In this episode of Cultivate your Culture, we talk with Dr. Lauren Tashman, who is a performance coach and certified mental performance consultant based in New York City. She works with clients in a variety of performance domains on mindset, leadership, and team culture through her private practice Align Performance, LLC and as a master coach for Valor Performance. Lauren co-hosts The Path Distilled podcast exploring the shared human experience of striving for success, and she’s been working with teams for over 15 years. She shares easy-to-use principles for getting the boat moving on culture change, various models on leadership, and how to navigate the change process.
Connect with Lauren on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or through her website.
The host, Zoran Stojkovic believes that we are all born to flourish in work and life. Through his company, Kizo, he equips organizations and people with culture and mindset tools to reach full engagement through powerful workshops, memorable keynotes, and transformative individual consultations.
In this episode of Cultivate your Culture, we talk with Dr. Lauren Tashman, who is a performance coach and certified mental performance consultant based in New York City. She works with clients in a variety of performance domains on mindset, leadership, and team culture through her private practice Align Performance, LLC and as a master coach for Valor Performance. Lauren co-hosts The Path Distilled podcast exploring the shared human experience of striving for success, and she’s been working with teams for over 15 years. She shares easy-to-use principles for getting the boat moving on culture change, various models on leadership, and how to navigate the change process.
Connect with Lauren on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or through her website.
The host, Zoran Stojkovic believes that we are all born to flourish in work and life. Through his company, Kizo, he equips organizations and people with culture and mindset tools to reach full engagement through powerful workshops, memorable keynotes, and transformative individual consultations.
Hello, I'm your host, Zoran Stojkovic and welcome to Cultivate your Culture. This podcast we'll be discussing how leaders can build connected high performing teams and business in sport using actionable tools, evidence-based systems and simple processes. And today on the show, we have Lauren Tashman. Dr. Lauren Tashman is a Performance Coach and certified Mental Performance Consultant, based in New York City. She works with clients in a variety of performance domains on mindset, leadership and team culture through her practice, Align Performance LLC. And as a master coach for Valor Performance. Lauren co-hosts The Path Distilled podcast, a really great podcast, I'd suggest checking out. And that podcast explores the shared human experience of striving for success. And she's been working with teams for over 15 years now. Quite a background. Lauren, welcome to the show.
Lauren Tashman:Thanks so much. Thank you for inviting me to talk about one of my probably my favorite topics. I don't know why I didn't think about starting a podcast specifically on this topic. [LAUGHTER]
Zoran Stojkovic:So great to talk, you know, to talk to you and Lauren. Lauren and I met when she was delivering a session down at a conference in Portland, a Sports Psychology conference. And I was just captivated with with the way she she presented the session and with her style and delivery. And so we've stayed in touch since then, and had some of these conversations, kind of like not recorded. And now we're doing the thing. [LAUGHTER]
Lauren Tashman:Now other people get to listen in. Yeah
Zoran Stojkovic:Now other people get to listen in, yeah. So Lauren, maybe we'll dive right into it. I mean, how, like"team culture" is this phrase that gets thrown around so much. It's hard, sometimes hard to pinpoint. So I mean, how, how can we define it?
Lauren Tashman:It's funny, you say that, because I actually had a client say that to me the other day, like with very much frustration in her voice, the fact that people just kind of flippantly throw around this terminology now. To me, honestly, when I think about what it means, the first thing that comes to mind is that it's the identity of the team, right? It's who they are, as individuals and a collective. It represents their attitudes, their perceptions, their expectations, the way they respond to things. And so that's why it's so important, because it's truly a representation of that team, which then also feeds into the behavior piece, right? And the goals and the norms they have, it's not just who they are, it's what they do that demonstrates who they are, which is a really important consideration, right? Because it's it's easy to have an idea and identity, it's very difficult to align multiple people, even small, you know, some of the teams I work with are two person teams, right? Like maybe two founders, the co founders in a startup, who started it together, because they were so passionate about the idea and then find that wow, even with just two of us right now, it's actually kind of hard to do this work of being a team. Right but, easier said than done. So I think it also in that way, whether it's a small team or a larger team, like a sports team, or a Multinational Corporation, it's about the environment, right? I often when I talk to leaders, I talk about leadership being the job of creating, "the right environment". And what "right" means is complicated as well, right. And so really working towards that creating that, that identity and that shared sense of identity in terms of how we live out that identity, thinking about the processes that we use, how we cultivate relationships that are going to serve, work towards those shared goals. And then thinking about how we take these principles that we have about leadership, about teams about team dynamics, and really take a very critical and intentional, individualized approach to thinking about what does that look like for our team? And that's where sometimes right people really get tripped up because they want as one of a guest on my podcast recently said that the episode that's coming up this weekend, there's no secret sauce, but we're always looking for the secret sauce, right? And so we have these principles. And then it's our job. The hard work is thinking about, well, how does that apply to us and our team and who we want to be and what, you know, our goals are? That's really the the multifaceted kind of definition that comes to mind.
Zoran Stojkovic:Wow, that's quite a...quite a comprehensive definition.
