279 | Equipping Leaders for Cultural Success

In this episode of the Lead Culture Podcast, Jenni Catron discusses the final phases of the Lead Culture Framework, focusing on the importance of equipping leaders and committing to ongoing culture work. She emphasizes that culture work is not a one-time project but an ongoing process that requires patience, persistence, and a commitment to change management. The episode also highlights the significance of leadership development in fostering a healthy organizational culture and the need to protect momentum as teams work towards their cultural goals.

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Transcript

Jenni Catron (00:03.576)
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. Well, today we are in part five of five episodes of the podcast where I'm taking you through the key parts, the five phases of the Lead Culture Framework that is outlined in my new book. You guys, this week is Release Week for Culture Matters. And first of all, if you have pre-ordered

I want to thank you so much for your belief and your support of this book and this framework. I really do believe it is a game changer for leaders who want to build a thriving team. Like I absolutely believe deeply in this whole framework and I'm really excited for you to get the book. Those of you that pre-ordered, you should be getting yours any day. And I really am excited for you to discover this framework in its depth.

because there is so much to it. It's one of those things that I feel like I'm still learning and discovering exactly all that's in the framework. And I wrote it. But anyway, if you haven't gotten your book yet, go to culturemattersbook.com. And if you go pre-order at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever you buy books, go pre-order it. Then go to culturemattersbook.com and put in your order information. And for this week, release week,

Jenni Catron (02:28.586)
you still will get all of the extra bonuses for buying it pre-order or the week of release. So everything you can do to help us get the word out this week is really, really valuable. So today I want to pick up on the series that we've been in. I want to kind of finish out the series with the last two phases of the framework. We've been walking through the five phases of the Lead Culture Framework from assessing our current culture

defining what we aspire to, like, what do we look like at our best and how do we define that? Building the plan, thinking through that employee journey grid and really building a plan that helps us reinforce that aspirational culture at every stage of our team members journey. And then these last two phases are equipping and committing. And I'm going to do a little bit abbreviated time on these two phases, partly because you got plenty of work to do in the first three phases. And then also because this is where you

you stay committed to the ongoing work, which is really the fifth phase. And so I want to give you just a couple of things to be thinking about because you're probably still neck deep in the assess and define phases. If you've started this and you've been tracking with me, or if you're just getting your hands on the book, you're going to be at the early stages and those early stages, those early phases of the framework, take some time. And I want to encourage you to take the time that you need. I'm giving you the flyover.

in these five episodes, but I want to encourage you that come back to these episodes as you need them and kind of use them hand in hand with the book to help guide you through the process. Because this isn't a process where you listen to these five episodes and boom, you implement everything immediately. You will find that every phase takes a different amount of time depending on the work that you need to do. So today we're going to look at phases four and five, equipping and committing.

And again, my hope with this is that it just gives you a glimpse into what culture can be and equip you to make this your priority this year. honestly, this work is such a reflection of the work that I've done for the last 20 years with different teams. And I've seen the system work. If you work the system, much like any other key system in your business, right? Or in your organization, you have to actually commit to the system to see

Jenni Catron (04:52.406)
the impact of it. And that's what I want you to be thinking about as you engage the lead culture framework. Here's also what I want to tell you is that it's easy to get overwhelmed by the scope of the system. And I do not want you to get overwhelmed because I want you to find your starting point and just keep taking steps, right? Don't get overwhelmed by the scope of it. Find your starting point.

and then just keep working it because you will see impact. You will see progress by just committing to the work. So let's talk about equipping and committing. If you were to take away just one concept from this whole framework and the discussions we've been having, I would implore you to recognize that culture work is ongoing work and needs your constant attention. Kind of already repeated myself on that. It really is work

that needs to be a part of your operating system, right? That's why I call it the culture operating system. You need to make it just a daily part of your habits. If you work through the framework and then hope your culture will magically be better without continued commitment, you'll be disappointed. Just being super honest with you that if you just think it's an episodic thing and you don't stay committed to the ongoing work, it...

you won't see the impact that you are really hoping for. Culture is building or eroding every day and it needs constant nurturing. It needs constant attention. Now the good news is that by engaging this process, you're doing the heavy lifting. You're, you're understanding the system, right? You're understanding what it takes. Now you need to patiently and persistently keep working the plan, right? Patiently and persistently keep working the plan because that's the point of an operating system.

