Culture Focused Practice

Hey. Hey, Dr. Tara Vossenkemper here. You are listening to the Culture Focused Practice podcast. Welcome back, or welcome for the first time. Good to see you here. You've tuned in for a three part series. We're in episode two today. Series is The Culture Isn't Really What You Think, series and the. Focus is why good vibes, and that's some quotes and team building aren't enough to build a strong culture.

So yesterday we talked about culture being what you allow, how to identify and address unspoken problems. Today we're gonna talk about the energy audit. So why some team members are dragging the whole practice down. I will say make sure you subscribe before we go further- that way you can stay up on tomorrow's episode, culture-driven leadership: what great leaders do differently to build thriving teams.

All righty. Not all culture issues are obvious. That feels like one of the most important things to start with here. Sometimes they're really obvious, other times they're not so obvious, and that feels very important to clarify because the bigger problems typically are slower leaks.

They're not these explosive moments, although people have those. Those are big issues. But broadly speaking, the biggest issues, the biggest problems are gonna be those slow leaks instead of those, you know, massive explosions. Partly because the slow leaks, and I'm, I'm saying this personally, but I also think globally on average, the slow leaks are a little more difficult to identify.

My husband is very good at like picking up on this sort of thing, just immediately- less good at seeing the positive stuff. So I think in some ways maybe cynicism works well for this, for identifying this. Not that he's cynical, but he's got a, he's got an ability to see things like that that I just there- that's hard for me to do. It's hard for me to really be able to clearly articulate what the slow leak problem is. So it might be that I have like a, a visceral, sort of a physiological felt sense that something is off, but I'm, I'm sort of lacking in the language to be able to accurately capture it.

That can be a thing, but the reality still is that bigger problems, I'm sorry, the, the slow leaks are going to be the bigger problems compared to the sort of explosive moments. And that they can be hard to identify.

Another piece to this is that sometimes, you know, the team can seem like, fine. I use that with like a question mark, fine on the surface, but if there is subtle negativity that can really erode engagement over time. Not only between team members, between colleagues, but also just overall engagement with the group practice. Itself, you know, how they feel about being there, how they feel about their, their experience, how they talk about it, how they, you, how much they want to spend time, like thinking about it or talking with their friends or trying to become better at what they do.

There is a, a need for leadership to be able to check in regularly with the energy of the team. That sounds very esoteric. So let's just talk quickly about an energy audit. These are crucial to do. Again, it probably sounds a little abstract, but when we're thinking about something like an energy audit, which again is basically the point of this whole episode, think about it as a structured way to assess emotional impact from each team member.

So what, what emotional impact do they have on the group? On you, maybe personally, but also I would say on the group more importantly. So some questions you might be considering, and these aren't specific questions to ask. I wouldn't say this is the audit, but these are like the themes of the questions you should be trying to assess.

One is who actively lifts the team up? So who's that person? You're like, damn, they always have a great point, or something positive to say, or might think of them as either a hype man or as somebody who really cares about the culture and the practice and you and also their own wellbeing. Sure. So it's not somebody who is, I don't, I, I wanna clarify that I don't think of this person as a yes man.

You know, not like. Not like a yes man or a yes person for the team or for the group or something like that, but somebody who truly, genuinely believes in maybe what's happening and is pro group is pro culture.

Another might another question. Excuse me. Another like thematic question is who's sort of neutral? You know, they're kind of there. They don't really add anything, but they're not really taking anything away.

Another question, again, a thematic question, not specific, although I guess you could treat these as specific, but I think of the more as thematic, who drains the team. So this could be subtle or it can be overt.

It doesn't have to be one or the other. It could be both, and it might not be something that you can see directly. And so this is when we think about an energy audit and you're thinking specifically about who drains the team, either subtly or overtly, you might immediately think, well, how would I assess that?

You might ask the team, so we'll get into, you know, things you might be asking your team. This is one of those things, again, some questions around that thematic type question. Two more sort of thematic questions. One is, how is nega negativity spreading, if at all? So it might not be, it might have a really healthy practice.