Lauren Tashman:[LAUGHTER]
Zoran Stojkovic:And I mean, some of the some of the wording I heard you use that I found interesting was, was it's a team identity. It's the attitudes of the group. It's the perceptions, but it's also who they are and what they do, which isn't always aligned. Is it?
Lauren Tashman:Absolutely right. And you know, there's a kind of saying, which is absolutely true, which is every team has a culture, it just not might be one that has been intentionally and critically thought out, right? every leader has their own core values, their own needs, their own goals, every person on a team has those as well. And so there's an environment that gets created by the very nature of the, you know, human and social dynamic that we have to work with. And so it's really kind of critical lens on that and thinking about what environment do we have? And what environment do we want to have? And who do we want to be, which we see in today's world of, you know, people really wanting to be purpose driven, you know, impact driven have a sense of meaning, which has always been a feature of the human dynamic, right to have a sense of meaning, and a sense of agency, we see that showing up even more so. And so it's even more critical to really be thinking about team culture.
Zoran Stojkovic:Right, having a sense of meaning, and that in that environment can sometimes give that sense of meaning.
Lauren Tashman:Absolutely. And that's what a lot of people are looking for, right, is that, you know, certainly with your more kind of social, you know, socially organized groups, for example, you know, in business, there might be some socially driven, you know, impact startups. But really, in any sense, right? We're always, as humans, we're very goal focused, and we have our very purpose driven and so that shows up no matter the team.
Zoran Stojkovic:So then why is it important to Cultivate the Culture of a business or sports team?
Lauren Tashman:I think it's, it's a huge factor and being able to set the seat team up for success. Not but not just one shot success, right? Not the one hit wonder success, but really more long term success. And also, then, because of that, it helps them be robust when they face challenges and failures, right. So I think in a way, it creates the opportunity for more consistent success and the ability to withstand challenges and adversities. I think it also gives people a sense of belonging, which we see you know, from a psych need perspective of our need for relatedness, or from what's kind of being referred to as the new psychology of leadership, this kind of social identity approach to leadership really picking up on our, our need for kind of or not our need, but our tendency to be kind of in groupers, out groupers. When it comes to our social dynamic, it creates a sense of "we", a sense of collective, which does a lot of things. For us, it brings challenges that sense of we but it does a lot of things for us to set us up for success.
Zoran Stojkovic:So what I'm hearing you say is Cultivating a Culture is important because it ultimately leads to better performance, partly because people have that belonging, and they feel more connected. But why would that elevate performance? Can't teams perform without having that sense of belonging? And...
Lauren Tashman:Certainly, and I think there are many examples of that in sport and other areas of teams that perform that way. But inevitably, at least in my experiences, in the many years of doing that, and been doing this, inevitably there are there are cracks, right in the relationships, that dynamic that environment, and it's a lot of times what I see is when the team most needs to perform well together. So maybe they've done a good job of performance. Let's take a sports team, they've done a good job performing all season, and now they're heading into postseason. Okay, well, they really need to be able to collectively produce performance in that time period. And because of the impact of the pressure and stress and things like that, it can sometimes turn those little cracks or things that are amiss in the culture into bigger things that become a distraction. And that's really the idea is that it becomes a thing that gets in the way of performance, whether individual or group, same thing I've seen with both teams, and let's say startup companies is it might not be an issue in the beginning. So the pursuit of that, you know, first year of, you know, getting the business going and getting some income coming in or the first time pursuing, you know, that National Championship, because of you know, it's being the first time because of the energy behind that and the excitement behind that in a particular kind of mental lens, we take on that the challenges to the culture and the environment of the group don't seem to really be an issue. And then but then let's say that they accomplish that goal. Well, then now it's about either holding on to whatever was gained, right? So it shifts us maybe into a kind of a lost mentality. Or it's about pursuing the next big thing. And again, it then maybe exposes some of the things that were missed on the culture and then they become a problem. So it's not that teams can't be successful without optimal cultures, it's that that success might be hit or miss, which is not what a lot of teams want.
Zoran Stojkovic:Right. Yeah. And, and you're saying that maybe...maybe they have a successful year as a team. But ultimately, that's going to catch up to them. And culture is going to be one of the can be one of the hindrances that gets in the way, and I love your, your, the way you explain about the cracks, and the cracks get bigger. And those cracks add up over time. And I think that's a great way to explain it. Because it's like little these little injuries are happening to to the ecosystem. And we're going to talk about toxic behaviors a little bit later. But no thinking about culture, somebody, let's say somebody says, Yeah, it's important I get it, I get what it is, how can it be cultivated?
Lauren Tashman:This is a very, a very multifaceted question. I'm going to try and do diligence to. And but is that my, my reason of saying that is that it's it's honestly not that simple, right? If it were that simple, then you wouldn't have a need for a podcast, and no one would need someone like me to come in and work on the culture. And so let me maybe just present some food for thought for people listening. I think first and foremost, and I kind of alluded to this before, I think that, you know, two keys to this are being intentional, and being consistent. You know, I've worked too much with leaders in teams who think that, you know, it's just, it's a simple, because it sounds simple, it is simple. So we come up with our core values and that's it, cool...on the road to having our new team culture, right? And there's no, there's no consistency in terms of really trying to actually then take that and make that actually who we are and how we do things, and navigate the ebbs and flows of putting that into practice. And the intentional pieces, you know, what I mentioned before about making sure that you are taking the principles and applying them to your team. My favorite example of this is the what happened when places like Google and other kind of, you know, big tech startups started to really focus on you know, employee engagement at work and making their employees happier work, right, they get the the ping pong tables, they have the Open Office layout, they have the food and all this stuff, right, like, so then what people did was say, Okay, well, that's what Google's doing. And they're finding success with that. So now we're gonna do that we're gonna have a ping pong table, we're gonna have an open office layout, we're gonna, you know, bring in food for our employees, may or may not be useful for your culture, right? So understanding that it's not those things, it's the principles like the why behind doing those things, that's important to understand and think about how that maps into your your team's needs your world, and how to then create your culture around that. I think the naturals...
