270 | The Seven Pillars of a Healthy Culture with Chris Dyer

Thanks for joining us this week on the LeadCulture Podcast. We’re diving deep into the world of high-performing culture with the incredible Chris Dyer!

Chris is sharing his eye-opening journey about how he realized just how crucial organizational culture is and the powerful impact it’s had on his own business. He’s breaking down his framework of seven essential pillars that are game-changers: transparency, listening, recognition, measurement, uniqueness, and learning from mistakes. Chris also talks about the delicate balance leaders need to maintain—never letting one aspect of culture overshadow the others.

He’s all about encouraging leaders to say 'yes' more often and truly empower their team members. Building a vibrant, healthy culture is no small feat, but with consistent effort and a genuine commitment to your people, it’s absolutely within reach. Don’t miss this episode—it’s packed with practical insights and inspiration for anyone looking to elevate their organizational culture!

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Transcript

Jenni Catron (00:02.232)

Hey, leaders, welcome to the Lead Culture Podcast, part of the Art of Leadership Network. I'm your host, Jenny Catron, CEO of the 4sight Group. We're a company dedicated to helping leaders develop thriving teams. Each week, I'll be your guide as we explore practical strategies to equip you with the tools you need to lead with clarity, confidence, 

Jenni Catron (00:28.896)

and build unstoppable momentum in your organization. My mission is to be your trusted coach, empowering you to master the art of self -leadership so you'll learn to lead yourself well, to lead others better. Each week, we take a deep dive on a leadership or a culture topic. You'll hear stories from amazing guests and leaders like you who are committed to leading well. 

Jenni Catron (00:58.04)

So let's dive in and keep learning on this leadership journey together. Today, I am joined by Chris Dyer. Chris is a recognized company culture and remote work expert. As a former CEO managing thousands of people, his companies consistently were named a best place to work. They've also been named a fastest growing company by Inc Magazine five times.  

Jenni Catron (01:25.676)

And Chris routinely consults and speaks and Inc Magazine ranked him as the number one leadership speaker on culture. He has three bestselling books, including the power of company culture and remote work. so Chris and I dive into this topic of organizational culture. Today, I asked him about his seven pillars of company culture. I love his framework around how to think about culture. 

Jenni Catron (01:54.44)

And so we dive into that. And one of the things that really got my attention was topic of transparency. And you're going to love hearing what Chris has to say about the importance of transparency and what that can look like in a healthy organizational culture. Another key point that I love is when he talks about empowerment and that culture really is that people are empowered, that we're creating an environment, we're creating a place 

Jenni Catron (02:23.266)

where people truly feel empowered to contribute in a meaningful way. That stood out to me in particular because I was working with an organization just this past week. And as we did their culture work and identified some of the core issues inhibiting their culture, empowerment was one of the top things that they found was holding their team back. So that just resonated deeply. You're gonna love what Chris has to say. So many places where he helps make building a healthy culture actionable. 

Jenni Catron (02:53.176)

So here's my conversation with Chris Dyer. 

Jenni Catron (00:01.857)
Chris, it is a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. Thanks for joining me.

Chris Dyer (00:06.488)
Thanks so much for having me, Jenny.

Jenni Catron (00:08.513)
I was excited, I think a mutual friend connected the two of us. And then as I began to look at the work you do, I was like, we should be fast friends. The interest around organizational culture, company culture, I was like, okay, I need to know Chris. So here we are and I'm excited about our convo today. But I'd love for you maybe to start out with why culture? Where did that topic, how did that topic emerge for you as a passion?

Chris Dyer (00:37.74)
Yeah, so it emerged out of an absolute necessity. I guess, you know, my degree was like more sociology. I do enjoy like knowing why people do what they do. And I kind of had like a focus on the criminal justice side of, you know, why do people commit crimes? Like why are there more crimes when it's, you know, the moon is out and things like that. I kind of always get a little fascinated about why do, yeah, right.

Jenni Catron (01:00.865)
curious about all that. Yeah.

