gonna move on. No, I'm just kidding. We're gonna, we're gonna unpack these a little bit. So radical consistency is be being consistent, holding the line on your expectations, not just when it's convenient for you, but holding the line every single time.

There's another great book actually called Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. He was a Navy Seal, which totally makes sense. And interestingly, Daniel Coyle in the Culture Code highlights the. Sort of elite culture of the Navy Seals it, it's just, it totally makes sense that I would like both of these books is, is really what makes sense.

So Jocko of Willink, Extreme Ownership is another, I think a fantastic book. I think a fantastic book for leadership at a practice holding the line with every single time. So if you, your people are not following through consistently. That means you're not being consistent. There's something in what you're doing or not doing that is allowing this to take place. It's about you, ultimately.

High trust teams thrive on predictability. There has to be clear and fair and consistent behaviors, outcomes, expectations, follow through. All those things do, even if it feels shitty, it reduces uncertainty and it increases safety and trust. So this is what radical consistency gets us.

It gets us high trust teams who follow through high trust, high accountability because it starts at the top. So radical consistency, an example for an example. For example, uh, and example for you. There we go. Let's stick with feedback. So if feedback is given, let's just say inconsistently. So you say we give feedback all the time, but then you only ever give it when something is wrong.

Just follow that through to its logical conclusion. Your employees are not going to feel safe. They're going to feel on edge. They're not gonna feel engaged with feedback. If you want to be a great leader, if you wanna do this differently, you have to embed feedback into, if we're using feedback as the example, feedback has to be a consistent interaction, a consistent way of being at your practice.

If you are saying. We, we value feedback. We wanna do this all the time, then you need to do it all the time, or you need to give at least the options of doing it all the time. It can't just be when things are wrong and it can't be inconsistent because then people start not to trust again. They're not trusting what you say and we're decreasing trust, we're decreasing predictability for people. Predictability increases safety in terms of biologically it in our brain. It increases our sense of safety when we know what to expect. We know how this goes. We know what we can do. We know what we can't do. It allows us to relax in to structure. So in action.

So if you wanted to like. Bring this alive at your practice. Use really clear and repeatable systems for feedback. That's it. So simple. It could literally be something as easy as every single month you send out a call for feedback. Every single quarter you say quarterly conversations (an EOS concept. Thank you Gino Wickman, I also love you).

You would do something like consistent. Reporting conversations, you would do some. You would do things where you have this rhythm or this cadence of feedback at your business or at your practice. That is, that's what you need. You need clear, repeatable systems for feedback.

Again, using that as an example, that's radical consistency.

Number two, clear communication. This one is a little bit more, more nuanced, so just bear with me for a second. The, the cut and dry part of this, sort of the overarching theme of clear communication is that there should not be any guessing games.

People should know how things work and they should know how things are expected. There should be clear signals, very clear signals about how things work, how things are expected, how behavior looks, how we engage with each other.

When we don't have frequent or direct or clear communication, we get ambiguity. Ambiguity is very uncomfortable for a lot of people, especially when they're not the ones in charge. I will say ambiguity. For you as a leader or practice owner, maybe it feels great. You're like, hell yeah, I'm gonna see what develops out of this ambiguity. As somebody on a team, it doesn't feel safe.

Most everybody, I don't know who's comfortable with ambiguity. I think that it's very rare that people are, broadly speaking, when you don't have direct and clear and frequent communication, you're going to get ambiguity. That leads to a lack of safety, and also it leads to people trying to figure out how to navigate a system rather than knowing what to expect and being able to focus on their work.

Not only does it not feel good, but it also impacts how they engage with their work because they don't know what's expected. I will absolutely say stepping into places as an employee before I did my own thing. When I went into places and there wasn't clarity on my role or what was expected, I, oh man, it was just really unsettling, really confusing, and I spent so much mental energy thinking, what am I fucking doing? Like, am I supposed to be doing this? I don't know. I guess I'll just do it and then not be, ensure it is not a pleasant experience.

Alright, so let's do an example then. So examples would be something like using just simple and direct communication. So it, it could be that these are literally the, the. Not only the way that you communicate, but also the way in which communication should take place in terms of who talks to who. So it could be stuff like that, like, Hey, for anything you need, go directly to this person.

Boom, like you've said it, it's clear, it's brief. Brevity is good, brevity is great in this, in this regard. Go there. Very, very clear. It could be something like giving a deadline for something. Hey, I need this done at this time. Thank you. Very, very quick. Very to the point.