I have a, somebody that's in my mastermind right now and they were talking about how their team just loves to hang out and see each other and how it's just such a positive experience and I just, it makes my heart warm thinking about that. Like that's such a like endearing, sweet experience to have, not only as an employer, but I think also on leadership and also as an employee.

Like to be on a team like that is a pretty special, honestly, that's not a common occurrence, so my thought is if they were to answer that question, they would say it's not, you know? And so hopefully that's your answer. But again, how is negativity spreading, if at all? And then another thematic question might be, what patterns are emerging in the team dynamic?

So this is something that you can't answer after one meeting, but you might start to pay attention to how things change and evolve from a dynamic group dynamic perspective over time. Obviously, you would need to do this in a group setting. You can't do it one-on-one necessarily. Maybe you could, but you'd have to ask about how it's changing for other people over time. But my point is, if you wanted to assess this yourself, you would have to be seeing a group over time, seeing how that they unfold.

There are a few different types of energy draining team members. So we just quickly talked about how cultural issues aren't necessarily giant, you know, explosive moments.

They can be very, very subtle and the subtle ones are really the- I would say more par for the course and almost bigger. Maybe not in size at the time of, but like they're a bigger issue in terms of uh, impact, possible impact. And then also talking about the thematic questions from the energy audit.

So lifts, who actively lifts the team up? Who drains the team, who's neutral? How is negativity spreading? And what patterns are emerging in team dynamics?

So. Different types of energy draining team members. You, I'm gonna say some of these and you are gonna say, oh yeah, I used to work with that person. Or, oh my gosh, that's my so and so at my team. Or fuck, I used to be that person. You know, you are going to recognize some of these.

So number one is the chronic complainer. I literally have a person and they'll say, I just like to complain sometimes. And it's sort of like, that's. You know, almost like the mo. And so it's been, um, it's sort of known and like talked about which eases some of the possible tension from it.

But if you have a chronic complaint or you might see somebody who is constantly finding a problem but doesn't ever really come to you with a solution or even really consider that a solution might work for them. So chronic complainer just. Just think about your team. Do you have one of these people? Are you this person?

Another is a silent resistor. This one, to me is more insidious. This is a person who, on the surface seems calm and ready to drop bars, but they keep on forgetting what they wrote down. I'm so sorry. I'm gonna stop myself. The silent resistor, let me get back on track. On the surface, they seem agreeable.

Just stay focused and not get caught up in Eminem land. They seem agreeable. But in action or in practice, they are resisting whatever change might need to happen. They're, they're not actually doing the thing that they are supposed to be doing.

This is very frustrating because you're getting a message from them and their behavior is not in alignment with the message that they're sending to you. For us, this goes against a variety of core values, but I will not get it into that because that's neither here nor there for this specific part of this episode. Okay. Silent resistor seems agreeable. Is resistant to change behind the scenes and may, you know, not do the things that are expected of them passively.

And they might do it once you come to them and say, I need you to do this thing. But it ends up being a lot of maybe babysitting or coercing, or it feels a little bit like micromanaging like your. Always quote, always, you know, I say that with a grain of salt, playing follow up. They're always on your mind. Like, oh gosh, I have to follow up with them again about this thing.

Okay, let's keep going on the passive aggressive peacemaker. This is, um, uh, if you don't know how I feel about passive aggression. I don't like it. I don't do it well. So think about this person as somebody who kind of tries, tries to seem like they're smoothing thing over, but they're really also breeding resentment and not addressing whatever the real issue is.

And so this person is going to likely feel a lot of resentment and it's just gonna start to ooze out of them. It might be in emails that they send. It might be in passive aggressive comments that they make in meetings. It might be in an inability to let something go. Like they sort of get stuck on a point and they, you can tell they're emotionally heightened by this because no matter what you say, they're not able to hear you.

They're sort of in it. They're in it, and they're in something, they're in it, whatever it might be for them. So the passive aggressive peacemaker, again, it's kind of this way. We talk about these being like subtle, but like big issues or big impacts. Excuse me.

