The Recipe for Business Survival: Leadership, Culture, and You

Ever wondered why some businesses thrive while others crumble? The answer, as our guest Dr. Dhru Beeharilal reveals, lies in the leadership approach and organizational culture. As a renowned expert in diversity, equity, and inclusion, international coach, and founder of Nyan Leadership, Dr. Dhru provides an enlightening discussion on the differentiation between leaders and managers, and the subsequent effect on home-based businesses. Learn how to identify and discard limiting narratives that might be setting your business back, while simultaneously finding out how to attract and retain the best talent, build result-oriented teams, and spearhead positive transformations within your organization.

Shifting our focus to the significant role leadership plays in molding corporate culture, we delve into its implications in the realm of remote work. Get ready to understand the real impact of good leadership on employee retention, and the correlation between poor leadership and the worrying trend of the "great resignation". This conversation underscores the need to invest in commendable leaders and create a positive work environment to attract and retain the crème de la crème. An inspiring success story of a company that improved its culture by empowering its employees is also shared, illustrating the immense potential of investing in a positive corporate culture. So, gear up for an episode that promises to transform your understanding of leadership and organizational culture, and prepare you to make the necessary changes for a successful and growing venture.

Website: https://nayanleadership.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dhruvabee/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhrubee/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dhrubee 

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Transcript

Hank: 0:40

Welcome to the Home Business Success Show. Join us as we speak to home business entrepreneurs for tips, tricks, do's and even don'ts for running a successful home business. Welcome everyone, I'm Hank Eater, also known as Hank the PR Guy, host of the Home Business Success Show here on bizradious. All entrepreneurs, all the time. We'll join our guests right after my two cents marketing minute. Are you a leader or are you just a manager? Do you even know the difference?

Hank: 1:17

In the business world, a true leader is someone who motivates by example. He or she walks the walk. A leader empowers his crew to do what they were hired to do. Leaders find the best people for the job, get them up to speed and then let them do their job. On the other hand, a manager manages and sometimes even micromanages. This leaves people feeling less valued and more like mere cogs in a machine over which they have no control or even skin in the game beyond collecting a regular paycheck. Be a leader, not a manager.

Hank: 1:57

Using that in mind, our guest today, dr Drew B Harry Lall, shatters the limitations of leaders and business owners by focusing on mindset, leadership and organizational culture to attract and keep the best talent, build cohesive, highly effective teams and grow and scale their businesses. He is also a sought after keynote speaker and trainer with extensive experience of in diversity, equity and inclusion and organizational culture consulting, in addition to his role as an international coach better Asian professional certified coach that's a mouthful and the founder and principal of Nyan leadership, yep. Dr Drew works with leaders, business owners, teams and organizations to inspire meaningful, intentional and effective action that drives positive change in organizations around the world. Dr Drew is also the founder of Nyan leadership. Through Nyan leadership, he's helped organizations of all sizes to improve their workplace culture, develop diverse and inclusive teams and drive sustainable growth. Welcome to the show, drew. Thanks, I appreciate it. Oh, you're welcome. If you would please describe what it is that you do.

Dr. Dhru: 3:28

Yeah, so most of my work I'd say about 80% of it is mindset work, right? So it's working with organizations and individual leaders. There is such thing as organizational mindset, so we do that as kind of the culture work and then beliefs and that whole DEI concept diversity, equity, inclusion. But then we also work on the micro level with the individual leaders. And I love what you said about leaders versus managers, because that is a mindset shift, right, and the difference between a leader and a manager is the mindset around how they manage the team, how they lead the team, and that distinction is very, very important. So, helping people to really identify the stories because that's really what holds them back is what are the stories that we're telling ourselves about situations, about ourselves, about our clients and about our businesses and then also about our employees and teams? And how do we identify those stories, identify any limiting stories and then change those stories, because ultimately we can write whatever story we want. So I help them write the story that they want to write.

