274 | Navigating Change in Culture and Growth

In this episode of the Lead Culture Podcast, Jenni Catron discusses various leadership and culture-related questions submitted by listeners. The conversation covers topics such as preparing for the upcoming year, addressing board contention, fostering a culture of growth, combating team burnout, navigating leadership disconnects, and maintaining stability during organizational changes. Jenni emphasizes the importance of self-leadership, team engagement, and the need for a clear culture strategy to achieve organizational success.

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Transcript

Jenni Catron (00:02.968)
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, 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 so you can 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. So let's dive in and keep learning on this leadership journey together. Friends, Merry Christmas. If you're listening to this yet in 2024, I hope you had an amazing Christmas week, got some really good time with family and friends. And if you're like me, the week between Christmas and New Year is just an opportunity to focus on

the big picture, dream about the year ahead, do some planning, lots of catch up. And I thought that this would be a fun week to do a Q &A episode. In fact, a number of you have sent in questions in response to some of our weekly insights, newsletters, where we've been asking you, what are you thinking about in regard to your culture for the year ahead? Specifically, what are some of the culture things that you wanna focus on?

in 2025? What current challenges are you ready to tackle in 2025? So I have a handful of the questions that some of you have submitted and I'm going to get into that today because I actually think you've asked some really good questions and hopefully I can start pointing you in the right direction of some things to think about as you're preparing for 2025 and I really want 2025 to be the year that you do build that unstoppable

Jenni Catron (02:23.916)
team like that team that is unified, aligned, they are engaged, they are on mission with you. Because when you have an engaged and aligned team that is on mission, I truly do believe your team becomes unstoppable. So before we get to those questions though, I want to make sure are you registered for the Culture Matters Summit? This is happening on January 23rd. It's a free half day event where we're going to help you unlock your team's potential with a culture strategy.

that works. I want you to join 3,000 plus culture-focused leaders at the Culture Matters Summit. It's a high-impact virtual event to equip you with the strategies and insights needed to make culture your competitive advantage. 90 % of leaders believe culture is essential, but less than 25 % of you have a plan to shape it intentionally, and that's what I want to help you do. That is what the Culture Matters book is all about.

That is what the summit is going to help you do. You're going to hear from experts from Barna, Belay, Janaris, Clever Marketing. You're going to hear from Mark Miller, who is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author. Nona Jones is going to join us. Matt Randerson from Barna and a host of leaders who are going to bring just really helpful, thoughtful insights into how to build that thriving culture that you aspire to. go to culturematterssummit.com. It's free.

register, mark the day for your team from one to 4 PM central time on January 23rd. Just mark out that afternoon, make it a staff event and watch these sessions together. You can get the all access pass. You can upgrade to that. That'll give you a workbook, a copy of the culture matters book and a bunch of extra resources, including the recordings of the summit that you can use to follow up and really build that culture plan. So culturemattersummit.com.

go get registered and make sure you join us. It's going to be a fantastic day. I've gotten some sneak peeks on the talks. You guys, it's really good. So culturemattersummit.com go get registered for that. Okay. Let's look at these questions that I received. And this is the first time I've done this. So this is not going to be overly polished because I am kind of coaching in the moment on these questions. I jotted a couple of notes, but I really kept this to just respond.

Jenni Catron (04:48.842)
more live in the moment to the question that I got from some of the leaders that submitted these. So here's the first question. This individual said, I've got a board that is rife with unproductive contention, just lots of contention among the board. People who have been a part of it and stepped off of it see that contention, the people who hang around, maybe not quite as much. It's kind of the culture they've become used to, right? So like when they're in it, they're not seeing it.

So this individual says, where do you start in trying to shape a board towards something healthier than stuck in a rut of contention? Now, have you all been a part of a team or, know, and it could be a board, it could be a volunteer team, could be a staff team where it's just kind of contentious, like that's just the mode of operation. Well, that's a culture thing, right? Because somehow in some way that contention, that contentious,

type of environment was set and so anybody new who comes in just assumes, this is the way we operate. So it just gets repeated. And so my encouragement to the leader who submitted this, by the way, I'm not using names because I didn't check with people ahead of time to make sure they wanted their name or their organization shared because they probably don't when we're talking about some of these things. So what I would say to this leader is, first of all, I would name it. And the thing I love about a new year is it's an opportunity to kind of just hit the pause button.

and say, hey, we're starting on a new year. What do we hope for? What do we envision? What do we aspire to? And that is what I would do with this board is I would name the contention that we feel and name it by identifying a few very specific instances where, hey, when we had this discussion back in November, notice how contentious that was when in fact,

The decision we needed to make or the action wasn't that big of a deal, but we kind of made it kind of contentious in the moment when in fact the outcome wasn't that big a deal. I'm making this up because I don't know this individual specifics, but find a specific situation and say, I think that we probably could have been a little more collaborative in that, or I, or I wish we could have been a little more collaborative in that. Start painting a picture of what you hope for and then bring that group in. What you're looking for is do they.