Think about a chronic complainer. Think about the silent resistor.

Think about the passive aggressive peacemaker. These are all roles that are all different types of energy drains that they don't seem like that big of a deal, but they are. They are a big deal.

There's two more and then we'll talk about this. One is the overburdened star. So this is someone who is very high performing and maybe you think of them as a workforce and they go and they get shit done and they're real, you know, nose to the grindstone, but also they might be burning themselves out. That's a problem.

And at some point I'd literally just did a burnout series. It's applicable for group practice owners, but I would say it's applicable for anybody who's ever dealt with burnout.

There's gonna come a time where things -shoop- do a 180 and they're not going to be able to perform. So think about this. The overburdened star is a subtle cultural issue for a variety of reasons. Potentially also, this person might feel re resentful. I'm resistant, but resentful at other people who are not performing to the extent, same extent that they are.

And so it might be like they're frustrated with the team because of how much they're doing. The overburden start to me also like kind of starts to seep into a little bit of a martyr-y, feel a little bit martry-y. You know, they're taking on so much and nobody else is carrying the same amount. And so you can start to see the beginnings of resentment working right there.

Start like the seeds of resentment being sprinkled and watered every time they feel like they're doing enough and either they're burning themselves out or they're making a comment or noticing that nobody else seems to be working as hard as they are. So over burdened star. And the last one is the unspoken leader.

So this is a person who everybody follows regardless of what direction they're going into. Some people just have, it's not charisma. There's a whole book called Charisma Myth, which I think is fascinating. There's something about certain people who, almost like demand leadership. And I don't mean that in a, I don't mean demand.

Like they come in and they try to snatch it from you, snatch the mic from you. It's another Eminem reference for the record from a song called No Love Eminem, featuring Lil Wayne. I, I don't know why he's on my head now. He is just in my brain. He just keeps poking away at the inside of my brain. Um, so the unspoken leader, again, the one who everybody follows, but it might not be in the right direction.

They don't come in and like snatch something from you and demand something from you, but they might have a big presence. They take up space. They seem very competent and so naturally people sort of look to them and just follow along with what they could be doing. This is great if the person is going in the right direction.

It's kind of awesome because you could point to them right away and say, fuck yeah, this is a future peer mentor, or this is a clinical team lead, or this is a future leadership or this is somebody at the practice that we can rely on.

If they are not doing things in a way that is in alignment with the practice, this is less of a good thing because now they're leading people, sort of like the Pied Piper. They're leading people somewhere where you don't actually want them to go.

So again, we've got the different types of energy draining team members, the chronic complainer, the passive aggressive peacemaker, the overburdened star, the unspoken leader and the silent resistor.

Negatively has to be checked. There has to be a checks and balances. I think that there's a, I don't know if it's a fine line or a double-edged sword or what, but there's something to be said for people having space to express what's happening for them and how they feel and unchecked negativity.

I like giving people space to process. I don't like wallowing in negativity for longer than we need it to make sense of how people are and then sort of stand up and move through whatever that thing is. We, if we are, what am I trying to say? Your team is going to pick up on either the overt or subtle messages about where attention and reinforcement goes.

Let's think about praising publicly, for example, if we're praising publicly, then we are bringing to light the things that we want to happen. We're sort of saying, this is so fantastic. Thank you so much. That was great. You're awesome. You're a rockstar. Whatever it is that we might say.

Ideally, we're saying to everybody, the implicit messages, we want more of this. You will be celebrated if this thing happens. If on the other hand, there is complaining, for example, that takes place or there's, um, passive aggressive comments or somebody who's actively doing something wrong, but like never- so that unspoken leader, you know, they never, they never get checked. They never get stopped or called out or anything like that, and we don't do anything about it. And then they end up sort of doing what they want or getting what they want at the expense of maybe the team health. You're gonna notice an increase, maybe not a surge, but you're gonna notice an increase of similar behaviors to that thing.