It's designed to become a rhythmic part of how you work on a day-to-day basis, right? It's designed to become the habits and the behaviors that shape how you work. It's not a project, it's your way of working. And again, I think that was the aha for me when I started into this work and I hope it's become the aha for you that it really is just a part of the way that we work. It's everything that we do. If you saw the Culture Matters Summit,

Jenni Catron (07:15.438)
You might remember Mark Miller talking about some of his conversations with other leaders who just embody culture and he asked them, do you talk about it in every meeting and do you talk about it every day? And he got kind of quizzical looks from some of these leaders because they were like, well, it's everything we do. It's not just something we do episodically. It's the way we work. And that's how we want to think about culture in order to really see the impact.

and the experience that we want to create for our teams. So let's talk about these two words, patience and persistence. I've used them a lot and you'll hear me say them again and again because they're really key to working the process. The reason so many cultures stay stuck is because leaders are unwilling to patiently and persistently implement their operating system and give it time to produce change.

At the heart of culture change is behavior change. Your team has developed behaviors for how they work together, right? There are just ways that you work together. Some good, some not so good, right? So by clarifying your aspirational culture, you've defined a new target that inevitably requires changes in everyone's behavior, including yours. And behavior change takes time. Your culture didn't break overnight.

and it won't be fixed overnight. Now I realize that statement might be a little more extreme than your situation, but you get the sentiment, right? Like it didn't drift to an unhealthy place overnight and it's not going to move back to a healthy place overnight. We've got to give it time. We're asking our team to change the familiar, right? We're asking them to change what like, however you work right now is what they're familiar with, whether it's good or bad. Like they might even grumble about it, but it's what they know. So they're okay with it.

The behaviors that are likely serving them well right now, or at least the behaviors that are keeping the peace are what are familiar. And we're asking them to change some of that. Culture work often gets messier before it gets better. And we just need to know that we need to be prepared for it. In your effort to behave differently, you're gonna do it awkwardly. You're gonna have to course correct. So this is where patience and persistence come into play. This is why I need you to know that and be prepared for it. Patience,

Jenni Catron (09:42.656)
You're probably not unfamiliar with the word, but by definition, patient means not hasty. means steadfast and persistence means to go on resolutely or stubbornly in spite of opposition. we might like that word just a little bit better, right? So you could also say you need to be steadfast and stubborn, patient and persistent or steadfast and stubborn. You pick your alliteration, but

What I care about is that you recognize that these attributes are essential to seeing your desired goal come to fruition, right? That these things are critical to see the culture you aspire to come to fruition. So I need you to commit to it for the sake of you, your team, and the hope you've created by engaging the process so far. Here's what you've got to be prepared for leaders is that you have set expectations just by doing this work.

So you got to make sure you're ready to deliver on it. It will actually be worse on your culture. If you start this project with gusto and then fail to follow through with patience and persistence. So again, this is your willingness to commit to it. So what exactly do I mean? Here are a few scenarios, just a few, cause there's going to be all kinds of them. You could probably share them with me, the ones you bump into, but here's a few scenarios that will come up that will require you to patiently and persistently reinforce your culture plan.

You might be tempted to skip a values review in a staff meeting because something more urgent came up. A really talented team member continues to violate a core value and you avoid addressing it because we hate those uncomfortable conversations. You're busy with a big project and you're tempted to cancel your staff outing or you urgently need to fill a critical.

open position and want to forego your hiring process because you found a great candidate, right? So you just want to like abandon your process and jump into that hire. Those are a few things that are likely to happen that will cause you to not patiently and persistently follow the plan you've defined. And I'm willing to bet as you begin living into your culture operating plan, it will feel like everything is conspiring against you.

Jenni Catron (12:02.126)
100%, it's gonna happen, right? It's gonna feel like everything's working against you. And this is the resistance inevitable in meaningful work. So don't be discouraged by it, just expect it. Just know it's gonna come and commit to this mantra of patience and persistence, right? Patience and persistence, so critical to leading well and leading successfully. Okay, I also wanna talk about, as we talk about equipping ourselves and our team for...

culture work and we talk about committing to this ongoing work. want to talk about change management just for a minute, because this is a biggie that again is part of what you're going to have to lead through is a change management process. So what I'm trying to convey to you is the importance of importance of understanding and embracing change management. You likely do this in other parts of your organization, but you need to recognize that this is part of what you're doing with culture work. Leading others through change requires intentional

commitment. You're leading, leading others through change at a pace they can stand. And I think that's always really helpful to know and change management is that we've got to lead people through it at a pace they can stand too much, too fast, and they'll resist too slow and they lose hope. I was recently working with a construction company in the Northeast to help them define and implement their culture operating system.

