Lead Culture with Jenni Catron
Navigating the complexities of leadership can be daunting and overwhelming. With Jenni Catron and her guests as your trusted and experienced guides, your leadership journey can become less overwhelming and more fulfilling. Jenni and the 4Sight team want to help you become a healthy leader who leads a thriving organization. Listen to discover the tools and wisdom you need to gain the 4Sight for success!
Lead Culture with Jenni Catron
214 | Shaping and Sustaining a Thriving Team Culture Amid Organizational Growth
Success and growth can be a double-edged sword, leading to a cultural drift. Witnessing our team misaligning with values, formation of silos, and witnessing a rise in turnover can leave us blindsided and disheartened.
In this week's episode, Jenni discusses the intricate dynamics of managing cultural shifts in evolving organizations, shares insights into how to lead a team when it feels like your thriving culture has slipped away overnight, how to monitor team health as your organization grows, and how to shift from a culture that's merely absorbed to one that's intentionally imparted.
Resource
Culture Conference
Culture Conference is back and registration is now open. Mark your calendar for August 10th and register you, your team, and every leader you know to join us.
Culture Conference is a free digital conference designed to help you build thriving teams, cultivate inspiring workplaces, and achieve your mission. We have an amazing speaker line up, including Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel; Valorie Burton, Life Strategist and Bestselling Author, Josh Howerton, Senior Pastor of Lakepointe Church and New York Times bestselling author Author Jon Acuff - just to name a few!
Connect with Jenni
Have questions for us? Send us an email at podcast@get4sight.com and someone from the team will reach out and help you walk through your culture questions and talk through some of the dynamics that you're navigating, because this work matters. Connect with us on Facebook and Instagram @Get4Sight on LinkedIn at The4SightGroup, or on Threads at JenniCatron.
Your Next Step
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The Art of Leadership Network. Well, hello friends, I'm your Jenni Catron , and this is the Lead Culture Podcast, where I coach you to lead yourself well so you can lead others better. My team and I at the 4Sight Group are committed to building confident leaders, extraordinary teams and thriving cultures. Each week, we'll take a deep dive into a leadership or culture topic that will give you the tools you need to lead with clarity and confidence and build a thriving team. Before we get into today's episode, I want to make sure that you are registered for Culture Conference. Culture Conference is back and registration is open. Mark your calendar for August 10th and register yourself, register your team, register every leader you know. Just say, hey, i just went ahead and signed you up because I know you're going to appreciate this event.
Jenni Catron:Culture Conference is a free digital conference designed to help you build thriving teams, cultivate inspiring workplaces and achieve your mission. You guys, you know how powerful it is when you have a team that is aligned and working effectively together. At least, i hope you know what that feels like. It's always in a bit of a flux, right. That's the nature of culture, but we want to help you keep building that team that you are incredibly proud of and that allows you to achieve your mission. So we have an amazing lineup of speakers Pat Gelsinger from Intel, valerie Burton, who is a bestselling author, josh Howerton, who is senior pastor of Lake Point Church, new York Times bestselling author, john Acuff, my great friend Annie Downs, and many more. So mark your calendar, august 10th, and go to cultureconferenceorg to register. And remember it is free to you because we have some amazing sponsors, including our friends at Clever. So, busy leaders, you need to meet Clever, a game-changing agency for all your marketing, creative and communication needs. Their fractional workforce offers expertise as well as on-demand and ongoing project support for all of your graphic design, marketing, website and production needs. We trust Clever with our website and they have exceeded our expectations and feel like a true extension of our team here at Foresight. So, with flexible 30-day contracts and exceptional results, clever delivers success without the high cost of full-time hires. You guys, we have used Clever for several years. They actually help produce the culture conference and they're also sponsoring it this year. So if you need support in marketing, creative communication on website, et cetera, reach out to Clever at weareclevercom, weareclevercom, or call or text 404-585-1953. You can either reach out on their website at weareclevercom, or text, or call at 404-585-1953. And be sure to thank them for sponsoring Culture Conference this year.
Jenni Catron:Okay, so today I want to talk about the conversation that I have with a lot of leaders, why your culture is good until it's not. I talked to so many leaders who are like gosh. I felt like my culture was great, like our team was thriving, everything seemed like it was going really well, and then all of a sudden, i feel like overnight, things changed. I wonder if you've had that experience too. Right, it's like gosh, i thought everything was good And then all of a sudden, like something happened and it feels like we are just, you know, like everything kind of blew up, and I hear that story a lot from leaders.