So this is why I say that these subtle cultural things are a bigger problem because it's not like- One explosive moment, it sort of, it hits and then it's done. You clarify, you process, you streamline, you clean up, you make sure everyone's okay, and then everybody moves on. Subtle behaviors, again, like those energy draining team behaviors, they start to bleed into the way other people behave.

In the book, the Culture Code, which I freaking love again, Daniel Coyle, I've referenced him before, I will reference him forever. He's one of the only people I've sent fan mail too. I just love that book. So GD much.

He writes about an experiment called The Bad Apple Experiment. It's early, it's, it's in one of the earlier chapters. And so the, the premise of this whole thing is that there's a researcher who's studying, oh, I'm gonna butcher this, but this researcher basically does these groups of four, and they're four students and he brings 'em together and he says he wants them to work on this problem together, broadly speaking.

And he does this over maybe 40 groups. He does this 40 times. I might get that wrong, but he does it a lot of times. In each group. He has one plant. Of course he does. 'cause it's research. So you have to lie to some people. You know, he has one plant and then he has three people who have no idea what's going on.

And that plant behaves in one of three, one of three ways. He's either the slacker, the jerk, or um, gosh, what's the third one? The slacker. The jerk or something else. I can't remember. And in all of the groups, with one exception, performance dropped every group.

But the weird thing is that all of the people in those groups said that was great. They did well. But they were monitoring, of course, like engagement, I think probably physical cues, and they were assessing how is the group actually performing? Every group was performing poorly.

The only exception was one group with a guy, I think his name was Nick in the group, and he was constantly, it wasn't even on purpose, so to read about it or I listened to this book a lot of times, so to hear about it, the way I remember it being described is that Nick would do something where he would just constantly like filter through whatever the jerk would say.

So if the jerk said something rude, everybody else might physically lean back and Nick would sort of lean in and like softly smile and, and like, oh yeah, okay. And then he would just soften. He would soften the experience and everybody else felt safe.

So I'm talking about that because even when people don't know they're being impacted by those around them, they are. And it doesn't take much to change the trajectory of the group experience. It takes one person to influence how things can go either positively or negatively. Also, an amazing book. So please read The Culture Code. And if you want that ex example, again, it was The Bad Apple Experiment.

Another thing to note with unchecked negativity is that if it goes unchecked, people leave. Good employees are gonna disengage or they're gonna leave. So again, pointing back to this bad Apple experiment. People might not know why. They might just feel like, I don't know, it just doesn't feel the same anymore, but they're, they're out.

Or they might think like, no, everything has been great. I'm just ready to move on. And potentially sure, like that can absolutely be true. And also if you've noticed a rise in energy draining team behaviors, team member behaviors, then you also might use that as a through line to this person leaving. So some stuff to keep in mind.

Once you've identified an energy drain, I hate saying that, like an energy drain, you know? But once you have identified this at your practice or identified a person, maybe you've got a few different steps to take.

Step one is you have to assess impact. And so when we talk about assessing impact, we're talking about three things. One, we need to know is this occasional? Is it chronic? That's number two, or is it toxic? That's number three.

Occasional. I mean, people have shitty fucking days. That's what occasional is. Occasional is like every so often you get something from somebody and it's like, huh, it's a little outta character, like, seems odd. And you might wonder what's, I wonder what? I wonder what's up with that person? This is just assessing impact. So is the negativity, again, occasional every so often, just like having a bad day.

Is it chronic meaning It's more present than not, but it's also present enough that it starts to erode morale over time. So again, like the constant complainer or like the silent resistor, are you starting to see the impact of this? Is it starting to erode morale, employee morale, or employee engagement? It will over time.

Toxic- assessing impact. If we're talking about toxic, we're talking about an active disruption to the team. So typically toxic doesn't just start and come outta nowhere. It's usually that buildup. It is that slow process over time, and then it shifts into toxic. This is either somebody actively gossiping, actively undermining leadership, making others feel unsafe. There are some very hard lines you should draw in your practice, and that is up to you to decide. Safety for me is a hard line. Safety is a hard line .