Chris Dyer (01:03.96)
And then I went and started a business and I got completely uncurious about it. And I ran the business like a sports team. was, you know, it was a bit of rah rah rah, but like I was essentially, you know, if you didn't do what I wanted you to do, I'd be like threatening, you know, maybe you guys need to do pushups or go do laps around the building, but like, that's not a real thing you can do. and so we did okay. And then the recession hit in 08 and we were flailing and we were going to fail. And I was like,

Why am I the only one coming up with big ideas? Why am I the only one who's trying to save the company? Why is everyone just sitting here staring at me, waiting for the answer? And that's when the light bulb went on and I went, hi, it's me. I'm the problem, right? Like I'm the reason that they're sitting and waiting. I'm the reason why they're not coming up with ideas because I haven't done anything to ever nurture that in the past. Or if I did, I'd...

Jenni Catron (01:37.505)
Hmm.

Jenni Catron (02:00.158)
interesting.

Chris Dyer (02:01.372)
intentionally or unintentionally dissuaded them from doing that, right? Or I didn't give them the space to talk and to think and I took over or, you know, like, and so there was so many things in there of like, yeah, it's me. I'm the CEO, I'm the boss. if, you know, so I went, okay, cool. I'm going to fix it. And then it was like, so how do I fix it? You know, if, you wanted to fix your car,

Jenni Catron (02:15.723)
Mm -hmm.

Chris Dyer (02:27.148)
yourself, you could go on a YouTube video, go buy a book, look at a manual, like you could find the answer very clearly. And I went to go find the answer and it wasn't out there. There were bits and pieces, you know, but there wasn't like a holistic, what are you supposed to do about culture? And so I set out on this journey to like figure it out and it worked really, really well. And then people started asking me to share what we were doing.

Jenni Catron (02:40.769)
Sure, yeah.

Chris Dyer (02:55.938)
and they started asking me to speak and then somebody was crazy enough to ask me to write a book and then another book and another book. And like, it's just turned into like me being curious and loving this idea and trying to be as good at it as I can has turned into so many other things and helped so many other employees and companies. So that's kind of the, it's addictive to me now, right? I can go do a speech and help like a thousand people not hate their jobs. Like that's awesome. And so I really.

Jenni Catron (03:16.373)
Right?

Jenni Catron (03:21.823)
That's so good. Yeah. I love that because my story was rather similar in that all of a sudden I discovered that the experience that I was having as an employee was radically changed because of some circumstances. And then I moved into a leadership role where I had more direct influence over the experience the team was having. And I was like, wait, how do I lead this? And I love how you identified, hey, it's me. It starts with me. How am I leading?

the team to an environment and a culture that's actually inspiring and engaging. And, but you're right. Then you go, well, how, right? How, how do we do this? Because I think a lot of organizations, I'd love to hear your perspective on this kind of accidentally have good cultures until they don't. And then they don't, they don't know what to do to improve it or, you know, even recreate what they had in the past. So speak to that a little bit of, do you, well, I'd love even to know a little bit more of how you.

what you found in how to actually lead a healthy culture. Like what was the formula you ended up stumbling upon?

Chris Dyer (04:30.368)
Yeah, so I came up with these seven specific things and I, so I used to have these glass windows in my office when we were all in one building and I would be writing things down and racing them. And I ended up coming up with seven words that I decided were really important. And this came from, I was reading like hundreds of books. I was going to every conference I could go to. I was listening to every great speaker. I was talking to every, you know, successful person, business person, mentor, like

What do you do? What do you don't do? Like I was, I really was studying these people and they were all telling me and I was reading about the same thing, you know? And so I might get a really good book and I'd be like, okay, listening is really important. And I'd be hearing from all these other people how important it is to communicate well and to listen to your employees. But like, but that's only one part. You can be a great listener and your culture can be great at listening and then you can suck at everything else and your culture is not.

Jenni Catron (05:10.379)
Hmm.

Jenni Catron (05:23.617)
That's good.

Chris Dyer (05:29.622)
be great. Right. And so I think we get overly focused on just doing this one thing, right, because the speaker wants to sell you a book about that or whatever. And it's a bit more broad than that. And so once I got those seven up on the board and I kept testing and pushing and we kept talking about it internally and you know, my company is growing now, like as we're doing this work with culture, we're rapidly growing. were

Jenni Catron (05:30.22)
Right?