Zoran Stojkovic:Wow..
Lauren Tashman:Go ahead. Sorry.
Zoran Stojkovic:No, no, you you first..
Lauren Tashman:I was gonna say, I think a natural starting place is the values, right? That's typically when I'm asked to talk about culture, you know, or brought in and people say, Well, what are you going to do? Like, where do we start? We get to talking about the values, right? Like, let's talk about your core values. If you have them already. Great. Let's look at that and what you're doing with them and how they're working. If you don't have them, well, let me help you start really clarifying those. But I think the true piece of really cultivating this is working on the team environment. If we think about to get nerdy for a second, the contingency model of leadership, which says that leaders can prioritize, you know, results or relationships, and it's about knowing when to prioritize either I think it's a Daniel Goleman, who talks about, you know, 'the golf bag', analogy to leadership, like knowing which club you have to pull out when, right, the best leaders have this voluminous golf bag. And it's not just golf clubs randomly thrown in there. It's very clearly, you know, bringing in particular golf clubs and knowing which one to use at which time. And I think, you know, a lot of our models on leadership then suggest that creating an optimal culture is about prioritizing both, which is truly very difficult, prioritizing both relationships, and results and performance. But understanding that the relationships need to be in service of creating optimal performance individually, and collectively, not just we have good relationships, we get along, we're friends, we hang out we know things about each other, but that we know the things we need to know we have the dynamic on our team that supports us in being able to do the things that we want or need to do. And so it's really about starting there on looking at the environment and trying to cultivate an environment that is going to support creating this culture.
Zoran Stojkovic:The environment and, and ideally, like, some of the things I heard you mentioned is being intentional and consistent to build the culture, like sitting down and seeing whether...it might mean sitting down and seeing if everybody's on the same page about the values, like, what's the mission of the company? And if people are all over the page, while it's gonna take developing some consistent language and an understanding of that language, and actually then buying into it, which might be another challenge. You making any changes and whatnot, but the contingency model definitely rings rings true with me. And and I think that with the golf bag analogy, you know, there might be more even more clubs, but those at least having those two and ideally not hitting employees ahead with that...
Lauren Tashman:[LAUGHTER]
Zoran Stojkovic:... is that going to help cultivate this culture. What's the starting place, though? Like what? As a rule of thumb, and I know that different companies, different teams are at different stages. But what would in general, be the starting place? Lauren, who has to be in those conversations? Is it like a leadership group thing? They go on a retreat and come up with this? Is it does it include everybody?
Lauren Tashman:Yeah, those are important questions to think about. Let me start with the where it starts. And then I'll talk about maybe who has to be involved in what my thoughts are on how that looks. But I think it starts with some form of an assessment or evaluation of where they're at with their culture, like, what is their culture? And what are the perspectives on that I like to think of teams as puzzles in the sense that every puzzle has to have, you know, multiple pieces, and each piece has a particular place on the team. Then thinking about that each place on the team might have a particular vantage point on the team. And getting a sense of those vantage points is essential. Right. Again, another kind of nerdy model here. But there's a leadership model that suggests that there isn't a direct relationship between leaders and their team's performance, that there's a moderating kind of factor in the middle there, which is the perceptions of the leader. Right? So perceptions really matter. And so really getting at those perspective, those perspectives, getting a sense of what people think about the culture, if possible, getting eyes on the culture and watching it and action and doing some observations. Some people might use, you know, some more quantitative assessment tools. So really trying to evaluate and assess the culture at first and get that picture is really important. And that's why when I was at Florida State, I had the opportunity to basically take some additional classes, get some things during my PhD, really, because I decided to stay there after having done my master's there. And one of the things that I did was get a certificate in program evaluation, which is really that right? Like how do we design an assessment approach, if you will, to try and get a sense of a particular program, or a particular culture. And that's, that's really the place to start. So everybody then is involved, or, you know, very particular choices about who you're trying to get a look into is, is important consideration. And then once you start doing the work, I very much advocate for, and I've kind of gotten pushback against this. So I'm curious, your thoughts, I very much advocate for starting with the leaders or the leadership group. Because I think that the reality is that even if you want to have what might be called like a flat, kind of dynamic on your team, right, not a hierarchy or something like that. The reality is that there are leaders and that there is a particular role that leaders have and need to play on a team. And so their, their vision of the team is important their goals for the team, their core values, and what they want the team, the identity of the team to be as at least an important starting place. And then we can go from there and working in particular people and getting different people in the room so that there is a felt sense of ownership over both designing and bringing to bear the culture, right. So on a sports team, for example, it might look like meeting with the head coach first, then maybe meeting with all the coaches that maybe we bring in the captains then maybe we go out and we do this amongst the whole team, then maybe we go back to the captains and then we go back to the team. So it's this very iterative process of really trying to very intentionally bring people in and create that That kind of full engagement that can be helpful in this process.