Step two is having direct conversations with them. So it needs to be, whatever it is, it needs to be addressed immediately. If it's occasional, you might just check in lightly and say, Hey man, I know this.

I know you seem a little bit off. Like anything you wanna talk about what's going on? Just, just approach it with them lightly. Realistically, if they're in a mostly good place, they might be able to identify, yeah, I've just been feeling really this way, or I've just been, maybe I have stuff at home that's happening, or maybe I've been, I'm noticing 'em starting to feel unappreciated. They'll probably, I ideally they'll identify something for you to be able to take and run with, you know?

If it's chronic. So again, we're talking about your next step after assessing impact is having a direct conversation. If it's a chronic issue, a chronic something, we have to address it with seriousness.

So again, you might just like check in lightly with something that happens occasionally. With a more chronic behavior, so it's more present than not, you're noticing eroding, you're noticing it eroding morale, for example. You need to address it with the level of seriousness and say this has become a pattern of behavior and we need it to stop. We want it to stop, so you might troubleshoot with them. Like usually in moments like this, I'm gonna lean into some basic therapeutic principles. I might just say. What is being left unsaid? What is it that is bothering you that you really need to say to me or you really need to say about being here? Be honest with me. I want you to be honest and authentic and candid about how you're feeling. Again, a feeling isn't name calling. Name calling is name calling.

A feeling is something like I am immensely frustrated. I feel ignored. I feel belittled. I feel small. I feel unseen. I feel invalidated. I feel sad. I feel this. I feel that I feel disappointed. I was passed over for another leadership opportunity. I mean, these are all relevant and, and valuable. It's valuable information, but it's also relevant because I'm gonna, I typically, I care about the person in front of me. I wanna know what's wrong, and if there is anything we can do about it, we can seek to troubleshoot this together.

So that's, if it's chronic, if it's toxic, this has to be addressed very assertively. I don't mean yelling like very, like you need to stop, you know, not anything like that. But it needs to be addressed assertively. It need needs to be addressed with a, this is not tolerated. This behavior will stop immediately. Here's what we want to see.

For me, what feels important in this is that not only is the behavior problematic in and of itself, but also the impact on others around them. I'm gonna talk about both of those things. I'm gonna say, Hey, this behavior can last no longer. This is not okay. Here's, here's what I'm noticing, here's what I'm seeing, here's how I would characterize it or classify it. Here's why it's a problem. And it's impacting people around you. Like it's not just you. It is all these people who are interacting with you . So that's step two, direct conversation.

Step three. Sounds harsh, but it's either shape up or ship out. It's gonna be coach or cut. So if this person is open to feedback, coach 'em. If they're like, fuck, I know I just can't get over this thing. Or if they, whether it's occasional chronic or toxic. If they're open to feedback, coach them, period.

You can do that. It's okay if you coach them. You might need to let them go. So just to clarify, it might be a situation where they are unwilling or unable or uninterested, just they feel very justified and vindicated, but they're not willing to change a behavior. They don't really care about the impact on the team.

They double down. They're super resistant. They keep arguing. No matter. How gently or kindly or calmly you're approaching something, you're only getting negativity back. I would probably take a beat if that was happening. I would probably say, you know what, we're gonna stop this right now, but I want us to revisit soon.

Let's take, I would say like, let's take a half hour. I want you to go. Please engage in something other than thinking about this because we don't want to engage in any sort of distress maintaining thoughts, which is a Gottman concept as an FYI. Go, bring your physiology down. Let's come back and we'll talk again.

I am comfortable engaging in friction and arguments to be able to get to the, the root of something that's going on. And I understand that getting to the root of stuff isn't always a, an easy or seamless or, honestly fun process.

However, when we get to the root, that's when we can figure out what the fuck is going on, pull it up, reorganize, regroup, set up a new plan, and then move forward. And everybody feels better ideally, where everybody feels like, um, they're heard, they're validated, they're understood, and we have a plan for moving forward. That's what I mean, like I'm comfortable with arguing or like getting to that point from the argument.

