266. Conscious Leadership: Designing an Unstoppable Culture with Mick Spiers

Are you building your workplace culture intentionally, or allowing it to form by default? This question lies at the heart of effective leadership, yet few leaders truly understand how their everyday decisions silently shape what it feels like to work in their organizations.

Culture isn't the aspirational language hanging on your office walls. It's the unspoken rules that govern how decisions get made, how people treat each other, and how your team functions when no one's watching. As we explore in this episode, we get the behavior we role model, celebrate, and perhaps most critically—the behavior we tolerate. When leaders say they value transparency but withhold information, or claim to support work-life balance while sending midnight emails, they create environments of mistrust where actions and words don't align.

Margaret Graziano, bestselling author of "Ignite Culture," brings powerful insights from decades of experience in organizational leadership. Her observation that "people join companies for the mission but stay or leave based on the culture" captures why intentional culture-building matters more than ever in today's competitive landscape. We dig deep into her concept of conscious leadership—creating environments where people feel seen, safe, valued, and empowered—and why this approach transforms both individual performance and organizational outcomes.

One particularly transformative distinction we explore is building "accountability without blame." In toxic workplaces, accountability feels like punishment. In thriving cultures, it's an act of respect—a way of saying, "I believe in you, and I know you're capable of this standard." This shift from fear to empowerment fundamentally changes how people show up, speak up, and step up.

If your leadership energy became the blueprint for your culture, would you be proud of the result? Would people feel they truly matter? The culture you create is a direct reflection of the clarity, consistency, and courage you bring each day. It requires continuous attention—not a set-and-forget approach, but an ongoing commitment to embodying the values you wish to see throughout your organization. Listen now to discover how to lead culture by design rat

Chapters

• 0:00 What is workplace culture?
• 1:56 Role modeling the culture you want
• 3:36 The danger of tolerating bad behavior
• 5:04 Insights from Margie Graziano
• 7:11 Accountability without blame
• 8:11 Creating culture is ongoing work

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

What kind of culture are you really creating? If someone asked your team what it feels like to work here, what would they say? And are you leading your culture by design or is it drifting by default? In today's episode, I'm going to reflect on my deeply insightful conversation with Margie Graziano, bestselling author of Ignite Culture and a true champion of conscious leadership and intentional culture. I'll share my views of what I heard from Margie and add my own flavor about what it takes to create an unstoppable culture.

Mick Spiers: 0:38

Welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm your host, Mick Spiers. In today's episode, we are digging deep into what this thing called culture is really all about. So before we dive in, let's take a moment to ask what is culture? Culture is the way things are done around here. It's the default mode. It's what it's like to experience this workplace not when the boss is watching, but when no one is. It's not your posters or your mission statements. It's your lived experience. It's not the plaque that you put on the office wall. It's the actions and behaviors and values of the group. Culture is driven by the collective values and behaviors of the group. It's revealed in how people act under pressure, how they treat each other, how decisions get made and how people feel. And here's the truth we get the behavior that we role model, that we celebrate and reward and that we tolerate. So let's unpack that If you want to lead your culture, you first need to decide what kind of culture you want, what values underpin that culture, what behaviors align with those values.

Mick Spiers: 1:56

Then comes the hard part. You must go first. You need to role model those behaviors. You need to role model those behaviors. Your actions, your decisions must reflect the values you speak about, because one of the quickest ways to lose trust is when your actions don't match your stated values, and trust once lost is hard to earn back. Your actions speak louder than your words every time, especially in leadership. So you can't walk around saying that we're a people-first organization and then make decisions that are completely the contrary. You need to make sure that your decisions, your actions, your behaviors match what you said you wanted to see in others. The next step is just as important. You need to celebrate and reward the behaviours you want to see more of.