Jenni Catron (05:40.353)
Mm -hmm.

Chris Dyer (05:55.48)
five times fastest growing company on the ink list, five years running, all of a sudden we were our best place to work 15 years in a row. None of that stuff ever happened before, ever. And yeah.

Jenni Catron (06:08.853)
Wow. Hey, really quick, what was your business, Chris? Because I'm sure our listeners are curious.

Chris Dyer (06:13.9)
Yeah, I owned a human capital company. We were called People G2. We did background checks and drug testing and employee screening and personality tech. I all this kind of stuff when you were going to hire somebody. We were part of that mechanism. We worked with all the big software companies and integrated, and we had to work really in that human capital system. So I started off just speaking to HR folks because those were my customers. Those were my people.

Jenni Catron (06:25.897)
Yep, yep.

Chris Dyer (06:40.682)
And I'm telling them like, hey, your culture doesn't have to suck and here's how to do it. And that caught kind of caught fire. so there's these seven things and I don't know if you want to go through them or where you want to take that, but that's really like the basis. And I have spent my years since then continuing to test and push and, ask the question, am I right? Is there a different word?

Jenni Catron (06:47.093)
Yeah.

Jenni Catron (07:06.378)
Right, yep.

Chris Dyer (07:08.088)
Should I replace one of these? And I've still stayed since 2009, know, and now it's 2024 after this recording. It hasn't changed. They're still rock solid.

Jenni Catron (07:17.995)
They're still, yeah, they're still holding. Yeah. That's so good. Yeah. I would love, mean, I don't want you to give them all away because we need to go, we need to go get it, but give us the seven and then I'd love for you to hit on a couple of them that you think are, are there a couple that are disproportionately important, maybe disproportionately important in the season we're in? So give us the seven and then give us a little commentary on the ones that are peaking your curiosity right now.

Chris Dyer (07:45.228)
Yeah. Yeah. So the pillars of the pillars are transparency, listening, recognition, measurement, uniqueness, and mistakes.

Jenni Catron (07:59.925)
Hmm. Okay.

Chris Dyer (08:02.306)
So the real answer to that question is if you're listening to this and you heard those seven words and one of those words made you flinch and one of those words you were like, my company does not do that. That's the one you need to go focus on. That's the one that's the biggest thing. Right now, I find that most companies are pretty bad at transparency and they're pretty bad at leveraging mistakes or dealing with mistakes in a healthy way. So those two are pretty big.

Jenni Catron (08:17.995)
There we go.

Chris Dyer (08:31.832)
We can always be better listeners. We can have a better recognition program. We can focus on what makes us unique. And that's not just your employees. That's your marketing. That's your clients. That's like everything, right? We don't want to talk about what makes us the same. In the book, I give this silly example of like, if you were selling those boring yellow number two pencils, how do you possibly stand out?

Jenni Catron (08:42.091)
Yeah.

Jenni Catron (08:53.514)
You

Chris Dyer (08:57.506)
Right? If you're selling them alongside everybody else, right? That's the game. And like, how do you talk through that? And we can take that example and talk through it as employees or what do we offer? mean, we are a business, we have employees. It's pretty, that's pretty universal to any other company, but what makes us unique? What makes our people unique? So if we would take two of those, let's just say, I don't know if there was maybe one or two that you thought would be interesting. I'm happy to go down that road or I can pick for you. I don't know.

Jenni Catron (08:57.771)
That's right. Yeah.

Jenni Catron (09:25.983)
Well, where I started to go as I was listening to you talk about them a little bit is, do you find there's a, I wonder if there's pairings because like you mentioned like transparency and mistakes can be sticky ones. I'm wondering about, like, I feel like some cultures are one -sided, you know, that there's the, they might do a good job acknowledging and listening, but that, you know,

good feedback around mistakes and how we handle mistakes or the transparency and decision making or whatever that might be. Like, is there a, and one of them is measurement, right? Like I'm actually kind of curious about that one. Cause I think sometimes people assume that good culture is the kind of kumbaya everybody loves everybody, but then the accountability side of the equation gets, you know, isn't as strong.