So my point is, if you're engaging with somebody and they are really resistant and really argumentative and really doubling down on whatever behavior it's that they've been engaging in, you might cut it right there.

I would be more likely to give them a minute and say, you, I would wanna still engage. But if they need a minute, I'm gonna give them a minute. I'm gonna say, you know what, take a half hour, we're gonna come back and talk. And if they, you know, if they can't, then we'll come back tomorrow morning or ASAP basically.

And I'm gonna try that conversation again. If that continues and they cannot see how their behavior is unacceptable, that is time to let that person go. That's cut 'em. I can handle people doing a wide variety of things. Mistakes are never an issue. People fuck up all the time. It's like mistakes are human, but somebody unwilling to either unwilling or maybe unable to see themselves in how they're showing up in an interaction, that's kind of a hard stop for me. You have to see yourself relatively accurately and if your behavior's very problematic. Same for me. I have to actively work on seeing myself relatively accurately, and that's why I like feedback a lot to have a checks and balance, checks and balances type situation.

But if this person is not able to do that or not willing, or they basically just saying, fuck you, fuck off. Done. Cut 'em. Again, if they're open and interested in growing and evolving and coaching, yeah, coach 'em. Of course there are limitations on that. If the behavior continues, regardless of how much you coach them, that's a different conversation.

So let's keep going, shall we? Again, your three steps, once you've identified an energy drain, you have three steps. One is assessing impact, two is directing, having direct conversation, excuse me, directing the conversation, but having direct conversations. And three is deciding and following through coach or cut shape up or ship out.

I don't know where that's from, but I actually, I actually like that better.

All right, so you might be wondering, you might be asking yourself, well, gee, Tara, this is great, but how do I continuously check the energy on my team? Or maybe you haven't thought that at all, and fine, that's fine too. I'm gonna say that you should, you should be engaging in consistent energy checks with your team.

You could do something as basically as having a quarterly energy check-in. Quick. It could be self-imposed, or it could also be a quick little survey you send out to your team. It could be something where you assign each person to assess three other peers anonymously, so where you're getting a variety of information about a person or people. And you're also getting a sense for like, okay, how is this person showing up and what's the impact that they're having on the group? That's one thing you could do.

You also might just have a quick like pulse check system every month. You might say something like a real quick question, like, scale one to 10, how does it feel to work here right now? Boom. That's quick. I don't actually love that question, but I think it's a very simple and broad question. I don't like it because. If I was doing a quick pulse check, I would do a question like that. I don't love it if I was trying to dig in to figure out what was wrong. So my caveat to that question is if I got a bunch of sixes, 10 being things are fucking awesome, one being this is the worst ever, and I got a bunch of sixes, I would absolutely be doing a follow-up survey.

Like, whoa, y'all, this average was six for the entire team. What is happening, what is going on? And I might send out a follow up. I really need some more input to figure out what's happening and how we can fix this 'cause this is a problem. My minimum is 85% satisfaction, engagement, people feeling valued. 85% is the percentage that I want to see anytime I do surveys on average.

So somebody might be a six for something, but if the global average, average is 85% or above, I consider that overall good. And for that one that may be completed, you know, filled out a questionnaire and put six, I'm gonna follow up with them. I wanna say, Hey, I see this number. I hate that for you. I wanna know what's going on.

Or I might have their direct superior or their direct supervisor follow up with them directly to figure out what's going on with that with that metric.

So the goal with following up as a side note, it's not to convince people to give a different number. That's, that would be so gross telling them that it's not really a six, it's, it's more like an eight, right? It's really like a nine. So you would agree it's a nine. No, don't be a pushy car salesman. That's not, don't. Please don't do that.

The goal with following up with somebody is to understand why it's six. That's literally it. I want to know if somebody gives a low score on something I want to understand. I don't like that score for you, for for me, for the group, but also for you. I want your experience here to be great and A six is not great. A six is basically failing. It's a D. It's pretty much failing. Tell me what the problems are as you see them. Tell me what prompted you to write six for this question instead of seven or instead of eight, or what would it take to get you from a six to a seven?