I think this can be a little bit gendered because on average, I remember some research I read, um, I think somebody who identified as female was sending messages and maybe there was like a shared email with her and a male counterpart and she was sending these messages and her responses, she was getting, she, she thought like, wow, I, this is great. Like people are being really responsive and they're really. Like getting back to me quickly and they're really, you know, they were engaging with her differently. And then she realized that she was sending them and maybe it was his signature line or on the email or something like that. So then her partner did the counter experiment and started using her signature line.

And they both reported very different experiences with experiences, the reception of their communications. And so I say this is gendered, meaning that if you identify as male, then it might be that more brevity to the point sort of direct communication is a tendency and also is received differently than if you are doing this as female, for example.

And then as female potentially, I think a lot of us and I identify as female, I think a lot of us tend to over communicate or potentially sugarcoat or we're real soft with language. We don't always need to be. I'm not saying you need to change how you communicate. What I am saying is that you can be whoever you are as you communicate and also still have brevity, still have clarity, still communicate directly and effectively and know, like I think there's more nuance to this conversation itself than I am probably able to give in the middle of this episode. So just like putting that out there as a, maybe a, maybe a grain of salt, maybe just something that I am thinking about and considering, but not really weaving in to this episode because it's not really, it's not really purpose of, even if it is kind of part of what, what we're talking about.

So, in action, what does clear communication look like? I said have brevity and clarity, but there's definitely, this is where the nuance comes in. You need to be over communicative about certain things, about the right, the quote, right in quote things. So for example, if you're introducing a new system, a new process, I will, I'll just make it personal. 'cause of course I have my own life as my experience. You know, I will do something where I explain my rationale. I explained the context. Why are we here? I explained, then I might get into my rationale. This is, this is where we are right now. Context. This is why I am doing this thing. This is, and then specifics. This is what I need you to do, or this is what is changing. And then any action items, this is what I need from you directly. This is the deadline for implementing, and so I sort of detail out why am I doing this? Sometimes I do objections. I might do some little section like how you might be feeling. You know, you might be frustrated, you might be confused, you might be this, and I'll talk directly, directly to those in an email. For me, I much prefer video at a meeting doing something like this live. So if it's a big enough thing, I'm gonna introduce it live, and then I'm gonna follow up via email. But it's not a huge, huge thing, but it is something that's like a new system or new process, I'm gonna do it in that way.

Give context, give our rationale, like why now? Why this thing? Give the process. What's new, what's different, what's expected? Give a deadline. Give an action item sometimes. In those emails, what I'll also do is at the top, I'll write TLDR. Too long, didn't read. Not everybody wants all those details.

I have some people who just wanna be told what to do. Fuck. Fine. Okay, cool. Too long, didn't read. I need you to start doing this thing. And then I'll do a line break and then I'll say detailed explanation as to why. Read if you want to. If somebody follows up with a question like, wait, why are we doing this?

Which nobody has ever done actually. But if somebody did, I would point them back and say, be more specific. Like, I have this explanation right here. What further questions do you have? So over communication is fine in some regards. If you are asking for something like direct feedback or like a survey to be done by the end of the week, you don't need to send a novel.

Just say, Hey, I need the survey done. It's for this reason. Deadline is this day. Thanks so much. That's not something you need to be overly communicative about. There are some things you should be, and there are some things that you don't need to be, if you find yourself groveling or being sort of like, oh, I'm afraid to ask my team to do anything.

That's, I would say that is more about you and your fear of owning being a leader than it is about your team. Probably, I dunno that for sure, but probably. And also that's gonna get in the way of clear communication. The more that you say that's not helpful information or necessary, or the more that you try to soften or really talk about what you're doing and not getting to the point of like just real quick, here's why we're doing this, and then boom, here's what we're doing, and then boom, here's what I need from you.

The more you do that, the more you're gonna lose people, and I think it's sort of. Um, weakens. I hate saying weakens 'cause I think that's a shitty word, but it, it does something where it, I think it takes away your power. I think it does something like, it's sort of every time you go to type, more and more trying to justify something that you're doing, you're just passing your power over to something else and not to you. Just own it.

You want somebody to do something, it needs to take place. Here's what it is. Here's the deadline, here's the ask. Boom. Done. So clear communication. What this does, again, also, the more you talk about something, the less engaged people are reading it, and then it ends up being confusing. And so now you have guessing games and you have not clarity and not brevity.