Chris Dyer (10:16.141)
Mm

Jenni Catron (10:19.595)
So is there kind of a dichotomy? almost hear a balance as you say the seven, and I'm curious how you would respond to that.

Chris Dyer (10:26.752)
Yeah, mean, because you can be on the transparency and positivity side, positive leadership, and you can do good recognition and kumbaya, you're right. And then like, but did we actually make our sales number? And do we actually know what's profitable for us to be selling? And do we know what's actually working? And do we know who in the company is doing a great job and maybe who's not? Then we need to fix that.

Jenni Catron (10:51.841)
Right, right?

Chris Dyer (10:53.08)
Right, so measurements important. And to your point, I've seen the opposite where we are not kumbaya. Everything is measurement. Everything is like managing off a spreadsheet. We don't treat people like human beings. And it's like, yes, but column E says our profit is only 16 % this way. So we're going to fire everyone in this department. And you're like, dude, like that doesn't make any sense. So we can definitely get lopsided in these pillars. We can measure too much.

Jenni Catron (11:04.075)
That's right.

Jenni Catron (11:17.835)
Yeah.

Chris Dyer (11:20.972)
So I always say measure what matters. Now, you could be somebody who's listening to this and say, listen, I manage five people. I don't have anything to do with the larger organization. Or maybe my organization is built on purpose. We're not built around profit. We're built on purpose. And we have a particular mission and we know what that is, but like, what am I supposed to do if I got five people?

Well, measurement could be, we value people who say thank you. Do you measure that? Like, right? We value people who would stop and help somebody else out, who will do a five minute favor at work. And so do you measure that? Do you talk about that in your meeting of like, hey, John and Sally, they stopped and helped me this week. I had this huge problem. They gave me like five minutes of their time.

Jenni Catron (11:57.675)
That's great.

Chris Dyer (12:17.206)
and it really got me unstuck so I didn't have to spend hours researching stuff. Thank you. Right? And calling that out. Like that's measurement, right? We're identifying what's important to us and that we are measuring when it happens and calling it out and rewarding and recognizing and writing the other pillar in, right? We're being positive about what we like and not focusing on what the heck, guys? No one helped me out. I asked for help. No one said anything. No.

Jenni Catron (12:26.837)
Right, yep.

Jenni Catron (12:40.853)
That's good.

Chris Dyer (12:47.126)
reward the one who did, right? John said, I'll help you. Don't go back to the other four and go, well, how come you guys didn't help me? I mean, that's the bad, that's the negative side of it. So we can, we can ingest it like really small little layers. And we can also take it to the huge, you know, obtuse extremes as well. It just depends on where you are in the organization.

Jenni Catron (12:48.501)
That's right. Yeah.

Jenni Catron (12:58.571)
Yeah, for sure.

Jenni Catron (13:09.749)
Yeah, that's really good. I love how you point out there that wherever we are, we can start modeling and living into these pillars, even if we're not the top of the organization with all the influence. It's like every one of us is impacting and influencing it. Is there one of these that if it's missing is incredibly detrimental or

Or is there one that it's like, is like, if you get this one wrong, it's hard to get the others right. Is there any order to them? Maybe is the question.

Chris Dyer (13:43.254)
Yeah, mean, transparency is a big one because if we are not sharing openly with people what our goals are, what our purpose is, maybe what on it, like it shocks me. I will go in and I will have companies call me and organizations call me and go, hey, this team is really struggling. Like we don't know what's going on and I'll go into that team and I'll be like, hey, so do you know each other's goals are? And they go, no, like, so you're all on the same team.

and none of you know what each other's goals are.

Jenni Catron (14:16.181)
So good. Yeah. But so common, right? Yeah.