And in one of our monthly meetings, they expressed that the rest of the staff were eager to start talking about what we were going to do to change the culture. Right? So the rest of the staff are starting to get a little impatient. So we had been in the assessment phase, doing careful work to really hear and assess the current culture dynamics. But when I heard the teams hunger to take action, I knew that they were ready for the next step of change. So you kind of want to listen, right? You don't want to go too fast and frustrate people, but you don't want to go so slow that they're like, Hey,

Are you doing anything? What's happening over there? Like if you hear that, you know you need to speed up. So change management is the ability to read, discern and guide a team to a new outcome. That's the goal, right? So this skill is essential in effectively changing your organizational culture. Some leaders, some of you are naturally wired with a bit more intuition to discern how to pace change in a way that creates buy-in.

Jenni Catron (14:18.318)
And leaders like this feel their way through the change and are typically quite successful. Like you just intuitively kind of know how to lead through it. The problem with that approach is that because you're going with your gut, you don't know how to teach others to do it. And so it works for you, but you don't know how to replicate it. So change management is a skill you can learn and frankly need to learn in order to be an effective leader. So you want to be conscious of that.

I recognize you might have really good instincts about change management and that's great. And trust those instincts. I'm not saying abandon those instincts, but do make sure that you know a process and you're teaching a process to the rest of your team so that your other leaders are equipped to help lead through change as well. Because culture change is just really one of the many changes that you'll need to lead through, right? As a leader. And there are other resources on change management in the book.

I outline five steps for leading change. You can dig into that. You can Google some resources on change management. I don't have time to get into how to lead through change, but I want you to be conscious of the fact that when you're doing the culture work, it is a change management process. And so you need to make sure you are committing to that process in order to lead through change well. All right. Let's talk about leadership development because this is part

of the equipping phase, that we've got to make sure that every leader at every level is prepared to lead our culture. The health of your team is directly related to how your people managers lead. How your people managers lead. This is really key. When one of my team and I were working with organizations to help them improve their culture, we often find that a major obstacle to improving their culture is the inconsistency of their leaders.

This is big you guys, that every leader at every level needs to be well equipped to lead people well. So we were working with a marketing company in Dallas and I was really baffled by the change challenges they were experiencing. They were showing all the usual symptoms of a toxic culture like significant staff turnover, gossip, mistrust. But when we did our staff-wide survey with them,

Jenni Catron (16:38.552)
the team indicated a great deal of camaraderie and even love for their leaders. Like they actually really enjoyed their leaders. And so the data seemed completely at odds. And again, so we dug in deeper, right? Like whenever the data doesn't make sense, I dig deeper trying to figure out what it's telling me. And what we discovered was that while the staff loved and appreciated each other, they didn't trust how their leaders made decisions. And this was big. While they respected their leaders as individuals,

they didn't respect their leadership skills. And this finding reinforced what we repeatedly see. Too often people are promoted for their competence and likability, but are not trained and equipped for leadership responsibility. And so as you're in these final phases of the framework, I want you to be paying really close attention to how are you equipping your leaders to lead well? How are you equipping your leaders

to succeed because this is the cult, a major culture buster, especially when you've done all the work of assessing, defining and building the plan. But then if your people managers day in and day out are actually violating the very things you're aspiring to, you're dead in the water, right? You're dead in the water. So when we talk about leadership development, especially related to team culture, there are two things I want you to be thinking about.

developing good people managers. So making sure you're not just promoting people because of they were, they've been good employees and it's almost like a reward. You want to make sure you're actually equipping them for the leadership responsibility they're going to hold because it's a different set of skills that they need to be trained in to succeed. And then you want to be thinking about how are we creating development opportunities for all of our staff? That's one of the things that we're hearing frequently from

team members is that they want to be a part of cultures. They want to be a part of organizations where they are developed, where there's an intentional, an intention in that organization. It's part of the culture to develop people, to help people continue to grow and thrive in their roles inside the organization. So I want you to be really thoughtful about your leadership development. We taught, we call the framework, the lead culture framework.