Zoran Stojkovic:I agree that starting with the leadership and then slowly phasing it out, and still giving everybody a voice is, I think that's, that's the best way to do it. Because ultimately, I think one of the best ways to protect the culture is with who you let in, and the people that decide who they hire, or the leadership group. And so I think that's, that's a piece of it, as you said, they had to have the vision, the mission, the bigger picture of things, the why. And so yeah, I definitely say starting there, and I liked how you, you would start there, go down, go down the levels, and then come back up. And, and still give everybody a voice. And I think, you know, at some point, having everybody in the room and giving everybody a chance to speak their mind and creating a psychologically safe space to do that, which might be challenging, if it doesn't exist already. And it might take might take time to really cultivate that as well.
Lauren Tashman:And not, of course, it's a little bit of a pitch here for people like us, right, the coaches who come in and do this work, but that's a lot of times why we are brought in or needed in this process is because it's hard for the team to use on their own, right, we're the ones that get to come in and really just have all these principles in mind, the facilitation skills, the unique position of being really external to this puzzle, and these pieces to be able to help the team work in this way to work towards these aims.
Zoran Stojkovic:Yeah, and it's definitely important to stay. I mean, because the leadership group is paying you. So I think maybe sometimes employees or members of a team can get pretty skeptical and see us as as a spy, or as somebody who's working on pushing forward the agenda of the leadership group. And so just again, supporting those basic psychological needs and that autonomy, and still giving people a chance to make him feel like they do have a voice in it, that's going to be heard, and that something's going to be done about that.
Lauren Tashman:Yeah, and you know, that's why it's important at the beginning with the leaders and people that bring you in on the group to set expectations very clearly about your role, about the fact that you might push, you might not be everybody's fan favorite process, right. Like, that's not, that's not necessarily the job. You know, a lot of people might kind of get put into the hot seat, but for good reason in terms of sharing their perspectives and all that. But at the end of the day, your role there is to help the team move forward. And part of the reason of, you know, bringing in all of the people at some point or in some way to this is because you've really got to create as many champions of the culture as possible, right, that everybody feels that yes, this is the direction that we want to move in. And to your point about, you know, culture fit. And they're kind of related idea that's been brought up of culture contribution. You know, we have to see what that look ends up looking like on the team, you know, I have a couple episodes. Now in my podcast, we interviewed, a startup founder, who was talking about like, one of his big kind of realizations or lessons learned was that he didn't do that quick enough in his company, you know, realize that, you know what, some people don't just don't belong here anymore. They did. And they had a great contribution to where we were going getting out now. But now there's just not a fit. And that's the reality of it, you know, the unfortunate reality of it.
Zoran Stojkovic:Yeah, one of the one of the other guests I had on the show is a startup founder as well. And he talks about this, the team that takes the company from zero to 2 million, might be different than the team that's needed, take it from a million to 10 million. And, you know, it even might be similar in sports teams, like the the coach that that takes the team to, to the higher division or, or to a championship may not be the best coach to keep coaching after the team wins a championship, even though that does sound counterintuitive, but just even the players in the team,
Lauren Tashman:It does, but it also relates to the idea of culture not being static, right, but being very dynamic. And so teams that I have been extremely fortunate to work with over several years have a lot of times realize that okay, actually, there's times where we then need to check in and maybe evolve our culture and look at look at how it has evolved and look at then how our values or our, you know, norms or roles, the people on the team have to rise to the occasion or go in the direction of, you know, the what the direction of the team has been?
Zoran Stojkovic:Yeah, because those puzzle pieces might have changed and there might have been turnover. There was something that it was Phil Jackson and Juergen Klopp. Both great, really great coaches. basketball, soccer, they both mentioned something around, you can't stay in a team as a leader. They say five or six years is like like a expiry date. It's kind of like the expiry date. And I'm not sure if that I'm not sure if I click with that, but I want to hear your thoughts on it. Because in a nutshell, what they say is, either you leave, or your whole team has to be sort of different within those five years, you can have the same team from year one to year five,
Lauren Tashman:Really, actually fascinating. But think about the teams that have had the true pleasure of working with over many years, I think you would probably see that that's the case that as internal and external factors change on the team, the team often changes and the team's needs change, or the performance changes, something, you know, these changes that occur might necessitate changes to anybody on the team. And so I think that that, I won't, I won't say that I necessarily know that that's truly been, you know, studied or looked at, at least in that way that I'm aware of, but I can see how it maps on to my experiences, I can see how it maps on to, you know, some of our team dynamics, theories in terms of, you know, kind of the cyclical nature of teams and team development. And even that one of my favorites that I rarely hear people talk about, but it always stood out to me was the pendulum perspective of teams are like, you kind of got this sub point of like team operating at its optimal. And then something whether internal or external, the team, like kicks it away from there, you swing away. And the idea is, you know, how do we not make those swings so big and so long? And how do we not get stuck, right? So how do we make sure we're never going to be able to stick in the same place, that's not how a pendulum works. But the idea is to be able to have that process where we can swing back and forth, and the swings aren't as big, and as long as we don't get stuck there. And so I think, you know, some of those things maybe come to mind, I think it's also, you know, human dynamic that comes to mind of our tendencies for complacency, at times our tendencies for novelty, you know, for the Steiner's Model of Productivity and the whole piece of social loafing, right that, and this really relates to teams, a team's potential, and where it performs is really a function of what any faulty processes that are occurring on the team, you know, things that are related to motivation, or what you know, what's kind of put under coordination, which means how they're operating together. So I think if we look at it from that way, we can see how maybe what they're saying actually makes quite a lot of sense for a number of different reasons.