Jenni Catron (07:05.952)
if you bring awareness to it, do they acknowledge, yeah, I guess we kind of do do that. So you're going to need to use some emotional intelligence in how you bring this up and saying, hey, I noticed when I was reflecting that we tend to kind of operate with a little bit of contention. Do y'all notice that? Here's an example. And you're looking for them. So you want to not make them defensive, but seek agreement on that. And it might be that you talk to one or two people ahead of time who have maybe acknowledged it or named it.

They'll be quick to kind of come with you in that conversation of, we tend to do this. Could we do, could we do this better? Could we do this different? So you're looking for agreement. then with that group, with some acknowledgement of, yeah, I think that's not what we look like at our best. Define who do we want to be? How do we want to operate together? You know, my definition of culture is clarity of who we are and how we work together to achieve our mission. And so for all of you, that would be a great,

beginning of the year discussion with any team is, who are we and how do we work together to achieve our mission? So who are we is rooted in mission, right? Who are we is, this is what we do, this is the purpose we do it for. How we work together are those values, beliefs and behaviors that guide our interaction. And unintentionally, contention has become one of the behaviors of this group. So.

To this leader, I would say, see if you can get everybody to acknowledge, yeah, we do kind of operate kind of contentiously. And I don't know if that's what we look like at our best. What do we aspire to? How do we want to work together this year to really achieve our mission? What would we look like at our best? Those couple of questions could go a long way in helping the team get alignment around what they hope for, and then start to give some greater definition to.

What are the values or behaviors that we want to be true of who, who we are as a team and how we work together and use that to hopefully start helping shape the future. Okay. The second one is, from a leader who says, I would like to hear a discussion on holding our team to a higher standard to create a culture where the team's success matters and there's room for growth within the organization for the ones who want it. So.

Jenni Catron (09:24.75)
What I'm hearing in this one is, we want the whole team to feel the importance of succeeding together and we want individuals to have room for growth. Like if people want to grow and develop internally, and I'm actually hearing this a lot. So for the leader who sent this in, I'm hearing a lot of desire for development plans. A lot of young leaders are saying, what's my pathway for growth? And if you're particularly in a smaller organization, there's not always clear like,

growth pathways by title changes, Ascending up the ladder, so to speak, because we're a small team, there's not a lot of managers, directors, et cetera. But there's always room for every person on the team to go, to grow. So my question for you is, how effective are you and or your team in having those one-on-one conversations? I'm a big believer in one-on-one.

conversations with the people you manage is really important for ongoing development. That's a, that's the weekly spot. I prefer weekly, maybe every other week, but no fewer than every other week. my opinion, to just do check-ins with your team, with each individual, Hey, how are you doing? What are you working on? What roadblocks do you have? How can I help you grow? And what you're doing is you're creating ongoing conversation for you to know what inspires that team member, how they want to grow.

And it helps them articulate what's important to them. So you're just getting in sync with them on what's important to them. The second thing I would say is, do you have a rhythm for performance plans and performance plans and reviews? See, a lot of times we do the review part, but we don't do the planning part. And I think both are really essential to helping create an environment where team members know, Hey, we want you to learn and grow. We want you to be,

You doing things that help you continue to grow as an individual. So one-on-one conversations on a regular basis, weekly or biweekly really important to creating those conversations for development. Secondly, performance development plans. do we, are we starting the year with a plan for growth in that, what are your top three performance goals for this next six months?

Jenni Catron (11:41.526)
And what is one area you want to grow in professionally? Because then as a leader, you can look at that and you can say, okay, I can recommend a book. can recommend, can recommend a course. can recommend a podcast. I can, make a way for you to go to a conference. You can understand how they want to grow and what they want to grow in. And then you can help define a pathway for that.

And that's development, right? If employees feel like you're in partnership with them for their growth, it doesn't mean all the responsibilities on you, but it means you're in partnership with them and understanding what's important to them and what will help them continue to grow in the role that they're in and maybe even to what they aspire to. One-on-one conversations, performance, development plans are the key to starting there. There's a lot of other things you could do, but I would start with those two things. Okay, third question.

is from a leader who is working with a small team. And she says, the program, the team seems continually burnt out. So she, this is a team she's just started working with. They feel continually burnt out. Introverts on the team don't engage. There's a sense of territorial hoarding of roles. Defensive reactions are common. Unkind facial expressions, hunkered down in meetings.

almost a defeated stance, not making eye contact. And she says, this is kind of a leftover piece of the previous leadership, which was stay in your lane, you know, at which kind of created isolation. So I'm paraphrasing because this leader gave a good bit of detail, which was awesome.