So, whew, lots of talking. That's clear communication. So we've talked about again, habits of leaders who build strong cultures. Number one, radical consistency. Number two, clear communication. Man, I had one more thing I wanted to say. It's just a little example. I can't tell you the number of times I've given feedback to people- not so much now 'cause they've learned, but leadership in particular, when they first, you know, started engaging in leadership. They would send these emails to people asking for feedback or asking for something with sort of no end in sight and it would be a really soft sort of ask. And I would say, I just say what you want. Just tell what are you asking them to do? Like ask them and then tell them when you need it by.

And so a very simple fix is look at some emails where you've, you've needed something from people. Look at those emails that you've sent in the past month or two. How clear is your ask and how clear is your deadline for a response or follow up?

Boom, that's all you just do that look and see how clear is your comm is your communication. Excuse me. It's easier too when it's a little bit removed, when it's not fresh for you. So I wouldn't say, look at an email you sent earlier today. I would say, look at one from a couple months ago or from last month because there's a little bit more distance.

Okay, clear communication. That's number two.

Number three is visible accountability. I love this one so much. Oh my gosh, I love this one so much. This is for me, this is all about vulnerability. That's the Daniel Coyle concept, the culture code concept, vulnerability. Visible accountability. If you mess up, own it.

That's just it. That's literally it. Own mistakes that you make, don't shift the blame. Don't pass it over. Also, why I like Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink, it's you. You are the one responsible for ensuring that things happen or don't at your practice. If you are the owner, you are the one responsible hires that we've made that didn't work out, I should say that.

Hmm. Hires that we made that we probably shouldn't have made offers to- my fault, that's me. I approve that. That's my fault. I didn't follow some process or I didn't do some. That's on me. I'm not gonna blame my team. I'm gonna say I did not hold true to our rule of thumb, which is if it's not a hell yes, it's a no.

I did not hold true to that I did not hold your feet to that fire. We made an offer to somebody then we shouldn't have, and now we're in a position where, you know, they're no longer with us or they're let go or they whatever. We shape our culture by modeling vulnerability when we can say we're human, we're fallible, we make mistakes.

When you can own, literally just own a mistake in front of your team, like, oh, son of a bitch, I messed that up, my bad. Whoops, sorry. If you're not ever doing the doing that, if you're not ever modeling vulnerability by owning mistakes. What's gonna happen is that there's going to be a culture of blame that starts to take place.

Nobody else is gonna feel safe to do this. I'm not saying it's only on you, but I am saying it's, it's basically on you. You do need to be modeling this for people. Successful teams create environments where mistakes are learning opportunities, not where they're horrible things, and they should never be made.

I tell people, you absolutely should make mistakes. I expect that mistakes are going to be made. I have made them. I expect they will be made. I don't care that they are made. Assuming we're not engaging in egregious practices or harming people, I think I would care in some instances. But by and large, if somebody, you know, uh, sends an email with inaccurate information or, um, maybe double bills a client for something or whatever it might be. Shit happens. Mistakes get made and validating this is human, this happens. It happens to me all the time. That is the tone. That should be the tone for the practice. You should be setting that tone.

So in action. It might be where you say something like, I messed up. I got that wrong. That's my bad. That's on me. My mistake. I should have done this instead. I didn't do that. Well, I did not do that. Right. That sort of thing, especially in front of people. Very, very important. It's saying to everybody, again, we're thinking about what's in, what's stated. Sure. But also what's implied.

The implied message is. I'm not beating myself up. I might not be, I might not love that I made this mistake, but I did. It's cool. I'm human. I'm sorry that it impacted anybody negatively if it did, and the implicit message again is, it's okay to mess up. It's okay to make mistakes. That is very, very important.

This is gonna get you a culture of people owning shit that they do. I still have people come to me and they'll say, Tara, I need to, I need to own my shit. That's one of our core values. Own. Own your shit. I need to own my shit. And they'll just come forward and say things and it's like, oh sweet. Thanks. Thanks for letting me know.

If we need to fix something, we will. And if we don't, sometimes it's just them letting me know, I did this thing, I fixed it already, but I still wanted you to know. I love it. I love that they can come to me. I love that they are also living out this culture of accepting ownership for things that we mess up.

So again, recapping real quick, visible accountability, clear communication and radical consistency. Those are habits of leaders who build strong cultures.

Something that you might want to consider is balancing approachability with authority. I am not very a. I am not very authoritarian. I don't like telling people what to do. I don't like to be told what to do.

I think my tendency, what I've been told a lot of my life is that I do tend to be more approachable. I like people also, so I want, I want people to feel comfortable around me. So I, I think my tendency is gonna be approachability. There's, there is a balancing act though, between approachability and authority.