Jenni Catron:Depending on the circumstances, there are always different things that are contributing to, maybe, a culture that isn't as healthy as we thought it is. Sometimes it is some blind spots for us as leaders, which is why we have our culture blind spot assessment on the website. You've probably had a chance to check that out, but if not, go to getforsightcom and right on the top of the homepage is our culture blind spot assessment, which is free for you to kind of just do a quick check on where might we have some blind spots in our organizational culture, and you know so. The bigger and more complex our organizations get, the harder it is for us, as senior leaders, to have a good pulse on the health of our team. And you guys, i have been there. I have led teams from really just myself when Foresight started and now, where our team is nearly a dozen, i led when I was back at Crosspoint in Nashville. There were five of us when I came on staff and then that team grew to over 75 staff over the course of nine years, and so there were many, many shifts and changes. When I was out at Menlo Park, we had over, i think, 125 on staff. And then, of course, we've worked with teams from, you know, just a couple of people on staff, over 6,000, and one of the big companies that we've partnered with on culture work, and so I've seen it at all different sizes and I've seen the impact on culture in all different ways.
Jenni Catron:But what I often find is that this dynamic of culture really sneaks up on growing organizations, and so what typically happens is you start with a small team of people that you really like and you enjoy and you just want to be with. That's how we start new things, right? Whether you're an entrepreneur and you've started a business or a nonprofit, maybe you're a church planter, maybe you joined a like I have in the past, maybe you joined a relatively small team and you know we're one of the early people on the ground helping get that organization going, and you know you hire people that you know and are connected with. A lot of times people will say to me Jenny, how did you select your coaches on the foresight team? And I was like, well, so far that's been easy, because the coaches that have joined me are people that I know trust, like respect, i know they share the same values that I hold, and so I was able to recruit this first handful of coaches because of, like, deep relationship and great connection. That just made them a natural and very obvious fit.
Jenni Catron:And so that's how most of our organizations start, like that first little small batch of people that are surrounding you are people that you really know, enjoy, trust. Maybe it's a friend of a friend, but who you're bringing to the team is very chemistry driven, right, and so culture in this stage is really a product of chemistry, right, like it's the people we enjoy being with who end up making the team. Now we're looking for competency, we're looking for character, and so that chemistry piece is there. But for the initial stages of organizational growth we often consider culture and chemistry to be the same thing, and when we do that, it ultimately gets us in trouble, and I'll explain why more in a minute.
Jenni Catron:But what you intuitively value is who you recruit to partner with you, so all of your decision making, especially in the early stages of growth, or with a small team. So you could even be a 20 year old organization. But if you just have a handful of employees, because you're kind of slow, steady, wins the race kind of approach to growth, which is absolutely fine When you have, like that small team that's kind of how culture is formed Is that? it's a product of just kind of those connections and chemistry, and what you intuitively value is who you recruit to partner with you, so you're not overly thinking like the deep convictions and values you hold, because you're intuitively picking up on that, because you're partnering with people that you have a good bit of relationship with, and so this is why for so many of your organizations, culture feels great, right, like. I know everybody. I know how they think, i know what they value, i know how they work, i know that we're aligned on these things, and so Culture really feels pretty good at that stage.
Jenni Catron:Because what's happening in those early stages is culture is being formed. Culture exists, whether we acknowledge it or not. It's there, who we are and how we work together. That's happening. We are shaping a culture, even if there's a handful of us around the table, but it's formed without a lot of conscious acknowledgment. Now, some of you may be, because the topic of culture has been much more mainstream and the popular thing to do, and in some ways, almost to its detriment. But most of us are so focused on the mission What are we trying to achieve together that we're not giving as much conscious acknowledgment to culture building.
Jenni Catron:Now, values also are being instilled, unintentionally. You have them. There are values that guide how you work, whether they're values that you really want to live into or not. Let me give you an example. I have a high value of self-leadership. You've heard me say it before lead yourself well to lead others better. I have a high value of self-leadership, so I naturally look for and gravitate to and connect with people who share that same value, people who are learners, people who are growing, people who are intentional about making themselves better.
Jenni Catron:I also, unintentionally, have a value of scarcity. Now, this is not a value that I want to hold to, so I have a more conscious aspirational value of generosity. But when we're in these early days and we're not consciously thinking about our culture or what we really want to instill, those unintended values or those unconscious values will sneak up and creep in. So if I'm not conscious of my tendency towards scarcity, i will nickel and dime everything. I will play it way too safely because I don't want to fail, and so I can unintentionally be instilling those values into my team. I notice this sometimes for us when my team will be working on a project and they might say but we're going to have to invest a little in this, and their assumption will be that I don't want to spend money on it, and I'm like, ah, there's where that unintentional value of scarcity creeps in, because if I am operating out of that without thoughtfulness, i am instilling that into our culture. So there are values that are being instilled unintentionally, and some of those are good and some of them not so good, and so this is one of those reasons why I think it's really important that in these early stages, we get more conscious about how we're shaping culture.