Jenni Catron (18:55.66)
because leadership is so key to its success. And we'll come back and we'll talk about that a lot more. Y'all know we do leadership coaching. That's what Foresight has done for the last eight and a half years is invest in leaders because leaders build teams. Leaders are shaping culture. And so these two things are like, inextricably linked. Like it is really critical that we're equipping our leaders while we're building our culture. Okay. And the final thing I want to share today is the

the commit part of the framework, the final phase of the framework is this commitment to the ongoing work. And I specifically want to talk about momentum. I once had a mentor tell me that one of the most important things a leader is responsible for is protecting momentum. And I have returned to this nugget of wisdom time and time again. Like I just, it comes back all the time when I'm working on a big project. Protecting momentum applies in every area of leadership.

And it's especially true of your culture. Once you have your culture moving in the right direction, you need to fiercely protect that momentum. And momentum can be a bit deceiving. When you have it, you think you always will. And sometimes then you get a little complacent about it. And you might even overlook issues that are starting to slow the momentum, right? Like you don't even notice that it's starting to slow down momentum. and then

As it slows down, you realize, man, we missed that. Like we now regaining that momentum is so much harder. When you don't have momentum, you feel like you'll never get it, right? It's like, my gosh, how are we going to get this moving? And so you're tempted to blame strategies or external circumstances. You grasp at shiny new things, oftentimes not realizing that root cause lies deeper. And so you need to understand

what's producing your momentum. And part of if you've been working the framework, you've started to get momentum on your culture. You're getting your culture moving in the right direction. And you need to recognize that committing to the ongoing work is really essential to protect that momentum. In Walter Isaacson's biography of Leonardo da Vinci, he explains da Vinci's fascination with momentum. Now da Vinci is one of those historical.

Jenni Catron (21:18.666)
leaders that I just find really fascinating because he's just so brilliant in so many ways. But I was reading that biography and he was talking about Leonardo's fascination with momentum. He said Leonardo understood the concept of what he calls impetus, which is what happens when a force pushes an object and gives it momentum. So in typical Da Vinci form, he couldn't be content with just the concept, Da Vinci had to always unpack everything to try to figure it out.

And he proved his concept by studying a tightly wound spring, noticing that in the beginning it has greater force, but as it unwinds, it has less and less power. Da Vinci's meticulous observations reveal profound insights into the nature of momentum and how we can sustain it. So he was noticing at the beginning that tightly wound spring has a ton of force.

So when you start this culture work, you're going to start out with a lot of momentum, but it's going to slow down over time. And so you have to be prepared for that. And DaVinci talked about four things. I'm going to focus on the fourth one today, but he talked about, need to anticipate the unwinding, right? That it's coming. Your, momentum is going to slow. need to be prepared for that. You need to plan for ongoing effort. So what will we do to keep that momentum knowing it's going to slow down? We're to have to make sure we're giving

pushes on that flywheel, so to speak, to help keep the momentum. We need to know our driving force. Like what was the thing that caused the momentum in the first place so that we can like mimic that or we can reproduce that. And then the last thing he said is you need to identify the friction. And this is the one that I want you to notice is DaVinci specifically said, he said, what prevents perpetual motion.

is the inevitable loss of momentum in a system when it rubs against reality. Now that phrase, when it rubs against reality, like this is real. Reality in culture work looks like team members who roll their eyes every time you repeat a value. That's the reality. You're gonna be trying to repeat the values and keep them in front of people and you're gonna have team members who start to roll their eyes. Reality is that in spite of agreeing on the behaviors that drive your values,

Jenni Catron (23:38.894)
Team members are going to misbehave from time to time. They're not going to live into what you've defined. The reality is a new, well-meaning employee who brings their own interpretation of culture and requires coaching and redirecting, right? Like you're like, my gosh, how did they not know that? So you're going to have to coach and you're going to have to redirect. That's the friction in the system, right? Reality is external forces that create pressure and stress and tempt you to pause or abandon your culture plan. Something's going to come up and you're going to think you don't have time to keep working on the culture.