Mick Spiers: 2:52

Catch people doing the right thing. Notice a name in it, shine a light on the values being lived. Recognition isn't just about making someone feel good, it tells the entire organization. It sends a signal this is who we are. This is what matters here. So go out of your way to say yes, thank you. If you want to create a speak up culture, thank people every time that they speak up and do it in a way that everyone sees it, so that others quickly catch on and go. Oh, the boss likes it when people speak up, so I'm going to learn to speak up too. It becomes infectious.

Mick Spiers: 3:36

Now for the most insidious piece. We also get the behaviour we tolerate. We accept what we walk past and it has a ripple effect on everyone watching. When we tolerate behavior that's out of step with our stated values, one of three things happen. Some people will mimic that behavior. They'll assume it's now okay to do that. Others will become infuriated and they'll disengage. They'll give less of themselves and they'll care less. And the most values aligned person they might get so infuriated they just leave. Then you're left with the wrong people reinforcing the wrong culture, and the leaders scratched their heads asking what happened to our culture. You lose the people that had the right values and you're stuck with the people that were contravening those values. Now, to be clear not tolerating misaligned behavior doesn't always mean immediate dismissal, but it does mean acting. It means addressing it early and directly, before it spreads and before it becomes embedded. As Patrick Lencioni once said, if you don't confront someone about their behavior, you're training them and everyone else that it's acceptable.

Mick Spiers: 5:02

Now let's get back to Margie. Now let's get back to Margie. She brought immense clarity to the inside-out approach to leadership. She's seen it all over 20 years of helping organizations hire, grow and retain people. And her big takeaway People join companies for the mission, but they stay or leave based on the culture. Margie's idea of conscious leadership is all about creating an environment where people feel seen, where they feel safe, where they feel valued, where they feel empowered. And that starts with conscious hiring, bringing in people whose values and energy align with your desired culture, not just their resume. She also discussed the importance of neuroscience and psychometrics understanding how our nervous system responds to threat and safety. If your team don't feel safe, they won't speak up, they won't innovate and they won't grow.

Mick Spiers: 6:05

Another powerful distinction Margie made was this great cultures build accountability without blame. Let those words sink in for a moment. Accountability without blame. Does that sound like your workplace? In unhealthy workplaces, accountability often feels like a trap or a punishment, but in high performance cultures, accountability is an act of respect. It's saying I believe in you, I trust you, I'm holding you to a standard because I know you're capable of this. I'm empowering you, I'm enabling you, I'm trusting you that you can do this. That shift from fear to empowerment is what separates toxic workplaces from thriving ones.

Mick Spiers: 6:57

Now, if you haven't picked up Margie's book Ignite Culture, I highly recommend it. It's not just theory. It's packed with practical tools for evaluating, designing and sustaining culture intentionally. But here's the catch this isn't a one and done strategy. Culture is alive. It evolves with every decision you make, every conversation you allow, every value you uphold or let slide. So let me leave you with this. If your leadership energy became the blueprint for your culture, would you be proud of the result? Would people feel seen, heard and valued? Would they feel like they matter? Would your actions match your words? The culture you lead is a reflection of the clarity, consistency and courage that you bring every day. It's not set and forget. It's ignite and keep fueling it. That's it for today.

Mick Spiers: 7:58

If this solo cast resonated with you, I'd encourage you to listen to the full episode with Margie and grab a copy of Ignite Culture. It might just be the spark your leadership and your team need right now. And, as always, if you found this helpful, don't forget to like, follow or share the Leadership Project with someone who's ready to lead culture from the inside out. In the next episode, I'm going to be joined by Israel Duran, who's going to talk to us about empowering leaders through the art of speaking.

Mick Spiers: 8:40

Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project mickspiers. com. A huge call out to Faris Sedek Sadek for his video editing of all of our video content, and to all of the team at TLP Joan Gozon On, Gerald gerald Calibo Calabo and my amazing wife, Sei Spiers Spears. I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to The the Leadership Project YouTube channel, where we bring you interesting videos each and every week, and you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, facebook and Instagram. Now, in the meantime, please do take care, look out for each other and join us on this journey, as we learn together and lead together.