Dr. Dhru: 4:24

What's an example of such a story? So, for example, I mean the leadership versus management concept, right, I mean there's folks who are in a position of leadership. I wouldn't say that they're leaders yet, but they're managers, right, and they manage a team and, like you said, they might micromanage. That can oftentimes come from a story about trusting their employees, that they can't trust their team to do their work themselves. They have to micromanage them and focus on every little detail. That may or may not matter, because if they don't, their teams are going to do whatever they want, and then it's going to be the Wild West. That's a story, right? It's also a story that companies are telling themselves now that, oh, people don't do good work when they're at home. They have to come back to the office. That story has been proven wrong, but they still have that story, so logic really doesn't come into play. A lot of times it's really about unwinding that story, because it's so tightly wound around their identity and who they are, and so those stories really aren't effective in a long term situation.

Hank: 5:21

I'm glad you brought that up because it's a particular interest to the home business success show, because we're basically our listeners are home business entrepreneurs and for people who do work remotely you know, even even home business people sometimes hire employees, you know, but they don't work in the home business person's home, they work in their own homes. And for a lot of people, this transition that happened during pandemic times, so now of the shift from being in a traditional office to working out of a home based space, whether they're entrepreneurs or whether they're work from home employees has shown for a lot of people that it is more productive.

Hank: 6:04

It's, you know, getting rid of the commute and not having someone breathing down your neck all the time you know, and it's not to say there aren't benchmarks that they have to follow and deliverables they have to have those things, but many have found themselves far more effective working out of their home office than having to show up in a brick and mortar space every day. That being said, what would you say is the real value of leadership in organizations?

Dr. Dhru: 6:37

So leaders are the lifeblood of an organization, whether people want to believe that or not. Right? If you have poor leadership, the culture is going to suffer, the culture suffers, then the employees individually suffer and then they'll end up leaving. People don't lead bad jobs, they lead bad leaders. That's proven time and time again and that's something I preach as much as I can to organizations who want to listen. And the ones who don't want to listen are the ones who are going to complain and cry about it in a couple years when things shift again and then they can't hire or attract the right talent.

Dr. Dhru: 7:04

You know, 20, 30 years ago it was a lot easier because, first of all, there was no social media there's no Glassdoor to check on what it was like working at a particular company and what the experience was like. Nowadays it's so available. You can ask any number of people. You can see Glassdoor, first of all as a website. You can check that out and see how companies are doing and how they treat their employees. But even so, you can also connect with different people on LinkedIn or various social media platforms and find out directly from them. Hey, I know you used to work at this company, what was it like there, and that availability, that ease of access to people wasn't really there 20, 30 years ago. So you couldn't find out until you got into that company and worked there for six months that that company was really trash in terms of culture and respect for the employees.

Dr. Dhru: 7:47

But you have this situation that's happened in the last year or so this great resignation idea over the last couple of years and companies are freaking out because they can't get, attract the right talent, or can't hire the right talent because it's one's too expensive, or they just don't want to work for those companies and they think it's because they're lazy.

Dr. Dhru: 8:01

And some of them are entitled and that's a different issue but largely it's not entitled, it's not in that kind of thing, it's just they don't want to work for companies that don't respect them anymore and that holding them hostage is not there anymore. So part of the issue is that whole concept of as long as you respect your people and have good leadership and invest in good leaders, that leader will keep their team together, and as soon as that leader leaves, though, that entire team is going to leave. Eventually, at least the best quality people are going to leave, people who are not really highly skilled or not going to be great employees. They'll probably stick around because they're afraid of going somewhere else. They're not going to get hired anywhere else. But the people who are really high performers are going to get scooped up by another company, and then again the people in charge of that company are going to wonder what happened.

Hank: 8:45

I guess in order to become a really good leader, it depends on what level of management circles they're in in the company. But a really good leader who empowers their team to do their job and picks the best people obviously is being treated the same way up the corporate ladder. They're being valued, they're being allowed to do their job as well. So I suppose that speaks for the overall corporate culture in a company like that.

Dr. Dhru: 9:12

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the challenges is people don't necessarily see good leadership, right, I mean? And again, nowadays you have more examples of that. You can watch videos on it and that kind of thing on YouTube is a great tool for that kind of thing, but it wasn't always the case. And so people who are in leadership positions now one would call them leaders, because they're not definitely leaders but they're in leadership positions now grew up in a time when there wasn't that model of good leadership in these different fields, right, and there's some, really, I would say, frequent fliers in terms of the people who complain about this kind of thing or have those kind of poor cultures.