Chris Dyer (14:19.608)
That is the common thing. It is the exception that people generally... And I'm like, cool, so let's start there. What is everyone's goals this year? How are you all being judged on your performance as a person, a member of this organization? And you go around and you realize that everyone's got these goals and you're like, suddenly the light bulbs start going off. And they're like, this is why David doesn't want to ever do this thing that I want him to do because his goals are these three things. He doesn't care.

or he's not even thinking about my thing because his goal is like one, two, and three, and I'm over here with A, B, and C. And you're like, and if I want him to help me, I need to put this in the lens or the perspective of what's important or what he's being told is important about his job by somebody else, right? And then larger.

Jenni Catron (14:57.024)
right?

Jenni Catron (15:08.021)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Dyer (15:13.482)
Outside of that, like, do each department know what each other's goals are? Does everyone know, like, how everybody's doing? Do we show up to a meeting once a month and talk about, these are our goals, this is where we are so far, this is the progress we've made, this is what we're struggling, we could use some help, like, we don't know what to do? Are we openly talking about the good, the bad, the ugly, and sharing all of that? Because when people don't know something,

Jenni Catron (15:34.433)
That's right.

Chris Dyer (15:41.196)
They immediately fill in the gaps with their past negative experiences, not their positive ones, right? If you and I work together and every day when you walk in the office, you normally say hi or you wave or whatever, and two days in a row you walk in, you don't even look at me and you go right to your desk, what am I going to assume? Well, the last time this happened at a job, it's because someone was mad at me.

Jenni Catron (15:50.772)
Yep.

Chris Dyer (16:10.176)
Or maybe I'm getting fired. Or maybe I did something wrong or like whatever. And then if I actually went to you and be like, hey, I noticed like when you came in in the morning, seemed upset, is everything okay? And you're like, yeah, my grandma's really sick. We think she might pass away any day now. And you're like, it had nothing to do with me. At all.

Jenni Catron (16:14.944)
That's right.

Jenni Catron (16:29.759)
Nothing to do with me. Yeah, but you're right. Yeah, we fill in that storyline with that. Like you said, the past negative experience and that's really good. Okay, so question here for you, cause that was also helpful and I think everybody listening is like relates to this.

Are we, is it busyness? What is it that keeps us from understanding each other's goals, know, kind of priorities that, that inhibits the transparency? What is, what do you think is the biggest thing keeping us from that level of communication, connection that helps us, you know, work together better?

Chris Dyer (17:12.236)
the team level, it's the team leader's job to facilitate that and get people curious and interested in talking about that. hey, yes, you have your goals, but we want everyone to be successful here. And can we work as a real team to make sure everyone reaches their goals? And we can only do that if we know what those are. So I think that's the responsibility of a manager. Often there's this weird, like, we're going to have one -on -ones and we're only going to talk about it. And no one says not to talk about it, but for some reason we don't ever talk about it.

Jenni Catron (17:19.434)
Mm -hmm.

Chris Dyer (17:40.982)
Maybe you have like a bestie on your team and you might talk to them about it, like your team, just don't understand where, why this imaginary wall of like goal privacy showed up one day, but it's there and it needs to be knocked down right away. At the higher level, it is the senior levels team's job to be as transparent as possible so that our people know, because even when there's bad news, my people were always

Jenni Catron (17:53.568)
right?

Chris Dyer (18:10.296)
You could see them take a breath and the anxiety level go down. Even when I told them all of the terrible things happened, like during COVID, here's the 900 terrible things we're dealing with today. But because I told them what it was, I told them what we were thinking about, I told them what we were planning on doing, I told them when we had to change the plan, which we did like every day, it felt like during COVID, it was like, well, this is the new rules we're under, here's the new plan, everybody, right?

Jenni Catron (18:23.936)
right?

Chris Dyer (18:40.086)
They were okay because they were like, I trust that you understand what the real problem is. You've told me this. You seem to be dealing with it and you have a plan. Whereas if I just said, well, we don't really know what's going on. I don't really tell anybody. Then they're like, my God, is the company going to go under? Do I need to look for another job? Should I be freaked out? So they're bringing in extra stress and anxiety. They don't need.

Jenni Catron (19:02.689)
That's right.

Jenni Catron (19:07.883)
That's so good.