Again, I bet a lot of you can relate to this, right? Where you've just somewhere, somehow we've created this disconnection that they're not really operating as a team. They're kind of hunkered down, doing their own thing, staying in their lane. so wanting to help this leader reframe that culture, which is a heavy lift by the way. I don't want to...

Jenni Catron (13:42.734)
make it feel daunting or overwhelming, but when that's become the culture, it takes quite a bit in it. And what's happening is every person on that team is behaving in a way that has served them well, even though that doesn't sound like it, right? Like hunkering down, being territorial, none of that sounds great, except if that's the way you survive in the organization, then that's what you're going to continue to do.

So it feels a little unsafe. So this is the psychological safety of organizational culture. If you remember my culture hierarchy of needs, psychological safety is in the middle, which is like that level of trust where people feel like they can comfortably and confidently engage. So that doesn't exist based upon what I'm hearing from this team. And so we...

there's a shift we need to make in the culture. So now we have to figure out how do we make it safe for team members to behave differently. And that starts with the leader beginning to model the value of engagement, beginning to make it safe for people to actually collaborate. She says the team culture feels.

most critical as I can't see the strategic plan taking flight successfully where trust, safety and belief are so lacking. So she nails this, right? Like she's, she has her pulse on this in that they're supposed to be working on strategic planning. And she's like, I think the strategic plan is going to fail because we lack the culture piece. And she's exactly right. Another piece in the culture, the lead culture framework, we talk about the three building blocks for success. You might've heard me talk about this before where we say it's

Purpose, culture and strategy are the three key building blocks and your culture is the linchpin between the purpose and the strategy. So you can have an amazing purpose, mission, vision, direction for the organization. You can build a fantastic strategy to achieve that mission. But if you don't have a team aligned in helping make that possible, your best strategy is going to be a pipe dream because you don't have a team.

Jenni Catron (15:45.4)
that is fully engaged to make it happen. And so she is exactly naming it. They can do the strategy work all day long, but if they don't have a team that's really on board, it's just gonna flounder. So here would be my coaching on this. is a heavy lift. So this is not gonna be an overnight thing, but I would encourage you to look at, back to that culture definition, who we are and how we work together to achieve our mission. Who are we?

What is that mission? What is that vision? Why does it matter? So I would probably take a session with this team and I would just say, Hey, we want to go back to the basics a little bit. We're gearing up for the year ahead. So let's go back to the basis basics. This is our mission. This is why we exist. Well, how come you joined the team? No, not in a, not in a posture of trying to make them defensive, but more in a, tell me what drew you to this team. That's probably the better way to say it. What drew you to this team? Why did you?

decide that this was the right place for you to be. So assume positive intent. Assume, hey, everybody joined the team at one time because they believed in the mission. So try to get them talking about that. Get them sharing, hey, here's why this mission mattered to me. This is why I wanted to come to work here. So you're diffusing it. You're making it about them of like, why are they here? Why does it matter again in a like positive tone? Like everybody sharing and the leader going first. Hey, here's why I'm here.

Here's why this mission matters to me. Here's why I believe in it so deeply. So I would take one session and just do that and then carry on with your regular agenda. Then I'd come back the next week or whenever your next meeting is, and I would say, okay, how do we want to work together to achieve that mission? What are the values that we want to guide us? What do we look like at our best? Sometimes when you have a team like this, we had the contentious board earlier. Now we've got a team that has this kind of territorial disengagement from one another thing.

sometimes getting them to talk about, what do we look like at our best? Because what they're going to likely identify is a specific project or something that drew them together where they had to work together. Or they might come up a little short, they might draw some blanks. So you might have a couple of examples kind of tucked away in the back of your mind of like, here's some examples of what we look like at our best.

Jenni Catron (18:06.24)
And depending on the circumstances, maybe you're having to hunt for it and that's okay. But getting them to start talking about, this is what we look like at our best. Gosh, I was so proud of us when so any like looking for those positive moments and then saying, how do we do more of that? And so I would do those first two sessions and see if that starts to, open up new conversations, kind of awaken that team to.

new ideas of how they might engage together. there, you know, there's a lot of heavy lift to do there. There's that's, it's not an overnight fix, but I think there's actually a couple of really, those are two really great conversations you can have to start moving it in the right direction. Okay. Next one. this, this one says the individuals and teams would like to see a culture change, but the senior leader has his own way of managing the organization. So.