Dr. Dhru: 9:46

And traditionally, the people in those positions who are in leadership positions haven't been good leaders. But it's not like they want to be people who are mistreated in their staff. They just grew up with that and they figure oh well, that was a right of passage. And they make these again stories, these excuses for themselves. It's like this is a right of passage. You have to go through this being hazing process if you will to get to where you need to get to, and this is part of the business. Well, it doesn't have to be right and that's part of that. That actually is very short-sighted and, frankly, it's excusable. It's excusing bad behavior and enabling bad behavior and that's starting to go away now, or needs to go away now, because people are starting to get wise to it. And so, yes to your point, those people who are in those leadership positions it affects the culture and affects how people interact with the company, with the leaders of the company, and it affects their ability to retain good staff.

Hank: 10:36

So then you were saying on glass doors, someone could log in there and look at what the corporate culture is like in different companies, if it's been reported through that.

Dr. Dhru: 10:45

Yeah, so the website Glassdoor I think it's the Glassdoorcom you can check out different companies. As long as they're on there, you can check out the employee responses and how they felt they were treated at this company and rated them different things. Now, obviously, some of that's going to be biased because some people were fired and they're not going to really they're not going to give a good review of that company. But there are also some really valid situations where people there's life situations changed, they left the company and they leave an honest review about how it was working there pros and cons and so that can be a really great tool. It shouldn't be the only tool people use, but it can be a tool in the toolbox.

Hank: 11:20

Right, I was thinking in terms of what said about companies on a public site like that. But in my early days, when I was a news reporter and I went to school for journalism, when we studied the law of mass communications and one might think, well, maybe I'm afraid to say something about the company on something like that because I might get sued. But that brings me back to the notion that the two best defenses against slander or libel are truth and absence of malice. A disgruntled employee might not have absence of malice because they might come on trying to get even with the company. But basically, if these reviews are truth, then they can't really be construed as anything other than free speech.

Dr. Dhru: 12:07

Right, and also opinions are protected too, right. So you can talk about opinions and how, what your experience was like, as long as you don't Throw anyone in particular person or company under the bus. You're not gonna say this company intentionally did the x, y and z unless you have proof of that. But you can say the experience was horrible. I didn't. I didn't feel respected, I didn't feel like my you know, like my opinions mattered. I didn't feel like I did. The leadership, value of the employees, all those things are completely protected. You can say all those things because that's that's what happened.

Dr. Dhru: 12:34

You can also talk about your exit interview and that's one of things I tell people companies, hr people, specifically as you're doing these exit interviews with people who are leaving the company, make sure you do an effective exit interview. Don't just take it to the tech, check the box, take feedback, because that that's gonna be. The only way you change the company is by getting feedback and say, okay, what do we need to change here? What do we need to actually invest in in terms of making a difference in this company so that we don't keep losing good talent and we can actually Turn the ship around and start attracting good talent back?

Hank: 13:02

well, that would be a whole mindset change on the part of the company to do things like that, because those who are in leadership positions, who are not leaders, think they have all the answers and they know it also. They certainly Don't want to get that kind of information from somebody who's on the way out.

Dr. Dhru: 13:18

You know what I mean. So that's a small thing, the difference to actually a lot of them. They act like they know they know everything, that they know it all and that they don't want feedback or whatever. They don't want feedback but it's not because they know it all. They don't actually believe that they know it all. They're actually severely insecure, most of them. There's a very small percentage that actually does believe that they're amazing, that they're the best thing in the world, but that's like less than 1%, most people out there. The reason that they're putting forth such a strong, over confident you know, overcompensating Display of image is because they're so insecure and they can't possibly allow themselves To get that bad feedback and shatter that image that they have for themselves or let anyone else believe that about themselves.