Chris Dyer (19:09.428)
Also, like, we would give people our P &L. I I told everyone, I gave everyone a copy of our P &L, like the summary, not the high detail. And we gave each team the high detail that was in their area of responsibility. And people started coming up with ideas on how to save money. They start, right, and then start asking like, well, why do we spend money on this? well, here is why, right? And we would talk about it.

Jenni Catron (19:18.106)
Of course.

Jenni Catron (19:28.833)
That's so brilliant. Yep.

Chris Dyer (19:36.448)
And like, then people started understanding how things work and they came up with better ideas or they had more empathy for a different department that maybe like, Hey, we realize you guys have really low margins, really hard to do what you do. Like we understand now, like why you're so freaking stressed out, you know? and so I think transparency is that one of like, if you're just hiding everything and you're keeping it close, cause you're afraid people are going to ask for raises if you're doing too well, and they're going to leave if they would tell them you're doing bad.

Jenni Catron (19:51.157)
Yeah.

Chris Dyer (20:05.846)
You just can't exist as a company. Trust me, I was there. It doesn't work.

Jenni Catron (20:11.595)
That's so good, Chris. And I think, I mean, there's clearly a reason why that one stands out because I think leaders get fearful of what to share or just like you said, you know, for just even the few examples you noted, we end up holding back instead of really bringing the team in with us. Like you said, they start bringing solutions. They start helping solve the problem when they have more understanding of where we are and what our reality is.

So I love that so much. Question for you, do you find that most leaders think culture is important and are they just too busy or distracted or to give it the attention it deserves? Or is there a lack of awareness of the importance of it? Like in all the work you've done with all the organizations you're serving, it's like, I mean, I think some of the data around employee engagement and organizational culture is not great.

And yet when you ask leaders if they think it's important, they kind of give lip service to it. So I'm curious, what do you think is holding us back from this like healthy organizational culture being the reality for most teams?

Chris Dyer (21:24.792)
So it's a great word that you use, which was healthy. And I want to equate this to, you know, if every day you went and went for a walk and every day you ate a little bit more healthy stuff and a little bit less portions and a little less of the junk, right? It wouldn't be that hard to do. I'm not asking anybody to suddenly go from, let's say,

they're, whatever they're eating to suddenly like, only get a thousand calories a day or now you have to be a vegan or like, like I'm not asking anyone to go to this extreme. I'm saying if you just do a little bit of work and then what people don't realize is the massive benefit they see out of it. Cause most people, you know, go on and they walk every day, they exercise every day, they eat a little bit healthier. Like they're pretty healthy, right?

Jenni Catron (21:57.43)
right?

Chris Dyer (22:19.8)
And, and they're feel better and they look better and they, they live longer and all of that. But like, it's not like you do one thing and you suddenly lose 20 pounds. Right? It's not like I do, I eat one meal healthy and suddenly my cholesterol is okay. This is not in, so it's kind of the same thing with culture. Like we have to, to do this work. And then all of sudden we look in the rear view mirror and we go, it's so good. Now the other thing is that.

Jenni Catron (22:28.043)
That's right.

Jenni Catron (22:35.723)
Habits, yeah.

Jenni Catron (22:46.464)
I love that.

Chris Dyer (22:48.076)
Generally people are not putting enough effort into this and so they have so many problems and so many issues happening that they feel like they don't have the time. And if that's you, I promise you that if you just start making the time to do it, all of these problems and all of the stuff that is constantly coming at you as a leader will dissipate because your people will feel more empowered to help you.

come with better ideas and they will feel like they understand what you're going to even say before you say it because you've been transparent, you've talked to them about it, we've talked about what worked on this project or what didn't work. They already start to know and so they can help you in a much more efficient way. That was a struggle I had, like everything had to come through my desk, everything had to come through my head.

Jenni Catron (23:40.566)
Yeah.

Chris Dyer (23:42.572)
That worked when I had seven employees. didn't work when I had thousands of employees and I was still trying to do that and it didn't work.

Jenni Catron (23:48.129)
So true. I love that so much because I think sometimes we think there's a magic, something magical we can do or a one -day event that fixes culture or we do whatever the new thing is that we're hearing about. And it really is that simple and consistent commitment to the things that are, and I think your seven pillars give us a framework for that, right?