The individuals and teams of this organization would like to see a culture change, but the senior leader doesn't see it. That's the bottom line. Therefore, there's a disconnect between what the employees want. They want a great leader who empowers individuals, communicates clearly, and gives individuals enough freedom to do the job. Probably all of us are like, yep, that's what we want. And the culture that the senior leader implements, which is one more of people working individually without teamwork.

We're seeing a theme here, aren't we? And I don't think any of these individuals who sent these questions knew one another because they're totally different organizations. how do you, his question is, how do you convince a senior leader who looks great in front of his boss by achieving all the KPIs, how do you convince that leader to change? This one's a big one, you guys, because momentum and success masks a lot of culture issues.

cause what he goes, we said earlier, and I skipped over this part is that they're doing great. Like they're expanding, they're growing, like basically everything looks like they're on mission. And, back to those three building blocks for success, the purpose, culture, and strategy. What often happens is that, the strategy begins to crush the culture. Like if we overemphasize on strategy and achieving our goals and achieving our objectives without also making sure we're attending to culture.

Jenni Catron (20:25.418)
Eventually fractures emerge. Eventually the weight of that strategy is too much and it creates fractures, stress points, and ultimately can crumble the team. so, helping this leader see that the current mode of operation is likely to lead to burnout, disengagement, frustration. Eventually they're going to start making mistakes because if the team is not fully on board, like they want to be.

but it sounds like they feel like the leader is not helping create the level of camaraderie and connection that they aspire to. I would work with this leader and see, is there any data that would tell us there's starting to be some fractures in the culture because of their operating mode, right? Again, sounds like they're very outcome focused right now. And this is not a bad thing, you guys. I'm a strategy girl. I'm like, we got to get stuff done. We've got a mission to accomplish. I'm about that all day long.

but it's got to come in a partnership with making sure we're attending to the health of the team. So is there any data that would help illuminate to this leader that while the KPIs and all the outcomes look great, there's actually some other things that need our attention. So that could show up in exit interviews. Like if there's been any turnover, hopefully you're doing exit interviews and those exit interviews might showcase a few issues. Now what commonly happens

Is that a leader will dismiss those exit interviews as one-offs or episodic. And I think part of what you want to do is help bring awareness to that leader of like, Hey, even if they might be one-offs or episodic, is there any kernel of truth in that we need to be paying attention to? I'd look for exit interview data. anything else that would indicate fractures? there, high contributing employees who are maybe starting to disengage?

Is there anything that used to be a norm that is not common anymore, like from a positive standpoint of maybe there was a lot more camaraderie or like, is there anything that's different from what it might've been historically that might be a symptom? Do we do any like annual surveys or get feedback from the team on a regular basis? And if not, I would suggest doing it. So what I would say to that leader in this case, cause you've probably got

Jenni Catron (22:50.984)
a senior leader who is all about making things happen. And again, if it looks, if they're meeting the KPIs and they're making their leader happy, then they don't have any reason to change their behavior unless you can showcase that there's other stuff going on behind the scenes that needs their attention. So can you encourage that leader to say, Hey, let's get some data from the team. Let's just get a pulse on how the team is doing because

If the team is starting to struggle, it won't matter how great the strategy is, we eventually will lose the momentum and not be able to continue achieving at the level we're achieving right now. So you want to bring attention to if once the team is unhealthy, it is really hard to rebuild that momentum. So you want to play to their desire to accomplish the mission, but in accomplishing the mission, we need a healthy team to make that possible. So there's a couple of things there. There's a lot in that.

that I would just encourage you to keep looking for the opportunities to help bring awareness to that leader of the importance of the stewardship of the team. And then the last question we'll tackle today. This leader says, what would you recommend for a young growing church with many pivots, adaptations, staff changes? They're just a three-year-old church. What's most important to communicate to a staff and lay leaders with good

needed shifts, right? You're in early growth stage. So you're just having to pivot a lot. There's a lot of changes. So this leader says, what stability could be highlighted while changes and growth occurs? So this goes back to what I've named in a couple of the other questions, that definition of who we are and how we work together. Cause you're absolutely right. Change is a part of, this is really true for all of us that change is just a part of our world, right? It is more of the norm.

So what we wanted to find is the things that don't change. So who we are, our mission, our vision, like that likely is not changing, at least radically, right? So what is our mission and vision, particularly for the season ahead of us? And then how do we work together? What are those values, beliefs, and behaviors that guide us? And so what I commonly find, I don't know if this is the case for you, but what I commonly find...