Hank: 14:00

Well, that's like those who have to build themselves up at the expense of others, and I guess that can happen with managers too, by making people who report to them feel inadequate or foolish. They feel powerful and of course, that leads to a very strong, toxic corporate culture. Absolutely, we, we, in a roundabout way, or maybe not turned about, we've talked about the importance of mindset mindset to leaders or business owners and I guess the more positive and the more inclusive and the more what's the word I'm looking for like Growth oriented. The more growth oriented the mindset is, then the better that particular company will function.

Dr. Dhru: 14:47

Yeah, absolutely, and the more they're willing they are to listen to feedback and actually get feedback from their employees and trust their employees to give them feedback and to do their jobs.

Hank: 14:56

What would you say are some of the ways that leaders can build a more inclusive and positive corporate mindset?

Dr. Dhru: 15:05

So I think what it's kind of. Actually I answer the question. Before you said sorry, but it's really that it's like being open to asking for feedback, being open to actually accepting the feedback and not cherry picking what feedback you want to highlight and focus on right. A lot of companies will do these like culture surveys or feedback surveys, and then they'll point to the one metric that happens to give them in a positive light, even loosely. They'll be like oh hey, seven percent of our employees are Amazing and would highly recommend this entire, this company. Okay, what about the other 93%? What do they think?

Dr. Dhru: 15:34

Oh well, don't worry about that. That they're. You know that. That's where they probably look very below, below the average, and we're like, oh, this company's really needs a lot of help with this stuff and doesn't know what they're doing. But they're gonna ignore that little. Put that in the pocket over there and they can focus on the seven percent of people that do Amazing or that feel like they're. They're amazing. So it's really not like leaning away from the denial piece of it, right, because a lot of it is denial. Whether it's active or passive, it's still denial, right.

Hank: 15:59

If you would give me just a little bit more insight in this notion that People don't quit bad jobs, they quit bad leaders. Yeah, absolutely so. Let's.

Dr. Dhru: 16:08

Let's take a toxic organization right, and I use it for toxic relatively right now, but let's say it's just an unhealthy culture in this organization. Right, you have five teams, just keep it simple five teams that all of which are functioning at different levels of effectiveness and efficiency. One of those teams is operated by an amazing leader who actually inspires and trusts their people, and that leader, as part of their job, as part of who they are, they're gonna shelter their team from everyone else, from all the other toxicity and all the other bad culture situations that are going on. Other leaders, maybe other leadership people in leadership will be Micromanians in their staff and will be, you know, having their staff have really good leadership, and we'll be. You know, having their staff have really unhealthy hours and unhealthy habits and whatever. This leader is really empowering, sets clear boundaries, it sets clear expectations and clear goals and really helps their staff grow and develop and that productivity is through the roof.

Dr. Dhru: 16:56

Well now, let's say that leader leaves. They find it another position somewhere else. They're getting tired of the toxicity on their side, because being a filter gets exhausting after a while. Right, and Sheltering your whole team will get. It will take its toll. So that leader leaves, right, they go to another company.

Dr. Dhru: 17:11

Well, now I give that team six to eight months at the most before they lose the best talent on that team, whether it's one person, whether it's the entire team, whether it's a couple people.

Dr. Dhru: 17:21

They're going to start losing people because that toxicity now is leaking into it and they're going to start feeling oh well, wait, is this what this person was dealing with? This whole time I didn't realize that this company operated this way and I don't want to work for a company like this. And now that guy, that guy's the guy I enjoyed working for and he's gone. So I don't want to be micromanaged, because I want. First of all, I've tasted the deliciousness of not being micromanaged, so I don't want to taste this accurate nonsense at this point. So I'm going to go somewhere else, I'm going to find another company and I'm going to start interviewing and again, they're going to stay as long as it takes for them to get a new job somewhere else, because in that situation, the devil you don't know is still better than the devil you do know in a situation, because you know the better devil that was before them, that took care of them.

Hank: 18:02

Right, right. So what is the most incredible experience you've seen? When you helped a company to up level their corporate culture?