How can we simply and consistently live into the culture we aspire to? And also recognizing it isn't an overnight thing. It is, you I love the health analogy because it is a commitment to what we really want to be true of our culture and how our team operates and not just, you know, a flash in the pan episodic thing that, you know, creates a kumbaya moment for a minute, but doesn't actually create the lasting impact that really builds great culture. Okay.

Last question for you here. If a leader isn't sure that their culture is healthier going the right direction, what one thing would you encourage them to do today?

Chris Dyer (24:59.852)
I would encourage them to go spend the rest of the day or the week or the month or whatever they can swallow, going around and saying yes to every question that's asked of them. Now, a little bit of help. You can have Yes and and Yes but, right, and get around it. If anyone's ever seen the Jim Carrey movie, there's actually an old British movie that that comes from. And also there's a fantastic book by Shonda Rhimes called A Year of Yes.

where I got inspired to do this. I spent an entire year saying yes to every single question asked of me. And it took me to the craziest places around the world and into situations I never would have thought I'd ever be in, made friends I would have never made. mean, like the results were huge, but just for the average leader right now, if you just say yes for the whole day to everything, and don't tell anyone you're gonna do this. That's another little caveat, right?

Jenni Catron (25:36.117)
Wow.

Jenni Catron (25:55.905)
It kind of defeats the purpose, right? Yeah.

Chris Dyer (25:59.288)
So don't go around advertising it, but just start saying yes and you'll be shocked at the sudden shift in energy and how people start to act differently and they approach things differently and their guard comes down, you have better conversations, you know? And even if it's something ridiculous, they're like, we're like, you know you would always say no. There's a way to say yes, but the...

Jenni Catron (26:25.985)
Mm -hmm.

Chris Dyer (26:27.14)
The crazy example I always give is somebody says, hey, can we start selling meth? Yes, but you're going to have to get the law changed first. Right? Like, I'm willing to consider your proposal, but you're to need to go get that law changed. As of right now, it's illegal to sell meth, so yeah, we have that little obstacle in the way. Right? Obviously, no one's going to be that crazy and extreme, but like there's a way to say yes to even the most ridiculous extreme things. Right?

Jenni Catron (26:36.641)
There you go, I love it, I love it.

Jenni Catron (26:52.629)
Ridiculous. Yup.

Chris Dyer (26:55.768)
That's not generally going to happen. But you'll find your people, like there's a shift in them. Right away when they're like, there was no resistance there. You're willing to talk to me about it? Right.

Jenni Catron (27:04.833)
They didn't expect that. Yeah. I mean, even as you say that, I'm thinking about myself of like, whoa, what would that look like if I just engaged a day a week or whatever it might be? And I think what I love about it is it also puts me as the leader into a little bit different posture. There's a, if I'm approaching it with a yes, I'm...

I'm forcing myself to not default to maybe the no that might be more common or the skepticism that maybe is crept into, you know, how we do things or how we approach things, just, you know, the old patterns. It's like, I almost noticed that if I were forced to say yes to everything, it would make me more curious and just more open. And I think that's the point you're getting at. And then that's creating an environment where

Chris Dyer (28:01.527)
Yeah.

Jenni Catron (28:03.307)
team members feel that receptivity from their leader instead of the resistance from their leader. Is that fair summary?

Chris Dyer (28:09.472)
Yeah, mean, it's hey, tell me more. Like, help me understand your idea here. Let's talk through it. That's a way of saying yes. You always have to use that exact words. I've done trainings for people around the world and some cultures are like, listen, if I say yes, that is a binding contract. Like, it is different than in America where we say yes and it's like a very loose like, know, yeah, I'm interested. I'll talk to you about it. So there's different ways of being

Jenni Catron (28:17.963)
Mm -hmm.

Jenni Catron (28:34.741)
Right?

Chris Dyer (28:38.776)
positive and open to the idea and talking about it. Anything that we do when it relates to culture is ultimately, there's probably two things to remember. One is, you know, the framework and what we need to do to have a great culture is easy. Okay. Sorry, I'm sorry. It's simple. It's not easy. It's simple.