Zoran Stojkovic:How Lauren, you've done some really great work and some pretty awesome teams, how, how have you helped shape team cultures?
Lauren Tashman:I think it depends on my role, you know, any of us in the position that gets to do this work, it depends on how we're brought in and how much we're integrated into a team. So there's certainly been work that I've done, where it's, you know, just consultation with a leader on how who they are as a leader, and how they are navigating the culture of their team. there's times where I'm brought in to do workshops, which I would say are probably my my least favorite ones. And I'm very clear to set expectations about like, here's the reality I'm I'm coming in, basically, to help you get started or to build some awareness amongst the team, get the conversation going. And I try to work really hard with the leaders who bring me in to help them figure out what the pros and cons of that right, we might be opening up a can of worms here. And now you're going to be the one that has to go and navigate that can of worms, or, you know, here are the next steps, right, we've had this initial conversation together. And then maybe it was a great conversation, it can't stop there, you hear now my recommendations on how to move the needle forward and make this part of process. So I've had that I've had ones where I'm brought in kind of as a consultant, more consistent consultant where, you know, might come in once a week and do work with the team. And then I'm, you know, also working with the leaders on that. So I'm not a part of the team and I'm but I'm helping, kind of strategically move it forward over time. And then I've had the ones you know, where I've been really like, into day to day with the team and day to day helping them do this work, you know, look at the culture, work on their relationships, work on their ability to work together, work on really analyzing the culture and thinking about where they are and how to push it forward. So it's kind of looked a lot of different ways. And you know, that is for a variety of different reasons, all can be useful, but it's just about kind of managing expectations and knowing what the team or the leaders want out of this work.
Zoran Stojkovic:Right. So it seems like it rains from individual conversations, group conversations via workshops, maybe some workplace observation and daily work environment assessment, and and then depending on on, you know, your relationship and the services, either suggesting what the next steps are, or actually implementing the next steps with the leadership group.
Lauren Tashman:Yep. And you mentioned the key part in there, which is, as I said, I think before, when I can, I love to get eyes on and observe the culture. Because, as I kind of said before, it's great to an important to get the vantage point. But it's also important to just watch them and see the dynamic rate from kind of my own eyes, just observing all the different interactions and the ways they approach things and work on things and you know, the, the body language, all you know, all sorts of number of things that can truly give you insight into a culture.
Zoran Stojkovic:So you go up to people and their desks and just kind of like, stare at them and see how they're how they're communicating. And, like, follow...
Lauren Tashman:I mean, I want to be in the room with meetings, I want to be around when they're just, you know, hanging out with each other, and just, you know, having lunch or you know, all that stuff. And it's funny, because a lot of times they'll be like, What are you thinking, right? You're watching us? Are you like, yeah, I am, right, like, that's the job right is to try and get insight. And it's actually but I don't know why. But I've always been interested in that. You know, I don't know if I told you this. But before I knew what sports psychology was, I thought that I really wanted to go into behavioral analysis, like, I always loved, like studying body language and trying to like, think about, like, what somebody was thinking and why they would do something. And so I really actually, you know, that's for me, if I'm part of bringing that into this work is really trying to get a sense of that team.
Zoran Stojkovic:Yeah, and body language may be maybe one of those things that can either elevate a culture or or kind of crush it. And I'm sure there's other there's other behaviors that are toxic for team culture, what have you come across that have been top toxic behaviors? And how have you dealt with them or advise leaders to deal with them?