As much as I always think about, I always think about Michael Scott, you know. Do I wanna be, what does he say? Do I wanna be loved? No, I don't wanna be loved. Do, do I have a need to be liked or I, I really need to be liked or I, I forget what it is, but it's like him talking about if he is a need to be loved or a need to be liked or something like that. It's so funny. He's such a mess.

But my point is there, there might not be times where somebody, there might be times or somebody does not like. Engaging with you about a topic because you're holding them accountable. We still have to hold people accountable, and so that's where this authority piece comes in, which is that we have to maintain some authority.

We can't just be approachable. Approachability is super important and approachability is not equivalent to respect. Respect is really about fairness and consistency, and I would say making hard decisions. I hate. I love my group and sometimes it is just so hard. Ownership is hard. It's hard to make hard decisions.

It's difficult when you know what needs to happen and no part of you wants to do it where you know, I have to fucking do this and it's gonna suck, and you don't actually want to. Guess what? It still has to happen and it still has to be you that does it. That's where this making hard decisions, being fair, being consistent, all of these things lean into have you build up this authority component and this respect bubble.

And also you can still be approachable. I definitely want people to come to me and say, this sucks, and I can say, yeah, it fucking sucks. And also hold a line at the same time. So you can build trust and not be a pushover. You can build respect and not be a pushover. It, they're not, these things aren't mutually exclusive.

Okay, one more thing, two more things actually. One is this sort of this notion of a culture reinforcement loop. So if we are doing things like holding our team accountable, holding leadership accountable, leadership is holding teams accountable. If we are modeling accountability and we're saying that we want this, for me, a logical next step or maybe a logical conclusion if we follow that thread is that our teams start to do that with each other.

You might say to them, Hey, leadership, ownership, we are not gonna be everywhere all the time. What we want is for each of you to feel empowered, to hold each other accountable. We want this happy medium where two people or three people are really actively and effectively engaged in their work and there are things that might not be something might be happening between them.

We want each person to be able to go to the other and say, Hey. We work well together. I've noticing this thing lately. Do you need anything different from me? Is there something we can do to help rectify this? It's, it's creating some issues on my end. That's the sort of thing that we want to encourage. If we have good people, if we're modeling vulnerability, if we are owning our shit, and any of these processes, if we are saying, hold each other accountable and we're gonna hold ourselves and you accountable, you can have this, you can have a cultural reinforcement loop. You can have people doing this with each other.

I'm not saying to shirk hard conversations and put them on everybody else. I am saying that there are some things that your team can handle on their own. So this also gets a little bit into like team empowerment and some like leadership tendencies that you can lean into.

So as an example, let's just do one quick example. If a colleague is missing deadlines consistently, let's say my biller is missing deadlines in my client care 'cause they work very closely together, my biller is missing deadlines and it's impacting client care to be able to engage with clients before they get confirmed for sessions.

And so maybe this is like pushed back intakes. It's, it's kind of messed up client care flow. I want client care to be able to go to my biller and say, hey. We work well together, mostly just really on the same page. I am noticing a little bit lately that there have been a few deadlines that have been missed, and maybe it wouldn't matter except it's influencing me being able to get people confirmed. So I'm wondering if you need something from me or what I can do to help you hit this deadline, because I want to get these people confirmed within this certain timeframe.

Boom. I want client care to be able to go to biller. Billing and do that. Leadership doesn't need to step in for something like that.

If billing said screw you, which she wouldn't, but hypothetically, she said something like that or she was like, yeah, yeah, I know. I just, I'm, I'm trying, I'm just overwhelmed right now. And then it kept happening. Then leadership might get involved. Then you might have that, you know, direct supervisor get involved in that conversation. Alright. That is again, sort of this culture reinforcement loop.

Last thing. Embedding a practical roadmap into daily leader daily leadership. Excuse me. So when we're doing something, again, if we're talking overall about culture driven leadership, what we really are talking about is how do we do this consistently and not have it eat all of our brain power up.

One is team meetings. So you might have a a section where you just highlight examples of people living out the culture and doing that. You're saying, this is important enough that I'm noting here what I'm seeing, or you're getting input from others. Like, Hey, let's shout out culture shout outs real quick. Anybody who's noticed something lately, show of hands. And when you send the agenda in advance, you might say, get this prepped. Be thinking about this. I wanna, we're gonna do some shout outs at this meeting. That way we're celebrating things that are happening related to culture, and it's kind of top of mind for people.

Another is one-to-one check-in. So you've got team meetings, one-to-one check-ins, just regular culture based checks. Keeping your finger on the pulse of culture. So it could be a simple, vague question like, you know, how do you feel the team is operating? It could be something like, what's your rating of the culture of the practice right now? It could be, uh, how are you feeling about the practice culture right now? It could be something, anything along along those lines.