Then you can go to get to start a feel for what people are looking for, maybe what's happening. It's really common. Well, I shouldn't say really common. When I have had scores like sixes, a lot of the times it's, it's sometimes about the person's role. So if a question, for example, is about engagement or relationships like relatability at the practice, somebody who's in a more isolated position.

This is an actual example. I had somebody in a more isolated position. They weren't in on the clinical team. It was just a, it was a distinct role that they played much more in tune with me, much less in tune with the rest of the team. And they reported a little bit of a lower score with like engagement or relatedness, something like that.

It was specifically because I don't really see the rest of the team. I see them for meetings, but I don't really engage with them. I don't really interact with them that much. Um, I'm not at clinical team meetings. I'm not in supervision. Like I mostly spend my time with you. You know, Tara. That's fair. I think that's fair.

And so the question is, okay, are there ways in which we can adjust your role so you have a little bit more engagement or are you happy overall that the six doesn't feel bad? Is does the six have a negative impact on you, or did it just, or did it just feel like a, an honest answer to sort of the circumstances of your role in this group?

So again, if you are seeing low scores on like a, a quick pulse check-in, I would encourage you to follow up with the team again, globally. If this is an anonymous survey, you'd have to follow up globally. If you gave people the option of putting their scores in with the name, then you'd be able to follow up directly.

The goal in following up is not to convince them that they put the wrong number in. It's to figure out why they put that number in and if there's anything you need to do from a systems or process or team or leadership perspective to help that number increase overall. Oh, goodness gracious. That's it, man.

That about does it for us. So let's just recap quick. There's a couple things. So one is that it's really hard to spot some energy drains, which we've talked about. What? Ultimately, we need a structured way of tracking this. Also, when subtle negativity is left unchecked, what happens? It spreads. We have to figure out how to proactively address negative energy.

How do we directly address it? How do we assess it? We also need to know how to hold people accountable, so if we don't have ways for holding people accountable, we're not gonna know who to cut, how to cut, who to coach, how to coach. We have to have some sort of process or system in place for this. And there's not really, um, no.

I am gonna say there are easy and simple ways of engaging quarterly check-ins with regard to like your, to your team's energy. Excuse me. There's ways of engaging in quarterly team team energy audits. It's like a mouthful. But we still need a system for assessing this. We can't do it blind and we can't do it willy-nilly.

We want to be able to have a system. If you are really struggling with things like team energy or subtle negativity, or really just trying to figure out why do things feel off, join my freaking membership. This is exactly the sort of thing that we talk about. It's the Culture Focused Practice membership.

You already know. And if you don't, I'm telling you now, you get me live twice a month. One for a q and a for an hour one for a live monthly training. My next one is literally on energy audits. I'm gonna focus on what I'm talking about right now, and there's a private Facebook group, of course, and there's a portal with a bunch of resources and previous trainings and shit in there that you can ideally use.

So additionally, it's not fun to do things alone. I work best in groups because I need feedback from others to help refine. You know, not, I hate to sound so weird to say iron, iron sharpens iron. Isn't that the saying? I have to be surrounded by others to help make sense of it helps me. Um. I grapple with things better.

It helps me see angles that I'm not looking at. It creates friction so that I can make more sense of what is internally trying to express or develop. That's the benefit of having a group and a community. So if you are interested in joining, which I would encourage you to do so, go to www.taravossenkemper.com/culture-focused-practice.

Sign up there. Also subscribe. Stay up with the podcast. That way you can follow along, you can finish the series, and you can binge watch any other episodes or listen binge listen any other episodes. You can find me on Spotify, apple Podcasts, on the interwebs, basically anywhere else where you can listen to podcast, I'm gonna be there.

So thank you so much for being here. I hope this is helpful. I super appreciate it. If you have any questions, if you need anything from me, hit me up. What you need, let me know where to clarify things more. Otherwise, it's great seeing you. Thank you for making this awesome, and I will see you next time. Bye.