Lauren Tashman:I think the one of the biggest that jumps out is like negativity or pessimism about the culture change. You know, if you've got people on the team who are like, this isn't gonna work, you know, they're just doing this because they think they have to whatever the the talk is about this. I think that's probably one of the biggest obstacles is just, you know, anyone on the team who who will, whether they want to or not be a barrier to moving things forward, because they just don't they can envision it. I think related to that is, you know, thinking about everybody's comfort with change, right, change is hard. There are going to be particular people on the team who are going to have to change more than others. Sometimes those are the leaders themselves, right. And so I think that's another that can be another challenge is, you know, just comfort with change and ability willingness to change, you certainly want awareness of change and needs to change. So related to that is resistant, there are some times when people are resistant to the culture change, they don't see the need for it, they think the culture is fine, they're happy with it. Maybe there's some fear associated with the change. And this can be one or it can be, you know, multiple people who kind of are resisting for a number of reasons. That change. I mentioned this one before. Thinking it's too simple, I think is one thing that's toxic, it's toxic. And even though that's not necessarily a behavior, it shows up in our behaviors, you know, that's just the Yeah, we had a great, we had a great team meeting on this, okay, great, everything's gonna be fine. Or we did this once. And so you know, we set up our values, that's awesome. Now we have this cool culture, we got the ping pong table, you know, it's, as I said, unfortunately, it's not that simple. If it was, it would be lovely, but it's just not that simple to get everybody kind of rallying around together and navigating the beautiful and also challenging, you know, human dynamic. And I think, you know, one of the things I always say to leaders and teams to try and set expectations at the beginning about this, is that you're, I'm not I'm not a person that is a black and white person. You know, I my answer is always it depends. The one thing that I am kind of black and white on is the fact that I think on a team for various reasons. I think this you are either a positive or a negative. And if you're neutral, you're in the negative camp, right? You're either helping the team move forward or do the things they need to do having that optimal culture or you're not. And I'm not saying that that's always intentional that people are always like, No, I want to, you know, support this effort. But that's the that's the true I think reality of a time where I do see things as as black and white, right, you're either a positive or a negative. And you can be that, you know, positive one day and a negative and other day, it's hard to navigate that sometimes, because working on teams and team culture is is very personal, as much as it is collective.
Zoran Stojkovic:So how can leaders deal with that? If some, if they have a negative or a neutral? I mean, do you have a story of something you've advise to a leader? Or is there some general advice that you have,
Lauren Tashman:Um, honestly, I think this is where the, the environment on the team and the ability for a team to have that psychological safety is, is truly important, because these are some of the like real conversations that need to happen on a team, between the leader and you know, these people that might be kind of in the neutral or negative category amongst each other. And being able to have a fundamental understanding underneath all of that of like, like I said, we're in this together. And we have to do this, this stuff to be able to do that. And so that's always like, my, my recommendation is to really work on the communication and the environment of the team first, to be able to have some of these important conversations, we want to talk to that person who, maybe, maybe they're just the neutral category, they're just not doing much, they're not contributing their thoughts, you know, and when you talk to them, they've got great perspectives. But when they show up in the group, they're not talking and actually, you know, it was a great experience, actually, for myself as someone facilitating this that I had with a team surrounding this. So we were having a lot of meetings where we were debriefing together, and I was really pushing people to share their perspectives. And there were a number of individuals on the team who pretty consistently, were not participating in that conversation not actively being the negative, right, like not resisting that conversation, but they just weren't the ones who were jumping in to share their perspectives. The team kind of called them out on this a little bit. And what we learned through that was differences in the way people process and reflect on things. So not everybody in the moment realizes what they want to say and how they want to contribute. And that was such an important honestly, realization for me as the person facilitating this that I needed to work on different ways of being able to put this stuff in front of people, so that the people who wanted and needed more time to reflect gather their thoughts, consider could do that, and then could bring that to the table in the conversations, right? Versus the people who were much it just came, for many reasons, much more easily for them to be able to think quickly and respond in the meeting. And so I think that's, you know, maybe just a simple example of really trying to, again, be intentional, but also flexible in the way that you're trying to work on some of these things.
Zoran Stojkovic:Wow, that's, that's a really good example. And and I think that I also used to think that if somebody's not contributing there, they just don't want to talk. They they know what they could say. And, and sometimes that's the case, I think, your way of dealing with the with the negative or the neutral of...well, I mean, in your story, the team called call them out, and then everybody learned that well. I just actually don't know what I what I want to say. And I'm not, I'm not really sure what what to contribute, and sometimes that's okay. But really, I think what we're what underpins that is that psychological safety, and just having having the space so that people can see ideas, no matter how stupid they seem.
Lauren Tashman:I think it's the space, but it's also intentionally thinking about your approach, you know, so one of the ways this always comes up in my discussions with leaders and teams is the dreaded meetings. Most people are like, I don't like meeting meetings are awful, right? Like, any iteration of that. And there's actually some wonderful books out there on how to actually set up your meetings and all that, like it's this, you know, we kind of assume like, well, I let a challenging process, we have an agenda, and we go into the meeting. And but I think it's, you know, this is where maybe my kind of educational psych background and my background as a teacher comes into play is like, thinking about how you incorporate different approaches and methods into how you design and facilitate your meetings. So maybe sometimes you you send people something prior to the meeting, "Hey, everybody give this a little bit of thought. And I want at least two ideas...you know, by the time we get into the meeting," or maybe it's using some version of what's called active learning strategies, like one of my favorites is the four corners strategy in the meeting so that you're getting this iterative process of people kind of co-constructing something and co-brainstorming together. And everybody kind of gets their their ability to bring to bear their thoughts and their knowledge, right. So there's really kind of articulate ways that you can go about doing this. And I think that that's that would be, that's usually one of the things I talk to a lot about leaders who want to start driving some of this stuff forward in their processes is really thinking critically about how they could approach their meetings, I guess
Zoran Stojkovic:I guess you're talking about differences in personality and communication styles. And, you know, measuring team culture can be can be really challenging how Lauren, how can leaders measure team culture? Is it? Does it mean doing personality tests and then sharing that with everybody and realizing what you know, what the results are? And does it mean, like observing? Does it mean talking to the leadership group? Is it through focus groups? Like how, how is it measured? Is it through the bottom line?