Dr. Dhru: 18:12

Yeah, so I mean, it was actually a situation similar to what I just described. There was a really amazing leader in this organization and he left, and the leader of the company. So it was kind of, if you can picture it, you have this pyramid of the company, at the top of the CEO, and then you have on the bottom. There's like in this situation there were seven teams that one person ended up leaving and that team was struggling now and the CEO recognized there were a couple levels of toxicity between him and the team. But he recognized that this guy was really a high performer and really supported his team and he's like I want that team back, I want that productivity back. How do I do that?

Dr. Dhru: 18:50

And he actually ended up reaching out to the guy who left to talk to him and ended up we ended working together and eventually we got three of the teams, because we worked together for only about eight or nine months before they had to shift gears and move things around because, again, the toxicity was getting to them.

Dr. Dhru: 19:05

They didn't want to do the whole organizational transformation up front, even though we recommended that. But we worked with three of their teams and those leaders ended up changing the way that they operated Because, again, it wasn't necessarily intentional that they're operating that way. They've never seen a better model and so once they understood that how to actually be a better leader, how to empower themselves and empower their teams those teams became really functional and really effective and we kept some people. We ended up they still ended up losing a lot of people, unfortunately, but the CEO changed how they hired, they changed how they operated the things and they changed a lot of the culture around the business and they ended up letting go of some of the more toxic leaders and after some time, after we worked together, they ended up changing the way that they did business altogether and that company was actually much more effective and again they kept a lot of the talent that they could have lost if they hadn't invested that time in energy.

Hank: 19:56

So by looking, listening and empowering they bring up their whole corporate culture and they set up. They set a corporate culture where people can feel valued and feel like their contribution really counts and that loyalty kind of breeds loyalty. It's amazing how quickly time flies, but is there anything I haven't asked you that you'd like to share?

Dr. Dhru: 20:23

No, I think that covers most of it. Honestly, I mean, like I said, mindset. I just don't think I will highlight as the power of mindset over skill set. You know, don't always hire just for skill set. You got to hire people with the right mindset as well.

Hank: 20:34

Right. So you could find somebody who maybe is extremely, amazingly experienced in their field, but you know from talking to them that they possibly have a negative mindset or they have some ideals or belief systems that go contrary to the corporate culture. So then you might have to pick up somebody who maybe doesn't have as many years experience as that person but has a better mindset.

Dr. Dhru: 20:58

Yeah, either yours experience or just letters after their name. I'll just give a quick example. I used to work at the DA's office in Boston and one of the attorneys that worked there one of them was from Harvard. The other people were from different schools like Suffolk and New England School of Law, and eventually, after the first couple of weeks of all working together, we all bought on. The same time the Harvard attorney started getting zero cases because he just was not a good attorney and he went to Harvard but he wasn't really the sharpest tag in the box, and so they stopped giving him great cases. They started giving him the boring stuff and everyone else of the Suffolk and New England School of Law students started getting all the harder cases.

Hank: 21:35

Oh yeah, that's a great example. If you would now please tell our listeners what is the easiest and best way to get in touch with you if they want to find out more or if they want to consult with you about improving corporate culture or even just developing themselves as a leader, you know, as a small business owner.

Dr. Dhru: 21:56

Absolutely so. My username on most of my social media is Drew B, so DHRUBE, that's YouTube. That's my link tree is also Drew B, linkedin. And then my Instagram is going to be Drew Vubby, with a VA in between, but otherwise everything else is Drew B, so reach out to me anywhere there. Check out my link tree. I've got a podcast called Ikigai Leadership. Sorry, ikigai Leadership, I take that too fast most of the time, but yeah, it's always fun for me. I love to have conversations with folks about how to improve their businesses and how to grow.

Hank: 22:28

Very cool. Well, thanks for being here with us today, dr Drew, and to our listeners, Tune in every Wednesday at 11am for the Home Business Success Show here on bizradious. Before I go, I want to tell you that there are some great resources available to home business owners. You are not alone in the wilderness in your home business. The Home Business Success Community has your back. We're an online membership support community of like-minded home business entrepreneurs. Contact me to find out more. Just go to bizradious, click on shows, find my picture and you'll find all the contact information you need. Remember, you can achieve success, freedom and independence in your own home business. I've done it, dr Drew has done it, and you can, too. See you again next week. This is Hank Eater, wishing all of you a fabulous day of home business success.