Jenni Catron:What's also happening in these early stages is that we're setting the expectations for how you work, how you spend money. So I kind of already hit on that We're setting those expectations for how you work, how you spend money and how you treat one another, your team, whether it's two or 10, in this early stage growth, they are picking up their clues from you on. Here's how we work together to achieve our mission. So you're setting those expectations, whether you're aware of it or not. And what's also happening is the legends of your culture are being written, like some of those crazy audacious stories of things you pulled off or you know, just the outrageous ideas or things that kind of get you moving. The legends of your culture are being written, and that's that can be pretty fun.
Jenni Catron:But all of this stuff is happening in this or these early stages of growth, and what I want you to notice is how critical it is that we become more conscious of shaping culture, because we think it's not a problem, because at this stage, in these early stages, culture feels pretty great Again because we've gathered people around us who just get us right. We've recruited and rallied friends and people we connect with. Well, not bad, but without more conscious awareness can actually create some fractures later. But what's going on here is it feels great, culture feels great. It's not very formal, like you know. We don't have values written on the wall or we don't have big handbooks of how we work together, like none of that stuff exists. It's not formalized because it's just a handful of us and we're figuring it out as we go.
Jenni Catron:The team really enjoys one another, everyone's involved in everything in these early stages And so culture is really caught right. Like it's just caught, like who we are and how we work together. That's just caught. It's just in the water, it's just what we do, and people often join the team because of the culture. They love the field, they love the camaraderie, they love the community and connection. That's happening right, like all the good pie products of good culture, and culture at this stage also is a very much a direct reflection of the founder or visionary leader, like the key leader in the organization. Culture is really a reflection of that leader, so that all feels awesome, right. And remember we're talking about in this episode why culture is great until it's not Well, as soon as your team kind of eclipses.
Jenni Catron:About 12 staff members is usually where I see this start to unravel. Sometimes we hold it together a little longer than that, But about the time that we can't all sit around the table doing everything together, you know that term, flock ball. You know when a bunch of five year olds are trying to play soccer and they all just flock around the ball and like there's no strategy. It's just like they all kind of hover around the ball and you know kind of get the ball somewhere, but there's no. No, they're not overly intentional, They're not very strategic, they're just kind of all moving together as a group. Well, that's how a lot of our small organizations operate.
Jenni Catron:And so as the organization grows, as the team expands, we start to hit what we would call impredictable success language. We say it's, we've hit white water right, like we've hit the rapids, like things are changing. The business or the organization is growing And all of a sudden it doesn't feel great anymore And we're scratching our head as leaders because we're like we've still got all the same people, like all the people that we used to, you know, love and be connected to and, you know, rallied with us in those early days. Most of them are still here. However, we're starting to see significant turnover. Right, all of a sudden, people are dropping off and leaving and it's pretty unexpected to you, the leader, like you're like. This is why it feels like overnight right, like it felt like things were good, and then it feels like all of a sudden overnight.
Jenni Catron:Now, the reality is this wasn't happening overnight, that your team were feeling it, and it was one of those things that we as leaders can be a little blind to because we're not, as like, directly connected to it and feeling the pain of it in the same way. And so we start to see that significant turnover Staff are doing things that feel a little misaligned with who we are and what we value, and you know the things that just you used to intuitively do. You're seeing misalignment with that and it's super confusing, right, like it just is super frustrating for us as leaders that staff do things that feel misaligned And we're starting to ask the questions of what in the world is going on here. We start to hear staff questioning culture, right, like, all of a sudden, their kind of point and fingers are poking holes into the thing that we thought was actually pretty good, and that becomes really discouraging. We start to see silos emerging, right Like where teams are kind of operating a little bit against each other, right Like everybody used to be for each other, and all of a sudden, these little silos are emerging and everybody's kind of doing their own thing, and what we're realizing at this point is that culture is no longer being caught the way it was when there were just a handful of us, and that's when we have to really move to culture being taught.
Jenni Catron:Now I get some pushback on that that leaders are like gosh, that feels wrong. You're like culture should be organic and culture is just a reflection of who we are. And so how can you teach culture? You can't really teach culture. Culture just has to be caught. Well, it's both and, and what happens at this stage is that we have to get more intentional and really more conscious about our culture, like who are we and how do we work together to achieve our mission? And so, friends, that is why we've got to give some intentionality to our, to our culture and to our, to a definition of who we are and how we work together to achieve that mission, and so that's what I want you to be thinking about.