You're going to put it on the back burner and I promise you it's a mistake. You have got to identify that as friction in the system and you've got to figure out, okay, what do we do to keep maintaining our momentum on the culture work? Maybe we need to adjust some things. Maybe we need to tweak some things, but don't abandon it. Identifying sources of friction is a critical aspect of momentum management. Just as friction slows down a moving object,

external pressures and internal conflicts can hinder your progress. So by pinpointing these obstacles, you can address them head on and keep your momentum intact, right? You want to protect that momentum. Momentum is both a gift and a challenge. It's a force that propels us toward our goals, but demands constant attention and care. So with greater awareness of the principles of momentum, we're better equipped to anticipate changes in momentum.

and proactively protect it. So I just want you to be conscious of that, that culture, there's a momentum to it, right? It's the environment we're creating. And we want to make sure that as we've built this momentum, as you've worked the phases of the framework, that you are now committed to protecting that momentum. Okay, I want to give you just a couple of things before we wrap up with this episode. What I love most about this work, about this culture work,

is the long tail impact it has on your culture. So here are a few things I repeatedly see improve. So I want to give you some good news. The things that I see improve in organizations that have committed to the Lead Culture Framework, that have committed to the ongoing culture work. First, confidence. It's been stated numerous times, but it can't be undervalued. As you bring clarity to your culture, you build confidence

Jenni Catron (26:05.644)
in your team members, right? And confident team members contribute at a high level. Secondly, alignment. Clarity throughout the organization also produces alignment in our efforts. Friction and frustration are less frequent, and when those moments occur, team members typically know what needs to happen to realign their efforts. Third, ownership.

With greater clarity and confidence, team members have a stronger sense of responsibility to the organization and more ownership in the outcomes. Fourth, commitment or loyalty. Feeling truly a part of the culture, team members are more committed and therefore more loyal to the organization. The level of trust and respect that is fostered goes both ways. And finally, engagement.

Engaged employees are gold. You know what it feels like when you've got team members who are just in it. They are just committed. They are in. They are engaged. Engaged employees increase profitability, result in less turnover, increase quality of your service or products, have lower absenteeism rates, and are less likely to burn up. All things we want, right, with our team members. So as you continue to work your lead culture plan,

I suspect you'll see these things that I just named and I think you'll add some to the list. You'll see some byproducts. You'll see some things that you are incredibly proud of. And I want to just encourage you to stay after it, to keep leading through the culture work, to keep leading through this work that I think is so critical to both your fulfillment as a leader, but to the fulfillment and the engagement of every person on your team.

Everybody deserves to be led well. Every person on your team deserves to be in a role that is aligned with their strengths, aligned with their gifts, that they have clarity of how they can contribute so that they can partner with you to achieve the mission that you are all called to. Remember, my definition of culture is clarity of who we are and how we work together to achieve our mission. So it's in pursuit of the mission. We're a team on a mission.

Jenni Catron (28:31.224)
But as leaders, we want to lead culture. We want to set the environment that brings out the best in all of us. So leaders, I want to encourage you to keep leading well. I want you to dig into this process. I want you to take the phases at the pace that works for you, right? You don't have to hurry it. You can engage these phases, but consistently, patiently, and persistently work the process so that you can build your culture operating system.

and see the outcomes that you hope for. All right. I hope these five episodes were helpful. Gave you just something to be thinking about, like getting your head around that framework and then make sure you've got the book culture matters book.com is where you can go find all the bonuses, go make sure you've ordered it and then go to culture matters book.com and get all those bonus resources this week. They're only good for this week, the week of release and, and then get to work on your culture plan. All right, friends.

I'm grateful for you. Thanks for leading well. Let me know how we can serve you. You can just email me at podcast at getforsight.com. Let us know what questions you have. If you're working the framework, where are you stuck? Let me know, cause I might do an episode on it. And if we can serve you in any way, our lead culture certified coaches are here to help you. So whether you just need some one-on-one coaching to help guide you through the framework or whether you would like one of our team members to come in and actually facilitate it for you, we would love to do that.

So just email me, Jenny Catron at get foresight.com J E N and I C A T R O N at get foresight. Get the number four S I G H T.com email me there and we'll get on a call so we can help you put this framework to work. All right, gang, keep leading well, and we'll see you next week.