These also could be something like the quarterly conversations. And so that's an EOS concept. Once a quarter, they're supposed to be mandatory. They're an hour between a person, a direct report, and a direct supervisor. And the question prompts are what's working and what's not working, and each person answers that about what's happening between them or role-based stuff that they might be working on. That's another way of keeping your finger on the pulse of culture, because if something's happening, culture related, what's not working from that direct supervisor might be, Hey, I'm actually, I've been noticing a lot of defensiveness from you lately, or what seems like defensiveness, I wanna talk about it a little bit.

Boom. Once a quarter, you've got time dedicated to trying to unpack something that's going on for a person, or vice versa. The direct report might say that to the supervisor. Absolutely, they should.

Third piece or fourth one, excuse me, about, you know, embedding this practical roadmap. It might be performance-based conversation.

So for any biannual, we do biannual reviews anytime we do this. Absolutely culture-based questions are embedded in this review always. And we typically do a survey in advance, so I'll send a survey out with some question prompts and then I'll, you know, plug that into a Google doc and we'll do notes as we go.

That's a whole different conversation about that whole setup. But regardless, the survey itself is gonna encompass, it's gonna include culture-based questions that are quantitative. I want them, I want like a one to 10 point scale as well as employee engagement questions, satisfaction, et cetera, and open-ended questions about a variety of things not worth getting into right now. So culture, my point is, culture should be tied into something, even like a performance based conversation.

Oh man. We have covered, I think we've covered a lot. I know that. I'm tired of talking, so I think that's usually a sign We've covered a lot. I have a final challenge. So here's the final challenge that I, I have two questions for you.

One is, what is one cultural behavior you've been tolerating that needs to change? I'll say that again. What's one cultural behavior that you've been tolerating that needs to change? Love this question.

Number two, what's one way you'll reinforce culture this week? And so for me, when I say culture, I think core values are just the easiest way of getting straight to the heart of how we engage with each other.

So we. Heavily lean on core values as a way of living out our culture because, or creating, cultivating, maintaining our culture because they are so much a part of how we engage with each other. So this episode has been all about, it's, it's leadership shaping culture and the role that we play and how we do this and how we can embed it and.

How we can structure things so that we are ensuring we keep our finger on the pulse of culture and not necessarily feeling like it's draining us on a daily basis, or we have to think about it and do it every single day. You do set the culture more than anybody else, but how you do it is what actually matters.

It's not what you say, it's what you do. Accountability. We know this feels messy. It can feel messy. It can be done with clarity and fairness and, and by creating this culture reinforced system, this self-contained system. And then of course, we all really want to know how do we set accountability structure structures in place?

Like how do we hold people accountable without feeling like a dick, basically, without feeling like an asshole?

So what I'll say is that my membership, we fucking focus on this, the culture focused practice. If you need support on doing these things, setting clear expectations and holding the line, creating accountability without being an asshole, balancing approachability and authority. IE not being Michael Scott, if you wanna be Michael Scott, you know, hats off team my friend. I love him, but I don't wanna be him. And then ultimately just reinforcing culture without burning out. You absolutely can and should join me at the Culture Focused Practice membership.

It's a steal of a price. You get me twice a month. We cover all these things and more. Two lives every single month. I think I said you gave me twice a month. Uh, one is a q and a. So come and ask anything you want to about trainings, about just questions you have related to culture, leadership, EOS, et cetera.

Another is a live training- dealer's choice. I might come up with something or people have requests. I love to do those. Private Facebook group of course. And then also a membership portal where there's access to resources, you know, past recordings, past q and a, some live consulting sessions, a variety of random miscellaneous resources.

And of course, oh, I'm sorry, you can find that at www.taravossenkemper.com/culture-focus-practice.

Additionally, it's hard to do on your own. I think you know this, it's hard to do this on your own. So for me, that community piece is just such an important part of being able to flesh out ideas and work through problems and make sense of what I might be going through and how I can do it better, and what I can tweak, and how I can streamline.

I have to do this in community. I, I don't do it well on my own.

The last thing is subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. Follow this podcast, follow the series if you haven't. Binge watch, binge listen or watch. I'm on YouTube too, so you can binge watch or binge listen to the episodes. If you have questions, of course, follow up with me directly.

Ask me questions. If you want me to do any specific podcast, let me know. I'd love to take and request, and I think that's it. I hope you have a great day. Thank you so much for being here with me. Thank you for making this incredible. I could not do this without you, and I will see you next time. Bye.