Jenni Catron:If you are one of those leaders who's like gosh, my culture was great until it wasn't Like what do I do with that? Well, this is where I would say to you it's time to do some assessment of where your culture is, and so this is part of the process. My team and I all of the foresight coaches have been certified in our lead culture framework, which is designed to help you walk through this process of moving from culture just being caught to culture being taught, and you know what happens This is the this is the key ingredient here is that when, once we get more purposeful about our culture, then it does get caught again, right, so then it becomes both caught and taught, and so what you want to do at this stage, if you're one of those leaders who's like gosh, it was so good And now it's not, and I don't know what changed, and I'm really frustrated by that. First of all, i get it, it's not uncommon, and so you're going through some of those growing pains of a team expanding, team, getting larger, and now you've got to put some intentional effort into defining your culture and living into a culture plan. There's some really fascinating research about how all of us believe that culture is good but, like, less than 10% of us have a plan for our culture Right, like, if we think something is worth working on, we usually build a plan for it. And so that's how we help leaders is come alongside them to build that culture plan.
Jenni Catron:So what we do when we're working with you is saying hey, we want to assess what's your current culture. Now, we do that via surveys and discussions and different tools and things. Let's assess your current culture. What's your reality, both those good and not so good values that you're kind of unconsciously been instilling into your culture, into your team. So we assess our reality, like what's true, where are we? Then we define what you want to aspire to like. Who are we at our best? That's one of the big questions we ask. And so defining what do we really aspire to, and then we help you build a plan to close the gap between that actual culture and the aspirational culture. Now, there's always a bit of an aspiration to culture, because we're a bunch of messy humans trying to do all of this work together, and so we're. We never perfect it, but the clearer we can be about what we aspire to like. What do we look like at our best? And then we help you build a plan to live into that aspiration, looking at different ways that we can help you inspire that culture with those values that are so critical, and then looking for the different rhythms and systems throughout your organization and throughout your team that will help you do that well.
Jenni Catron:And so I want to give you a quote from my friend, tim Stevens. Tim is the one of the executive pastors at Willow Creek Community Church And I want to read for you what Tim had to say about helping when Forsyte helped him with their organizational culture. He says in late 2020, our staff was in a tough place. Our team had carried the weight of a significant leadership failure, the isolation of a prolonged pandemic shutdown and demoralizing budget cuts which led to layoffs. We were in a tough place and our culture could only be described as toxic. Over the next year, we partnered with the Forsyte Group to help us assess our culture, discover shared values and begin to plan the rhythms and behaviors to help rebuild toward a place of health.
Jenni Catron:Jenny Catrin and her team guided me and my culture team each step of the way. We didn't need a quick fix, and their team offered us something we couldn't find elsewhere A partner to walk with us over a prolonged period of time. It's not perfect, but our culture has completely turned around and is beginning to thrive. And so, friends, that is what we hope for as we partner with you in culture, whether it's you listen to our podcast, you download our free resources or you have us come and support you and work directly with you. My goal is to help you build that thriving and healthy culture, because your mission matters. What you're doing matters so significantly, but it's hard to do without a healthy team, and so that is why we want to encourage you to keep leaning into the health of your culture. It matters, it's significant and it's really good and important work. So if you resonated today with this idea that your culture was good until, all of a sudden, it wasn't, i hope this got you thinking.
Jenni Catron:Feel free to email me some questions. You can email me at podcast. I get foresightcom and I would love to answer your questions or get someone from my team to reach out and help you walk through, talk through some of the dynamics that you're navigating, because this work matters. You guys, we're also in a time and a space where employees realize how critical it is. They wanna be a part of cultures that are compelling and engaging and exciting and are on mission. They wanna do purposeful work with great teams, and that's what great culture helps you do. So I hope it got you thinking today. Let me know what you thought.
Jenni Catron:What are some of your questions? Email me at podcastgetforsightcom or find us on Instagram at getforsight, or you can find me at Jenny Catrin on all the social channels, including the brand new threads. I just signed up there so we'll see how that goes. And friends, i would love it If this was helpful, if maybe this got you thinking about another organization that maybe your friend works at or that you volunteer for, or you're connected within some way and you're like gosh, this is what they're experiencing. Send it their way and tell them to check it out And then, if you haven't done it yet, would you leave that five star review? I would so appreciate it. It is a great help to us to know how we're doing. That's one of those little measurements that helps us know how are we doing in serving you. So stay connected. Let us know how we can serve you. Email me at podcastgetforsightcom and I will see you next week. Thanks for listening and keep leading well.