Lauren Tashman:For sometimes for some teams it is. Absolutely, you know, I think I'll bring up two things here, one I mentioned before, which is from my colleague, and guests on the podcast, Ira Zimmerman, who is there's no secret sauce, right? Again, there's no one way, there's a lot of different avenues we could use here. And we really have to think intentionally about what we want and need to use. Number two is thinking about this principle of triangulation, when it comes to assessment. We want one data point here, just the bottom line, or is the bottom line, a good data point, and then maybe we want to do some discussions, you know, with a couple of the people on the team, or maybe we want, you know, maybe there's some other objective, you know, way that we want to do this, or maybe it's, you know, through something like an after action review, after a performance where we can all collectively come together and say, Okay, what do we do? Well, what were the wins relative to the culture? What were the misses? And what are our solutions for now trying to do that better tomorrow, the next time and all that. So there's many different ways. The point, ultimate point being is that, particularly at the start of this process, it is very important to have these a lot. People don't always like that, but that constant check in of, you know, how are we doing with this? How are we doing this? How are we driving this forward is really important. And then as people get more comfortable, the culture starts getting into place, you might be able to dial that back a little bit, you don't ever want to go away from it, never check in on the culture, but you might be able to dial that back to you, you know, once a month or you know, depending on you know, particular time points that are, you know, chosen for various reasons, but that that check in is so important.
Zoran Stojkovic:Okay, so the check ends, and then the after action review, which at Spotify, they call that the post mortem. Yeah, I love that. Because it's it's like what failed, what, you know, what failed? And reminding people and kind of checking in on how much we're living the values and the mission and and the culture that we want to create, in the behaviors in the action.
Lauren Tashman:So that brings up I think, another consideration, which is what's called the artifacts of the culture, right? So what in what ways are we going to make this culture very relevant in your face? Right, like, Are we going to have those value words up in front of us all the time? Are, you know, is it going to be particular language that we use? Is it the way Like I said, we set up our meeting, so really making it very visible and memorable and constantly relevant process is really important, because, unfortunately, even for the things that are most important to us, it's easy to lose sight of them if they're not in front of our face, right. And I think the other thing you mentioned the post mortem, sometimes I think it's important not to think about measuring this or assessing it on the back end. But on the front end, let's do pre mortems. And think about well, alright, how are we going to live this out today? Right? And then we have a good pre to then have for our post?
Zoran Stojkovic:Oh, that's that's a neat idea. Pre mortem, post mortem. See how they match up? Lauren, what does what is cultivating your culture mean to you?
Lauren Tashman:I love this question, any number of things that we've talked about, but I think if I had to drill it down, I think it means having an intentional and individualized idea and process. I think it means knowing that it's not a one time event. And I think it means knowing that it can't be shallow, it must involve digging deep and getting real.
Zoran Stojkovic:Oh, that's that's a gem of a definition. That's a gem of a definition. Thanks for sharing that. Lauren, out of everything that we've talked about today, is there one practical tool leaders can use like tomorrow to cultivate the culture, their team?
Lauren Tashman:I mentioned the meeting. So I've already kind of talked about that. I think my one thing maybe I always have leaders start with is they're identifying and looking at the alignment with their own core values. It's great for teams and companies to have core values, but each one of us has them as well. And again, we have them whether or not we've really articulated them or not, or thought about them or not. And so, you know, there's a great look at this, for example, in a lot of the, you know, kind of top companies about, you know, does a leaders kind of top core value align with the company? And if there's any misalignment, well, that's quite challenging, right, because if, if me as the leader of startup company X, my core value is passion. But that's not really a part of our team, or that's not kind of one of the core drivers of the team, that's going to be quite challenging, because I'm always going to feel that dissonance, right. And so I think leaders need the kind of first step if they haven't already, is really clarify or work with a coach on clarifying and looking at alignment with your core values, and how you can make that a part of who you are and what you do. How do you communicate them verbally and non verbally to your team and the way that you set up things within your team? You know, in the way that you talk about things, you know, do you reinforce them? Is it part of what's kind of referred to as your "day one" speech where you very clearly say, this is who I am. This is you know, how I am and this is what you can expect out of me, and this is what I can expect out of you. And you mentioned the hiring process before, you know, one client I have worked with this on his interviews, right? Because he was realizing that once he got people into the company, he would have these conversations with them. But these conversations actually really needed to happen in the hiring process. So that there was that both people could look at, okay, is there that fit here? And is that going to work?
Zoran Stojkovic:He would share his personal values in interviewing people?
Lauren Tashman:Yeah.
Zoran Stojkovic:Well, I've never, I've never heard of that before.
Lauren Tashman:No, right. And both of us actually had that realization, we were talking about it, because we were both reflecting on how when he would get new people in, he would then have this conversation. These are my values. This is who I am. This is what you can expect out of me, this is what I expect out of you. And we kind of were talking about it or like, it's interesting, because what if you had that conversation during an interview? Would that help both of you make the decision about whether or not this was the right joint venture? Right?