Jenni Catron (25:11.54)
is that young organizations, founding leaders intuitively know the values, beliefs, and behaviors that they expect from the team, but they don't always articulate that and get it out and written. And so because you're a small enough team, most everybody on the team is catching it, but those lay leaders, those volunteers, they don't have enough time and proximity with the senior leader to naturally catch it.

And so, and as you grow, it won't be possible for everybody to fully just kind of understand and essentially read your mind as the senior leader. So what you want to do is really start crafting those values that are core to who you are now in a church culture. I'm guessing you probably already have church values of the things that you expect the whole congregation to align around, but you also want values for the team, meaning staff or key volunteers.

What are the values that guide how we work together? That second part of that culture definition, the values that guide how we work together. Do we expect adaptability because you're in a season of change? So, hey, being adaptable is just a part of what we do, being flexible. And then of course there'll be other things around maybe assuming the best, believing the best about one another, high communication. So your church values will be more around your spiritual

life and behaviors and your staff values or team values will be more about those operational best practices, those values that guide how we work, high ownership, collaboration. determine what are those values that are really key? What are the behaviors? Like, how does that, what does that look like? Cause we can name a value, but how we do it might be different in different people's interpretation and, and what beliefs, why do those things matter? And so,

If you haven't done that work, doing that work and giving that level of clarity, those are things you can define for the team. in even defining, you know what? Adaptability is a big value or flexibility is a big value for us because we're young and we're growing and we're pivoting. so change is just part of how we operate. You're clarifying that. So everybody goes, okay, wait, this is, this is what we do. So anywhere where you can bring clarity, even if it's clarity of, gosh, this is going to probably change in six months, but for now,

Jenni Catron (27:30.892)
Here's what we're focused on. And then if it changes, we're going to let you know. Even that is a level of clarity. So fighting for clarity where you can. The second question they asked was, where would you start with a small team to begin to implement the principles in your book? And how should those principles be introduced? 10 minutes of teaching, training, each staff meeting, et cetera, reading the book or excerpts of the book together. Great questions. And every team might do this differently. What I would recommend

is the book is really designed for you to read as a team and implement as a team. So there are culture team action plans at the end of every chapter. There's an action plan. There's also clarity checks of just saying, hey, how are we doing on this? And so those are activities that as a team you can do together. So I would say figure out what works well, probably an hour a month where you give everybody, like read chapter one, and then we're gonna discuss it in our team meeting together.

And then, because they've, they have a lot going on. If you give them too much reading, then they're probably not going to be comprehending it or ingesting it as much. And so I think probably once a month, and maybe it's a couple of chapters, maybe you want to hit, you know, there's five phases of the framework. So it might be that every month you discuss the new phase of the framework. You're going to pace yourself, however, because there's going to be some parts of that framework that need more attention. And so what I would say is work it out as you go.

it's not like I can prescribe like, Hey, read one chapter a month for, I forget how many chapters there are, something like 11, you know, for a year and boom, it'll all be done. Well, there might be some chapters you have to spend more time on cause there's more work for you to do there. So my encouragement would be read it at a pace that is, actionable for your team, but set aside if it's like one hour a month. That's the time you're working on the culture work.

and then give reading or assignments in between. The book's gonna walk you through that because it's really designed to help you build that culture plan. So that might have sounded a little vaguer than I intended it to, but set a specific time once a month, every other week, whatever the frequency is. And then as you read together, you'll find your pacing of, what do we need to focus on this month? And again, the clarity checks, the action plans in the book will also give you direction on that. Such good questions.

Jenni Catron (29:54.19)
You guys, I love that you are being so thoughtful and intentional about building a healthy culture. I so deeply believe this matters. I probably don't need to say that because you all know it. But I've shared with you all before that I had a couple of very specific experiences in my early career where I was a part of an amazing team and then went through a merger and overnight it went from amazing to awful.

And I thought, I never want an employee to experience that again. I want team members engaged, thriving. I want them having the level of clarity that they need to know how they can win here. And that's the heart of culture. Like we are on a mission together. So the whole purpose of culture is helping steward the people entrusted to you in pursuit of that mission. It's not just kumbaya. It's not just, you know, fun stuff and perks.

It's really knowing this is how we do the work together. And when we have that level of clarity, our contribution goes up significantly. So I hope you enjoyed these questions. You might've found yourself in some of the com some of those questions or elements of your team in those questions. And if you have others, I'd love to hear them. Just email me at jennycattrin at getforsight.com. And I would love to share.

Maybe some more questions. Maybe I'll do another one of these episodes if it's helpful to you. But in the meantime, make sure you go to culturematterssummit.com, get registered for the summit so we can continue the conversations. And I will see you back here next week.