Jenni Catron (28:42.667)
So valuable.

Jenni Catron (29:02.539)
Great, yep.

Chris Dyer (29:03.276)
So the framework is simple, what we need to do is simple, but it's never gonna be easy. It's gonna take work and consistency over time. And ultimately what we're trying to do is ensure that people feel empowered.

Jenni Catron (29:09.515)
That's good.

Chris Dyer (29:18.136)
At end of the day, do you feel empowered to do your job? Am I, as your leader, creating the right environment, getting out my virtual machete and clearing away all the junk out of your way so you can go get stuff done? Am I creating an empowered experience for you? And it doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want. It doesn't mean like you go from being customer service agent number three to the CEO tomorrow. But like, how do I help you today?

and be able to do that so you feel more empowered to get your job done and like it and enjoy the people around you, or at least not hate it, want to go home and scream in the pillow.

Jenni Catron (29:59.487)
Right. That's so good, Chris. Culture is simple, not necessarily easy. And it really is about that people feel empowered, but we're really empowering people, not even feel that we are empowering people. So good. Okay. I probably could keep pulling on a bunch of additional questions, but this was so valuable. And you gave us some really practical things to be thinking about. How can we connect more with you, find your resources and keep, keep learning from you.

Chris Dyer (30:29.282)
So probably a few things. I will give you the links. I mean, you can have in the show notes. If anyone wants to follow me on all the socials, I do a lot on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and all that, LinkedIn, of course. So if you want to connect in any of those places, I'm happy to say yes. If you would like some ideas on how you can further improve your culture, I have some ideas around like how do you do a one question survey every week.

Jenni Catron (30:34.741)
We sure will.

Chris Dyer (30:57.464)
different meeting types you might consider doing to help kind of change up your culture and how you interact with your team. So if you'd like that free little download, I'm happy to send it to you. All you have to do is text 33777, that's the number, and then you just put my first name, Chris, and you send it, and then it will send you back the PDF, and that's a free little goodies in there that you can use right now.

Jenni Catron (31:23.553)
That's awesome. Awesome. Chris, thank you so much. We will link everything in the show notes. And for that resource, people can just text your name, Chris, to the number 33777. Is that right?

Chris Dyer (31:39.128)
That's correct, 33777, just Chris, yep.

Jenni Catron (31:41.729)
Perfect. Awesome. Chris, thank you so much. Thanks for the work that you are doing to help leaders build great teams, build great cultures. We're super grateful and we have learned so much today. So thanks for joining me.

Chris Dyer (31:54.668)
Thanks for having me.

Jenni Catron (03:00.002)

All right, friends, so good, right? I feel like Chris and I, I'd love so much more time with him to keep learning and listening to him and how he is approaching organizational culture. So many, so many shared thoughts and beliefs around that topic. I would love to know what you thought of this week's episode. What was helpful? What additional questions do you have? And how can we help you answer those or help equip you? 

Jenni Catron (03:28.034)

to navigate some of the questions that you have around organizational culture and or leadership. You can connect with me on Instagram at either at getforsight, G -E -T, the number four S -I -G -H -T, or I'm at JennyKatrin, J -E -N -N -I -C -A -T -R -O -N. You can also find us on LinkedIn at the Foresight Group and at JennyKatrin. So we would love to connect with you there. And I'd love it if you'd share this episode. Tell somebody else about it. 

Jenni Catron (03:57.91)

Listen to it together as a team and then process some of your learning. Such as easy and simple way to invest in your culture by learning together. And then if we can help you with more leadership resources, make sure that you are signed up for the lead culture, not the lead culture. This is the lead culture. Make sure you are signed up for our weekly insights newsletter, which is my monthly email, not monthly. Gosh, you guys, I'm getting it all wrong today. It is my weekly email. 

Jenni Catron (04:26.658)

that I send with ideas around leadership and culture. And it's also the first place that I share news and upcoming events. So I am so glad that you are here with us. Thank you for joining us for the Lead Culture podcast and we will see you next week.