Zoran Stojkovic:Why did he decide to implement that? Like, would people leave when they realized what his values were? Or what you know, how he operated? Or?
Lauren Tashman:Not necessarily. It wasn't necessarily that they would hear the values and be like, Oh, no, I don't want to work for this company. It was more like, at some point, there was a realization that there was a misalignment of values. So by being able to have these conversations ahead of time, honestly, it helped him make this a good part of his hiring practices. But really, it helped them to think about, you know, is this the right fit for me? And that's why I kind of call like a joint venture, right? Like both people have to just like any relationship, both people have to say, like, yeah, I'm on board. That's why, you know, the famous example of Zappos, right, is that they would pay people to leave if after a month, they realized that they didn't want to be there. So why wouldn't we spend a lot more time giving people a sense of who we are and what our culture is beforehand? So we can both make that joint decision about whether this is the right move?
Zoran Stojkovic:That's I couldn't believe that when I heard the Zappos thing. Yeah, paying people 1000 or 2000? Because it's a short term. It's a short term loss. Ultimately, and and you're not, it's a protective barrier against, essentially, you don't want to work in there for the money.
Lauren Tashman:Yeah. And I think it also represents that you recognize that, you know, not always can we know what we're getting ourselves into until we get into it. And we're actually saying, Thank you for standing up and saying, you know what, this doesn't fit me and we're going to recognize that you tried it out. But now, you need to go somewhere else.
Zoran Stojkovic:Lauren, there's a lot of good books on cultures, a lot of good resources is there, you know, top two or top three for you?
Lauren Tashman:In terms of resources, there's a ton. I use a lot of resources to try and wrap my head around all this. I think the first place I honestly started with this was, two of my own professors at Florida State, Dave Eccles, and Gershon Tenenbaum, who, so I worked in a research lab that was ultimately headed by Anders Ericsson exploring expert performance and what Davidson and Gershon did was take all that work that's been done on expertise by Anders and others. And think about the notion of expert teams and team coordination. And so that was I think, the first time I really started thinking differently about team culture in comparison to what we had kind of had before with just to focus on team dynamics, so their work on expert teams, team coordination is really useful. I think obviously, the most recent probably that people would be aware of is Dan Coils' Culture Code book, people may be aware of that one people might not be as aware of Paul Zach's book on trust. And Paul Zach is really grounded in neuroscience, and so really comes at it, it's a great read, actually, for leaders, that book, and then I think, maybe two more, one that maybe wouldn't be associated with culture. But it really is, is Matthew Syed's Blackbox Thinking. That really has actually uses the culture of medicine and the culture of aviation as a comparison in terms of how we approach failure, how adaptable we are. And then last, but not least, is there some really good readings out there on this, what I said is being called the "new psychology of leadership", which is the the social identity approach to leadership, and how we, how we create that sense of we and how leaders can become kind of that best representation of "we". So those might be maybe some places to start for people who are listening,
Zoran Stojkovic:Awesome, those are really great suggestions, and a bunch of them outside of the world of psychology. And so that's, that's really great, Lauren, tell us what you're up to right now. And where people can find you and connect with
Lauren Tashman:You can find me at alignperform.com, that's you. probably the easiest way is to go to my website. And then you can connect with me on LinkedIn and other social media from there. And I have to say, and I know you and I were chatting about this before we got started. It's lovely to talk about culture, because because of the pandemic. And you know, being in New York City, I haven't other than some of the leaders I work with, I haven't really gotten to work with cultures, and I'm craving it so badly. So I am actually planning several things for next year. I already in my practice, offer a variety of different approaches that leaders and teams can work with me, like I said, you know, as we were talking about this, and then a new kind of program. I don't know that I'd call it a program, but a new kind of thing that I'm working on idea that I'm working on is actually Think Tanks for leaders who really want to work on culture and get some support from me in that but also have a group of people to work on this with together. So those are maybe some things that people might be interested in.
Zoran Stojkovic:Cool. I'll put your website in the show notes, and people can connect with you. Yeah. Great. Thanks so much for coming on. And, and for taking the time for sharing these awesome ideas. And and, you know, I could do this for hours.[LAUGHTER]
Lauren Tashman:[LAUGHTER] Thank you so much for having me.
Zoran Stojkovic:Yeah, you have a really interesting perspective. And and you explain things in ways that are easy to understand. It's not too academic, but it's it's practical and science back. So that's a lot of value in what you're saying today. So Lauren, thank you so much.
Lauren Tashman:Thank you.
Zoran Stojkovic:Hey, thanks for tuning in to cultivate your culture, rate and reviewer podcast on iTunes. Any websites and resources mentioned in the podcast as well as the guests information can be found on the show notes at www.kizo.ca/podcast. Here's a sneak peek of what's coming up in our episode next week.
Nadine Dubina:If you think about a fish tank, so you've got fish, and from the outside, we can see that the fish are swimming in water, but to the fish. The water is just a part of their habitat, right? It's just a part of what they experience every day. And I think that culture is very synonymous with the water inside of a fish tank is that we are swimming in it every day. But sometimes it's not something that we always notice. You tend to notice it when it gets really really dirty and needs cleaned. Right? Or when it's really really, really pristine. And things are going really well and it's almost effortless.